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Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/2/21

-- Liber LII, Manifesto of the O.T.O., by Aleister Crowley
-- Magick in Theory and Practice, by Aleister Crowley
-- Magick Without Tears, by Aleister Crowley
-- Moonchild, by Aleister Crowley
-- The Book of Lies, by Aleister Crowley
-- The Book of the Law, by Aleister Crowley
-- The Diary of a Drug Fiend, by Aleister Crowley
-- The Heart of the Master, by Aleister Crowley
-- The Vindication of Nietzsche, by Aleister Crowley
-- Aleister Crowley and Coprophagy: The Limits of Transgression, by Georgia van Raalte
-- Aleister Crowley as Political Theorist, by Kerry Bolton
-- Ordo Templi Orientis Spermo-Gnosis: Carl Kellner, Theodor Reuss, Aleister Crowley, by P.R. Koenig
-- The OTO & the CIA -- Ordis Templis Intelligentis, by Alex Constantine
-- Ordo Templi Orientis Spermo-Gnosis: Carl Kellner, Theodor Reuss, Aleister Crowley, by P.R. Koenig
-- 13th Degree: Royal Arch of Enoch (or Knights of the Ninth Arch), by Charles T. McClenechan
Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, by Wikipedia
-- Knights Hospitaller, by Wikipedia
-- Nosferatu's Baby (Much Too Much) Too hot To Handle, by Peter-R. Koenig
-- Ordo Templi Orientis Outer Head of the Order?, by Karl Germer
-- The Templar's Reich Milieu: The Slaves Shall Serve, by Peter-Robert Koenig
-- Theodor Reuss: The Programme of Construction and the Guiding Principles of the Gnostic Neo-Christians O.T.O., published in 1920, by P.R. Koenig
-- A Note on Gerard Aumont, by Ordo Templi Orientis International Headquarters
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-- Honour Thy Fathers: A Tribute to the Venerable Kapilavaddho ... And brief History of the Development of Theravāda Buddhism in the UK, by Terry Shine
-- Convert to Compassion: Allan Bennett, from Theravada Buddhism and the British Encounter: Religious, Missionary and Colonial Experience in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka [Excerpt], by Elizabeth J. Harris
-- Charles Henry Allan Bennett, by Wikipedia
-- Allan Bennett, by AstrumArgenteum.org
--Allan Bennett, by George Knowles
-- Tibet House US: Overview, by Tibet House US
-- Tibet Society: Our Story, by tibetsociety.com
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-- Committee for a Free Asia, by Central Intelligence Agency
-- The Dalai Lama, by The Central Intelligence Agency
-- The Indian Communist Party and the Sino-Soviet Dispute, by Office of Current Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency
-- The Sino-Indian Border Dispute, by Central Intelligence Agency
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-- Nehru on Communism: An Awakening, by cia.gov
-- Scientology Guardian's Office Debbie Sharp Reveals Secret CIA Human Experiments
-- Sex, Drugs and the CIA, by Douglas Valentine
-- The CIA's Secret War in Tibet, by Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison
-- Project MKULtra, by Wikipedia

The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor was an initiatic occult organisation that first became public in late 1894, although according to an official document of the order[1] it began its work in 1870. According to this document, authored by Peter Davidson, the order was established by Max Theon, who when in England was initiated as a Neophyte by "an adept of the serene, ever-existing and ancient Order of the original H. B. of L."[2]

The Order's relation, if any, with the mysterious "Brotherhood of Luxor" that Helena Blavatsky spoke of is not clear.[3]

Theon thus became Grand Master of the Exterior Circle of the Order. However, apart from his initiatory role, he seems to have little to do with the day to day running of the order, or of its teachings. He seems to have left these things to Peter Davidson, who was the Provincial Grand Master of the North (Scotland), and later also the Eastern Section (America).

Peter Davidson, cofounder of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light (HBL), a nineteenth-century British occult order, was born and raised in Forres, Scotland. In 1866 he married Christina Ross. He became a violin maker and in 1871 published a book, The Violin, that surveyed the historical and technical aspects of the instrument.


Violin

-- Davidson, Peter (1842-1929), by Encyclopedia.com

The order's teachings drew heavily from the magico-sexual theories of Paschal Beverly Randolph, who influenced groups such as the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) (later headed by Aleister Crowley) (Greenfield 1997) although it is not clear whether or not Randolph himself was actually a part of the Order.[4]

Prior to the rise of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1888 the HBoL was the only order that taught practical occultism in the Western Mystery Tradition. Among its members were a number of occultists, spiritualists, and Theosophists. Initial relations between the Order and the Theosophical Society were cordial, with most members of the order also prominent members of the T.S.[5]

Later there was a falling out, as the Order was opposed to the eastern-based teachings of the later Blavatsky (Davidson considered that Blavatsky had fallen under the influence of "a greatly inferior Order, belonging to the Buddhist [sic] Cult"). Conversely, the conviction in 1883 of the Secretary of the Order, Thomas Henry Burgoyne for fraud, was claimed by the Theosophists to show the immorality of the Order.

Thomas H. Burgoyne [Thomas Dalton]

Unlike the case of Peter Davidson, there are no descendants or local historians anxious to bear witness to the virtues and achievements of Thomas Henry Dalton (1855?-1895? [Date of birth deduced from prison records; death record searched for, without success, by Mr. Deveney.]), better known as T.H. Burgoyne, whose misdemeanors are amply chronicled in the Theosophical literature [B.6]. The “Church of Light,” a still active Californian group which descended from Burgoyne’s teachings, disposes of his life up to 1886 as follows:

T.H. Burgoyne was the son of a physician in Scotland. He roamed the moors during his boyhood and became conversant with the birds and flowers. He was an amateur naturalist. He also was a natural seer. Through his seership he contacted The Brotherhood of Light on the inner plane, and later contacted M. Theon in person. Still later he came to America, where he taught and wrote on occult subjects. [“The Founders of the Church of Light.”]

While this romanticized view cannot entirely be trusted, there is no doubt that Burgoyne was a medium and that he was developed as such by Max Theon. Burgoyne told Gorham Blake that he “visited [Theon’s] house as a student every day for a long time” [B.8.k], and gave this clue to their relationship in The Light of Egypt:

… those who are psychic, may not know WHEN the birth of an event will occur, but they Feel that it will, hence prophecy.

The primal foundation of all thought is right here, for instance, M. Theon may wish a certain result; if I am receptive, the idea may become incarnated in me, and under an extra spiritual stimulus it may grow and mature and become a material fact.

Burgoyne was making enquiries in occult circles by 1881, when he wrote to [The Rev W. A.] Ayton asking to visit him for a discussion of occultism. The clergyman was shocked when he met this “Dalton,” who (Ayton says) boasted of doing Black Magic [B.6.f], and forthwith sent him packing [B.6.k]. Later Ayton would be appalled to learn that it was this same young man with whom, as “Burgoyne,” he had been corresponding on H.B. of L. business. Having decided that the mysterious Grand Master “Theon” was really Hurrychund Chintamon, Ayton deduced that the young Scotsman must have learned his black magic from this Indian adventurer.

This lovely picture raises as many questions as it answers. Adam McLean tells me in a private e-mail (3-18-08) that the book Philalethes Illustratus is about alchemy. He adds:

The ouroboros is a well know symbol in alchemy, as is the interwoven triangles. These were often brought together in alchemical emblems. There was a particular focus on this image in the early 18th century, through its use as an illustration in the influential 'Golden Chain of Homer', written or edited by Anton Josef Kirchweger, first issued at Frankfurt and Leipzig in four German editions in 1723, 1728, 1738 and 1757. A Latin version was issued at Frankfurt in 1762, and further German editions followed. In the late eighteenth century Sigismund Bacstrom made a rather poor translation of the work into English. Blavatsky was very interested in this work and apparently wanted to write a commentary on it. Part of this was published in the Theosophical Society Journal 'Lucifer' in 1891. The Rev W. A. Ayton, the alchemical enthusiast, and contact of Blavatsky, used a variation of this image as a letterhead on his papers.

This is a copy of the letterhead of Rev W. A. Ayton which Adam McLean sent me. Ayton is mentioned in Blavatsky's diary in 1878 and 1879 (BCW I, p 410, 421 and II, p. 42). Note that where Blavatsky's seal has astrological connotations with for instance the sign of the Leo in the right-bottom corner, Ayton has an actual lion in exactly the same spot as well as a sun and moon. Adam McLean notes (3-18-08) that Ayton was a member of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor and his seal is similar to theirs.

It's clear at this point that the Theosophical Seal has a western esoteric background. Seen through the Eliphas Levi seal the cross was turned into an Egyptian cross, which makes sense as an Egyptian source for the early theosophical adepts was hinted at in their name: the Brotherhood of Luxor (whether a connection with the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor should be assumed is an open question of theosophical history).

The circle on top with the swastika inside is present in Blavatsky’s seal. I have not been able to find any precursors to that. In this respect Blavatsky’s seal was clearly the example for the Theosophical Seal.

-- Early history of the Theosophical Seal, by Katinka Hesselink 2006, 2008

Hurrychund Chintamon had played an important part in the early Theosophical Society and in the move of Blavatsky and Olcott from New York to India. He had been their chief Indian correspondent during 1877-1878, when he was President of the Bombay Arya Samaj (a Vedic revival movement with which the early Theosophical Society was allied). After Blavatsky and Olcott arrived in Bombay in 1879 and met Chintamon in person, they discovered that he was a scoundrel and an embezzler, and expelled him from the Society. Chintamon came to England in 1879 or 1880, and stayed until 1883, when he returned to make further trouble for the Theosophists in India. Perhaps the fact that Chintamon was in England when Burgoyne first met Theon led some to conclude that they were the same person. But this cannot be the whole story. Ayton claimed very clearly and repeatedly that he had proof of Burgoyne’s being in company with Chintamon. In a letter in the private collection, Ayton writes:

I have since discovered that Hurrychund Chintaman the notorious Black Magician was in company with Dalton at Bradford. By means of a Photograph I have traced him to Glasgow & even to Banchory, under the alias of Darushah Chichgur. Friends in London saw him there just before his return to India. This time coincides with that when I noticed a great change in the management. Chintaman had supplied the Oriental knowledge as he was a Sanskrit scholar & knew much. Theon was Chintaman! Friends have lately seen him in India where he is still at his tricks.

Before her disillusion[ment] with Chintamon, Blavatsky had touted him to the London Theosophists as a “great adept.” After the break that followed on her meeting with him in person, Chintamon allied himself to the rising Western opposition to esoteric Buddhism exemplified by Stainton Moses, C.C. Massey, William Oxley, Emma Hardinge Britten, Thomas Lake Harris, and others. From this formidable group, Burgoyne first contracted the hostility towards Blavatsky’s enterprise that would mark all his writings.

Chintamon also appears in connection with “H.B. Corinni,” the otherwise unidentifiable (and variously spelled) “Private Secretary” of Theon, who was thought by the police to be just another of Burgoyne’s aliases. Ayton, however, believed Corinni to be Chintamon’s son, who he said offered Blavatsky’s old letters for sale to the President of the London Branch of the Theosophical Society, Charles Carleton Massey. [Ayton to unnamed American neophyte, 11 June 1886, based on what he had been told by Massey.] The flaw in Ayton’s thesis is of course the existence of a real and independent Max Theon, of whom we, unlike Ayton, have documentary evidence. Nonetheless, after more than a hundred years, the whole tangle of misidentifications involving Chintamon, “Christamon,” and “Metamon” [see B.9.c-3] with the Order cannot be entirely resolved.

By October 1882, Burgoyne was in Leeds, working in the menial trade of a grocer. [This is the trade ascribed to him in the court records. The records of the Leeds Constabulary call him “medium and astrologer.”] Here he tried to bring off an advertising fraud [B.6.d] so timid as to cast serious doubt on his abilities as a black magician! As a consequence, he spent the first seven months of 1883 in jail. He had probably met Theon before his incarceration, and, as we have seen, worked for a time in daily sessions as Theon’s medium. On his release he struck up or resumed relations with Peter Davidson, and became the Private Secretary to the Council of the H.B. of L. when it went public the following year.

Burgoyne contributed many letters and articles to The Occult Magazine, usually writing under the pseudonym “Zanoni.” He also contributed to Thomas Johnson’s Platonist [see B.7.c], showing considerably more literacy than in the letter that so amused the Theosophists [B.7.b]. But he never claimed to be an original writer. In the introduction to the “Mysteries of Eros” [A.3.b] he states his role as that of amanuensis and compiler. The former term reveals what the H.B. of L. regarded as the true source of its teachings – the initiates of the Interior Circle of the Order. The goal of the magical practice taught by the H.B. of L. was the development of the potentialities of the individual so that he or she could communicate directly with the Interior Circle and with the other entities, disembodied and never embodied, that the H.B. of L. believed to populate the universes. If Gorham Blake is to be credited [B.6.k], Davidson and Burgoyne “confessed” to him that Burgoyne was an “inspirational medium” and that the teachings of the Order came through his mediumship. Stripped of the bias inherent in the terms “medium,” and “confess,” there is no reason to doubt the statement of Burgoyne’s role. In the Order’s own terminology, however, his connection with the spiritual hierarchies of the universe was through “Blending” – the taking over of the conscious subject’s mind by the Initiates of the Interior Circle and the Potencies, Powers, and Intelligences of the celestial hierarchies – and through the “Sacred Sleep of Sialam” (see Section 15, below).

Shortly after arriving in Georgia, for all the Theosophists’ efforts to intercept him [B.6.1], Burgoyne parted with Davidson. From then on, the two communicated mainly through their mutual disciples, squabbling over fees for reading the neophytes’ horoscopes and over Burgoyne’s distribution of the Order’s manuscripts, with each man essentially running a separate organization. This split may be reflected in the French version of “Laws of Magic Mirrors” [A.3.a], which was prepared in 1888 and which bears the reference “Peter Davidson, Provincial Grand Mater of the Eastern Section.”

Burgoyne made his way from Georgia first to Kansas, then to Denver, and finally to Monterey, California, staying with H.B. of L. members as he went. According to the Church of Light, Burgoyne now met Normal Astley, a professional surveyor and retired Captain in the British Army. After 1887 Astley and a small group of students engaged Burgoyne to write the basic H.B. of L. teachings as a series of lessons, giving him hospitality and a small stipend. Astley is actually said to have visited England to meet Theon – something which is hardly credible in the light of what is known of Theon’s methods. We do know, however, that Burgoyne advertised widely and took subscriptions for the lessons, and that they were published in book form in 1889 as The Light of Egypt; or The Science of the Soul and the Stars, attributed to Burgoyne’s H.B. of L. sobriquet “Zanoni.”

With The Light of Egypt, the secrecy of the H.B. of L.’s documents was largely broken, and they were revealed – to those who could tell – to be fairly unoriginal compilations from earlier occultists, presented with a strongly anti-Theosophical tone. Only the practical teachings were omitted. The book was translated into French by Rene Philipon, a friend of Rene Guenon’s, and into Russian and Spanish, and a paraphrase of it was published in German. We present [B.8] the most important reactions to this work, which has been reprinted frequently up to the present day.

After the political upheavals in Tibet in the 1950s, Pallis became active in the affairs of the Tibetan [Tibet] Society, the first Western support group created for the Tibetan people. Pallis also was able to house members of the Tibetan diaspora in his London flat. Pallis also formed a relationship with the young Chögyam Trungpa, who had just arrived in England. Trungpa asked Pallis to write the foreword to Trungpa’s first, autobiographical book, Born in Tibet. In his acknowledgment, Trungpa offers Pallis his “grateful thanks” for the “great help” that Pallis provided in bringing the book to completion. He goes on to say that “Mr. Pallis when consenting to write the foreword, devoted many weeks to the work of finally putting the book in order”.

Pallis studied music under Arnold Dolmetsch, the distinguished reviver of early English music, composer, and performer, and was considered “one of Dolmetsch's most devoted protégés”. Pallis soon discovered a love of early music—in particular chamber music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—and for the viola da gamba. Even while climbing in the region of the Satlej-Ganges watershed, he and his musically-minded friends did not fail to bring their instruments.


Viola da gamba

Pallis taught viol at the Royal Academy of Music, and reconstituted The English Consort of Viols, an ensemble he had first formed in the 1930s. It was one of the first professional performing groups dedicated to the preservation of early English music. They released three records and made several concert tours in England and two tours to the United States.

According to the New York Times review, their Town Hall concert of April 1962 “was a solid musical delight”, the players having possessed “a rhythmic fluidity that endowed the music with elegance and dignity”. Pallis also published several compositions, primarily for the viol, and wrote on the viol’s history and its place in early English music.

The Royal Academy of Music, in recognition of a lifetime of contribution to the field of early music, awarded Pallis an Honorary Fellowship. At age eighty-nine his Nocturne de l’Ephemere was performed at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London; his niece writes that “he was able to go on stage to accept the applause which he did with his customary modesty.” When he died he left unfinished an opera based on the life of Milarepa...



Pallis described "tradition" as being the leitmotif of his writing. He wrote from the perspective of what has come to be called the traditionalist or perennialist school of comparative religion founded by René Guénon, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, and Frithjof Schuon, each of whom he knew personally.

Frithjof Schuon (/ˈʃuːɒn/; German: [ˈfʀiːtˌjoːf ˈʃuː.ɔn]) (18 June, 1907 – 5 May, 1998), also known as ʿĪsā Nūr ad-Dīn ʾAḥmad (عيسیٰ نور الـدّين أحمد),[1] was an author of German ancestry born in Basel, Switzerland. He was a spiritual master, philosopher, and metaphysician inspired by the Hindu philosophy of Advaita Vedanta and Sufism and the author of numerous books on religion and spirituality. He was also a poet and a painter...

Schuon's father was a concert violinist and the household was one in which not only music but literary and spiritual culture were present.


Violin

-- Frithjof Schuon, by Wikipedia

As a traditionalist, Pallis assumed the "transcendent unity of religions" (the title of Schuon's landmark 1948 book) and it was in part this understanding that gave Pallis insight into the innermost nature of the spiritual tradition of Tibet, his chosen love. He was a frequent contributor to the journal Studies in Comparative Religion (along with Schuon, Guénon, and Coomaraswamy), writings on both the topics of Tibetan culture and religious practice as well as the Perennialist philosophy.

-- Marco Pallis, by Wikipedia

Burgoyne’s last years were spent in unwonted comfort if, as the Church of Light says, Dr. Henry and Belle M. Wagner – who had been members of the H.B. of L. since 1885 – gave $100,000 to found an organization for the propagation of the Light of Egypt teachings. Out of this grew the Astro-Philosophical Publishing Company of Denver, and the Church of Light itself, reformed in 1932 by Elbert Benjamine (=C.C. Zain, 1882-1951). Beside Burgoyne’s other books The Language of the Stars and Celestial Dynamics, the new company issued in 1900 a second volume of The Light of Egypt. This differs markedly from the first volume, for it is ascribed to Burgoyne’s spirit, speaking through a medium who was his “spiritual successor,” Mrs. Wagner. As the spirit said, with characteristically poor grammar: “Dictated by the author from the subjective plane of life (to which he ascended several years ago) through the law of mental transfer, well known to all Occultists, he is enabled again to speak with those who are still upon the objective plane of life.”

Max Theon wrote to the Wagners in 1909 (the year after his wife’s death), telling them to close their branch of the H.B. of L. [Information given to Mr. Deveney by Henry O. Wagner.] By that time, the Order had virtually ceased to exist as such, while the Wagners continued on their own, channeling doctrinal and fictional works. Their son, Henry O. Wagner, told Mr. Deveney that he, in turn, received books from his parents by the “blending” process, to be described below. In 1963 he issued an enlarged edition of The Light of Egypt, which included several further items from his parents’ records. Some of these are known to have circulated separately to neophytes during the heyday of the H.B. of L. (see Section 10, below), while others were circulated by Burgoyne individually on a subscription basis to his own private students (all of whom were in theory members of the H.B. of L.) from 1887 until his death. These include a large body of astrological materials and also treatises on “Pentralia,” “Soul Knowledge (Atma Bodha)” and other topics. They are perfectly consistent with the H.B. of L. teachings, but appear to have been Burgoyne’s individual production, done after his separation from Peter Davidson, and they are not reproduced here.

-- The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor: Initiatic and Historical Documents of an Order of Practical Occultism, by Joscelyn Godwin

See also

• Hermetic Brotherhood of Light

References

1. Godwin, Chanel, Deveney, 1995, pages 92-97
2. Godwin, Chanel, Deveney, 1995, page 95
3. Godwin, Chanel, Deveney, 1995, page 6
4. Godwin, Chanel, Deveney, 1995, page 44
5. Godwin, Chanel, Deveney, 1995, page 52

Sources

• Godwin, Joscelyn; Chanel, Christian; Deveney, John Patrick (1995), The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor: Initiatic and Historical Documents of an Order of Practical Occultism, Samuel Weiser
• T. Allen Greenfield. The Story of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light. Looking Glass, 1997.

External links

• The Hermetic Brotherhood Of Luxor at kheper.net

************************************

Lodges of Magic
LUCIFER
Vol. III., No. 14
London
October 15, 1888.

When fiction rises pleasing to the eye,
Men will believe, because they love the lie;
But Truth herself, if clouded with a frown,
Must have some solemn proofs to pass her down."

-- Churchill

One of the most esteemed of our friends in occult research, propounds the question of the formation of “working Lodges” of the Theosophical Society, for the development of adeptship. If the practical impossibility of forcing this process has been shown once, in the course of the theosophical movement, it has scores of times. It is hard to check one’s natural impatience to tear aside the veil of the Temple. To gain the divine knowledge, like the prize in a classical tripos, by a system of coaching and cramming, is the ideal of the average beginner in occult study. The refusal of the originators of the Theosophical Society to encourage such false hopes, has led to the formation of bogus Brotherhoods of Luxor (and Armley Jail?) as speculations on human credulity. How enticing the bait for gudgeons in the following specimen prospectus, which a few years ago caught some of our most earnest friends and Theosophists.

Students of the Occult Science, searchers after truth, and Theosophists who may have been disappointed in their expectations of Sublime Wisdom being freely dispensed by Hindu Mahatmas, are cordially invited to send in their names to . . . ., when, if found suitable, they can be admitted, after a short probationary term, as Members of an Occult Brotherhood, who do not boast of their knowledge or attainments, but teach freely” (at £1 to £5 per letter?), “and without reserve (the nastiest portions of P. B. Randolph’s “Eulis”), “all they find worthy to receive” (read: teachings on a commercial basis; the cash going to the teachers, and the extracts from Randolph and other “ ove-philter” sellers to the pupils!)* [Documents on view at Lucifer Office, viz., Secret MSS. written in the handwriting of----- (name suppressed for past considerations), “Provincial Grand Master of the Northern Section," One of these documents bears the heading, “A brief Key to the Eulian Mysteries,” i.e. Tantric black magic on a phallic basis. No; the members of this Occult Brotherhood “do not boast of their knowledge.” Very sensible on their part: least said soonest mended.]

If rumour be true, some of the English rural districts, especially Yorkshire, are overrun with fraudulent astrologers and fortune-tellers, who pretend to be Theosophists, the better to swindle a higher class of credulous patrons than their legitimate prey, the servant-maid and callow youth. If the “lodges of magic,” suggested in the following letter to the Editors of this Magazine, were founded, without having taken the greatest precautions to admit only the best candidates to membership, we should see these vile exploitations of sacred names and things increase an hundredfold. And in this connection, and before giving place to our friend’s letter, the senior Editor of Lucifer begs to inform her friends that she has never had the remotest connection with the so-called “H(ermetic) B(rotherhood) of L(uxor),” and that all representations to the contrary are false and dishonest. There is a secret body— whose diploma, or Certificate of Membership, is held by Colonel Olcott alone among modern men of white blood— to which that name was given by the author of “Isis Unveiled” for convenience of designation,* [In "Isis Unveiled," vol. ii. p. 308. It may be added that the "Brotherhood of Luxor" mentioned by Kenneth Mackenzie (vide his Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia) as having its seat in America, had, after all, nothing to do with the Brotherhood mentioned by, and known to us, as was ascertained after the publication of “Isis" from a letter written by this late Masonic author to a friend in New York. The Brotherhood Mackenzie knew of was simply a Masonic Society on a rather more secret basis, and, as he stated in the letter, he had heard of, but knew nothing of our Brotherhood, which, having had a branch at Luxor (Egypt), was thus purposely referred to by us under this name alone. This led some schemers to infer that there was a regular Lodge of Adepts of that name, and to assure some credulous friends and Theosophists that the "H. B. of L.” was either identical or a branch of the same, supposed to be near Lahore!!— which was the most flagrant untruth.] but which is known among Initiates by quite another one, just as the personage known to the public under the pseudonym of “Koot Hoomi,” is called by a totally different name among his acquaintance. What the real name of that society is, it would puzzle the “Eulian” phallicists of the “H. B. of L.” to tell. The real names of Master Adepts and Occult Schools are never, under any circumstances, revealed to the profane; and the names of the personages who have been talked about in connection with modern Theosophy, are in the possession only of the two chief founders of the Theosophical Society. And now, having said so much by way of preface, let us pass on to our correspondent’s letter. He writes:

A friend of mine, a natural mystic, had intended to form, with others, a Branch T. S. in his town. Surprised at his delay, I wrote to ask the reason. His reply was that he had heard that the T.S. only met and talked, and did nothing practical. I always did think the T.S. ought to have Lodges in which something practical should be done. Cagliostro understood well this craving of humans for something before their eyes, when he instituted the Egyptian Rite, and put it in practice in various Freemason lodges. There are many readers of Lucifer in ----- shire. Perhaps in it there might be a suggestion for students to form such lodges for themselves, and to try, by their united wills, to develop certain powers in one of the number, and then through the whole of them in succession. I feel sure numbers would enter such lodges, and create a great interest for Theosophy.” “A.”

In the above note of our venerable and learned friend is the echo of the voices of ninety-nine hundredths of the members of the Theosophical Society: one-hundredth only have the correct idea of the function and scope of our Branches. The glaring mistake generally made is in the conception of adeptship and the path thereunto. Of all thinkable undertakings that of trying for adeptship is the most difficult. Instead of being obtainable within a few years or one lifetime, it exacts the unremittent struggles of a series of lives, save in cases so rare as to be hardly worth regarding as exceptions to the general rule. The records certainly show that a number of the most revered Indian adepts became so despite their births in the lowest, and seemingly most unlikely, castes. Yet it is well understood that they had been progressing in the upward direction throughout many previous incarnations, and, when they took birth for the last time, there was left but the merest trifle of spiritual evolution to be accomplished, before they became great living adepts. Of course, no one can say that one or all of the possible members of our friend A.’s ideal Cagliostrian lodge might not also be ready for adeptship, but the chance is not good enough to speculate upon: Western civilization seems to develop fighters rather than philosophers, military butchers rather than Buddhas. The plan “A.” proposes would be far more likely to end in mediumship than adeptship. Two to one there would not be a member of the lodge who was chaste from boyhood and altogether untainted by the use of intoxicants. This is to say nothing of the candidates’ freedom from the polluting effects of the evil influences of the average social environment. Among the indispensable pre-requisites for psychic development, noted in the mystical Manuals of all Eastern religious systems, are a pure place, pure diet, pure companionship, and a pure mind. Could “A.” guarantee these? It is certainly desirable that there should be some school of instruction for members of our Society; and had the purely exoteric work and duties of the Founders been less absorbing, probably one such would have been established long ago. Yet not for practical instruction, on the plan of Cagliostro, which, by-the-bye, brought direful suffering upon his head, and has left no marked traces behind to encourage a repetition in our days. “When the pupil is ready, the teacher will be found waiting,” says an Eastern maxim. The Masters do not have to hunt up recruits in special ----- shire lodges, nor drill them through mystical non-commissioned officers: time and space are no barriers between them and the aspirant; where thought can pass they can come. Why did an old and learned Kabalist like “A.” forget this fact? And let him also remember that the potential adept may exist in the Whitechapels and Five Points of Europe and America, as well as in the cleaner and more “cultured” quarters; that some poor ragged wretch, begging a crust, may be “whiter-souled” and more attractive to the adept than the average bishop in his robe, or a cultured citizen in his costly dress. For the extension of the theosophical movement, a useful channel for the irrigation of the dry fields of contemporary thought with the water of life, Branches are needed everywhere; not mere groups of passive sympathisers, such as the slumbering army of church-goers, whose eyes are shut while the “devil” sweeps the field; no, not such. Active, wide-awake, earnest, unselfish Branches are needed, whose members shall not be constantly unmasking their selfishness by asking “What will it profit us to join the Theosophical Society, and how much will it harm us?” but be putting to themselves the question “Can we not do substantial good to mankind by working in this good cause with all our hearts, our minds, and our strength?” If “A.” would only bring his ----- shire friends, who pretend to occult leanings, to view the question from this side, he would be doing them a real kindness. The Society can get on without them, but they cannot afford to let it do so.

Is it profitable, moreover, to discuss the question of a Lodge receiving even theoretical instruction, until we can be sure that all the members will accept the teachings as coming from the alleged source? Occult truth cannot be absorbed by a mind that is filled with preconception, prejudice, or suspicion. It is something to be perceived by the intuition rather than by the reason; being by nature spiritual, not material. Some are so constituted as to be incapable of acquiring knowledge by the exercise of the spiritual faculty; e.g. the great majority of physicists. Such are slow, if not wholly incapable of grasping the ultimate truths behind the phenomena of existence. There are many such in the Society; and the body of the discontented are recruited from their ranks. Such persons readily persuade themselves that later teachings, received from exactly the same source as earlier ones, are either false or have been tampered with by chelas, or even third parties. Suspicion and inharmony are the natural result, the psychic atmosphere, so to say, is thrown into confusion, and the reaction, even upon the stauncher students, is very harmful. Sometimes vanity blinds what was at first strong intuition, the mind is effectually closed against the admission of new truth, and the aspiring student is thrown back to the point where he began. Having jumped at some particular conclusion of his own without full study of the subject, and before the teaching had been fully expounded, his tendency, when proved wrong, is to listen only to the voice of his self-adulation, and cling to his views, whether right or wrong. The Lord Buddha particularly warned his hearers against forming beliefs upon tradition or authority, and before having thoroughly inquired into the subject.

An instance. We have been asked by a correspondent why he should not “be free to suspect some of the so-called ‘precipitated’ letters as being forgeries,” giving as his reason for it that while some of them bear the stamp of (to him) undeniable genuineness, others seem from their contents and style, to be imitations. This is equivalent to saying that he has such an unerring spiritual insight as to be able to detect the false from the true, though he has never met a Master, nor been given any key by which to test his alleged communications. The inevitable consequence of applying his untrained judgment in such cases, would be to make him as likely as not to declare false what was genuine, and genuine what was false. Thus what criterion has any one to decide between one “precipitated” letter, or another such letter? Who except their authors, or those whom they employ as their amanuenses (the chelas and disciples), can tell? For it is hardly one out of a hundred “occult” letters that is ever written by the hand of the Master, in whose name and on whose behalf they are sent, as the Masters have neither need nor leisure to write them; and that when a Master says, “I wrote that letter,” it means only that every word in it was dictated by him and impressed under his direct supervision. Generally they make their chela, whether near or far away, write (or precipitate) them, by impressing upon his mind the ideas they wish expressed, and if necessary aiding him in the picture-printing process of precipitation. It depends entirely upon the chela's state of development, how accurately the ideas may be transmitted and the writing-model imitated. Thus the non-adept recipient is left in the dilemma of uncertainty, whether, if one letter is false, all may not be; for, as far as intrinsic evidence goes, all come from the same source, and all are brought by the same mysterious means. But there is another, and a far worse condition implied. For all that the recipient of “occult” letters can possibly know, and on the simple grounds of probability and common honesty, the unseen correspondent who would tolerate one single fraudulent line in his name, would wink at an unlimited repetition of the deception. And this leads directly to the following. All the so-called occult letters being supported by identical proofs, they have all to stand or fall together. If one is to be doubted, then all have, and the series of letters in the “Occult World,” “Esoteric Buddhism,” etc., etc., may be, and there is no reason why they should not be in such a case—frauds, clever impostures,” and “forgeries,” such as the ingenuous though stupid agent of the “S .P .R” has made them out to be, in order to raise in the public estimation the “scientific” acumen and standard of his “Principals.”

Hence, not a step in advance would be made by a group of students given over to such an unimpressible state of mind, and without any guide from the occult side to open their eyes to the esoteric pitfalls. And where are such guides, so far, in our Society? “They be blind leaders of the blind,” both falling into the ditch of vanity and self-sufficiency. The whole difficulty springs from the common tendency to draw conclusions from insufficient premises, and play the oracle before ridding oneself of that most stupefying of all psychic anaesthetics— IGNORANCE.

[admin]

Part 1 of 2

No Hurry for Hurree: Hurree Chunder Mukherjee [Hurree Babu] [Excerpts from Kim, by Rudyard Kipling]

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Thomas Henry Dalton, better known as T.H. Burgoyne. whose misdemeanors are amply chronicled in the Theosophical literature. The “Church of Light,” a still active Californian group which descended from Burgoyne’s teachings, disposes of his life up to 1886 as follows:

T.H. Burgoyne was the son of a physician in Scotland. He roamed the moors during his boyhood and became conversant with the birds and flowers. He was an amateur naturalist. He also was a natural seer. Through his seership he contacted The Brotherhood of Light on the inner plane, and later contacted M. Theon in person. Still later he came to America, where he taught and wrote on occult subjects. [“The Founders of the Church of Light.”]

While this romanticized view cannot entirely be trusted, there is no doubt that Burgoyne was a medium and that he was developed as such by Max Theon. Burgoyne told Gorham Blake that he “visited [Theon’s] house as a student every day for a long time”...

Burgoyne was making enquiries in occult circles by 1881, when he wrote to [The Rev W. A.] Ayton asking to visit him for a discussion of occultism. The clergyman was shocked when he met this “Dalton,” who (Ayton says) boasted of doing Black Magic, and forthwith sent him packing. Later Ayton would be appalled to learn that it was this same young man with whom, as “Burgoyne,” he had been corresponding on H.B. of L. business. Having decided that the mysterious Grand Master “Theon” was really Hurrychund Chintamon, Ayton deduced that the young Scotsman must have learned his black magic from this Indian adventurer.

Hurrychund Chintamon had played an important part in the early Theosophical Society and in the move of Blavatsky and Olcott from New York to India. He had been their chief Indian correspondent during 1877-1878, when he was President of the Bombay Arya Samaj (a Vedic revival movement with which the early Theosophical Society was allied). After Blavatsky and Olcott arrived in Bombay in 1879 and met Chintamon in person, they discovered that he was a scoundrel and an embezzler, and expelled him from the Society. Chintamon came to England in 1879 or 1880, and stayed until 1883, when he returned to make further trouble for the Theosophists in India. Perhaps the fact that Chintamon was in England when Burgoyne first met Theon led some to conclude that they were the same person. But this cannot be the whole story. Ayton claimed very clearly and repeatedly that he had proof of Burgoyne’s being in company with Chintamon. In a letter in the private collection, Ayton writes:

I have since discovered that Hurrychund Chintaman the notorious Black Magician was in company with Dalton at Bradford. By means of a Photograph I have traced him to Glasgow & even to Banchory, under the alias of Darushah Chichgur. Friends in London saw him there just before his return to India. This time coincides with that when I noticed a great change in the management. Chintaman had supplied the Oriental knowledge as he was a Sanskrit scholar & knew much. Theon was Chintaman! Friends have lately seen him in India where he is still at his tricks.

Before her disillusion with Chintamon, Blavatsky had touted him to the London Theosophists as a “great adept.” After the break that followed on her meeting with him in person, Chintamon allied himself to the rising Western opposition to esoteric Buddhism exemplified by Stainton Moses, C.C. Massey, William Oxley, Emma Hardinge Britten, Thomas Lake Harris, and others. From this formidable group, Burgoyne first contracted the hostility towards Blavatsky’s enterprise that would mark all his writings.

Chintamon also appears in connection with “H.B. Corinni,” the otherwise unidentifiable (and variously spelled) “Private Secretary” of Theon, who was thought by the police to be just another of Burgoyne’s aliases. Ayton, however, believed Corinni to be Chintamon’s son, who he said offered Blavatsky’s old letters for sale to the President of the London Branch of the Theosophical Society, Charles Carleton Massey. [Ayton to unnamed American neophyte, 11 June 1886, based on what he had been told by Massey.] The flaw in Ayton’s thesis is of course the existence of a real and independent Max Theon, of whom we, unlike Ayton, have documentary evidence. Nonetheless, after more than a hundred years, the whole tangle of misidentifications involving Chintamon, “Christamon,” and “Metamon” with the Order cannot be entirely resolved.

-- The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor: Initiatic and Historical Documents of an Order of Practical Occultism, by Joscelyn Godwin

Kim slunk away, his teeth in the bread, and, as he expected, he found a small wad of folded tissue-paper wrapped in oilskin, with three silver rupees—enormous largesse. He smiled and thrust money and paper into his leather amulet-case. The lama, sumptuously fed by Mahbub's Baltis, was already asleep in a corner of one of the stalls. Kim lay down beside him and laughed. He knew he had rendered a service to Mahbub Ali, and not for one little minute did he believe the tale of the stallion's pedigree.

But Kim did not suspect that Mahbub Ali, known as one of the best horse-dealers in the Punjab, a wealthy and enterprising trader, whose caravans penetrated far and far into the Back of Beyond, was registered in one of the locked books of the Indian Survey Department as C25 IB. Twice or thrice yearly C25 would send in a little story, baldly told but most interesting, and generally—it was checked by the statements of R17 [Hurree Chunder Mukherjee] and M4—quite true. It concerned all manner of out-of-the-way mountain principalities, explorers of nationalities other than English, and the guntrade—was, in brief, a small portion of that vast mass of 'information received' on which the Indian Government acts. But, recently, five confederated Kings, who had no business to confederate, had been informed by a kindly Northern Power that there was a leakage of news from their territories into British India. So those Kings' Prime Ministers were seriously annoyed and took steps, after the Oriental fashion. They suspected, among many others, the bullying, red-bearded horsedealer whose caravans ploughed through their fastnesses belly-deep in snow. At least, his caravan that season had been ambushed and shot at twice on the way down, when Mahbub's men accounted for three strange ruffians who might, or might not, have been hired for the job. Therefore Mahbub had avoided halting at the insalubrious city of Peshawur, and had come through without stop to Lahore, where, knowing his country-people, he anticipated curious developments.

And there was that on Mahbub Ali which he did not wish to keep an hour longer than was necessary—a wad of closely folded tissue-paper, wrapped in oilskin—an impersonal, unaddressed statement, with five microscopic pin-holes in one corner, that most scandalously betrayed the five confederated Kings, the sympathetic Northern Power, a Hindu banker in Peshawur, a firm of gun-makers in Belgium, and an important, semi-independent Mohammedan ruler to the south. This last was R17's [Hurree Chunder Mukherjee] work, which Mahbub had picked up beyond the Dora Pass and was carrying in for R17 [Hurree Chunder Mukherjee], who, owing to circumstances over which he had no control, could not leave his post of observation. Dynamite was milky and innocuous beside that report of C25; and even an Oriental, with an Oriental's views of the value of time, could see that the sooner it was in the proper hands the better. Mahbub had no particular desire to die by violence, because two or three family blood-feuds across the Border hung unfinished on his hands, and when these scores were cleared he intended to settle down as a more or less virtuous citizen. He had never passed the serai gate since his arrival two days ago, but had been ostentatious in sending telegrams to Bombay, where he banked some of his money; to Delhi, where a sub-partner of his own clan was selling horses to the agent of a Rajputana state; and to Umballa, where an Englishman was excitedly demanding the pedigree of a white stallion. The public letter-writer, who knew English, composed excellent telegrams, such as: 'Creighton, Laurel Bank, Umballa. Horse is Arabian as already advised. Sorrowful delayed pedigree which am translating.' And later to the same address: 'Much sorrowful delay. Will forward pedigree.' To his sub-partner at Delhi he wired: 'Lutuf Ullah. Have wired two thousand rupees your credit Luchman Narain's bank—' This was entirely in the way of trade, but every one of those telegrams was discussed and rediscussed, by parties who conceived themselves to be interested, before they went over to the railway station in charge of a foolish Balti, who allowed all sorts of people to read them on the road.

When, in Mahbub's own picturesque language, he had muddied the wells of inquiry with the stick of precaution, Kim had dropped on him, sent from Heaven; and, being as prompt as he was unscrupulous, Mahbub Ali used to taking all sorts of gusty chances, pressed him into service on the spot.

A wandering lama with a low-caste boy-servant might attract a moment's interest as they wandered about India, the land of pilgrims; but no one would suspect them or, what was more to the point, rob.

He called for a new light-ball to his hookah, and considered the case. If the worst came to the worst, and the boy came to harm, the paper would incriminate nobody. And he would go up to Umballa leisurely and—at a certain risk of exciting fresh suspicion—repeat his tale by word of mouth to the people concerned.

But R17's [Hurree Chunder Mukherjee] report was the kernel of the whole affair, and it would be distinctly inconvenient if that failed to come to hand. However, God was great, and Mahbub Ali felt he had done all he could for the time being. Kim was the one soul in the world who had never told him a lie. That would have been a fatal blot on Kim's character if Mahbub had not known that to others, for his own ends or Mahbub's business, Kim could lie like an Oriental...

Carried away by enthusiasm, he volunteered to show Lurgan Sahib one evening how the disciples of a certain caste of fakir, old Lahore acquaintances, begged doles by the roadside; and what sort of language he would use to an Englishman, to a Punjabi farmer going to a fair, and to a woman without a veil. Lurgan Sahib laughed immensely, and begged Kim to stay as he was, immobile for half an hour—cross-legged, ash-smeared, and wild-eyed, in the back room. At the end of that time entered a hulking, obese Babu [Hurree Chunder Mookerjee] whose stockinged legs shook with fat, and Kim opened on him with a shower of wayside chaff. Lurgan Sahib—this annoyed Kim—watched the Babu and not the play.

'I think,' said the Babu heavily, lighting a cigarette, 'I am of opeenion that it is most extraordinary and effeecient performance. Except that you had told me I should have opined that—that—that you were pulling my legs. How soon can he become approximately effeecient chain-man? Because then I shall indent for him.'

'That is what he must learn at Lucknow.'

'Then order him to be jolly-dam'-quick. Good-night, Lurgan.' The Babu swung out with the gait of a bogged cow.

When they were telling over the day's list of visitors, Lurgan Sahib asked Kim who he thought the man might be.

'God knows!' said Kim cheerily. The tone might almost have deceived Mahbub Ali, but it failed entirely with the healer of sick pearls.

'That is true. God, He knows; but I wish to know what you think.'

Kim glanced sideways at his companion, whose eye had a way of compelling truth.

'I—I think he will want me when I come from the school, but'—confidentially, as Lurgan Sahib nodded approval—'I do not understand how he can wear many dresses and talk many tongues.'

'Thou wilt understand many things later. He is a writer of tales for a certain Colonel. His honour is great only in Simla, and it is noticeable that he has no name, but only a number and a letter [R17] —that is a custom among us.'

'And is there a price upon his head too—as upon Mah—all the others?'

'Not yet; but if a boy rose up who is now sitting here and went—look, the door is open!—as far as a certain house with a red-painted veranda, behind that which was the old theatre in the Lower Bazar, and whispered through the shutters: "Hurree Chunder Mookerjee bore the bad news of last month", that boy might take away a belt full of rupees.'

'How many?' said Kim promptly.

'Five hundred—a thousand—as many as he might ask for.'

'Good. And for how long might such a boy live after the news was told?' He smiled merrily at Lurgan's Sahib's very beard.

'Ah! That is to be well thought of. Perhaps if he were very clever, he might live out the day—but not the night. By no means the night.'

'Then what is the Babu's pay if so much is put upon his head?'

'Eighty—perhaps a hundred—perhaps a hundred and fifty rupees; but the pay is the least part of the work. From time to time, God causes men to be born—and thou art one of them—who have a lust to go abroad at the risk of their lives and discover news—today it may be of far-off things, tomorrow of some hidden mountain, and the next day of some near-by men who have done a foolishness against the State. These souls are very few; and of these few, not more than ten are of the best. Among these ten I count the Babu, and that is curious. How great, therefore, and desirable must be a business that brazens the heart of a Bengali!'

'True. But the days go slowly for me. I am yet a boy, and it is only within two months I learned to write Angrezi. Even now I cannot read it well. And there are yet years and years and long years before I can be even a chain-man.'

'Have patience, Friend of all the World'—Kim started at the title. 'Would I had a few of the years that so irk thee. I have proved thee in several small ways. This will not be forgotten when I make my report to the Colonel Sahib.' Then, changing suddenly into English with a deep laugh:

'By Jove! O'Hara, I think there is a great deal in you; but you must not become proud and you must not talk. You must go back to Lucknow and be a good little boy and mind your book, as the English say, and perhaps, next holidays if you care, you can come back to me!' Kim's face fell. 'Oh, I mean if you like. I know where you want to go.'

Four days later a seat was booked for Kim and his small trunk at the rear of a Kalka tonga. His companion was the whale-like Babu, who, with a fringed shawl wrapped round his head, and his fat openwork-stockinged left leg tucked under him, shivered and grunted in the morning chill.

'How comes it that this man is one of us?' thought Kim considering the jelly back as they jolted down the road; and the reflection threw him into most pleasant day-dreams. Lurgan Sahib had given him five rupees—a splendid sum—as well as the assurance of his protection if he worked. Unlike Mahbub, Lurgan Sahib had spoken most explicitly of the reward that would follow obedience, and Kim was content. If only, like the Babu, he could enjoy the dignity of a letter and a number [R17]—and a price upon his head! Some day he would be all that and more. Some day he might be almost as great as Mahbub Ali! The housetops of his search should be half India; he would follow Kings and Ministers, as in the old days he had followed vakils and lawyers' touts across Lahore city for Mahbub Ali's sake. Meantime, there was the present, and not at all unpleasant, fact of St Xavier's immediately before him. There would be new boys to condescend to, and there would be tales of holiday adventures to hear. Young Martin, son of the tea-planter at Manipur, had boasted that he would go to war, with a rifle, against the head-hunters.

That might be, but it was certain young Martin had not been blown half across the forecourt of a Patiala palace by an explosion of fireworks; nor had he... Kim fell to telling himself the story of his own adventures through the last three months. He could paralyse St Xavier's—even the biggest boys who shaved—with the recital, were that permitted. But it was, of course, out of the question. There would be a price upon his head in good time, as Lurgan Sahib had assured him; and if he talked foolishly now, not only would that price never be set, but Colonel Creighton would cast him off—and he would be left to the wrath of Lurgan Sahib and Mahbub Ali—for the short space of life that would remain to him.

'So I should lose Delhi for the sake of a fish,' was his proverbial philosophy. It behoved him to forget his holidays (there would always remain the fun of inventing imaginary adventures) and, as Lurgan Sahib had said, to work. Of all the boys hurrying back to St Xavier's, from Sukkur in the sands to Galle beneath the palms, none was so filled with virtue as Kimball O'Hara, jiggeting down to Umballa behind Hurree Chunder Mookerjee, whose name on the books of one section of the Ethnological Survey was R.17 [R17].

And if additional spur were needed, the Babu supplied it. After a huge meal at Kalka, he spoke uninterruptedly. Was Kim going to school? Then he, an M A of Calcutta University, would explain the advantages of education. There were marks to be gained by due attention to Latin and Wordsworth's Excursion (all this was Greek to Kim). French, too was vital, and the best was to be picked up in Chandernagore a few miles from Calcutta. Also a man might go far, as he himself had done, by strict attention to plays called Lear and Julius Caesar, both much in demand by examiners. Lear was not so full of historical allusions as Julius Caesar; the book cost four annas, but could be bought second-hand in Bow Bazar for two. Still more important than Wordsworth, or the eminent authors, Burke and Hare, was the art and science of mensuration. A boy who had passed his examination in these branches—for which, by the way, there were no cram-books—could, by merely marching over a country with a compass and a level and a straight eye, carry away a picture of that country which might be sold for large sums in coined silver. But as it was occasionally inexpedient to carry about measuring-chains a boy would do well to know the precise length of his own foot-pace, so that when he was deprived of what Hurree Chunder called adventitious aids, he might still tread his distances. To keep count of thousands of paces, Hurree Chunder's experience had shown him nothing more valuable than a rosary of eighty-one or a hundred and eight beads, for 'it was divisible and sub-divisible into many multiples and sub-multiples'.

Through the volleying drifts of English, Kim caught the general trend of the talk, and it interested him very much. Here was a new craft that a man could tuck away in his head and by the look of the large wide world unfolding itself before him, it seemed that the more a man knew the better for him.

Said the Babu when he had talked for an hour and a half 'I hope some day to enjoy your offeecial acquaintance. Ad interim, if I may be pardoned that expression, I shall give you this betel-box, which is highly valuable article and cost me two rupees only four years ago.' It was a cheap, heart-shaped brass thing with three compartments for carrying the eternal betel-nut, lime and pan-leaf; but it was filled with little tabloid-bottles.

'That is reward of merit for your performance in character of that holy man. You see, you are so young you think you will last for ever and not take care of your body. It is great nuisance to go sick in the middle of business. I am fond of drugs myself, and they are handy to cure poor people too. These are good Departmental drugs—quinine and so on. I give it you for souvenir. Now good-bye. I have urgent private business here by the roadside.'

He slipped out noiselessly as a cat, on the Umballa road, hailed a passing cart and jingled away, while Kim, tongue-tied, twiddled the brass betel-box in his hands...

'Babus are very curious,' said Lurgan meditatively. 'Do you know what Hurree Babu really wants? He wants to be made a member of the Royal Society by taking ethnological notes. I tell you, I tell him about the lama everything which Mahbub and the boy have told me. Hurree Babu goes down to Benares—at his own expense, I think.'

'I don't,' said Creighton briefly. He had paid Hurree's travelling expenses, out of a most lively curiosity to learn what the lama might be.

'And he applies to the lama for information on lamaism, and devil-dances, and spells and charms, several times in these few years. Holy Virgin! I could have told him all that years ago. I think Hurree Babu is getting too old for the Road. He likes better to collect manners and customs information. Yes, he wants to be an FRS.

'Hurree thinks well of the boy, doesn't he?'

'Oh, very indeed—we have had some pleasant evenings at my little place—but I think it would be waste to throw him away with Hurree on the Ethnological side.'

'Not for a first experience. How does that strike you, Mahbub? Let the boy run with the lama for six months. After that we can see. He will get experience.'

'He has it already, Sahib—as a fish controls the water he swims in. But for every reason it will be well to loose him from the school.'

'Very good, then,' said Creighton, half to himself. 'He can go with the lama, and if Hurree Babu cares to keep an eye on them so much the better. He won't lead the boy into any danger as Mahbub would. Curious—his wish to be an F R S. Very human, too. He is best on the Ethnological side—Hurree.'

No money and no preferment would have drawn Creighton from his work on the Indian Survey, but deep in his heart also lay the ambition to write 'F R S' after his name. Honours of a sort he knew could be obtained by ingenuity and the help of friends, but, to the best of his belief, nothing save work—papers representing a life of it—took a man into the Society which he had bombarded for years with monographs on strange Asiatic cults and unknown customs. Nine men out of ten would flee from a Royal Society soiree in extremity of boredom; but Creighton was the tenth, and at times his soul yearned for the crowded rooms in easy London where silver-haired, bald-headed gentlemen who know nothing of the Army move among spectroscopic experiments, the lesser plants of the frozen tundras, electric flight-measuring machines, and apparatus for slicing into fractional millimetres the left eye of the female mosquito. By all right and reason, it was the Royal Geographical that should have appealed to him, but men are as chancy as children in their choice of playthings. So Creighton smiled, and thought the better of Hurree Babu, moved by like desire...

From the outer balcony, a ponderous figure raised a round bullet head and coughed nervously.

'Do not interrupt this ventriloquial necromanciss, my friend,' it said in English. 'I opine that it is very disturbing to you, but no enlightened observer is jolly-well upset.'

'..........I will lay a plot for their ruin! O Prophet, bear with the unbelievers. Let them alone awhile!' Huneefa's face, turned to the northward, worked horribly, and it was as though voices from the ceiling answered her.

Hurree Babu returned to his note-book, balanced on the window-sill, but his hand shook. Huneefa, in some sort of drugged ecstasy, wrenched herself to and fro as she sat cross-legged by Kim's still head, and called upon devil after devil, in the ancient order of the ritual, binding them to avoid the boy's every action.

'With Him are the keys of the Secret Things! None knoweth them besides Himself He knoweth that which is in the dry land and in the sea!' Again broke out the unearthly whistling responses.

'I—I apprehend it is not at all malignant in its operation?' said the Babu, watching the throat-muscles quiver and jerk as Huneefa spoke with tongues. 'It—it is not likely that she has killed the boy? If so, I decline to be witness at the trial .....What was the last hypothetical devil mentioned?'

'Babuji,' said Mahbub in the vernacular. 'I have no regard for the devils of Hind, but the Sons of Eblis are far otherwise, and whether they be jumalee [well-affected] or jullalee [terrible] they love not Kafirs.'

'Then you think I had better go?' said Hurree Babu, half rising. 'They are, of course, dematerialized phenomena. Spencer says.'

Huneefa's crisis passed, as these things must, in a paroxysm of howling, with a touch of froth at the lips. She lay spent and motionless beside Kim, and the crazy voices ceased.

'Wah! That work is done. May the boy be better for it; and Huneefa is surely a mistress of dawut. Help haul her aside, Babu. Do not be afraid.'

'How am I to fear the absolutely non-existent?' said Hurree Babu, talking English to reassure himself. It is an awful thing still to dread the magic that you contemptuously investigate—to collect folk-lore for the Royal Society with a lively belief in all Powers of Darkness.

Mahbub chuckled. He had been out with Hurree on the Road ere now. 'Let us finish the colouring,' said he. 'The boy is well protected if—if the Lords of the Air have ears to hear. I am a Sufi [free-thinker], but when one can get blind-sides of a woman, a stallion, or a devil, why go round to invite a kick? Set him upon the way, Babu, and see that old Red Hat does not lead him beyond our reach. I must get back to my horses.'

'All raight,' said Hurree Babu. 'He is at present curious spectacle.'

About third cockcrow, Kim woke after a sleep of thousands of years. Huneefa, in her corner, snored heavily, but Mahbub was gone.

'I hope you were not frightened,' said an oily voice at his elbow. 'I superintended entire operation, which was most interesting from ethnological point of view. It was high-class dawut.'

'Huh!' said Kim, recognizing Hurree Babu, who smiled ingratiatingly.

'And also I had honour to bring down from Lurgan your present costume. I am not in the habit offeecially of carrying such gauds to subordinates, but'—he giggled—'your case is noted as exceptional on the books. I hope Mr Lurgan will note my action.'

Kim yawned and stretched himself. It was good to turn and twist within loose clothes once again.

'What is this?' He looked curiously at the heavy duffle-stuff loaded with the scents of the far North.

'Oho! That is inconspicuous dress of chela attached to service of lamaistic lama. Complete in every particular,' said Hurree Babu, rolling into the balcony to clean his teeth at a goglet. 'I am of opeenion it is not your old gentleman's precise releegion, but rather sub-variant of same. I have contributed rejected notes To Whom It May Concern: Asiatic Quarterly Review on these subjects. Now it is curious that the old gentleman himself is totally devoid of releegiosity. He is not a dam' particular.'

'Do you know him?'

Hurree Babu held up his hand to show he was engaged in the prescribed rites that accompany tooth-cleaning and such things among decently bred Bengalis. Then he recited in English an Arya-Somaj [Arya Samaj] prayer of a theistical nature, and stuffed his mouth with pan and betel.

'Oah yes. I have met him several times at Benares, and also at Buddh Gaya, to interrogate him on releegious points and devil-worship. He is pure agnostic—same as me.'

Huneefa stirred in her sleep, and Hurree Babu jumped nervously to the copper incense-burner, all black and discoloured in morning-light, rubbed a finger in the accumulated lamp-black, and drew it diagonally across his face.

'Who has died in thy house?' asked Kim in the vernacular.

'None. But she may have the Evil Eye—that sorceress,' the Babu replied.

'What dost thou do now, then?'

'I will set thee on thy way to Benares, if thou goest thither, and tell thee what must be known by Us.'

'I go. At what hour runs the te-rain?' He rose to his feet, looked round the desolate chamber and at the yellow-wax face of Huneefa as the low sun stole across the floor. 'Is there money to be paid that witch?'

'No. She has charmed thee against all devils and all dangers in the name of her devils. It was Mahbub's desire.' In English: 'He is highly obsolete, I think, to indulge in such supersteetion. Why, it is all ventriloquy. Belly-speak—eh?'

Kim snapped his fingers mechanically to avert whatever evil—Mahbub, he knew, meditated none—might have crept in through Huneefa's ministrations; and Hurree giggled once more. But as he crossed the room he was careful not to step in Huneefa's blotched, squat shadow on the boards. Witches—when their time is on them—can lay hold of the heels of a man's soul if he does that.

'Now you must well listen,' said the Babu when they were in the fresh air. 'Part of these ceremonies which we witnessed they include supply of effeecient amulet to those of our Department. If you feel in your neck you will find one small silver amulet, verree cheap. That is ours. Do you understand?'

'Oah yes, hawa-dilli [a heart-lifter],' said Kim, feeling at his neck.

'Huneefa she makes them for two rupees twelve annas with—oh, all sorts of exorcisms. They are quite common, except they are partially black enamel, and there is a paper inside each one full of names of local saints and such things. Thatt is Huneefa's look-out, you see? Huneefa makes them onlee for us, but in case she does not, when we get them we put in, before issue, one small piece of turquoise. Mr Lurgan he gives them. There is no other source of supply; but it was me invented all this. It is strictly unoffeecial of course, but convenient for subordinates. Colonel Creighton he does not know. He is European. The turquoise is wrapped in the paper ... Yes, that is road to railway station ... Now suppose you go with the lama, or with me, I hope, some day, or with Mahbub. Suppose we get into a dam'-tight place. I am a fearful man—most fearful—but I tell you I have been in dam'-tight places more than hairs on my head. You say: "I am Son of the Charm." Verree good.'

'I do not understand quite. We must not be heard talking English here.'

'That is all raight. I am only Babu showing off my English to you. All we Babus talk English to show off;' said Hurree, flinging his shoulder-cloth jauntily. 'As I was about to say, "Son of the Charm" means that you may be member of the Sat Bhai—the Seven Brothers, which is Hindi and Tantric. It is popularly supposed to be extinct Society, but I have written notes to show it is still extant. You see, it is all my invention. Verree good. Sat Bhai has many members, and perhaps before they jolly-well-cut-your-throat they may give you just a chance of life. That is useful, anyhow. And moreover, these foolish natives—if they are not too excited—they always stop to think before they kill a man who says he belongs to any speecific organization. You see? You say then when you are in tight place, "I am Son of the Charm", and you get—perhaps—ah—your second wind. That is only in extreme instances, or to open negotiations with a stranger. Can you quite see? Verree good. But suppose now, I, or any one of the Department, come to you dressed quite different. You would not know me at all unless I choose, I bet you. Some day I will prove it. I come as Ladakhi trader—oh, anything—and I say to you: "You want to buy precious stones?" You say: "Do I look like a man who buys precious stones?" Then I say: "Even verree poor man can buy a turquoise or tarkeean."'

'That is kichree—vegetable curry,' said Kim.

'Of course it is. You say: "Let me see the tarkeean." Then I say: "It was cooked by a woman, and perhaps it is bad for your caste." Then you say: "There is no caste when men go to—look for tarkeean." You stop a little between those words, "to—look". That is thee whole secret. The little stop before the words.'

Kim repeated the test-sentence.

'That is all right. Then I will show you my turquoise if there is time, and then you know who I am, and then we exchange views and documents and those-all things. And so it is with any other man of us. We talk sometimes about turquoises and sometimes about tarkeean, but always with that little stop in the words. It is verree easy. First, "Son of the Charm", if you are in a tight place. Perhaps that may help you—perhaps not. Then what I have told you about the tarkeean, if you want to transact offeecial business with a strange man. Of course, at present, you have no offeecial business. You are—ah ha!—supernumerary on probation. Quite unique specimen. If you were Asiatic of birth you might be employed right off; but this half-year of leave is to make you de-Englishized, you see? The lama he expects you, because I have demi-offeecially informed him you have passed all your examinations, and will soon obtain Government appointment. Oh ho! You are on acting-allowance, you see: so if you are called upon to help Sons of the Charm mind you jolly-well try. Now I shall say good-bye, my dear fellow, and I hope you—ah—will come out top-side all raight.'

Hurree Babu stepped back a pace or two into the crowd at the entrance of Lucknow station and—was gone. Kim drew a deep breath and hugged himself all over. The nickel-plated revolver he could feel in the bosom of his sad-coloured robe, the amulet was on his neck; begging-gourd, rosary, and ghost-dagger (Mr Lurgan had forgotten nothing) were all to hand, with medicine, paint-box, and compass, and in a worn old purse-belt embroidered with porcupine-quill patterns lay a month's pay. Kings could be no richer. He bought sweetmeats in a leaf-cup from a Hindu trader, and ate them with glad rapture till a policeman ordered him off the steps....

I am half minded to take the hakim's medicine. He sells it cheap, and certainly it makes him fat as Shiv's own bull. He does not deny remedies, but I doubted for the child because of the in-auspicious colour of the bottles.'

The lama, under cover of the monologue, had faded out into the darkness towards the room prepared.

'Thou hast angered him, belike,' said Kim.

'Not he. He is wearied, and I forgot, being a grandmother. (None but a grandmother should ever oversee a child. Mothers are only fit for bearing.) Tomorrow, when he sees how my daughter's son is grown, he will write the charm. Then, too, he can judge of the new hakim's drugs.'

'Who is the hakim, Maharanee?'

'A wanderer, as thou art, but a most sober Bengali from Dacca—a master of medicine. He relieved me of an oppression after meat by means of a small pill that wrought like a devil unchained. He travels about now, vending preparations of great value. He has even papers, printed in Angrezi, telling what things he has done for weak-backed men and slack women. He has been here four days; but hearing ye were coming (hakims and priests are snake and tiger the world over) he has, as I take it, gone to cover.'

While she drew breath after this volley, the ancient servant, sitting unrebuked on the edge of the torchlight, muttered: 'This house is a cattle-pound, as it were, for all charlatans and—priests. Let the boy stop eating mangoes ... but who can argue with a grandmother?' He raised his voice respectfully: 'Sahiba, the hakim sleeps after his meat. He is in the quarters behind the dovecote.'

Kim bristled like an expectant terrier. To outface and down-talk a Calcutta-taught Bengali, a voluble Dacca drug-vendor, would be a good game. It was not seemly that the lama, and incidentally himself, should be thrown aside for such an one. He knew those curious bastard English advertisements at the backs of native newspapers. St Xavier's boys sometimes brought them in by stealth to snigger over among their mates; for the language of the grateful patient recounting his symptoms is most simple and revealing. The Oorya, not unanxious to play off one parasite against the other, slunk away towards the dovecote.

'Yes,' said Kim, with measured scorn. 'Their stock-in-trade is a little coloured water and a very great shamelessness. Their prey are broken-down kings and overfed Bengalis. Their profit is in children—who are not born.' The old lady chuckled. 'Do not be envious. Charms are better, eh? I never gainsaid it. See that thy Holy One writes me a good amulet by the morning.'

'None but the ignorant deny'—a thick, heavy voice boomed through the darkness, as a figure came to rest squatting—'None but the ignorant deny the value of charms. None but the ignorant deny the value of medicines.'

'A rat found a piece of turmeric. Said he: "I will open a grocer's shop,"' Kim retorted.

Battle was fairly joined now, and they heard the old lady stiffen to attention.

'The priest's son knows the names of his nurse and three Gods. Says he: "Hear me, or I will curse you by the three million Great Ones."' Decidedly this invisible had an arrow or two in his quiver. He went on: 'I am but a teacher of the alphabet. I have learned all the wisdom of the Sahibs.'

'The Sahibs never grow old. They dance and they play like children when they are grandfathers. A strong-backed breed,' piped the voice inside the palanquin.

'I have, too, our drugs which loosen humours of the head in hot and angry men. Sina well compounded when the moon stands in the proper House; yellow earths I have—arplan from China that makes a man renew his youth and astonish his household; saffron from Kashmir, and the best salep of Kabul. Many people have died before—'

'That I surely believe,' said Kim.

'They knew the value of my drugs. I do not give my sick the mere ink in which a charm is written, but hot and rending drugs which descend and wrestle with the evil.'

'Very mightily they do so,' sighed the old lady.

The voice launched into an immense tale of misfortune and bankruptcy, studded with plentiful petitions to the Government. 'But for my fate, which overrules all, I had been now in Government employ. I bear a degree from the great school at Calcutta—whither, maybe, the son of this House shall go.'

'He shall indeed. If our neighbour's brat can in a few years be made an F A' (First Arts—she used the English word, of which she had heard so often), 'how much more shall children clever as some that I know bear away prizes at rich Calcutta.'

'Never,' said the voice, 'have I seen such a child! Born in an auspicious hour, and—but for that colic which, alas! turning into black cholers, may carry him off like a pigeon—destined to many years, he is enviable.'

'Hai mai!' said the old lady. 'To praise children is inauspicious, or I could listen to this talk. But the back of the house is unguarded, and even in this soft air men think themselves to be men, and women we know ... The child's father is away too, and I must be chowkedar [watchman] in my old age. Up! Up! Take up the palanquin. Let the hakim and the young priest settle between them whether charms or medicine most avail. Ho! worthless people, fetch tobacco for the guests, and—round the homestead go I!'

The palanquin reeled off, followed by straggling torches and a horde of dogs. Twenty villages knew the Sahiba—her failings, her tongue, and her large charity. Twenty villages cheated her after immemorial custom, but no man would have stolen or robbed within her jurisdiction for any gift under heaven. None the less, she made great parade of her formal inspections, the riot of which could be heard half-way to Mussoorie.

Kim relaxed, as one augur must when he meets another. The hakim, still squatting, slid over his hookah with a friendly foot, and Kim pulled at the good weed. The hangers-on expected grave professional debate, and perhaps a little free doctoring.

'To discuss medicine before the ignorant is of one piece with teaching the peacock to sing,' said the hakim.

'True courtesy,' Kim echoed, 'is very often inattention.'

These, be it understood, were company-manners, designed to impress.

'Hi! I have an ulcer on my leg,' cried a scullion. 'Look at it!'

'Get hence! Remove!' said the hakim. 'Is it the habit of the place to pester honoured guests? Ye crowd in like buffaloes.'

'If the Sahiba knew—' Kim began.

'Ai! Ai! Come away. They are meat for our mistress. When her young Shaitan's colics are cured perhaps we poor people may be suffered to—'

'The mistress fed thy wife when thou wast in jail for breaking the money-lender's head. Who speaks against her?' The old servitor curled his white moustaches savagely in the young moonlight. 'I am responsible for the honour of this house. Go!' and he drove the underlings before him.

Said the hakim, hardly more than shaping the words with his lips: 'How do you do, Mister O'Hara? I am jolly glad to see you again.'

Kim's hand clenched about the pipe-stem. Anywhere on the open road, perhaps, he would not have been astonished; but here, in this quiet backwater of life, he was not prepared for Hurree Babu. It annoyed him, too, that he had been hoodwinked.

'Ah ha! I told you at Lucknow—resurgam—I shall rise again and you shall not know me.

How much did you bet—eh?'

He chewed leisurely upon a few cardamom seeds, but he breathed uneasily.

'But why come here, Babuji?'

'Ah! Thatt is the question, as Shakespeare hath it. I come to congratulate you on your extraordinary effeecient performance at Delhi. Oah! I tell you we are all proud of you. It was verree neat and handy. Our mutual friend, he is old friend of mine. He has been in some dam'-tight places. Now he will be in some more. He told me; I tell Mr Lurgan; and he is pleased you graduate so nicely. All the Department is pleased.'

For the first time in his life, Kim thrilled to the clean pride (it can be a deadly pitfall, none the less) of Departmental praise—ensnaring praise from an equal of work appreciated by fellow-workers. Earth has nothing on the same plane to compare with it. But, cried the Oriental in him, Babus do not travel far to retail compliments.

'Tell thy tale, Babu,' he said authoritatively.

'Oah, it is nothing. Onlee I was at Simla when the wire came in about what our mutual friend said he had hidden, and old Creighton—' He looked to see how Kim would take this piece of audacity.

'The Colonel Sahib,' the boy from St Xavier's corrected. 'Of course. He found me at a loose string, and I had to go down to Chitor to find that beastly letter. I do not like the South—too much railway travel; but I drew good travelling allowance. Ha! Ha! I meet our mutual at Delhi on the way back. He lies quiett just now, and says Saddhu-disguise suits him to the ground. Well, there I hear what you have done so well, so quickly, upon the instantaneous spur of the moment. I tell our mutual you take the bally bun, by Jove! It was splendid. I come to tell you so.'

'Umm!'

The frogs were busy in the ditches, and the moon slid to her setting. Some happy servant had gone out to commune with the night and to beat upon a drum. Kim's next sentence was in the vernacular.

'How didst thou follow us?'

'Oah. Thatt was nothing. I know from our mutual friend you go to Saharunpore. So I come on. Red Lamas are not inconspicuous persons. I buy myself my drug-box, and I am very good doctor really. I go to Akrola of the Ford, and hear all about you, and I talk here and talk there. All the common people know what you do. I knew when the hospitable old lady sent the dooli. They have great recollections of the old lama's visits here. I know old ladies cannot keep their hands from medicines. So I am a doctor, and—you hear my talk? I think it is verree good. My word, Mister O'Hara, they know about you and the lama for fifty miles—the common people. So I come. Do you mind?'

'Babuji,' said Kim, looking up at the broad, grinning face, 'I am a Sahib.'

'My dear Mister O'Hara—'

'And I hope to play the Great Game.'

'You are subordinate to me departmentally at present.'

'Then why talk like an ape in a tree? Men do not come after one from Simla and change their dress, for the sake of a few sweet words. I am not a child. Talk Hindi and let us get to the yolk of the egg. Thou art here—speaking not one word of truth in ten. Why art thou here? Give a straight answer.'

'That is so verree disconcerting of the Europeans, Mister O'Hara. You should know a heap better at your time of life.'

'But I want to know,' said Kim, laughing. 'If it is the Game, I may help. How can I do anything if you bukh [babble] all round the shop?'

Hurree Babu reached for the pipe, and sucked it till it gurgled again.

'Now I will speak vernacular. You sit tight, Mister O'Hara ... It concerns the pedigree of a white stallion.'

'Still? That was finished long ago.'

'When everyone is dead the Great Game is finished. Not before. Listen to me till the end. There were Five Kings who prepared a sudden war three years ago, when thou wast given the stallion's pedigree by Mahbub Ali. Upon them, because of that news, and ere they were ready, fell our Army.'

'Ay—eight thousand men with guns. I remember that night.'

'But the war was not pushed. That is the Government custom. The troops were recalled because the Government believed the Five Kings were cowed; and it is not cheap to feed men among the high Passes. Hilas and Bunar—Rajahs with guns—undertook for a price to guard the Passes against all coming from the North. They protested both fear and friendship.' He broke off with a giggle into English: 'Of course, I tell you this unoffeecially to elucidate political situation, Mister O'Hara. Offeecially, I am debarred from criticizing any action of superiors. Now I go on.—This pleased the Government, anxious to avoid expense, and a bond was made for so many rupees a month that Hilas and Bunar should guard the Passes as soon as the State's troops were withdrawn. At that time—it was after we two met—I, who had been selling tea in Leh, became a clerk of accounts in the Army. When the troops were withdrawn, I was left behind to pay the coolies who made new roads in the Hills. This road-making was part of the bond between Bunar, Hilas, and the Government.'

'So? And then?'

'I tell you, it was jolly-beastly cold up there too, after summer,' said Hurree Babu confidentially. 'I was afraid these Bunar men would cut my throat every night for thee pay-chest. My native sepoy-guard, they laughed at me! By Jove! I was such a fearful man. Nevar mind thatt. I go on colloquially ... I send word many times that these two Kings were sold to the North; and Mahbub Ali, who was yet farther North, amply confirmed it. Nothing was done. Only my feet were frozen, and a toe dropped off. I sent word that the roads for which I was paying money to the diggers were being made for the feet of strangers and enemies.'

'For?'

'For the Russians. The thing was an open jest among the coolies. Then I was called down to tell what I knew by speech of tongue. Mahbub came South too. See the end! Over the Passes this year after snow-melting'—he shivered afresh—'come two strangers under cover of shooting wild goats. They bear guns, but they bear also chains and levels and compasses.'

'Oho! The thing gets clearer.'

'They are well received by Hilas and Bunar. They make great promises; they speak as the mouthpiece of a Kaisar with gifts. Up the valleys, down the valleys go they, saying, "Here is a place to build a breastwork; here can ye pitch a fort. Here can ye hold the road against an army"—the very roads for which I paid out the rupees monthly. The Government knows, but does nothing. The three other Kings, who were not paid for guarding the Passes, tell them by runner of the bad faith of Bunar and Hilas. When all the evil is done, look you—when these two strangers with the levels and the compasses make the Five Kings to believe that a great army will sweep the Passes tomorrow or the next day—Hill-people are all fools—comes the order to me, Hurree Babu, "Go North and see what those strangers do." I say to Creighton Sahib, "This is not a lawsuit, that we go about to collect evidence."' Hurree returned to his English with a jerk: "'By Jove," I said, "why the dooce do you not issue demi-offeecial orders to some brave man to poison them, for an example? It is, if you permit the observation, most reprehensible laxity on your part." And Colonel Creighton, he laughed at me! It is all your beastly English pride. You think no one dare conspire! That is all tommy-rott.'

Kim smoked slowly, revolving the business, so far as he understood it, in his quick mind.

'Then thou goest forth to follow the strangers?'

'No. To meet them. They are coming in to Simla to send down their horns and heads to be dressed at Calcutta. They are exclusively sporting gentlemen, and they are allowed special faceelities by the Government. Of course, we always do that. It is our British pride.'

'Then what is to fear from them?'

'By Jove, they are not black people. I can do all sorts of things with black people, of course. They are Russians, and highly unscrupulous people. I—I do not want to consort with them without a witness.'

'Will they kill thee?'

'Oah, thatt is nothing. I am good enough Herbert Spencerian, I trust, to meet little thing like death, which is all in my fate, you know. But—but they may beat me.'

'Why?'

Hurree Babu snapped his fingers with irritation. 'Of course I shall affeeliate myself to their camp in supernumerary capacity as perhaps interpreter, or person mentally impotent and hungree, or some such thing. And then I must pick up what I can, I suppose. That is as easy for me as playing Mister Doctor to the old lady. Onlee—onlee—you see, Mister O'Hara, I am unfortunately Asiatic, which is serious detriment in some respects. And all-so I am Bengali—a fearful man.'

'God made the Hare and the Bengali. What shame?' said Kim, quoting the proverb.

'It was process of Evolution, I think, from Primal Necessity, but the fact remains in all the cui bono. I am, oh, awfully fearful!—I remember once they wanted to cut off my head on the road to Lhassa. (No, I have never reached to Lhassa.) I sat down and cried, Mister O'Hara, anticipating Chinese tortures. I do not suppose these two gentlemen will torture me, but I like to provide for possible contingency with European assistance in emergency.' He coughed and spat out the cardamoms. 'It is purely unoffeecial indent, to which you can say "No, Babu". If you have no pressing engagement with your old man—perhaps you might divert him; perhaps I can seduce his fancies—I should like you to keep in Departmental touch with me till I find those sporting coves. I have great opeenion of you since I met my friend at Delhi. And also I will embody your name in my offeecial report when matter is finally adjudicated. It will be a great feather in your cap. That is why I come really.'

'Humph! The end of the tale, I think, is true; but what of the fore-part?'

'About the Five Kings? Oah! there is ever so much truth in it. A lots more than you would suppose,' said Hurree earnestly. 'You come—eh? I go from here straight into the Doon. It is verree verdant and painted meads. I shall go to Mussoorie to good old Munsoorie Pahar, as the gentlemen and ladies say. Then by Rampur into Chini. That is the only way they can come. I do not like waiting in the cold, but we must wait for them. I want to walk with them to Simla. You see, one Russian is a Frenchman, and I know my French pretty well. I have friends in Chandernagore.'

'He would certainly rejoice to see the Hills again,' said Kim meditatively. 'All his speech these ten days past has been of little else. If we go together—'

'Oah! We can be quite strangers on the road, if your lama prefers. I shall just be four or five miles ahead. There is no hurry for Hurree—that is an Europe pun, ha! ha! —and you come after. There is plenty of time; they will plot and survey and map, of course. I shall go tomorrow, and you the next day, if you choose. Eh? You go think on it till morning. By Jove, it is near morning now.' He yawned ponderously, and with never a civil word lumbered off to his sleeping-place. But Kim slept little, and his thoughts ran in Hindustani:

'Well is the Game called great! I was four days a scullion at Quetta, waiting on the wife of the man whose book I stole. And that was part of the Great Game! From the South—God knows how far—came up the Mahratta, playing the Great Game in fear of his life. Now I shall go far and far into the North playing the Great Game. Truly, it runs like a shuttle throughout all Hind. And my share and my joy'—he smiled to the darkness—'I owe to the lama here. Also to Mahbub Ali—also to Creighton Sahib, but chiefly to the Holy One. He is right—a great and a wonderful world—and I am Kim—Kim—Kim—alone—one person—in the middle of it all. But I will see these strangers with their levels and chains...'

'What was the upshot of last night's babble?' said the lama, after his orisons.

'There came a strolling seller of drugs—a hanger-on of the Sahiba's. Him I abolished by arguments and prayers, proving that our charms are worthier than his coloured waters.'

'Alas, my charms! Is the virtuous woman still bent upon a new one?'

'Very strictly.'

'Then it must be written, or she will deafen me with her clamour.' He fumbled at his pencase.

'In the Plains,' said Kim, 'are always too many people. In the Hills, as I understand, there are fewer.'

'Oh! the Hills, and the snows upon the Hills.' The lama tore off a tiny square of paper fit to go in an amulet. 'But what dost thou know of the Hills?'

'They are very close.' Kim thrust open the door and looked at the long, peaceful line of the Himalayas flushed in morning-gold. 'Except in the dress of a Sahib, I have never set foot among them.'

The lama snuffed the wind wistfully.

'If we go North,'—Kim put the question to the waking sunrise—'would not much mid-day heat be avoided by walking among the lower hills at least? ... Is the charm made, Holy One?'

'I have written the names of seven silly devils—not one of whom is worth a grain of dust in the eye. Thus do foolish women drag us from the Way!'



Hurree Babu came out from behind the dovecote washing his teeth with ostentatious ritual. Full-fleshed, heavy-haunched, bull-necked, and deep-voiced, he did not look like 'a fearful man'. Kim signed almost imperceptibly that matters were in good train, and when the morning toilet was over, Hurree Babu, in flowery speech, came to do honour to the lama. They ate, of course, apart, and afterwards the old lady, more or less veiled behind a window, returned to the vital business of green-mango colics in the young. The lama's knowledge of medicine was, of course, sympathetic only. He believed that the dung of a black horse, mixed with sulphur, and carried in a snake-skin, was a sound remedy for cholera; but the symbolism interested him far more than the science. Hurree Babu deferred to these views with enchanting politeness, so that the lama called him a courteous physician. Hurree Babu replied that he was no more than an inexpert dabbler in the mysteries; but at least—he thanked the Gods therefore—he knew when he sat in the presence of a master. He himself had been taught by the Sahibs, who do not consider expense, in the lordly halls of Calcutta; but, as he was ever first to acknowledge, there lay a wisdom behind earthly wisdom—the high and lonely lore of meditation. Kim looked on with envy. The Hurree Babu of his knowledge—oily, effusive, and nervous—was gone; gone, too, was the brazen drug-vendor of overnight. There remained—polished, polite, attentive—a sober, learned son of experience and adversity, gathering wisdom from the lama's lips. The old lady confided to Kim that these rare levels were beyond her. She liked charms with plenty of ink that one could wash off in water, swallow, and be done with. Else what was the use of the Gods? She liked men and women, and she spoke of them—of kinglets she had known in the past; of her own youth and beauty; of the depredations of leopards and the eccentricities of love Asiatic; of the incidence of taxation, rack-renting, funeral ceremonies, her son-in-law (this by allusion, easy to be followed), the care of the young, and the age's lack of decency. And Kim, as interested in the life of this world as she soon to leave it, squatted with his feet under the hem of his robe, drinking all in, while the lama demolished one after another every theory of body-curing put forward by Hurree Babu.

At noon the Babu strapped up his brass-bound drug-box, took his patent-leather shoes of ceremony in one hand, a gay blue-and-white umbrella in the other, and set off northwards to the Doon, where, he said, he was in demand among the lesser kings of those parts.

'We will go in the cool of the evening, chela,' said the lama. 'That doctor, learned in physic and courtesy, affirms that the people among these lower hills are devout, generous, and much in need of a teacher. In a very short time—so says the hakim—we come to cool air and the smell of pines.'...

'You see, Mister O'Hara, I do not know what the deuce-an' all I shall do when I find our sporting friends; but if you will kindly keep within sight of my umbrella, which is fine fixed point for cadastral survey, I shall feel much better.'

Kim looked out across the jungle of peaks. 'This is not my country, hakim. Easier, I think, to find one louse in a bear-skin.'

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Part 2 of 2

'Oah, thatt is my strong points. There is no hurry for Hurree. They were at Leh not so long ago. They said they had come down from the Karakorum with their heads and horns and all. I am onlee afraid they will have sent back all their letters and compromising things from Leh into Russian territoree. Of course they will walk away as far to the East as possible—just to show that they were never among the Western States. You do not know the Hills?' He scratched with a twig on the earth. 'Look! They should have come in by Srinagar or Abbottabad. Thatt is their short road—down the river by Bunji and Astor. But they have made mischief in the West. So'—he drew a furrow from left to right—'they march and they march away East to Leh (ah! it is cold there), and down the Indus to Hanle (I know that road), and then down, you see, to Bushahr and Chini valley. That is ascertained by process of elimination, and also by asking questions from people that I cure so well. Our friends have been a long time playing about and producing impressions. So they are well known from far off. You will see me catch them somewhere in Chini valley. Please keep your eye on the umbrella.'

It nodded like a wind-blown harebell down the valleys and round the mountain sides, and in due time the lama and Kim, who steered by compass, would overhaul it, vending ointments and powders at eventide. 'We came by such and such a way!' The lama would throw a careless finger backward at the ridges, and the umbrella would expend itself in compliments...

As usual, the lama had led Kim by cow-track and by-road, far from the main route along which Hurree Babu, that 'fearful man', had bucketed three days before through a storm to which nine Englishmen out of ten would have given full right of way. Hurree was no game-shot—the snick of a trigger made him change colour—but, as he himself would have said, he was 'fairly effeecient stalker', and he had raked the huge valley with a pair of cheap binoculars to some purpose. Moreover, the white of worn canvas tents against green carries far. Hurree Babu had seen all he wanted to see when he sat on the threshing-floor of Ziglaur, twenty miles away as the eagle flies, and forty by road—that is to say, two small dots which one day were just below the snow-line, and the next had moved downward perhaps six inches on the hillside. Once cleaned out and set to the work, his fat bare legs could cover a surprising amount of ground, and this was the reason why, while Kim and the lama lay in a leaky hut at Ziglaur till the storm should be over-past, an oily, wet, but always smiling Bengali, talking the best of English with the vilest of phrases, was ingratiating himself with two sodden and rather rheumatic foreigners. He had arrived, revolving many wild schemes, on the heels of a thunderstorm which had split a pine over against their camp, and so convinced a dozen or two forcibly impressed baggage-coolies the day was inauspicious for farther travel that with one accord they had thrown down their loads and jibbed. They were subjects of a Hill Rajah who farmed out their services, as is the custom, for his private gain; and, to add to their personal distresses, the strange Sahibs had already threatened them with rifles. The most of them knew rifles and Sahibs of old: they were trackers and shikarris of the Northern valleys, keen after bear and wild goat; but they had never been thus treated in their lives. So the forest took them to her bosom, and, for all oaths and clamour, refused to restore. There was no need to feign madness or—the Babu had thought of another means of securing a welcome. He wrung out his wet clothes, slipped on his patent-leather shoes, opened the blue-and-white umbrella, and with mincing gait and a heart beating against his tonsils appeared as 'agent for His Royal Highness, the Rajah of Rampur, gentlemen. What can I do for you, please?'

The gentlemen were delighted. One was visibly French, the other Russian, but they spoke English not much inferior to the Babu's. They begged his kind offices. Their native servants had gone sick at Leh. They had hurried on because they were anxious to bring the spoils of the chase to Simla ere the skins grew moth-eaten. They bore a general letter of introduction (the Babu salaamed to it orientally) to all Government officials. No, they had not met any other shooting-parties en route. They did for themselves. They had plenty of supplies. They only wished to push on as soon as might be. At this he waylaid a cowering hillman among the trees, and after three minutes' talk and a little silver (one cannot be economical upon State service, though Hurree's heart bled at the waste) the eleven coolies and the three hangers-on reappeared. At least the Babu would be a witness to their oppression.

'My royal master, he will be much annoyed, but these people are onlee common people and grossly ignorant. If your honours will kindly overlook unfortunate affair, I shall be much pleased. In a little while rain will stop and we can then proceed. You have been shooting, eh? That is fine performance!'

He skipped nimbly from one kilta to the next, making pretence to adjust each conical basket. The Englishman is not, as a rule, familiar with the Asiatic, but he would not strike across the wrist a kindly Babu who had accidentally upset a kilta with a red oilskin top. On the other hand, he would not press drink upon a Babu were he never so friendly, nor would he invite him to meat. The strangers did all these things, and asked many questions—about women mostly—to which Hurree returned gay and unstudied answers. They gave him a glass of whitish fluid like to gin, and then more; and in a little time his gravity departed from him. He became thickly treasonous, and spoke in terms of sweeping indecency of a Government which had forced upon him a white man's education and neglected to supply him with a white man's salary. He babbled tales of oppression and wrong till the tears ran down his cheeks for the miseries of his land. Then he staggered off, singing love-songs of Lower Bengal, and collapsed upon a wet tree-trunk. Never was so unfortunate a product of English rule in India more unhappily thrust upon aliens.

'They are all just of that pattern,' said one sportsman to the other in French. 'When we get into India proper thou wilt see. I should like to visit his Rajah. One might speak the good word there. It is possible that he has heard of us and wishes to signify his good-will.'

'We have not time. We must get into Simla as soon as may be,' his companion replied. 'For my own part, I wish our reports had been sent back from Hilas, or even Leh.'

'The English post is better and safer. Remember we are given all facilities—and Name of God!—they give them to us too! Is it unbelievable stupidity?'

'It is pride—pride that deserves and will receive punishment.'

'Yes! To fight a fellow-Continental in our game is something. There is a risk attached, but these people—bah! It is too easy.'

'Pride—all pride, my friend.'

'Now what the deuce is good of Chandernagore being so close to Calcutta and all,' said Hurree, snoring open-mouthed on the sodden moss, 'if I cannot understand their French? They talk so particularly fast! It would have been much better to cut their beastly throats.'

When he presented himself again he was racked with a headache—penitent, and volubly afraid that in his drunkenness he might have been indiscreet. He loved the British Government—it was the source of all prosperity and honour, and his master at Rampur held the very same opinion. Upon this the men began to deride him and to quote past words, till step by step, with deprecating smirks, oily grins, and leers of infinite cunning, the poor Babu was beaten out of his defences and forced to speak—truth. When Lurgan was told the tale later, he mourned aloud that he could not have been in the place of the stubborn, inattentive coolies, who with grass mats over their heads and the raindrops puddling in their footprints, waited on the weather. All the Sahibs of their acquaintance—rough-clad men joyously returning year after year to their chosen gullies—had servants and cooks and orderlies, very often hillmen. These Sahibs travelled without any retinue. Therefore they were poor Sahibs, and ignorant; for no Sahib in his senses would follow a Bengali's advice. But the Bengali, appearing from somewhere, had given them money, and could make shift with their dialect. Used to comprehensive ill-treatment from their own colour, they suspected a trap somewhere, and stood by to run if occasion offered.

Then through the new-washed air, steaming with delicious earth-smells, the Babu led the way down the slopes—walking ahead of the coolies in pride; walking behind the foreigners in humility. His thoughts were many and various. The least of them would have interested his companions beyond words. But he was an agreeable guide, ever keen to point out the beauties of his royal master's domain. He peopled the hills with anything they had a mind to slay—thar, ibex, or markhor, and bear by Elisha's allowance. He discoursed of botany and ethnology with unimpeachable inaccuracy, and his store of local legends—he had been a trusted agent of the State for fifteen years, remember—was inexhaustible.

'Decidedly this fellow is an original,' said the taller of the two foreigners. 'He is like the nightmare of a Viennese courier.'

'He represents in little India in transition—the monstrous hybridism of East and West,' the Russian replied. 'It is we who can deal with Orientals.'

'He has lost his own country and has not acquired any other. But he has a most complete hatred of his conquerors. Listen. He confided to me last night,' said the other.

Under the striped umbrella Hurree Babu was straining ear and brain to follow the quick-poured French, and keeping both eyes on a kilta full of maps and documents—an extra-large one with a double red oil-skin cover. He did not wish to steal anything. He only desired to know what to steal, and, incidentally, how to get away when he had stolen it. He thanked all the Gods of Hindustan, and Herbert Spencer, that there remained some valuables to steal.

On the second day the road rose steeply to a grass spur above the forest; and it was here, about sunset, that they came across an aged lama—but they called him a bonze—sitting cross-legged above a mysterious chart held down by stones, which he was explaining to a young man, evidently a neophyte, of singular, though unwashen, beauty. The striped umbrella had been sighted half a march away, and Kim had suggested a halt till it came up to them.

'Ha!' said Hurree Babu, resourceful as Puss-in-Boots. 'That is eminent local holy man. Probably subject of my royal master.'

'What is he doing? It is very curious.'

'He is expounding holy picture—all hand-worked.'

The two men stood bareheaded in the wash of the afternoon sunlight low across the gold-coloured grass. The sullen coolies, glad of the check, halted and slid down their loads.

'Look!' said the Frenchman. 'It is like a picture for the birth of a religion—the first teacher and the first disciple. Is he a Buddhist?'

'Of some debased kind,' the other answered. 'There are no true Buddhists among the Hills. But look at the folds of the drapery. Look at his eyes—how insolent! Why does this make one feel that we are so young a people?' The speaker struck passionately at a tall weed. 'We have nowhere left our mark yet. Nowhere! That, do you understand, is what disquiets me.' He scowled at the placid face, and the monumental calm of the pose.

'Have patience. We shall make your mark together—we and you young people. Meantime, draw his picture.'

The Babu advanced loftily; his back out of all keeping with his deferential speech, or his wink towards Kim.

'Holy One, these be Sahibs. My medicines cured one of a flux, and I go into Simla to oversee his recovery. They wish to see thy picture—'

'To heal the sick is always good. This is the Wheel of Life,' said the lama, 'the same I showed thee in the hut at Ziglaur when the rain fell.'

'And to hear thee expound it.'

The lama's eyes lighted at the prospect of new listeners. 'To expound the Most Excellent Way is good. Have they any knowledge of Hindi, such as had the Keeper of Images?'

'A little, maybe.'

Hereat, simply as a child engrossed with a new game, the lama threw back his head and began the full-throated invocation of the Doctor of Divinity ere he opens the full doctrine. The strangers leaned on their alpenstocks and listened. Kim, squatting humbly, watched the red sunlight on their faces, and the blend and parting of their long shadows. They wore un-English leggings and curious girt-in belts that reminded him hazily of the pictures in a book in St Xavier's library "The Adventures of a Young Naturalist in Mexico" was its name. Yes, they looked very like the wonderful M. Sumichrast of that tale, and very unlike the 'highly unscrupulous folk' of Hurree Babu's imagining. The coolies, earth-coloured and mute, crouched reverently some twenty or thirty yards away, and the Babu, the slack of his thin gear snapping like a marking-flag in the chill breeze, stood by with an air of happy proprietorship.

'These are the men,' Hurree whispered, as the ritual went on and the two whites followed the grass-blade sweeping from Hell to Heaven and back again. 'All their books are in the large kilta with the reddish top—books and reports and maps—and I have seen a King's letter that either Hilas or Bunar has written. They guard it most carefully. They have sent nothing back from Hilas or Leh. That is sure.'

'Who is with them?'

'Only the beegar-coolies. They have no servants. They are so close they cook their own food.'

'But what am I to do?'

'Wait and see. Only if any chance comes to me thou wilt know where to seek for the papers.'

'This were better in Mahbub Ali's hands than a Bengali's,' said Kim scornfully.

'There are more ways of getting to a sweetheart than butting down a wall.'

'See here the Hell appointed for avarice and greed. Flanked upon the one side by Desire and on the other by Weariness.' The lama warmed to his work, and one of the strangers sketched him in the quick-fading light.

'That is enough,' the man said at last brusquely. 'I cannot understand him, but I want that picture. He is a better artist than I. Ask him if he will sell it.'

'He says "No, sar,"' the Babu replied. The lama, of course, would no more have parted with his chart to a casual wayfarer than an archbishop would pawn the holy vessels of his cathedral. All Tibet is full of cheap reproductions of the Wheel; but the lama was an artist, as well as a wealthy Abbot in his own place.

'Perhaps in three days, or four, or ten, if I perceive that the Sahib is a Seeker and of good understanding, I may myself draw him another. But this was used for the initiation of a novice. Tell him so, hakim.'

'He wishes it now—for money.'

The lama shook his head slowly and began to fold up the Wheel. The Russian, on his side, saw no more than an unclean old man haggling over a dirty piece of paper. He drew out a handful of rupees, and snatched half-jestingly at the chart, which tore in the lama's grip. A low murmur of horror went up from the coolies—some of whom were Spiti men and, by their lights, good Buddhists. The lama rose at the insult; his hand went to the heavy iron pencase that is the priest's weapon, and the Babu danced in agony.

'Now you see—you see why I wanted witnesses. They are highly unscrupulous people. Oh, sar! sar! You must not hit holyman!'

'Chela! He has defiled the Written Word!'

It was too late. Before Kim could ward him off, the Russian struck the old man full on the face. Next instant he was rolling over and over downhill with Kim at his throat. The blow had waked every unknown Irish devil in the boy's blood, and the sudden fall of his enemy did the rest. The lama dropped to his knees, half-stunned; the coolies under their loads fled up the hill as fast as plainsmen run aross the level. They had seen sacrilege unspeakable, and it behoved them to get away before the Gods and devils of the hills took vengeance. The Frenchman ran towards the lama, fumbling at his revolver with some notion of making him a hostage for his companion. A shower of cutting stones—hillmen are very straight shots—drove him away, and a coolie from Ao-chung snatched the lama into the stampede. All came about as swiftly as the sudden mountain-darkness.

'They have taken the baggage and all the guns,' yelled the Frenchman, firing blindly into the twilight.

'All right, sar! All right! Don't shoot. I go to rescue,' and Hurree, pounding down the slope, cast himself bodily upon the delighted and astonished Kim, who was banging his breathless foe's head against a boulder.

'Go back to the coolies,' whispered the Babu in his ear. 'They have the baggage. The papers are in the kilta with the red top, but look through all. Take their papers, and specially the murasla [King's letter]. Go! The other man comes!'

Kim tore uphill. A revolver-bullet rang on a rock by his side, and he cowered partridge-wise.

'If you shoot,' shouted Hurree, 'they will descend and annihilate us. I have rescued the gentleman, sar. This is particularly dangerous.'

'By Jove!' Kim was thinking hard in English. 'This is dam'-tight place, but I think it is self-defence.' He felt in his bosom for Mahbub's gift, and uncertainly—save for a few practice shots in the Bikanir desert, he had never used the little gun—pulled the trigger.

'What did I say, sar!' The Babu seemed to be in tears. 'Come down here and assist to resuscitate. We are all up a tree, I tell you.'

The shots ceased. There was a sound of stumbling feet, and Kim hurried upward through the gloom, swearing like a cat—or a country-bred.

'Did they wound thee, chela?' called the lama above him.

'No. And thou?' He dived into a clump of stunted firs.

'Unhurt. Come away. We go with these folk to Shamlegh-under-the-Snow.'

'But not before we have done justice,' a voice cried. 'I have got the Sahibs' guns—all four. Let us go down.'

'He struck the Holy One—we saw it! Our cattle will be barren—our wives will cease to bear! The snows will slide upon us as we go home... Atop of all other oppression too!'

The little fir-clump filled with clamouring coolies—panic-stricken, and in their terror capable of anything. The man from Ao-chung clicked the breech-bolt of his gun impatiently, and made as to go downhill.

'Wait a little, Holy One; they cannot go far. Wait till I return,' said he.

'It is this person who has suffered wrong,' said the lama, his hand over his brow.

'For that very reason,' was the reply.

'If this person overlooks it, your hands are clean. Moreover, ye acquire merit by obedience.'

'Wait, and we will all go to Shamlegh together,' the man insisted.

For a moment, for just so long as it needs to stuff a cartridge into a breech-loader, the lama hesitated. Then he rose to his feet, and laid a finger on the man's shoulder.

'Hast thou heard? I say there shall be no killing—I who was Abbot of Such-zen. Is it any lust of thine to be re-born as a rat, or a snake under the eaves—a worm in the belly of the most mean beast? Is it thy wish to—'

The man from Ao-chung fell to his knees, for the voice boomed like a Tibetan devil-gong.

'Ai! ai!' cried the Spiti men. 'Do not curse us—do not curse him. It was but his zeal, Holy One! ... Put down the rifle, fool!'

'Anger on anger! Evil on evil! There will be no killing. Let the priest-beaters go in bondage to their own acts. Just and sure is the Wheel, swerving not a hair! They will be born many times—in torment.' His head drooped, and he leaned heavily on Kim's shoulder.

'I have come near to great evil, chela,' he whispered in that dead hush under the pines. 'I was tempted to loose the bullet; and truly, in Tibet there would have been a heavy and a slow death for them ... He struck me across the face ... upon the flesh ...' He slid to the ground, breathing heavily, and Kim could hear the over-driven heart bump and check.

'Have they hurt him to the death?' said the Ao-chung man, while the others stood mute.

Kim knelt over the body in deadly fear. 'Nay,' he cried passionately, 'this is only a weakness.' Then he remembered that he was a white man, with a white man's camp-fittings at his service. 'Open the kiltas! The Sahibs may have a medicine.'

'Oho! Then I know it,' said the Ao-chung man with a laugh. 'Not for five years was I Yankling Sahib's shikarri without knowing that medicine. I too have tasted it. Behold!'

He drew from his breast a bottle of cheap whisky—such as is sold to explorers at Leh—and cleverly forced a little between the lama's teeth.

'So I did when Yankling Sahib twisted his foot beyond Astor. Aha! I have already looked into their baskets—but we will make fair division at Shamlegh. Give him a little more. It is good medicine. Feel! His heart goes better now. Lay his head down and rub a little on the chest. If he had waited quietly while I accounted for the Sahibs this would never have come. But perhaps the Sahibs may chase us here. Then it would not be wrong to shoot them with their own guns, heh?'

'One is paid, I think, already,' said Kim between his teeth. 'I kicked him in the groin as we went downhill. Would I had killed him!'

'It is well to be brave when one does not live in Rampur,' said one whose hut lay within a few miles of the Rajah's rickety palace. 'If we get a bad name among the Sahibs, none will employ us as shikarris any more.'

'Oh, but these are not Angrezi Sahibs—not merry-minded men like Fostum Sahib or Yankling Sahib. They are foreigners—they cannot speak Angrezi as do Sahibs.'

Here the lama coughed and sat up, groping for the rosary.

'There shall be no killing,' he murmured. 'Just is the Wheel! Evil on evil—'

'Nay, Holy One. We are all here.' The Ao-chung man timidly patted his feet. 'Except by thy order, no one shall be slain. Rest awhile. We will make a little camp here, and later, as the moon rises, we go to Shamlegh-under-the-Snow.'

'After a blow,' said a Spiti man sententiously, 'it is best to sleep.'

'There is, as it were, a dizziness at the back of my neck, and a pinching in it. Let me lay my head on thy lap, chela. I am an old man, but not free from passion ... We must think of the Cause of Things.'

'Give him a blanket. We dare not light a fire lest the Sahibs see.'

'Better get away to Shamlegh. None will follow us to Shamlegh.'

This was the nervous Rampur man.

'I have been Fostum Sahib's shikarri, and I am Yankling Sahib's shikarri. I should have been with Yankling Sahib now but for this cursed beegar [the corvee]. Let two men watch below with the guns lest the Sahibs do more foolishness. I shall not leave this Holy One.'

They sat down a little apart from the lama, and, after listening awhile, passed round a water-pipe whose receiver was an old Day and Martin blacking-bottle. The glow of the red charcoal as it went from hand to hand lit up the narrow, blinking eyes, the high Chinese cheek-bones, and the bull-throats that melted away into the dark duffle folds round the shoulders. They looked like kobolds from some magic mine—gnomes of the hills in conclave. And while they talked, the voices of the snow-waters round them diminished one by one as the night-frost choked and clogged the runnels.

'How he stood up against us!' said a Spiti man admiring. 'I remember an old ibex, out Ladakh-way, that Dupont Sahib missed on a shoulder-shot, seven seasons back, standing up just like him. Dupont Sahib was a good shikarri.'

'Not as good as Yankling Sahib.' The Ao-chung man took a pull at the whisky-bottle and passed it over. 'Now hear me—unless any other man thinks he knows more.'

The challenge was not taken up.

'We go to Shamlegh when the moon rises. There we will fairly divide the baggage between us. I am content with this new little rifle and all its cartridges.'

'Are the bears only bad on thy holding? said a mate, sucking at the pipe.

'No; but musk-pods are worth six rupees apiece now, and thy women can have the canvas of the tents and some of the cooking-gear. We will do all that at Shamlegh before dawn. Then we all go our ways, remembering that we have never seen or taken service with these Sahibs, who may, indeed, say that we have stolen their baggage.'

'That is well for thee, but what will our Rajah say?'

'Who is to tell him? Those Sahibs, who cannot speak our talk, or the Babu, who for his own ends gave us money? Will he lead an army against us? What evidence will remain? That we do not need we shall throw on Shamlegh-midden, where no man has yet set foot.'

'Who is at Shamlegh this summer?' The place was only a grazing centre of three or four huts.'

'The Woman of Shamlegh. She has no love for Sahibs, as we know. The others can be pleased with little presents; and here is enough for us all.' He patted the fat sides of the nearest basket.

'But—but—'

'I have said they are not true Sahibs. All their skins and heads were bought in the bazar at Leh. I know the marks. I showed them to ye last march.'

'True. They were all bought skins and heads. Some had even the moth in them.'

That was a shrewd argument, and the Ao-chung man knew his fellows.

'If the worst comes to the worst, I shall tell Yankling Sahib, who is a man of a merry mind, and he will laugh. We are not doing any wrong to any Sahibs whom we know. They are priest-beaters. They frightened us. We fled! Who knows where we dropped the baggage? Do ye think Yankling Sahib will permit down-country police to wander all over the hills, disturbing his game? It is a far cry from Simla to Chini, and farther from Shamlegh to Shamlegh-midden.'

'So be it, but I carry the big kilta. The basket with the red top that the Sahibs pack themselves every morning.'

'Thus it is proved,' said the Shamlegh man adroitly, 'that they are Sahibs of no account. Who ever heard of Fostum Sahib, or Yankling Sahib, or even the little Peel Sahib that sits up of nights to shoot serow—I say, who, ever heard of these Sahibs coming into the hills without a down-country cook, and a bearer, and—and all manner of well-paid, high-handed and oppressive folk in their tail? How can they make trouble? What of the kilta?'

'Nothing, but that it is full of the Written Word—books and papers in which they wrote, and strange instruments, as of worship.'

'Shamlegh-midden will take them all.'

'True! But how if we insult the Sahibs' Gods thereby! I do not like to handle the Written Word in that fashion. And their brass idols are beyond my comprehension. It is no plunder for simple hill-folk.'

'The old man still sleeps. Hst! We will ask his chela.' The Ao-chung man refreshed himself, and swelled with pride of leadership.

'We have here,' he whispered, 'a kilta whose nature we do not know.'

'But I do,' said Kim cautiously. The lama drew breath in natural, easy sleep, and Kim had been thinking of Hurree's last words. As a player of the Great Game, he was disposed just then to reverence the Babu. 'It is a kilta with a red top full of very wonderful things, not to be handled by fools.'

'I said it; I said it,' cried the bearer of that burden. 'Thinkest thou it will betray us?'

'Not if it be given to me. I can draw out its magic. Otherwise it will do great harm.'

'A priest always takes his share.' Whisky was demoralizing the Ao-chung man.

'It is no matter to me.' Kim answered, with the craft of his mother-country. 'Share it among you, and see what comes!'

'Not I. I was only jesting. Give the order. There is more than enough for us all. We go our way from Shamlegh in the dawn.'

They arranged and re-arranged their artless little plans for another hour, while Kim shivered with cold and pride. The humour of the situation tickled the Irish and the Oriental in his soul. Here were the emissaries of the dread Power of the North, very possibly as great in their own land as Mahbub or Colonel Creighton, suddenly smitten helpless. One of them, he privately knew, would be lame for a time. They had made promises to Kings. Tonight they lay out somewhere below him, chartless, foodless, tentless, gunless—except for Hurree Babu, guideless. And this collapse of their Great Game (Kim wondered to whom they would report it), this panicky bolt into the night, had come about through no craft of Hurree's or contrivance of Kim's, but simply, beautifully, and inevitably as the capture of Mahbub's fakir-friends by the zealous young policeman at Umballa.

'They are there—with nothing; and, by Jove, it is cold! I am here with all their things. Oh, they will be angry! I am sorry for Hurree Babu.'

Kim might have saved his pity, for though at that moment the Bengali suffered acutely in the flesh, his soul was puffed and lofty. A mile down the hill, on the edge of the pine-forest, two half-frozen men—one powerfully sick at intervals—were varying mutual recriminations with the most poignant abuse of the Babu, who seemed distraught with terror. They demanded a plan of action. He explained that they were very lucky to be alive; that their coolies, if not then stalking them, had passed beyond recall; that the Rajah, his master, was ninety miles away, and, so far from lending them money and a retinue for the Simla journey, would surely cast them into prison if he heard that they had hit a priest. He enlarged on this sin and its consequences till they bade him change the subject. Their one hope, said he, was unostentatious flight from village to village till they reached civilization; and, for the hundredth time dissolved in tears, he demanded of the high stars why the Sahibs 'had beaten holy man'.

Ten steps would have taken Hurree into the creaking gloom utterly beyond their reach—to the shelter and food of the nearest village, where glib-tongued doctors were scarce. But he preferred to endure cold, belly-pinch, bad words, and occasional blows in the company of his honoured employers. Crouched against a tree-trunk, he sniffed dolefully.

'And have you thought,' said the uninjured man hotly, 'what sort of spectacle we shall present wandering through these hills among these aborigines?'

Hurree Babu had thought of little else for some hours, but the remark was not to his address.

'We cannot wander! I can hardly walk,' groaned Kim's victim.

'Perhaps the holy man will be merciful in loving-kindness, sar, otherwise—'

'I promise myself a peculiar pleasure in emptying my revolver into that young bonze when next we meet,' was the unchristian answer.

'Revolvers! Vengeance! Bonzes!' Hurree crouched lower. The war was breaking out afresh. 'Have you no consideration for our loss? The baggage! The baggage!' He could hear the speaker literally dancing on the grass. 'Everything we bore! Everything we have secured! Our gains! Eight months' work! Do you know what that means? "Decidedly it is we who can deal with Orientals!" Oh, you have done well.'

They fell to it in several tongues, and Hurree smiled. Kim was with the kiltas, and in the kiltas lay eight months of good diplomacy. There was no means of communicating with the boy, but he could be trusted. For the rest, Hurree could so stage-manage the journey through the hills that Hilas, Bunar, and four hundred miles of hill-roads should tell the tale for a generation. Men who cannot control their own coolies are little respected in the Hills, and the hillman has a very keen sense of humour.

'If I had done it myself,' thought Hurree, 'it would not have been better; and, by Jove, now I think of it, of course I arranged it myself. How quick I have been! Just when I ran downhill I thought it! Thee outrage was accidental, but onlee me could have worked it—ah—for all it was dam'-well worth. Consider the moral effect upon these ignorant peoples! No treaties—no papers—no written documents at all—and me to interpret for them. How I shall laugh with the Colonel! I wish I had their papers also: but you cannot occupy two places in space simultaneously. Thatt is axiomatic.'…

Kim tilted the kilta on the floor—a cascade of Survey-instruments, books, diaries, letters, maps, and queerly scented native correspondence. At the very bottom was an embroidered bag covering a sealed, gilded, and illuminated document such as one King sends to another. Kim caught his breath with delight, and reviewed the situation from a Sahib's point of view.

'The books I do not want. Besides, they are logarithms—Survey, I suppose.' He laid them aside. 'The letters I do not understand, but Colonel Creighton will. They must all be kept. The maps—they draw better maps than me—of course. All the native letters—oho!—and particularly the murasla.' He sniffed the embroidered bag. 'That must be from Hilas or Bunar, and Hurree Babu spoke truth. By Jove! It is a fine haul. I wish Hurree could know ... The rest must go out of the window.' He fingered a superb prismatic compass and the shiny top of a theodolite. But after all, a Sahib cannot very well steal, and the things might be inconvenient evidence later. He sorted out every scrap of manuscript, every map, and the native letters. They made one softish slab. The three locked ferril-backed books, with five worn pocket-books, he put aside.

'The letters and the murasla I must carry inside my coat and under my belt, and the hand-written books I must put into the food-bag. It will be very heavy. No. I do not think there is anything more. If there is, the coolies have thrown it down the khud, so thatt is all right. Now you go too.' He repacked the kilta with all he meant to lose, and hove it up on to the windowsill. A thousand feet below lay a long, lazy, round-shouldered bank of mist, as yet untouched by the morning sun. A thousand feet below that was a hundred-year-old pine-forest. He could see the green tops looking like a bed of moss when a wind-eddy thinned the cloud.

'No! I don't think any one will go after you!'

The wheeling basket vomited its contents as it dropped. The theodolite hit a jutting cliff-ledge and exploded like a shell; the books, inkstands, paint-boxes, compasses, and rulers showed for a few seconds like a swarm of bees. Then they vanished; and, though Kim, hanging half out of the window, strained his young ears, never a sound came up from the gulf.

'Five hundred—a thousand rupees could not buy them,' he thought sorrowfully. 'It was verree wasteful, but I have all their other stuff—everything they did—I hope. Now how the deuce am I to tell Hurree Babu, and whatt the deuce am I to do? And my old man is sick. I must tie up the letters in oilskin. That is something to do first—else they will get all sweated ... And I am all alone!' He bound them into a neat packet, swedging down the stiff, sticky oilskin at the corners, for his roving life had made him as methodical as an old hunter in matters of the road. Then with double care he packed away the books at the bottom of the food-bag.

The woman rapped at the door.

'But thou hast made no charm,' she said, looking about.

'There is no need.' Kim had completely overlooked the necessity for a little patter-talk. The woman laughed at his confusion irreverently.

'None—for thee. Thou canst cast a spell by the mere winking of an eye. But think of us poor people when thou art gone. They were all too drunk last night to hear a woman. Thou art not drunk?'

'I am a priest.' Kim had recovered himself, and, the woman being aught but unlovely, thought best to stand on his office.

'I warned them that the Sahibs will be angry and will make an inquisition and a report to the Rajah. There is also the Babu with them. Clerks have long tongues.'

'Is that all thy trouble?' The plan rose fully formed in Kim's mind, and he smiled ravishingly.

'Not all,' quoth the woman, putting out a hard brown hand all covered with turquoises set in silver.

'I can finish that in a breath,' he went on quickly. 'The Babu is the very hakim (thou hast heard of him?) who was wandering among the hills by Ziglaur. I know him.'

'He will tell for the sake of a reward. Sahibs cannot distinguish one hillman from another, but Babus have eyes for men—and women.'

'Carry a word to him from me.'

'There is nothing I would not do for thee.'

He accepted the compliment calmly, as men must in lands where women make the love, tore a leaf from a note-book, and with a patent indelible pencil wrote in gross Shikast—the script that bad little boys use when they write dirt on walls: 'I have everything that they have written: their pictures of the country, and many letters. Especially the murasla. Tell me what to do. I am at Shamlegh-under-the-Snow. The old man is sick.'

'Take this to him. It will altogether shut his mouth. He cannot have gone far.'

'Indeed no. They are still in the forest across the spur. Our children went to watch them when the light came, and have cried the news as they moved.'

Kim looked his astonishment; but from the edge of the sheep-pasture floated a shrill, kite-like trill. A child tending cattle had picked it up from a brother or sister on the far side of the slope that commanded Chini valley.

'My husbands are also out there gathering wood.' She drew a handful of walnuts from her bosom, split one neatly, and began to eat. Kim affected blank ignorance.

'Dost thou not know the meaning of the walnut—priest?' she said coyly, and handed him the half-shells.

'Well thought of.' He slipped the piece of paper between them quickly. 'Hast thou a little wax to close them on this letter?'

The woman sighed aloud, and Kim relented.

'There is no payment till service has been rendered. Carry this to the Babu, and say it was sent by the Son of the Charm.'

'Ai! Truly! Truly! By a magician—who is like a Sahib.'

'Nay, a Son of the Charm: and ask if there be any answer.'

'But if he offer a rudeness? I—I am afraid.'

Kim laughed. 'He is, I have no doubt, very tired and very hungry. The Hills make cold bedfellows. Hai, my'—it was on the tip of his tongue to say Mother, but he turned it to Sister—'thou art a wise and witty woman. By this time all the villages know what has befallen the Sahibs—eh?'

'True. News was at Ziglaur by midnight, and by tomorrow should be at Kotgarh. The villages are both afraid and angry.'

'No need. Tell the villages to feed the Sahibs and pass them on, in peace. We must get them quietly away from our valleys. To steal is one thing—to kill another. The Babu will understand, and there will be no after-complaints. Be swift. I must tend my master when he wakes.'

'So be it. After service—thou hast said?—comes the reward. I am the Woman of Shamlegh, and I hold from the Rajah. I am no common bearer of babes. Shamlegh is thine: hoof and horn and hide, milk and butter. Take or leave.'

She turned resolutely uphill, her silver necklaces clicking on her broad breast, to meet the morning sun fifteen hundred feet above them. This time Kim thought in the vernacular as he waxed down the oilskin edges of the packets.

'How can a man follow the Way or the Great Game when he is so—always pestered by women? There was that girl at Akrola of the Ford; and there was the scullion's wife behind the dovecot—not counting the others—and now comes this one! When I was a child it was well enough, but now I am a man and they will not regard me as a man. Walnuts, indeed! Ho! ho! It is almonds in the Plains!'…

Up the valleys of Bushahr—the far-beholding eagles of the Himalayas swerve at his new blue-and-white gored umbrella—hurries a Bengali, once fat and well-looking, now lean and weather-worn. He has received the thanks of two foreigners of distinction, piloted not unskilfully to Mashobra tunnel, which leads to the great and gay capital of India. It was not his fault that, blanketed by wet mists, he conveyed them past the telegraph-station and European colony of Kotgarh. It was not his fault, but that of the Gods, of whom he discoursed so engagingly, that he led them into the borders of Nahan, where the Rahah of that State mistook them for deserting British soldiery. Hurree Babu explained the greatness and glory, in their own country, of his companions, till the drowsy kinglet smiled. He explained it to everyone who asked—many times—aloud—variously. He begged food, arranged accommodation, proved a skilful leech for an injury of the groin—such a blow as one may receive rolling down a rock-covered hillside in the dark—and in all things indispensable. The reason of his friendliness did him credit. With millions of fellow-serfs, he had learned to look upon Russia as the great deliverer from the North. He was a fearful man. He had been afraid that he could not save his illustrious employers from the anger of an excited peasantry. He himself would just as lief hit a holy man as not, but ... He was deeply grateful and sincerely rejoiced that he had done his 'little possible' towards bringing their venture to—barring the lost baggage—a successful issue, he had forgotten the blows; denied that any blows had been dealt that unseemly first night under the pines. He asked neither pension nor retaining fee, but, if they deemed him worthy, would they write him a testimonial? It might be useful to him later, if others, their friends, came over the Passes. He begged them to remember him in their future greatnesses, for he 'opined subtly' that he, even he, Mohendro Lal Dutt, MA of Calcutta, had 'done the State some service'.

They gave him a certificate praising his courtesy, helpfulness, and unerring skill as a guide. He put it in his waist-belt and sobbed with emotion; they had endured so many dangers together. He led them at high noon along crowded Simla Mall to the Alliance Bank of Simla, where they wished to establish their identity. Thence he vanished like a dawn-cloud on Jakko.

Behold him, too fine-drawn to sweat, too pressed to vaunt the drugs in his little brass-bound box, ascending Shamlegh slope, a just man made perfect. Watch him, all Babudom laid aside, smoking at noon on a cot, while a woman with turquoise-studded headgear points south-easterly across the bare grass. Litters, she says, do not travel as fast as single men, but his birds should now be in the Plains. The holy man would not stay though Lispeth pressed him. The Babu groans heavily, girds up his huge loins, and is off again. He does not care to travel after dusk; but his days' marches—there is none to enter them in a book—would astonish folk who mock at his race. Kindly villagers, remembering the Dacca drug-vendor of two months ago, give him shelter against evil spirits of the wood. He dreams of Bengali Gods, University text-books of education, and the Royal Society, London, England. Next dawn the bobbing blue-and-white umbrella goes forward.

On the edge of the Doon, Mussoorie well behind them and the Plains spread out in golden dust before, rests a worn litter in which—all the Hills know it—lies a sick lama who seeks a River for his healing. Villages have almost come to blows over the honour of bearing it, for not only has the lama given them blessings, but his disciple good money—full one-third Sahibs' prices. Twelve miles a day has the dooli travelled, as the greasy, rubbed pole-ends show, and by roads that few Sahibs use. Over the Nilang Pass in storm when the driven snow-dust filled every fold of the impassive lama's drapery; between the black horns of Raieng where they heard the whistle of the wild goats through the clouds; pitching and strained on the shale below; hard-held between shoulder and clenched jaw when they rounded the hideous curves of the Cut Road under Bhagirati; swinging and creaking to the steady jog-trot of the descent into the Valley of the Waters; pressed along the steamy levels of that locked valley; up, up and out again, to meet the roaring gusts off Kedarnath; set down of mid-days in the dun gloom of kindly oak-forests; passed from village to village in dawn-chill, when even devotees may be forgiven for swearing at impatient holy men; or by torchlight, when the least fearful think of ghosts—the dooli has reached her last stage. The little hill-folk sweat in the modified heat of the lower Siwaliks, and gather round the priests for their blessing and their wage….

'It is I that am the woman of ill-omen,' cried the old lady penitently. 'We that go down to the chattris [the big umbrellas above the burning-ghats where the priests take their last dues] clutch hard at the bearers of the chattis [water-jars—young folk full of the pride of life, she meant; but the pun is clumsy]. When one cannot dance in the festival one must e'en look out of the window, and grandmothering takes all a woman's time. Thy master gives me all the charms I now desire for my daughter's eldest, by reason—is it?—that he is wholly free from sin. The hakim is brought very low these days. He goes about poisoning my servants for lack of their betters.'

'What hakim, mother?'

'That very Dacca man who gave me the pill which rent me in three pieces. He cast up like a strayed camel a week ago, vowing that he and thou had been blood-brothers together up Kulu-way, and feigning great anxiety for thy health. He was very thin and hungry, so I gave orders to have him stuffed too—him and his anxiety!'

'I would see him if he is here.'

'He eats five times a day, and lances boils for my hinds to save himself from an apoplexy. He is so full of anxiety for thy health that he sticks to the cook-house door and stays himself with scraps. He will keep. We shall never get rid of him.'

'Send him here, mother'—the twinkle returned to Kim's eye for a flash—'and I will try.'

'I'll send him, but to chase him off is an ill turn. At least he had the sense to fish the Holy One out of the brook; thus, as the Holy One did not say, acquiring merit.'

'He is a very wise hakim. Send him, mother.'

'Priest praising priest? A miracle! If he is any friend of thine (ye squabbled at your last meeting) I'll hale him here with horse-ropes and—and give him a caste-dinner afterwards, my son ... Get up and see the world! This lying abed is the mother of seventy devils ... my son! my son!'

She trotted forth to raise a typhoon off the cook-house, and almost on her shadow rolled in the Babu, robed as to the shoulders like a Roman emperor, jowled like Titus, bare-headed, with new patent-leather shoes, in highest condition of fat, exuding joy and salutations.

'By Jove, Mister O'Hara, but I are jolly-glad to see you. I will kindly shut the door. It is a pity you are sick. Are you very sick?'

'The papers—the papers from the kilta. The maps and the murasla!' He held out the key impatiently; for the present need on his soul was to get rid of the loot.

'You are quite right. That is correct Departmental view to take. You have got everything?'

'All that was handwritten in the kilta I took. The rest I threw down the hill.' He could hear the key's grate in the lock, the sticky pull of the slow-rending oilskin, and a quick shuffling of papers. He had been annoyed out of all reason by the knowledge that they lay below him through the sick idle days—a burden incommunicable. For that reason the blood tingled through his body, when Hurree, skipping elephantinely, shook hands again.

'This is fine! This is finest! Mister O'Hara! you have—ha! ha! swiped the whole bag of tricks—locks, stocks, and barrels. They told me it was eight months' work gone up the spouts! By Jove, how they beat me! ... Look, here is the letter from Hilas!' He intoned a line or two of Court Persian, which is the language of authorized and unauthorized diplomacy. 'Mister Rajah Sahib has just about put his foot in the holes. He will have to explain offeecially how the deuce-an'-all he is writing love-letters to the Czar. And they are very clever maps ... and there is three or four Prime Ministers of these parts implicated by the correspondence. By Gad, sar! The British Government will change the succession in Hilas and Bunar, and nominate new heirs to the throne. "Trea-son most base" ... but you do not understand? Eh?'

'Are they in thy hands?' said Kim. It was all he cared for.

'Just you jolly-well bet yourself they are.' He stowed the entire trove about his body, as only Orientals can. 'They are going up to the office, too. The old lady thinks I am permanent fixture here, but I shall go away with these straight off—immediately. Mr Lurgan will be proud man. You are offeecially subordinate to me, but I shall embody your name in my verbal report. It is a pity we are not allowed written reports. We Bengalis excel in thee exact science.' He tossed back the key and showed the box empty.

'Good. That is good. I was very tired. My Holy One was sick, too. And did he fall into—'

'Oah yess. I am his good friend, I tell you. He was behaving very strange when I came down after you, and I thought perhaps he might have the papers. I followed him on his meditations, and to discuss ethnological points also. You see, I am verree small person here nowadays, in comparison with all his charms. By Jove, O'Hara, do you know, he is afflicted with infirmity of fits. Yess, I tell you. Cataleptic, too, if not also epileptic. I found him in such a state under a tree in articulo mortem, and he jumped up and walked into a brook and he was nearly drowned but for me. I pulled him out.'

'Because I was not there!' said Kim. 'He might have died.'

'Yes, he might have died, but he is dry now, and asserts he has undergone transfiguration.' The Babu tapped his forehead knowingly. 'I took notes of his statements for Royal Society—in posse. You must make haste and be quite well and come back to Simla, and I will tell you all my tale at Lurgan's. It was splendid. The bottoms of their trousers were quite torn, and old Nahan Rajah, he thought they were European soldiers deserting.'

'Oh, the Russians? How long were they with thee?'

'One was a Frenchman. Oh, days and days and days! Now all the hill-people believe all Russians are all beggars. By Jove! they had not one dam'-thing that I did not get them. And I told the common people—oah, such tales and anecdotes!—I will tell you at old Lurgan's when you come up. We will have—ah—a night out! It is feather in both our caps! Yess, and they gave me a certificate. That is creaming joke. You should have seen them at the Alliance Bank identifying themselves! And thank Almighty God you got their papers so well! You do not laugh verree much, but you shall laugh when you are well. Now I will go straight to the railway and get out. You shall have all sorts of credits for your game. When do you come along? We are very proud of you though you gave us great frights. And especially Mahbub.'

'Ay, Mahbub. And where is he?'

'Selling horses in this vi-cinity, of course.'

'Here! Why? Speak slowly. There is a thickness in my head still.'

The Babu looked shyly down his nose. 'Well, you see, I am fearful man, and I do not like responsibility. You were sick, you see, and I did not know where deuce-an'-all the papers were, and if so, how many. So when I had come down here I slipped in private wire to Mahbub—he was at Meerut for races—and I tell him how case stands. He comes up with his men and he consorts with the lama, and then he calls me a fool, and is very rude—'

'But wherefore—wherefore?'

'That is what I ask. I only suggest that if anyone steals the papers I should like some good strong, brave men to rob them back again. You see, they are vitally important, and Mahbub Ali he did not know where you were.'

'Mahbub Ali to rob the Sahiba's house? Thou art mad, Babu,' said Kim with indignation.

'I wanted the papers. Suppose she had stole them? It was only practical suggestion, I think. You are not pleased, eh?'

A native proverb—unquotable—showed the blackness of Kim's disapproval.

'Well,'—Hurree shrugged his shoulders—'there is no accounting for thee taste. Mahbub was angry too. He has sold horses all about here, and he says old lady is pukka [thorough] old lady and would not condescend to such ungentlemanly things. I do not care. I have got the papers, and I was very glad of moral support from Mahbub. I tell you, I am fearful man, but, somehow or other, the more fearful I am the more dam'-tight places I get into. So I was glad you came with me to Chini, and I am glad Mahbub was close by. The old lady she is sometimes very rude to me and my beautiful pills.'

'Allah be merciful!' said Kim on his elbow, rejoicing. 'What a beast of wonder is a Babu! And that man walked alone—if he did walk—with robbed and angry foreigners!'

'Oah, thatt was nothing, after they had done beating me; but if I lost the papers it was pretty-jolly serious. Mahbub he nearly beat me too, and he went and consorted with the lama no end. I shall stick to ethnological investigations henceforwards. Now good-bye, Mister O'Hara. I can catch 4.25 p.m. to Umballa if I am quick. It will be good times when we all tell thee tale up at Mr Lurgan's. I shall report you offeecially better. Good-bye, my dear fallow, and when next you are under thee emotions please do not use the Mohammedan terms with the Tibetan dress.'

He shook hands twice—a Babu to his boot-heels—and opened the door. With the fall of the sunlight upon his still triumphant face he returned to the humble Dacca quack.

'He robbed them,' thought Kim, forgetting his own share in the game. 'He tricked them. He lied to them like a Bengali. They give him a chit [a testimonial]. He makes them a mock at the risk of his life—I never would have gone down to them after the pistol-shots—and then he says he is a fearful man ... And he is a fearful man. I must get into the world again.'

At first his legs bent like bad pipe-stems, and the flood and rush of the sunlit air dazzled him. He squatted by the white wall, the mind rummaging among the incidents of the long dooli journey, the lama's weaknesses, and, now that the stimulus of talk was removed, his own self-pity, of which, like the sick, he had great store. The unnerved brain edged away from all the outside, as a raw horse, once rowelled, sidles from the spur. It was enough, amply enough, that the spoil of the kilta was away—off his hands—out of his possession. He tried to think of the lama—to wonder why he had tumbled into a brook—but the bigness of the world, seen between the forecourt gates, swept linked thought aside. Then he looked upon the trees and the broad fields, with the thatched huts hidden among crops—looked with strange eyes unable to take up the size and proportion and use of things—stared for a still half-hour. All that while he felt, though he could not put it into words, that his soul was out of gear with its surroundings—a cog-wheel unconnected with any machinery, just like the idle cog-wheel of a cheap Beheea sugar-crusher laid by in a corner. The breezes fanned over him, the parrots shrieked at him, the noises of the populated house behind—squabbles, orders, and reproofs—hit on dead ears.

'I am Kim. I am Kim. And what is Kim?' His soul repeated it again and again.

He did not want to cry—had never felt less like crying in his life—but of a sudden easy, stupid tears trickled down his nose, and with an almost audible click he felt the wheels of his being lock up anew on the world without. Things that rode meaningless on the eyeball an instant before slid into proper proportion. Roads were meant to be walked upon, houses to be lived in, cattle to be driven, fields to be tilled, and men and women to be talked to. They were all real and true—solidly planted upon the feet—perfectly comprehensible—clay of his clay, neither more nor less. He shook himself like a dog with a flea in his ear, and rambled out of the gate. Said the Sahiba, to whom watchful eyes reported this move: 'Let him go. I have done my share. Mother Earth must do the rest. When the Holy One comes back from meditation, tell him.'

There stood an empty bullock-cart on a little knoll half a mile away, with a young banyan tree behind—a look-out, as it were, above some new-ploughed levels; and his eyelids, bathed in soft air, grew heavy as he neared it. The ground was good clean dust—no new herbage that, living, is half-way to death already, but the hopeful dust that holds the seeds of all life. He felt it between his toes, patted it with his palms, and joint by joint, sighing luxuriously, laid him down full length along in the shadow of the wooden-pinned cart. And Mother Earth was as faithful as the Sahiba. She breathed through him to restore the poise he had lost lying so long on a cot cut off from her good currents. His head lay powerless upon her breast, and his opened hands surrendered to her strength. The many-rooted tree above him, and even the dead manhandled wood beside, knew what he sought, as he himself did not know. Hour upon hour he lay deeper than sleep.

Towards evening, when the dust of returning kine made all the horizons smoke, came the lama and Mahbub Ali, both afoot, walking cautiously, for the house had told them where he had gone.

'Allah! What a fool's trick to play in open country!' muttered the horse-dealer. 'He could be shot a hundred times—but this is not the Border.'

'And,' said the lama, repeating a many-times-told tale, 'never was such a chela. Temperate, kindly, wise, of ungrudging disposition, a merry heart upon the road, never forgetting, learned, truthful, courteous. Great is his reward!'

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Vivekananda Exposed Christian Missionaries; Ramakrishna Mission Today Supports Christ
by Dr. Vivek Arya [Dr. Vivek Arya is a child specialist by profession. He writes on Vedic philosophy and History and draws inspiration from Swami Dayanand.]
Accessed: 3/2/21

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Swami Vivekananda is famous for his Chicago speech and his association with Rama-Krishna (RK) Mission. There is also another part of his life. He widely criticized Christian Missionaries for their conversion tactics and constant attack on Belief and principles of Hinduism. Bengal became a nursery for Christian missions. K.C. Banerji, M.L. Basak, Lal Behari De and Madhusudan Dutta were among few born to rich Bengali Brahmins but converted to Christianity. They even became forerunners in propagation of Christianity in Bengal. Brahma Samaj of Keshub Chandra Sen was different from Brahma Samaj of Raja Ram Mohan Roy. Raja posed biggest opposition to Christianity while Keshub turned to biggest admirer of his times. In this article we will like to know about the views of Swami Vivekananda on Christianity.

The Bible failed to impress Vivekananda. He said that the sayings, precepts, or doctrines which the New Testament preaches were already in existence among the Jews before the Christian era, having come from different quarters, and were being preached by Rabbis like Hillel and others.

The miracles of Christ also failed to impress Vivekananda. In fact, they repelled him strongly. What were the great powers of Christ, he asked, in miracles and healing, in one of his characters? They were low, vulgar things because he was among vulgar beings.

He even criticized Christians and said that they go wrong only when they insist that Christ is the only saviour. Yet it was Christ that Vivekananda found missing from Christianity. He wondered which Church, if any, represented Christ. All churches were equally intolerant, each threatening to kill those who did not believe as it did. The person of Christ rather than his teaching had become more important for Christianity. He had been turned into the only begotten son of God. Christian baptism remained external and did not touch the inner man. It aimed at instilling some mental beliefs and not at transforming human behaviour. Most men remained the same after baptism as they were before it. What was worse, the mere sprinkling of water over them and muttering of formulas by a priest made them believe that they were better than other people.

Swami Vivekananda was aware of what Church did to Galileo and other advocates of Science in Europe. He said that Christianity had spread with the help of the sword since the days of Constantine and tried to suppress science and philosophy. Hindus have nothing to gain from Christianity as it is only a system of superstitions. Hindus should not get frightened when the missionaries threaten them with hell; in fact, hell is better than the company of a Christian missionary.

There came a Christian to him once recalled Vivekananda, and said, "You are a terrible sinner". Vivekananda said, "Yes, I am. Go on." He was a Christian missionary. He said, "I have very good things for you. You are a sinner and you will go to hell." I said, "Very good, what else?" Vivekananda asked him, "Where are you going?" "I am going to heaven", he answered. Vivekananda said, "I will go to hell." That day the Christian missionary gave him up.

If Christ could help people become good, why has he failed in the Christian countries where he has been worshipped for so long? Here comes a Christian man, continued Vivekananda. The man said, "You are all doomed; but if you believe in this doctrine, Christ will help you out." In Vivekananda's opinion, "If this were true - but of course it is nothing but superstition - there would be no wickedness in Christian countries. Let us believe in it - belief costs nothing - but why is there no result? If I ask, Why is it that there are so many wicked people? They say, We have to work more. Trust in God but keep your power dry!"

The missionaries were highly critical of the Vedas which Hindus have always held in the highest esteem. Vivekananda upheld the Vedas as depositories of divine wisdom. Rather than processing the Vedas in terms of the Bible, as the Brahmos had started doing, the Bible should be weighed on the Vedic scale and prove its worth. So far as the Bible, he observed, and the scriptures of other nations agree with the Vedas, they are perfectly good, but when they do not agree, they are no more to be accepted. On another occasion he said, "It is in the Vedas that we have to study our religion. With the exception of the Vedas every book must change. The authority of the Vedas is for all time to come; the authority of every one of our other books is for the time being."

Brahmins were the next target of missionary attack. Vivekananda stood by these custodians of Hinduism. "The ideal man of our ancestors", he said, "was the Brahmin. In all our books stands out prominently this ideal of the Brahmin. In Europe there is his Lord the Cardinal, who is struggling hard and spending thousands of pounds to prove the nobility of his ancestors and he will not be satisfied until he has traced his ancestry to some dreadful tyrant who lived on a hill and watched the people passing by, and whenever he had the opportunity, sprang out and robbed them."

"In India, on the other hand, the greatest princes seek to trace their descent to some ancient sage who dressed in a bit of loin cloth, lived in a forest, eating roots and studying the Vedas. Our ideal is the Brahmin of spiritual culture and renunciation."

As he heard the malicious propaganda against Hinduism which missionaries were mounting in America and saw their methods of raising money, he hit them hard. He warned the missionaries about the effect which their propaganda was having on the moral and mental health of people who listened to them.

There was a corollary to Vivekananda's defence of Hinduism and critique of Christianity, particularly of the Christian missions. He called upon Hindu society to open its doors and take back its members who had been alienated from it by foreign invaders. Christian as well as Islamic missionaries were taking advantage of Hindu orthodoxy which was reluctant to receive those who had been forced or lured away from the Hindu fold but who were now ready to return to the faith of their forefathers. Vivekananda viewed this orthodoxy as nothing but a blind prejudice induced by the Hindus' deep distrust of imported creeds.

Swami Dayananda, the founder of Aryasamaj laid stress on Swadeshi and Swarajya and forcefully identified Christianity as a crude cult suited to savage societies. He authored 13th Chapter in Satyarth Prakash as a critical examination of the principles and beliefs of Christianity based on Bible. The missionaries themselves watched him for some time, for it appeared as if he was making things uneasy for them.

Swami Dayananda gave birth to a new movement - Shuddhi (purification) of those who had been enticed away from Hindu society at one time or the other. It sent a wave of consternation through the missionary circles and restored Hindu confidence. Dayananda's work was continued after his death by the scholars of the Arya Samaj. Compared to the South India and East India, the progress of Christianity has been very, very slow in the North. The credit for reversing the trend in the North goes overwhelmingly to the lead given by Maharishi Dayananda and the Arya Samaj he founded.

Swami Vivekananda was an ardent admirer of Aryasamaj Shuddhi Campaign. The Bengalee newspaper Dated 7th, August, 1901 mentions Shuddi of Babu Bhawani Kishore Bhattacharya, a Bengali man born in respectable Brahmin family. He was converted to Christianity when he was Boy. Under the auspices of Aryasamaj he was purified in Ripon College. The ceremony was attended by many noble persons with full sympathy and enthusiasm. He was attracted towards Aryasamaj by reading preachings and tracts authored by Thakur Kahan Chandraji Verma, the President of Aryasamaj. The Shuddhi Ceremony was greeted by reading a letter of none other then Swami Vivekananda who expressed his fullest sympathy with the movement and deep sorrow for his inability to preside on account of ill health. 'This news is mentioned in a book named Christ a Myth authored by Thakur Kahan Chandji Verma.

Vivekananda's views on Christianity were to be adopted by RK mission. Vivekananda, who was Shri Ramakrishna's dearest disciple had viewed Islam and Christianity not as religions but as doctrines of the sword. But just contrary to his belief they went totally against him. Today the RK Mission has become a world-wide network, and a wealthy institution patronized by the high and the mighty, not only in India but also abroad.

Presently Ramakrishna Mission celebrates Christmas on 24th December eve. Just ignoring what Swami Vivekananda had said about Christianity. They wanted to promote the secular image of their mission. It is nothing more then keeping the educated followers of Mission unaware about the Truth. They have never thought that Christian missions in Bengal are engaged in converting poor Hindu tribals to Christianity by unruly means and tactics. They never thought that Church representatives visit uneducated villages of Bengal and try to prove that Christianity is best and all practices of Hindus are pagan worship and thus superstitions. They never thought to utilize their funds and powers to save Hinduism in Bengal. No to forget the mission once went to court to prove themselves that they are not Hindus.

_______________

References

1. Sita Ram Goel, HISTORY OF HINDU-CHRISTIAN ENCOUNTERS AD 304 TO 1996, Voice of India, New Delhi
2. Blog link mentioning Celebration of Christmas in Belur Muth. https:/ /www.anirbansaha.com/christmas-eve-at-ramakrishna-mission-belur-math;
3. Thakur Kahan Chand Varma, Lahore, Christ A Myth, 1933,P. 192-193
4. Swami Dayanand, 13th Chapter, Satyarth Prakash, Sarvdeshik Arya Pratinidhi Sabha, Delhi.

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Shuddhi
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/2/21

Shuddhi is Sanskrit for purification. It is a term used for reconverting those that are deemed to have been converted away from Hinduism back to Hinduism.

Shuddhi movement

The socio-political movement, derived from ancient rite of shuddhikaran,[1] or purification was started by the Arya Samaj, and its founder Swami Dayanand Saraswati [2] and his followers like swami Shraddhanand, who also worked on the Sangathan consolidation aspect of Hinduism, in North India, especially Punjab in early 1900s, though it gradually spread across India.[2] Shuddhi had a social reform agenda behind its rationale and was aimed at abolishing the practise of untouchability by converting outcasts from other religions to Hinduism and integrating them into the mainstream community by elevating their position, and instilling self-confidence and self-determination in them.[2][3][4] The movement strove to reduce the conversions of Hindus to Islam and Christianity, which were underway at the time.[2]

In 1923, Swami Shraddhanand founded the 'Bhartiya Hindu Shuddhi Mahasabha' (Indian Hindu Purification Council) and pushed the agenda of reconversion, which eventually created a flashpoint between Hindus and Muslims as Hindus were the recipients of the violence. Mahatma Gandhi made a comment on Swami Shraddhananda in an article titled 'Hindu-Muslim-Tensions: Causes and Resistance' in the May 29, 1922 issue of Young India.

Swami Shraddhananda has also become a character of disbelief. I know that his speeches are often provocative. Just as most Muslims think that every non-Muslim will one day convert to Islam, Shraddhananda also believes that every Muslim can be initiated into the Aryan religion. Shraddhananda ji is fearless and brave. He alone has built a great Brahmacharya Ashram (Gurukul) in the holy Ganges. But they are in a hurry and it will move soon. He inherited it from the Aryan society."

Gandhi further wrote Dayanand that "he narrowed one of the most liberal and tolerant religions of the world." Swami responded to Gandhi's article that "If Aryasamaji is true to themselves, then the allegations of Mahatma Gandhi or any other person and invasions also cannot obstruct the trends of Arya Samaj." Shraddhanand followingly kept moving towards his goal.

The main point of contention was the reconversion of Malkana Rajputs in western United Province [5] As a result, the movement became controversial and antagonized the Muslims populace [3] and also led to the assassination of the leader of the movement, Swami Shraddhanand by a Muslim in 1926. After Swami Shraddhanand died this movement continued.[6]

On 23 February 1928, many Catholic Gaudes in Goa were re-converted to Hinduism notwithstanding the opposition of the Church and the Portuguese government.[7] This was carried out by a Hindu religious institution from Mumbai known as Masur Ashram, the converts were given Sanskrit Hindu names, but the Portuguese government put impediments in their way to get legal sanction for their new Hindu names.[8] 4851 Catholic Gaudes from Tiswadi, 2174 from Ponda, 250 from Bicholim and 329 from Sattari were re-converted to Hinduism after nearly 400 years. The total number of the converts to Hinduism was 7815.[9] However, in Northern India this movement faced stiff opposition from Islamic organisations and the Sunni Barelvi organisation All India Jamaat Raza-e-Mustafa[10] in Bareilly city, which attempted to counter the efforts of the Shuddhi movement to convert Muslims to Hinduism in British India.[11]

See also

• Shuddhikaran
• Ghar wapasi

References

1. Hindu-Muslim Relations in British India: A Study of Controversy, Conflict, and Communal Movements in Northern India 1923-1928, by G. R. Thursby. Published by BRILL, 1975. ISBN 90-04-04380-2. Lame'Page 136.
2. Dayanand and the Shuddhi Movement Indian Political Tradition, by D.K Mohanty. Published by Anmol Publications PVT. LTD. ISBN 81-261-2033-9. Page 116.
3. untouchable assertion The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth-century India, by Nandini Gooptu. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-521-44366-0. Page 157.
4. The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India, by Gail Minault, Akhtar. Published by Columbia University Press, 1982. ISBN 0-231-05072-0. Page 193.
5. The Fundamentalism Project, by Martin E. Marty, R. Scott Appleby, American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Published by University of Chicago Press, 1991.ISBN 0226508781. Page 564.
6. Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India, by William Gould. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-521-83061-3. Page 133.
7. Ghai, R. K. (1990). Shuddhi movement in India: a study of its socio-political dimensions. Commonwealth Publishers. pp. 208 pages (see page 103). ISBN 9788171690428.
8. Ralhan, Om Prakash (1998). Post-independence India: Indian National Congress, Volumes 33-50. Anmol Publications PVT. LTD. pp. 6330 pages (see pages 304–305). ISBN 9788174888655.
9. Godbole, Shriranga (December 2010). Sanskrutik Vartapatra. Pune: Sanskrutik Vartapatra. pp. 61–66 & 112.
10. "JRM". jamatrazaemustafa.org. Retrieved 2015-07-28.
11. Hasan, M.; Jamia Millia Islamia (India). Dept. of History (1985). Communal and pan-Islamic trends in colonial India. Manohar. Retrieved 2015-07-28.

Further reading

• Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India: Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India, Volume III-I, by Kenneth W. Jones. Published by Cambridge University Press, 1987. ISBN 0-521-24986-4.
• Shuddhi Movement in India: A Study of Its Socio-political Dimensions, by R. K. Ghai. Published by Commonwealth Publishers, 1990.
• Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies and Modern Myths, by Chetan Bhatt. Published by Berg Publishers, 2001. ISBN 1-85973-348-4.
• Religion in South Asia: Religious Conversion and Revival Movements in South Asia in Medieval and Modern Times, by Geoffrey A. Oddie. Published by Manohar, 1991. Chapter 10: Reconversion to Hinduism: The Shuddhi of the Arya Samaj. Page 215.

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Part 1 of 2

Prostitution in Ancient India
by Sukumari Bhattacharji
Formerly Professor or Sanskrit, Jadavpur University, Calcutta.
Social Scientist
Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 32-61 (30 pages)
Feb., 1987

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Many States, even among the Moderns, have found the Necessity as well as Utility of tolerated Prostitution; they have discovered it to be one of the most effectual Methods for preserving the Peace of Families and the Health of Individuals; and Publick Stews have accordingly been licensed under every Regulation that could be devised to obviate their probable ill Effects, and to secure all their Advantages; so, in Asia, the Profession of Singing and Dancing by distinct Sets or Companies naturally formed these Women into a Kind of Community. And as the Policy of a good Government will always look with an Eye of Regard upon every Branch of Society, it was but just and proper to enact Laws for the Security and Protection of this Publick Body, as well as of the rest of the State, particularly as the Sex and Employment of those who composed it rendered them more than usually liable to Insult and ill Usage.

-- A Code of Gentoo Laws, Or, Ordinations of the Pundits, From a Persian Translation, Made From the Original, Written in the Shanscrit Language, by Nathaniel Brassey Halhed

The culture of the performing art of nautch, an alluring style of popular dance, rose to prominence during the later period of Mughal Empire and the British East India Company Rule. During the period of Company rule in India by the British East India Company in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and during the subsequent British Raj, the British military established and maintained brothels for its troops across India. Women and girls were recruited from poor rural Indian families and paid directly by the military. The red-light districts of cities such as Mumbai developed at this time. The governments of many Indian princely states had regulated prostitution in India prior to the 1860s. The British Raj enacted the Cantonment Act of 1864 to regulate Prostitution in colonial India as a matter of accepting a necessary evil. The Cantonment Acts regulated and structured prostitution in the British military bases which provided for about twelve to fifteen Indian women kept in brothels called chaklas for each regiment of thousand British soldiers. They were licensed by military officials and were allowed to consort with soldiers only. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, thousands of women and girls from continental Europe and Japan were trafficked into British India, where they worked as prostitutes servicing British soldiers and local Indian men.

-- Prostitution in India, by Wikipedia

Highlights:

The rupajiva was not accomplished in the arts like the ganika; her only stock in trade as the name signifies was her beauty and charm. She owed the state two days' income for a month. If a man forcibly enjoyed her he was fined 12 panas, but in times of crisis half her monthly income could be forfeited to the state...A vandhaki too had to pay part of her income to the state coffers in times of national crisis...

We have seen that the ganika, rupajiva, vesya and vandhaki had to pay taxes to the state but a careful study leads to the conclusion that almost all categories had an actual or potential obligation for paying taxes; the collection, however, depended on the degree and nature of the organization. Organized red light areas paid taxes regularly, at a fixed rate, while it was much more difficult to ascertain the income of the women 'kept' in seclusion by a man or of the unorganized individual women plying the trade in isolated pockets or even, like the vandhaki, at home. Similarly, organized brothels enjoyed greater security from the state in lieu of the taxes they paid while individuals who paid 'hush-money' to extortionist officers could hardly demand any protection from injustice, manhandling, coercion and cheating. The Nammayasundarikatha, a twelfth century text says that the state received 25% to 30% of the prostitute's income...

The ganika, says Kautilya, was also paid a monthly salary from the royal treasury and the pratiganika, her short-time substitute, received half the amount. The ganika, however, did not enjoy property rights. "There is every likelihood that their palatial establishments and gardens were state property with life interest." On her death, her daughter inherited her property but only for use; she could not sell, mortgage, exchange or donate them. This, of course, is true of the ordinary prostitute living in an organized brothel; many outstanding ganikas were mistresses of their own property...A ganika could be bought out by a sympathetic customer; her redemption money (niskraya) was 24,000 panas, a very high sum in view of the fact that her annual salary paid by the state was between 1000 and 3000 panas...

Foreign customers had to pay 5 panas extra tariff duty to the state apart from the courtesan's regular fees. The pumscali (a common whore) did not have any fixed fees; she could only demand fees on marks of cohabitation, if she tried to extort money from her customers her fees were liable to be forfeited to the state -- also if she threw temper tantrums or refused to oblige the customer in any way. The Kuttanimmata says that the temple prostitute (tridasalayajivika) got paid by the temple authorities and that her income was fixed by tradition. Ksemendra's Samayamatrka says that they were paid in grain as remuneration and that they were employed in rotation.

If after receiving her fees a prostitute refused to oblige her customer she paid a fine of double her fees; if she refused him before accepting the fees she paid her fees as fine...

Courtesans sometimes did perform several other functions. In the Mahabharata they participated in the victory celebrations.65 They even played a political role as spies whose duty it was to seduce important men who were potential sources of vital political information, to collect such information and supply it to the relevant officers through the superintendent (ganikadhyaksa)...

The retired temple prostitute was employed by the state for spinning cotton, wool and flax...The keepers of brothels...were adept in bringing about and resolving quarrels between rival suitors as and when needed by them or by political agents of the state...

Institutionalized prostitution, however, offered somewhat better prospects for old and retired courtesans. Kautilya lays down the rule that ganikas, pratiganikas, (short term substitutes for the ganikas), rupajivas, vesyas, dasis, devadasis, pumscalis, silpakarikas, kausikastri (woman artisan) are to be given pension by the state in old age. Since Kautilya was written for a prince it is to be assumed that these women were employed by the state and had earlier paid taxes to the state which the state regarded partially as provident fund contribution against old age, disability, retirement and penury. We are not told what the pension was in terms of money, whether it was adequate for sustenance. But a steady income, however small, must have meant some measure of security to elderly women who would otherwise be wholly destitute. But since women and their labour was exploited in most spheres of life, we may assume that this rule was not strictly observed, because such women were totally powerless to sue the state for non-payment. Yet the few who actually received some pension were lucky to have it. Retired prostitutes were employed as cooks, store-keepers, cotton-wool and flax spinners, and in various other manual jobs, so the state did not have to pay the pension until they were too old and weak to work any more. In old age some prostitutes became matrkas, i.e., matrons-in-charge of a brothel...

We have just seen that their clients also maltreated and manhandled them and these were not isolated incidents or exceptions or there would be no need to frame laws against crimes and stipulate the exact amount of fines for the several kinds of assault. She was often used and then cheated, robbed, thrashed, mutilated and murdered. If the institution was for society a necessary evil and the state had a vested interest in extracting revenue and espionage service from this 'evil', then it could not afford to ignore a situation when the source of such revenue was harmed so that she could not multiply the revenue. Hence the laws. But the attitude of society was clearly against the prostitute and not against her client...

What was the prostitute's social status? Strangely enough, prostitution is recognized as a profession with laws to regulate it because it served its specific purpose by catering to men's needs of extramarital sexual gratification and also the state's needs by bringing in considerable revenues and secret political information through espionage. As townships sprang up along trade routes and as rich men long away from home frequented these brothels these became a regular feature with the chief courtesans, beauty queens, being regarded as ornaments of the town or city, magarasobhani or nagaramandana. Because she was in high demand and because she would fetch a rich revenue if she was accomplished and attractive, the state undertook to supervise her education (with quite a heavy and rigorous syllabus) at its own expense, provided she remitted part of her income to the state...

Kautilya says that the superintendent of prostitutes conferred the title of ganika to the pretty, young and cultured hetaira;101 she drew 1000 panas from the state presumably for her establishment, and her teachers in the various arts were also paid by the state. She had a measure of social security in the sense that those who harmed her physically, financially and socially were liable to be punished heavily by the state. Needless to say that such a coveted position was not accorded to many; only a handful of the prostitutes were made ganikas whose favours were enjoyed by kings, princes and the richest of the merchants...The devadasis were a class by themselves who, because they were attached to institutions (i.e., temples) governed directly or indirectly by the state, enjoyed some degree of protection.

It is common knowledge that in most centres of ancient urban civilization temple prostitution was a common feature. Whether in ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, Babylon in temples of Badl and Astarte, or in Chaldea, Phoenicia or India and in the Far East it flourished under the dual patronage of the state and the church. Temple priests frequently got paid from the royal treasury, the temple prostitute was an extra allowance to them...

Once inside the temple and under the thumb of the priests they became like slaves with no clear definition of their rights and duties...

What happened to the devadasi when she grew old? Presumably not all of them enjoyed royal patronage. Those who did were employed in the state textile factory as we find in the solitary mention of the devadasi in Kautilya.105 Dancing was the only art she had learned and she could not practice it in old age, so that if she was one of those who did not enjoy royal care she would be reduced to destitution. Her profession prevented her from having a family and her long stay in the temple isolated her from society; therefore, even if she worked in a textile factory for a time she would face penury in real old age when both the temple and the community cut her off as wholly redundant. Thus at the end of a long career of double exploitation -- as a temple dancer and as the priests' concubine -- she faced complete destitution, for neither the state nor the temple had any obligation to look after her.

-- Prostitution in Ancient India, by Sukumari Bhattacharji

THE EARLIEST mention of prostitution occurs in the Rgveda, the most ancient literary work of India. At first however we hear of the illicit lover, jara and jatini - male and female lover of a married spouse. What distinguished such an illicit lover from the professional prostitute or her client is the regular payment for favours received. When we merely hear of an illicit lover there may or may not have been an exchange of gift; in a case of mutual consent gifts must have been optional. In the remote days of barter economy when money or currency was yet unknown, such gifts were equivalent to payment in cash. We have oblique references to women being given gifts for their favours, but the contexts leave us guessing whether the woman was a willing partner or whether she agreed to oblige in return for the gifts she received. But clearly, even in the earliest Vedic age, love outside wedlock was a familiar phenomenon and unions promoted by mere lust are mentioned in quite an uninhibited manner.

Prostitution as a profession appears in the literature of a few centuries after the Vedas although it must have been common in society much earlier. After the earliest Vedic literature between the twelfth and the ninth centuries B.C. (i.e., Rgveda, Books II-VII). we have a vast literature which covers the period between the eighth and the fifth centuries B.C. In this literature, too, we hear of the woman of easy virtue, of the wife's illicit love affairs.1

Extra-marital love may have been voluntary and unpaid but there is the possibility of it being regarded by the male partner as a form of service for which he was obliged to pay in some form. But as long as it was confined to a particular person, it was a temporary contract and was not regarded as a profession. The later Pali term muhuttia (lasting for an instant), or its Sanskrit equivalent muhurtika signified such purely temporary unions with no lasting relationship or obligation. Such affairs may have been voluntary or professional, depending on the attitude of the partners.

Gradually, there arose a section of women who, either because they could not find suitable husbands, or because of early widowhood, unsatisfactory married life or other social pressures especially if they had been violated, abducted or forcibly enjoyed and so denied an honourable status in society, or had been given away as gifts in religious or secular events -- such women were frequently forced to take up prostitution as a profession. And when they did so, they found themselves in a unique position: they constituted the only section of women who had to be their own bread winners and guardians. All the others -- maiden daughters, sisters, wives, widows and maidservants -- were wards of men: fathers, brothers, husbands, masters or sons.2 So women who took up prostitution had to be reasonably sure of an independent livelihood; their customers had to make it a viable proposition for them.

Economic Status

It is easy to see that all avenues to prostitution did not offer the same kind of economic security. A raped woman had little chance of an honourable marriage and social rehabilitation; so, reduced to prostitution, she had to accept whatever came her way. This also held true for the old maid turned prostitute. But a young widow or a pretty wanton maid or an unhappily married attractive woman could perhaps choose her partner and name her price, at least in the beginning of her career while she still enjoyed the protection of her father's, husband's or in-laws' home. We have absolutely no way of knowing when prostitution in India arose as a recognizable profession or how much the prostitute received by way of payment. Its emergence and recognition as a profession was presumably concomitant with the institution of strict marriage rules, especially monoandry, and the wife being regarded as the private property of her husband. The terms sadharani or samanya (common), synonyms for prostitute, distinguish her as a woman not possessed by one man; this is the desideratum. When a woman docs not belong to one man but obliges many, as the terms varangana, varastri, varavadhu and varamukhya3 signify, since she is not the responsibility of any one man, she looks after herself. She does by accepting payment from each of the men she obliges; she then This becomes panyastri, one whose favours can be bought with money.

The process of the emergence of prostitution must have been slow, varying from region to region and from age to age. By the later Vedic age, i.e., around the eighth or seventh century B.C., we have references to a more regularized form of prostitution recognized as a social institution. Early Buddhist literature, especially the Jatakas, hear testimony to the existence of different categories of prostitutes, and incidentally provides some information about their fees as also of their financial position.

Professional prostitution presupposes an economic condition in which surplus was produced, a surplus which also earned prosperity from abroad through trade and commerce. It also presupposes the rise of petty principalities, the breakdown of tribal society, the rise of the joint or extended family and the social subjugation of women in general. In a settled agricultural community, the woman gradually lost social mobility and a measure of freedom that she had been enjoying before. She became man's ward, possession, object of enjoyment. Also, with the accumulation of private property, the wife was more zealously guarded and jealously watched over. Society was now polygamous: polyandry disappeared except in some small pockets.

Whether as an unmarried girl, a wife or a widow, she belonged to some man; so otter men could not approach her without trespassing on the owner's property rights. Pleasure outside the home, therefore, had to be paid for, hence prostitution had to he institutionalized so that there was an assurance of a steady supply for ready payment. It must have been a long and tortuous process for women of this profession to congregate in a 'red light area', away from the village -- and later also from towns -- where men could go and seek their company. Social ostracism on the one hand and professional solidarity of the guild type of association on the other, ensured their security and prosperity.

Although the later Vedic literature tacitly assumes and sometimes even overtly mentions prostitutes, it is in the Buddhist texts that we see them first as professionals. In Vedic literature, especially in the Aitareya and Sankhayana Aranyakas, the prostitute is mentioned in an apparently obscene altercation with the neophyte (brahmacarin). In the Vratyasukta of the Atharvaveda, she follows the Magadha. These are clearly part of a fertility ritual. It is in this role that she has persisted in ritual and literature down the ages.

There are various myths and legends regarding the origin of prostitution. The Mahabharata account of the destruction of the Yadavas and Vrsnis4 ends with the women of these tribes being abducted by barbarian brigands. In the Kuru and Pancala regions5 inhabited by the Madras and the Sindhu-Sauviras, the Brahmin sages Dalbhya Caikitayana and Svetaketu's nephew Astavakra were said to be associated with the teaching of erotics in which prostitution constitutes a section. In the Mahabhatata6 and the Matsya purana7 we are given fictitious accounts of the origin of prostitution. Ksemendra says that wicked mothers give their daughters, enjoyed and abandoned by men, to others.8 Vatsyayana in his Kamasutra gives detailed instructions on how a chaste girl should be seduced cleverly until she yields to a man's lust.9 Presumably, when such a man abandoned her she was forced to adopt prostitution as a profession. We also hear of the jayopojivins or jayajivins, husbands who lived on the wife's income which she earned by selling herself. This itself was regarded as a minor sin on the husband's part, an upapataka which could be expiated by taking the comparatively mild candrayana vow.'10 All these texts reveal to us some of the channels by which women came to prostitution. Another old channel of the supply of prostitutes was young virgins given away as gifts on special religious and secular occasions. The number of such girls given away to brahmins, guests, priests, sons-in-law is staggering. In later Vedic times we hear of daksinas, sacrificial fees to officiating priests. Such fees included horses, cattle, gold and also women of various categories -- umarried, married without children and married with children. One wonders what a priest did with hundreds of such women. Some he could marry, others he would enjoy and abandon, still others he would employ as maidservants. Many of these would later find their way to brothels or to slave markets. Yet another source of supply was the royal palace. A king could summon pretty maids to his palace, enjoy them for some days and then send them away. In the Vatsagulma region, ministers' wives had to oblige the king by paying visits (on being summoned) to the palace. In Vidarbha, pretty maids were enjoyed by the king for a month and then sent away. When such women came out of the palace, one obvious solution for their future life was prostitution. Of course, courtiers would sometimes marry some of them but the rest had few alternative courses open to them. Kautilya says that prostitutes were recruited from four sources: either they were born as prostitutes' daughters, or they were purchased,11 or captured in war,12 or they were women who had been punished for adultery.13

Finally, a totally abhorrent manner of procuring women for temple prostitution was buying women and giving them to the temples. Such donors were said to grow rich in this life and live in heaven for a long time. We hear that he who gave a host of prostitutes to the Sun god went to the region of the sun after death.14

Temple dancers do not appear before the last few centuries B.C. and arc mentioned frequently in the early centuries A.D. in some regions. The Jatakas do not know them, Greek visitors after Alexander do not mention them. Even Kautilya does not associate professional dancers with temple prostitution. Evidently, the institution arose in the troubled period of foreign invasion before and after the early centuries A.D. Kalidasa, in the fifth century A.D., assumes their existence and function as an established tradition.15 From the sixth century A.D. onwards, literature and epigraphy hear many evidences of its existence. As townships and cities arose along the trade routes in northern India around the sixth century B.C., internal and maritime trade flourished in these, and towns and cities became centres where courtesans plied their trade and attracted money from travellers, merchants, soldiers and men of various trades. These courtesans were trained in many arts and if they were young and pretty they could amass a fortune, but evidently only the exceptionally beautiful, young and accomplished among them were so fortunate. Since entertainment was their primary function, they had to provide song, dance, music and various other kinds of pleasure; they had to keep a troupe of artistes in the different fields in readiness for the cultivated customer. To the upper class of courtesans sometimes came men of refined aesthetic sensibilities and intellectual ability; hence they were obliged to provide entertainment like the hostesses of the French salons of the last century or the Japanese geisha girls. They themselves were trained in the various arts including literature, for their training was quite lengthy and elaborate. We hear of texts composed for such training; these are called Vaisikatantra. But every courtesan could not herself provide all kinds of aesthetic pleasure, so they had to make an initial and also recurring investment for training and maintaining a troupe of artistes. Occasionally, the royal treasury came to her aid.

Chief courtesans of prosperous cites and towns maintained their own train of singers and dancing girls. Royal courts also patronized such singers and dancers who could be enjoyed by the king and his favourites and who could also be employed as spies.

From the earliest times we have many different names for courtesans. The Rgveda knows the hasra, a frivolous woman and the agru,16 and the sadharani.17 The Atharvavetda knows the pumscali, she who walks among men,18 the mahanagni, she of great nakedness (i.e., who bares herself to many) is mentioned in the atharvaveda,19 Atiskadvari and apaskadvari, women with fancy dress and bare bosoms are mentioned in the Taittiriya Brahmana.20 Rajayitri, she who entertains and is given to sensuality, also figures in some texts.21 Samanya and sadharani are generic terms for the common woman.22 In the Mahavrata rite the pumscali, a prostitute pairs ritually with a brahmacarin.23 The Kamosutra in the second or first century B.C. mentions the kumbhadasi and paricarika maidservants who could also be enjoyed at will. Kulata and svairini, wanton women, nati, the actress, silpakarika, she who is engaged in arts and crafts, prakasavinasta, the openly defiled one, rupajiva and ganika, are courtesans with different social ranks.

The Jatakas mentionvannadasi, vesi, nariyo, gamaniyo, and nagarasobhani itthi; 24 muhuttia25 and janapadakalyani are mentioned in several Buddhist texts in the sense of the most beautiful women who can be enjoyed by an entire janapoda. The ganika must initially have connoted a woman at the disposal of all the members of a gana, a tribe, and later of the political unit, or constituent of a confederacy. Some later names includes salabhanjika, who is no other than a prostitute in Jatadhara's dictionary.

Variations in Status and Functions

This profusion of synonyms cannot be explained by regional or temporal variations only, it also signifies the social and financial status of the various categories of courtesans.26 The numerous synonyms also testify to the widespread presence of the institution through the ages.

The rupajiva was not accomplished in the arts like the ganika; her only stock in trade as the name signifies was her beauty and charm. She owed the state two days' income for a month. If a man forcibly enjoyed her he was fined 12 panas, but in times of crisis half her monthly income could be forfeited to the state.27 She could also belong to the royal harem28 and could also be exclusively kept by one man; in which case another enjoying her was fined 48 panas.29 Disguised as a wife she could help a man escape and could also be employed by the state as a spy.30 Vatsyayana also mentions the rupajiva.31 Another name of the mistress of one individual man is avaruddha. The rupadasi was unaccomplished and was employed in the personal attendance of a wealthy man. Like the vannadasi mentioned in the Jatakas she could entertain customers on her own or serve under some other person.32 The ganikadasi was a female slave of the ganika who could also become independent and set up her own establishment. The Samajataka mentions Sama, a courtesan of Kasi who had a retinue of 500 ganikadasis.33 Other common and late names are varangana, varabadhu, varamukhya, all of which stand for a prostitute while vrsli, which originally meant a Sudra woman later came to mean a harlot; pumsula and lanjika are later synonyms of harlots. Kulata was a married woman who left home to become a public woman and vandhaki was a housewife turned whore; her husband was known as vandhakiposa, maintaining or being maintained by a vandhaki. A vandhaki too had to pay part of her income to the state coffers in times of national crisis. The randa was a low common woman, a mistress to vita, usually an old hag who pretended to he engaged in penance but was actually out to catch customers.

The ganika and sometimes the rupajiva too, received free training in the various arts and

those who teach prostitutes, female slaves and actresses arts such as singing, playing on musical instruments, reading, dancing, acting, writing, painting, playing on instruments such as vina (lyre), pipe and drum, reading the thoughts of others, manufacture of scents and garlands, shampooing and the art of attracting and captivating the mind of others shall be endowed with maintenance from the state. They, the teachers shall train the sons of prostitutes to be chief actors (rangopajivan) on the stage. The wives of actors and others of similar profession who have been taught various languages and the use of signals (samjna) shall, along with their relatives be made use of in detecting the wicked and murdering and deluding foreign spies.34

In a sixth century Jain work we have an exhaustive list of the prostitute's attainments -- writing, arithmetic, the arts, singing, playing on musical instruments, drums, chess, dice, eightboard chess, instant verse-making, Prakrite and Apabhramsa poetry, proficiency in the science of perfume making, jewellery, dressing up, knowledge of the signs of good or bad men and women, horses, elephants, cooks, rams, umbrellas, rods, swords, jewels, gems which antidote poison, architecture, camps and canopies, phalanx arrangement, fighting, fencing, shooting arrows, ability to interpret omens, etc. Altogether seventy-two arts and sciences were to be mastered by her.35

It is clear (hat the prostitute especially the ganika, the most accomplished among them, offered men something which by the early centuries A.D. had become absolutely rare among the women of the gentry, viz, accomplishment. We read in the Manusamhita: "The sacrament of marriage is to a female what initiation with the sacred thread is to a male. Serving the husband is for the wife what residence in the preceptor's house is to the man and household duty is to the woman, what offering sacrifices is to the man."36 This series of neat equations deprive the woman of education, dooming her to household chores only, especially service of her husband and in-laws, but also thereby indirectly doom her to the loss of her husband's attention. With an unaccomplished wife at home, the man who cared for cultured female company went to the brothel for it. Manu belongs to the early centuries A.D.;37 a steady deterioration in the status of the woman and the Sudra followed his codification of the social norm and the brothel flourished because it catered to the cultured man-about-the-town's (nagaraka) tastes in women.

The ganika because of her youth, beauty, training and accomplishment belonged to a superior social status. With an extensive, elaborate, and apparently expensive education she could frequently name her price, which, as Buddhist texts testify was often prohibitive. She was patronized by the king who visited her sometimes, as also by wealthy merchants. Because of her high fees none but the most wealthy could approach her. She alone enjoyed a position where as long as her youth and beauty lasted she could not be exploited.

Taxes to the State

We have seen that the ganika, rupajiva, vesya and vandhaki had to pay taxes to the state but a careful study leads to the conclusion that almost all categories had an actual or potential obligation for paying taxes; the collection, however, depended on the degree and nature of the organization. Organized red light areas paid taxes regularly, at a fixed rate, while it was much more difficult to ascertain the income of the women 'kept' in seclusion by a man or of the unorganized individual women plying the trade in isolated pockets or even, like the vandhaki, at home. Similarly, organized brothels enjoyed greater security from the state in lieu of the taxes they paid while individuals who paid 'hush-money' to extortionist officers could hardly demand any protection from injustice, manhandling, coercion and cheating. The Nammayasundarikatha, a twelfth century text says that the state received 25% to 30% of the prostitute's income.

We hear of the extremely high fees of some famous ganikas in the Buddhist texts. Bhatti38 and parivvayam39 denote two different types of fees. Vasadavatta of Mathura charged very high rates per night.40 Salavati of Rajagraha charged a hundred karsapanas per night while Ambapali's fees led to a dispute between the cities Rajagrha and Vaisali. A Jain text41 says that a courtesan who had a faultless body and whose attainments were complete may charge 1000 karsapanas per night. Evidently, only the richest merchants could pay such fees. The play Mrcchakatika mentions a thousand gold coins and ornaments being sent in advance to lure a ganika to a paramour's house. The ganika, says Kautilya, was also paid a monthly salary from the royal treasury and the pratiganika, her short-time substitute, received half the amount. The ganika, however, did not enjoy property rights. "There is every likelihood that their palatial establishments and gardens were state property with life interest."42 On her death, her daughter inherited her property but only for use; she could not sell, mortgage, exchange or donate them. This, of course, is true of the ordinary prostitute living in an organized brothel; many outstanding ganikas were mistresses of their own property. Hence in Buddhist literature we have many instances where she gave away her property. A ganika could be bought out by a sympathetic customer; her redemption money (niskraya) was 24,000 panas, a very high sum in view of the fact that her annual salary paid by the state was between 1000 and 3000 panas. A rupajiva's fees were 48 panas, she usually lived with actors, wine-sellers, meat-sellers, people who sold cooked rice and Vaisyas generally. It is obvious that she kept company with people who controlled ready cash.

A man who forcibly attacked a ganika's daughter paid a fine of 54 panas plus a fine (sulka) of sixteen times her mother's fees, presumably to the mother herself.42 The second fine may also be a hush-money paid to the bridegroom at the daughter's wedding. Foreign customers had to pay 5 panas extra tariff duty to the state apart from the courtesan's regular fees. The pumscali (a common whore) did not have any fixed fees; she could only demand fees on marks of cohabitation, if she tried to extort money from her customers her fees were liable to be forfeited to the state -- also if she threw temper tantrums or refused to oblige the customer in any way. The Kuttanimmata says that the temple prostitute (tridasalayajivika) got paid by the temple authorities and that her income was fixed by tradition. Ksemendra's Samayamatrka says that they were paid in grain as remuneration and that they were employed in rotation.

If after receiving her fees a prostitute refused to oblige her customer she paid a fine of double her fees; if she refused him before accepting the fees she paid her fees as fine.44 Apparently it is a fair business deal where the defaulter pays a fine but if we pause and think that a sensible person would not ruin the prospects of gain or income unless she had some serious reason for disobliging her customer, it becomes clear that she did not have the option of refusing to sell herself. In other words, society refused to look upon her as a human being; she was just a commodity, nothing more. If a price had been accepted the commodity was the customer for use.

Regarding her customers Vatsyayana is very clear. The ideal one is young, rich, without having to earn his wealth (i.e., born to wealth), proud, a minister to the king, one who can afford to disregard his elders' commands, preferably an only son of a rich father. Born in an aristocratic family, be should be learned, a poet, proficient in tales, an orator, accomplished in the various arts, not malicious, lively, given to drinks, friendly, a ladies' man but not under their power, independent, not cruel, not jealous, not apprehensive.45 The courtesan is advised not to stick to one visitor when she has offers from many. She should go to the person who can offer the gifts she covets.46 Since money can buy everything she should oblige him who can afford the highest sum -- this, says the text, is what the teachers' instruct. When she wants to bring her paramour back from a rival she should be extra nice to him and be satisfied with less payment temporarily. This is to ensure her future ... she should leave the impoverished lover and never invest in one from whom there is no hope of return.47 She should be able to read the signs of his disaffection; a long list of such signs are given.48 Above all, a courtesan should never encourage or entertain a suitor of reduced means. When she has squeezed her customer dry she should remorselessly leave him and search for a rich one. Normally, a ganika chose her own customer except when the king forced one on her. Then, if she refused she was whipped with 1000 lashes or was fined 5000 panas. She did not have any right over her own body where the royal wish was concerned.49 The punishment for forcing an unwilling ganika was 1000 panas or more. Once she admits a client into her own house to share it with her she could not throw him out. If she did, the fine was eight times her fees. She could only refuse if he was diseased. When the client cheated her of her fees he had to pay eight times the fees.

The prostitute could own ornaments, money, her fees, servants, maidservants who could be concubines. But other texts indicate that this ownership was not real or ultimate; but merely a right of use. The concubine, however, was obliged to pay the mistress for her own upkeep, plus one pana per month.

Prostitution in ancient India existed both overtly and covertly. In other words, besides brothels or open establishments run by and for one or more prostitutes, ancient texts give a list or many professions for girls where she could potentially be enjoyed by her employer with impunity. She could act as a substitute for the wife. In the Jain text Vasudeva Hindi we read of Bharata, a leader of his clan having another woman besides the wife. All the feudatories under him sent their daughters who arrived at the same time. The queen threatened to leave, so it was decided that they would serve him in the outer court and that later they would be handed over to the gana, the tribe, to become ganikas, the text thus explains the origin of the term ganika. The Mahabharata tells us that the Pandava, army was followed by a host of prostitutes who went in the rear of the army on baggage carts.50 Yudbisthira on the eve of the war sent his greetings to the prostitutes.51 In the train of the Pandavas when they left for the forest there were "chariots, traders' goods and brothels", presumably to entertain the army.52 King Virata after his victory ordered young girls to dress well, come out53 and entertain the assembled men. Such a command could only be given to public women. When Krsna went on a peace mission to the Kauravas, Duryodbana's entertaiment of the former included a rest house with women; Dhrtarastra ordered fair harlots to go with his sons to meet Krsna. The later didactic interpolations of the Mahabharata, however, are full of imprecations and stigma against prostitutes.54 The Ramayana mentions ganikas and vesyas in the list of comforts, luxuries and status symbols. It is quite clear that prostitutes became a symbol of the prosperity concomitant with urban civilization. Like gold and jewellery, like corn and cattle, a rich man desired prosperity and plenty in the number of women he could enjoy freely.

Women as Commodity

The concept of women as chattel or commodity for man's enjoyment is borne out by the inclusion of women -- pretty and young -- in large numbers in any list of gifts given to a man in return for a favour or as a mark of respect. Thus she is a part of daksina, fees to a sacrificial priest. At Yudhisthira's horse-sacrifice women were sent by other kings as a donation to make up a necessary part of the entertainment.55 Yudhisthira himself gives away pretty maids to guest kings;56 he is even laid to have given away hundreds of thousands of pretty girls as did King Sasabindu of old at his horse sacrifice.57 Pretty maids as part of daksina are also mentioned when King Bbagiratha gave hundreds of thousands of lovely maids, well decked out with gold ornaments.58 Even at a sradha ceremony Brahmins received thousands of pretty maidens as gifts.59 These girls could sometimes find husbands but presumably, since prostitution was being looked down upon more and more and maidenhood became an essential prerequisite for marriage in the Smrti texts, most of them were forced to become prostitutes.

In heaven heroes are rewarded with a large number of beautiful girls.60 The same idea is also seen in classical Sanskrit literature. In the Kumarasambhava, 61, Raghuvamsa,62 Kiratarjuniya,63 and in Sisupalavadha,64 in Subandbu and Bana we have references to courtesans as a prestigious decoration of a royal palace and an indispensable part of city life. Bhaguri calls her puramandana, an ornament of the city. Thus her status was that of an inanimate object of enjoyment, it was sub-human and subject.

Courtesans sometimes did perform several other functions. In the Mahabharata they participated in the victory celebrations.65 They even played a political role as spies whose duty it was to seduce important men who were potential sources of vital political information, to collect such information and supply it to the relevant officers through the superintendent (ganikadhyaksa). Their role as temptress is emphasized in the Vattaka Jataka. The names of various types of courtesans gives us an inkling of their roles. Thus the devavesya was the temple dancer, something like the Greek hierodoules; the vajavesya served the king; while the brahmavesya or tirthaga visited holy places or pilgrimages. In the Brahmapurana we have the description of Ekamratirtha, where lived many prostitutes66 presumably to cater to the pilgrims and visitors. In the samaja public functions there used to be a separate gallery where sat the courtesans who gave musical performance for the samaja. Kautilya assigns them the duties of common maidservants at the palace. We hear of a prostitute serving Dhrtarastra when Gandhari was pregnant.67 Uddyotana Suri in his Kuvalayamala describes nymphs in Indra's heaven who carried water vessels, fans, fly-whisks, parasols, mirrors, kettledrums, harps, ordinary drums, clothes and ornaments, In the Ramayana and the Mahabharata such women followed the king in the palace and served him in his train. The Latitavistara mentions women who carried full pitchers, garlands, jewellery and ornaments, the throne, the fan, jars full of perfumed water, etc, Evidently in all these instances, as also in many references in the Puranas and later literature the pretty damsels giving light personal service to the king are projected to heaven where the earthly prostitutes figure as celestial nymphs serving the gods. Whether on earth or in heaven monarchs or wealthy potentates used such women to enhance their glory and pleasure.

The retired temple prostitute was employed by the state for spinning cotton, wool and flax. The nagaraka, man-about-the-town, in his love-intrigues could have assistance from widows, Buddhist nuns, and old courtesans who acted as go-betweens. In the palace the courtesan held positions as the royal umbrella-bearer, masseuse in charge of the king's (also of the royal family) toilet, dress and ornaments, and as the king's bathroom attendant. They also had a place in the royal entourage in hunting and military expeditions, and on occasion entertained royal guests. What is true of her function with regard to the king is also true of the rich courtier merchant and nobles described as nagaraka in the Kamasutra. In the non-monarchical gana states the chiefs gambled and indulged themselves in the company of prostitutes. The keepers of brothels procured pretty women from their establishment for these chiefs' entertainment. These aged women, the brothel-keepers, were adept in bringing about and resolving quarrels between rival suitors as and when needed by them or by political agents of the state. Courtesans belonged to kings or wealthy citizens' trains in their amusements and festivals, their garden parties, boat trips, musical soirees, and bathing and drinking sprees. The Kamasutra describes the different sports and festivals of rich barons to each of which courtesans were invited.

At-homes could be held in a courtesan's salon where assembled men of the same age, intellect, wealth who would hold discussions with courtesans. This was called gosthi; there they talked about the problems of poetry and art. They shifted the venue to the different members' houses where they indulged in food and various drinks. Courtesans were to be served first, then the men should eat and drink. These men-about-the-town rode out to an appointed place together with the courtesans in the forenoon, and having spent the day in various kinds of sports and entertainments such as cockfights, ramfights, theatrical performances, etc., they should return in the evening. In summer they should indulge in water-sports68.

The text goes on to name twenty different sports and festivals which depended on the seasons, the moon and auspicious days of the year. "Villagers should learn of these sports of the townsmen, describe and imitate them."70

No doubt the prostitutes occasionally enjoyed themselves at such times, but whether they spied, massaged, bathed, dressed or carried the umbrella we do not hear of any extra payment for these additional duties to which they were certainly entitled because their main task as prostitutes only earned them a place in the king's or rich man's establishment. In a sense in the organized brothel prostitutes were better off, because normally they were not expected to do other chores although when with their customers, they sometimes entertained them with minor services. It all depended on the social and economic status of the prostitute. The city's chief courtesan was a wealthy person of a high rank who had a host of servants and maidservants for the menial chores; she herself was too accomplished, rich and respectable to do the chores herself; whereas a poor and common strumpet had to cater to many customers, also indigent and therefore, each able to pay very little. Hence she had to do all the menial chores for herself and her customer for bare subsistence.71 The avaruddha, a woman 'kept' by a man, enjoyed freedom from manual labour only if her patron was rich; otherwise she had to work for herself and for him. Hers was like a 'contract marriage' and, as in marriage, the status of the woman depended on the man's income.

Social Status

At this distance of time it is difficult to form an adequate idea of the social status of prostitutes. We have seen that not all prostitutes belong to the same category. The accomplished young beauty could name her price, sometimes at an apparently exorbitant rate, because she was in great demand. Speaking of the ranks of royal attendants the Kurudhamma Jataka says that the lowest of the courtiers was the door-keeper, the dvarlka; he occupies the lowest place but one, for he is above the public woman, the ganika. Every city had a chief courtesan who was 'an ornament  to the city'.72 The janapadakalyani or the sadharani of the non-monarchichal state of the Licehavis were in great demand and were often looked up to because of their beauty and culture and so could ask any price for their favours. And they got it as many Buddhist texts testify. The word janapadakalyanl literally meant the most beautiful woman In a country. The Digha Nlkaya,73 the Majjhima Nikaya,74 and the Samyutta Nlkaya75 refer to her, Buddhist texts mention many affluent and powerful courtesans who fed the Buddha and his train and gave gifts to the order. We thus hear of Ambapali giving such a feast to the Lord and his hundred thousand followers. She also gave away her big mango grove to the order.76 Salavati's daughter Sirima received 1000 kahapanas per night.77 We hear of a banker's daughter who chose to become a prostitute. Her father set too high a price; few customers came; she reduced it to half and was called ardhakasi.78

As looks, age and accomplishments came down the price and social prestige also came down so that middle aged, unaccomplished or plain-looking women had to agree to mere subsistence rates or even less. Even that they did not always get, as many texts on erotics tell us. The Kuttanimata, a major text on prostitution, describes the plight of such discarded prostitutes who were reduced to begging, stealing, and various other tricks. They had no guarantee of the next meal or shelter, no provision against old age, disease and penury. The heart-rending description of an abandoned, unattractive prostitute who takes recourse to becoming a confidence trickster and is pursued by society is occasionally rendered ludicrous by the very comicality of her various moves and the invariable failure of each move. But beyond this comic portrait is the tragic situation of a woman who, after having provided pleasure to many men's lust all through her life, has to fend for herself at a time when she is worst equipped for such a lone battle. In many texts we hear of such retired harlots begging.79 The classic example is Kankali, an inn-keeper's daughter, sold at seven as a slave in the market place, who started as an ordinary prostitute and in time lost her youth and whatever charm she had earlier had. So she tried her hand at different professions but since she had no training in any she could not earn a livelihood through them. Then she tried to seduce people at pilgrimages, dressing up and disguising her age and loss of looks, but was eventually caught and summarily dropped. She changed roles frequently, was even imprisoned; in a bid to escape she murdered the warder. She then fled to a monastery where she could not stick it for very long. Later she begged openly until there was a famine and she could not get alms. So she became a nurse to a child whose gold chain she stole one night and escaped. When that money was exhausted she took to selling loaded dice. Then she returned to begging as a profession. But the strain and poor returns prompted her to steal food offered to idols. She next became a wine-seller, a fortune-teller and an actress in turn and finally she went about pretending to be insane. For a time she enjoyed royal hospitality because she gave out that she could paralyse a hostile army. But quite naturally she had to take to her heels before the actual encounter took place. Finally she returned to her native place and became a procuress for a pretty young prostitute, Kalavati.80 This tale, evidently a concatenation of many disparate episodes, epitomizes the fate of old prostitutes. Their tragedy was not only the lack of social security but also their lack of proficiency in any alternative profession through which they could earn a livelihood. Besides, having known better days they could not stick to any mean profession which did not provide comfort. Hence they flitted from one profession to another with cunning and the ability to cheat through play-acting -- arts they had mastered as prostitutes- -- s the only stock-in-trade. In the Desopadesa we hear of a sixty-year old woman making herself up as a young girl in the hope of catching a customer.81

Institutionalized prostitution, however, offered somewhat better prospects for old and retired courtesans. Kautilya lays down the rule that ganikas, pratiganikas, (short term substitutes for the ganikas), rupajivas, vesyas, dasis, devadasis, pumscalis, silpakarikas, kausikastri (woman artisan) are to be given pension by the state in old age. Since Kautilya was written for a prince it is to be assumed that these women were employed by the state and had earlier paid taxes to the state which the state regarded partially as provident fund contribution against old age, disability, retirement and penury. We are not told what the pension was in terms of money, whether it was adequate for sustenance. But a steady income, however small, must have meant some measure of security to elderly women who would otherwise be wholly destitute. But since women and their labour was exploited in most spheres of life, we may assume that this rule was not strictly observed, because such women were totally powerless to sue the state for non-payment. Yet the few who actually received some pension were lucky to have it. Retired prostitutes were employed as cooks, store-keepers, cotton-wool and flax spinners, and in various other manual jobs, so the state did not have to pay the pension until they were too old and weak to work any more. In old age some prostitutes became matrkas, i.e., matrons-in-charge of a brothel.

We hear of prostitutes' anvaya, family: their mothers, sisters, daughters and sons. The mother looked after her personal possessions, like dress and ornaments; she could not deposit her ornaments anywhere else; the daughter inherited them on her mother's retirement or death. But only for use. The sister could act as her substitute in a commission and the son was trained as a musical artist or an actor, He became a property of the state, almost a slave, and was obliged to hold musical performances for the stage for eight years. The manumission fees for him was higher than that for the prostitute. But in the play Mrcchakatika we hear of bandhulas "who are begotten by unknown clients of the prostitutes." Without any social identity these boys lived in a brothel until they could eke out a livelihood for themselves. The pathetic tone of the verse tells us how these boys were looked upon as waste products, like slag in a factory.

A prostitute was obliged to keep the brothel superintendent posted about her income and expenses and he could stop her from being extravagant. She could not sell or mortgage her property al will; for doing so she paid a fine, fifty and a quarter panas.

Occasionally a prostitute was married. Vatsyayana lays down a provision whereby a vesya could be given in marriage to one who could provide special musical assistance to the establishment; such a marriage leads to greater prosperity.82 Otherwise we hear of a notional sort of marriage which was more in the nature of initiation. The man did not have any exclusive claim on her person or services. The avaruddha belonged to her patron exclusively and the law-givers say that his exclusive right to her should be respected.83 Narada has no objection to a man having sexual relations with a non-Brahmin svairini, vesya, dasi and nikasini (one who did not live a secluded life) of a lower caste if she was not another's wife.

That even a prostitute can fall in love is admitted theoretically by Vatsyayana even though he says that they are and should always be after money.84 A prostitute, according to the Skandapurana, belongs to a separate caste: if a man of the same or a superior caste enjoys her he is not to be punished, provided she is not another's concubine. If she is, then he simply performs the prajapatya (a light) penance85 and gets away with it. In literature we have a few instances of the prostitute falling in love."

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Part 2 of 2

Vilification in Literature

Both institutionally and individually prostitutes depended upon certain categories of middlemen and procurers. Chief among these was the kuttani or samhhali. Now, in a brothel the mother of the chief prostitute was the person-in-charge who watched over her daughter's and the other girl's interests. Her duties included checking the payments, protecting the girl's health and wealth, driving away undesirable customers (i.e., those with depleted coffers), using deceit and delay tactics to spare the girls as much as possible, bargaining for greater emoluments by pretending that other, richer customers are making bigger offers, varying custom i.e., to deprive an eager one for a lime in order to extort better fees from him.87 No wonder she was vilified in literature. "She is like a blood-thirsty tigress, only where she is absent does the client appear as a fox". "The kuttani with her ear glued to the door in greedy expectation of money becomes eager even when a blade of grass drops".88 The Kamasutra mentions these procuresses together with beggar women, cultivated women, female mendicants with shaven heads, candala women and old prostitutes.89 Apparently she is an old hag with the nature of a vampire. But if one pauses to think she was the prostitute's only guarantee of safety and fair payment. Without her, if the prostitute had to deal with the customer directly she could be cheated, robbed, insulted, maimed, even killed with impunity. The basis of this surmise is offered by Kautilya in his Arthasastra where we read that the fine for defamation of a courtesan was 24 panas; for assault 48 panas and for lopping off her ears 51-3/4 panas and forced confinement. The Yajnavalkya Smrti says that the fine for molesting a prostitute is 50 panas; and if she is gang-raped each assailant had to pay 24 panas to her.90 For the safety of her person some laws had to be framed and for graver crimes the penalty varied between 1000 and 48000 panas according to the degree of the heinousness of the crime and the status of the injured courtesan. On the other hand, later religious and law books have nothing but contempt for courtesans, and hold them solely responsible for the institution. They go to the length of saying that the murder of a prostitute is no crime.91 Manu believes that all prostitutes were thieves and swindlers.92 It is true that the erotic text Kalavilasa lists sixty-four specified modes in which a courtesan could deceive her customer. It also tells us the story of King Vikramaditya, who when he fell on hard days became the prostitute Vilasavati's guest. She showered her own wealth on him and when he gave himself out to be dead, threw herself on his pyre. With her help he regained his kingdom and made her the chief queen. Then she confessed to him her love for a young man who was arrested as a thief. With the king's help he was freed and the lovers were united. Then the king remembered his minister's warning: they are not to be trusted. This innate deceitfulness of prostitutes is a recurring note in all literature. But in this instance the text ignores her contribution: the re-instatement of the king as sovereign, and betrays only a sneer, shared no doubt by the entire community, for, the possibility of a prostitute being in love so deeply that she treads a dangerous and tortuous path to gain her lover appeared totally absurd to them. The text condemns the woman for everything, and more so the prostitute, wholly ignoring her client's role, and her own contribution to his career.

We have just seen that their clients also maltreated and manhandled them and these were not isolated incidents or exceptions or there would be no need to frame laws against crimes and stipulate the exact amount of fines for the several kinds of assault. She was often used and then cheated, robbed, thrashed, mutilated and murdered. If the institution was for society a necessary evil and the state had a vested interest in extracting revenue and espionage service from this 'evil', then it could not afford to ignore a situation when the source of such revenue was harmed so that she could not multiply the revenue. Hence the laws. But the attitude of society was clearly against the prostitute and not against her client.

The procuress, the matron of the brothel or the mother of the chief courtesan sought to safeguard her physical, social and financial well-being.

The vita was the middleman and/or companion of the courtesan. Because the vita was a man he could procure custom for her. Technically, a vita was a worthy spendthrift who, reduced to penury, takes shelter (sometimes with his wife) in a brothel or in similar pleasure resorts.93 The vitas are counsellors of both the courtesans and their clients and could bring about misunderstandings between them and also reconcile them with each other. The pithamarda, on the other hand, was a teacher of the prostitute as also an associate of the nagaraka, the man-about-the-town, who helped his friend achieve his ends.94 Both, but especially, the vita, looked after the courtesan's interests where she needed a man to help her. In the Mrcchakatia he escorts her in a dark night, instructs her when she goes to seek pleasure, has no illusion about the profession but has respect for her as a person. In the four famous Bhanas of the late classical period the vitas are helpers, peace-makers, go-betweens, procurers and counsellors of the partners. Evidently, the courtesan was also helpless against certain situations so that she shared her income with a male go-between for protecting her own interests. This and the services of the kuttani already signify that the courtesan was liable to be exploited, cheated, insulted and physically injured. The vita, apparently a parasite, gave valuable service to her where her sex and social position rendered her vulnerable.

What was the prostitute's social status? Strangely enough, prostitution is recognized as a profession with laws to regulate it because it served its specific purpose by catering to men's needs of extramarital sexual gratification and also the state's needs by bringing in considerable revenues and secret political information through espionage. As townships sprang up along trade routes and as rich men long away from home frequented these brothels these became a regular feature with the chief courtesans, beauty queens, being regarded as ornaments of the town or city, magarasobhani or nagaramandana. Because she was in high demand and because she would fetch a rich revenue if she was accomplished and attractive, the state undertook to supervise her education (with quite a heavy and rigorous syllabus) at its own expense, provided she remitted part of her income to the state. Not only was she obliged to pay revenue to the state she often undertook some works for public welfare. Thus we read in the Brhatkalpabha, a Jain text, of a picture gallery set up by a courtesan. The Buddhist texts record Amrapali as also giving similar services. Other courtesans fed the hungry during a famine, gave away money, land, and property for the Buddhist cause. Many treated the Buddha and monks to sumptuous feasts. Frequently, when the courtesans amassed wealth they set up works of public utility: they sank wells, constructed bridges, temple gardens, caityas (sacred mounds), donated money to the needy, gave gifts, and generally served the community through such works for public utility. Yet we read in the Mahabharata that the prostitutes' quarters should be situated in the south because that is the direction of Yama, the god of death. In the Manasollasa, a medieval text, we read that houses of ill-fame should be situated on the outskirts of the town. But in Greece the courtesans had a different status; one of the most beautiful sections of any Grecian city was where the richest of the courtesans built their houses. The lyric poem Pavanaduta of Dhoyi describing the temple prostitutes says that it seemed that Laksmi, the goddess of beauty has herself descended there. Kalhana in his Rajatarangin mentions an extremely qualified devadasi by the name of Kamala. In some Puranas we read of the anangavrata, a rite which signified temple prostitution.95 The Kamasutra lays down that she should always be decked out with jewellery and without being fully visible should streetwalk discreetly "because she is a commodity".96 The same text defines her conduct: "without really getting attached to her client she should act as if she were; she should submit to her cruel and mendacious mother and if the mother is not there she should submit to the matron of the house. She has the right of use of her ornaments, food and drinks, garlands, perfumes, etc."97 "She should pretend the loss of her own and her client's ornaments, should engage in a mock quarrel with her mother on the subject of excessive expenses and having to incur debts, should make the client pay her bills, should pretend to be obliged to sell her ornaments in order to both ends meet, should report about her rivals' greater income, etc. etc.".98 If this long list of deceptions is any index of how society expected her to conduct herself in her profession, one fails to understand the bitter censure society meted out to her when she complied. The Rajatarangini, a poetical chronicle of Kashmir, records that King Lalitapida gave out that anyone proficient in courtesan love and clever at jokes would become his friend. Later literature has no inhibition in mentioning or describing courtesans attached to the palace, to the manor houses of the nobility, especially of merchants, and to temples as well as those who lived in brothels. Such descriptions in Kalidasa, Bharavi, Dandin, Bhatti, Subandhu, Banabhatta, Sriharsa (Naisadhacarita) are totally uninhibited and done with great gusto and skill. Yet other didactic texts are full of imprecations against prostitutes. The Visnu Samhita lays down that he who associates with a courtesan should perform the prajapatya penance.99 The vituperation against prostitutes begins in the didactic sections of the Mahabharata, the Dharmasutras (many of which belong to the age of the Brahmanical interpolation of the Mahabharata), and continue through the Puranas and Smrti texts. Such texts choose to ignore the fact that courtesans are not born but made; they can only exist as long as society has a demand for them. Therefore, since a section of society calls courtesans into being to cater to their need, the condemnation should be shared by that section as well. But apart from mild half-hearted penalties -- more in the nature of not-too-obvious strictures and threats of notional ostracism -- the male clients go morally scot-free.

This double standard is not an isolated phenomenon, it is the product of a rooted ambivalence in the society's consciousness. Since the designation of ganika was the highest and had to be earned through beauty, charm and accomplishments,100 it signified the highest social class among prostitutes. Kautilya says that the superintendent of prostitutes conferred the title of ganika to the pretty, young and cultured hetaira;101 she drew 1000 panas from the state presumably for her establishment, and her teachers in the various arts were also paid by the state. She had a measure of social security in the sense that those who harmed her physically, financially and socially were liable to be punished heavily by the state. Needless to say that such a coveted position was not accorded to many; only a handful of the prostitutes were made ganikas whose favours were enjoyed by kings, princes and the richest of the merchants. It can be guessed that pretty young women with real cultivated taste and accomplishments flocked to well-governed towns and cities where they could not be molested by rakes and ruffians with impunity and where trade and commerce thrived. Even in such townships as well as in prosperous villages women with less beauty and culture and presumably older in age plied their trade as rupajivas and vesyas depending on their age, accomplishments and charm. The very name of the rupajiva clearly distinguishes her from the ganika, for, while the latter was an educated person the rupajiva had only her beauty as her stock-in-trade. The vesya may have lacked even that and relied on her clothes and jewellery (vesa) for attracting customers. The avaruddha as we have seen was the mistress of an individual in the role of a concubine; the relationship was temporary but while it lasted society respected its rights. The pumscali, varavilasini, svairini, kulata, etc. were free agents who were out to turn whatever charm they had to the best financial capital. Sometimes they employed middlemen to attract customers and sometimes they hawked themselves. From all accounts they had less to offer and, therefore, earned much less. The devadasis were a class by themselves who, because they were attached to institutions (i.e., temples) governed directly or indirectly by the state, enjoyed some degree of protection.

It is common knowledge that in most centres of ancient urban civilization temple prostitution was a common feature. Whether in ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, Babylon in temples of Badl and Astarte, or in Chaldea, Phoenicia or India and in the Far East it flourished under the dual patronage of the state and the church. Temple priests frequently got paid from the royal treasury, the temple prostitute was an extra allowance to them. Of course, the financial and social status of the temple varied from place to place. City temples enjoying royal patronage were entirely different from poor village temples subsisting on local contributions. Hence the status and prosperity of the temple prostitutes too differed according to the kind of patronage the temple received.

Just what the social background of these unfortunate girls was is far from clear. Apart from the parents making a devotional gift of their daughters to the temple,102 there must have been the daughters of devadasis, or distress sales of girls to the temple, recruitment of local beauties under moral pressure, or girls abducted from helpless parents, girls won as war booty or recruited through superstitious practices. However they came in, it is quite clear that it was an all-India and age-long phenomenon. Even though the Madras Legislative Assembly banned it by a law in 1929 it persisted there and in the rest of India and still persists in many pockets after it was banned all over India by a legislation in 1947. The overt duty of the devadasis was to dance at the time of the evening worship in the temple, but they were also treated as concubines by the temple priests. Kalidas refers to them as vesyas and describes them as enjoying the first drops of monsoon rain as a welcome relief to their tired limbs.

Once inside the temple and under the thumb of the priests they became like slaves with no clear definition of their rights and duties. The Kuttanimata does mention payment from temple authorities but this evidently did not mean anything more than subsistence and clothes and ornaments for them as temple dancers. In the Samayamatrka102 we hear of grains being given to devadasis who danced in rotation. In the third century B.C. Jagimara inscription we hear of Devadatta's love for the devadasi Sutanuka. Many other cave inscriptions104 mention of the music and dance provided by courtesans and devadasis. Since major treatises are nearly all silent on the duties and rights of the devadasis, it appears that they were completely at the mercy of the temple priest, a specially privileged section in Indian society who enjoyed immunity from the penal code and were thus free to exploit these girls as they pleased. Evidently, here, too, the more talented beauties coming from the upper rung of society enjoyed somewhat fairer treatment than those born to temple prostitutes or recruited from destitute parents or as rich men's gifts or war booty. But because the masters of these prostitutes, the priests, enjoyed privilege both through their sacerdotal office and through royal patronage the devadasis' position was more abject than presumably of those organized in the brothels regarding whose rights and privileges some rules had been clearly enunciated. The very helplessness of the devadasis must have led to the widespread distribution of the institution and its prolonged continuation in the name of religion. The violent resistance and opposition of the hieratic section, esp. in South India when its abolition was proposed, testifies to the nature and measure of the priests' vested interest in the institution.

What happened to the devadasi when she grew old? Presumably not all of them enjoyed royal patronage. Those who did were employed in the state textile factory as we find in the solitary mention of the devadasi in Kautilya.105 Dancing was the only art she had learned and she could not practice it in old age, so that if she was one of those who did not enjoy royal care she would be reduced to destitution. Her profession prevented her from having a family and her long stay in the temple isolated her from society; therefore, even if she worked in a textile factory for a time she would face penury in real old age when both the temple and the community cut her off as wholly redundant. Thus at the end of a long career of double exploitation -- as a temple dancer and as the priests' concubine -- she faced complete destitution, for neither the state nor the temple had any obligation to look after her.

It is both rewarding and revealing to turn the pages of dictionaries on the subject of prostitution. Apart from older, i.e., Vedic and later Vedic terms like agru, hastra, atiskadvari, and vrsali, each of which emphasized one aspect of the public women, we have a host of later synonyms which varied with time and place. The standard Sanskrit lexicon Amarakosa says that vesya, varastri, ganika and rupajiva are synonyms. Jatadhara adds ksudra and salahhanjika; the Sabdaratnabali has a few more entries: jharjhara, sula, varavilasini, varavani, bhandahasini, while the Sabdamala adds lanjika, vandhura, kunta, karamrekha and varvati. The standard dictionary of Hemacandra has sadharanastri, panyangana, bhunjika and varavadhu to which the Rajanirghanta (lexicon) adds bhogya and smaravithika. Even a cursory glance at these names tell us that while some signify the profession itself others (like ksudra, sula, kunta, bhandahasini, bhunjika, bhogya or smaravithika) express society's sneer and contempt.

In the Brahmavaivaria Purana we read that a woman loyal to her husband is ekopatni (wife to one), if she goes to another she is a kulata.106 If she goes to three she is vrsali, a pumscali with a fourth, a vesya with a fifth and sixth, a yungi with a seventh and eighth. Above that she becomes a mahavesya whom no one of any caste may touch.107 Although it appears that all except the mahavesya may be touched that is not true. The Dharmasastras generally lay down that visiting a prostitute is a crime but since they also prescribe mild expiatory rites, it appears that society did not look upon it as either a heinous crime, or an irremediable sin.

As we have seen there is an evident ambivalence regarding the profession. The Samayapradipa, a late ritual text mentions the sight of a prostitute as an auspicious sign; a man gains his desire if he sees her on setting out on a journey. Other such items are obviously auspicious -- like a cow with its calf, a bull, horse or a chariot, fire with its flame turning to the right, a goddess, a full pitcher, garlands, banners, white rice, etc. The only apparently inauspicious item in the catalogue is the prostitute; yet a sight of her is regarded as a good omen. Similarly, soil from near a prostitute's house is an essential item for fashioning the image of Durga, the goddess of cardinal importance in Bengal. The mystery is solved when we remember the role of the prostitute in the earlier rituals where she had to copulate with a man or engage in a mock altercation with a neophyte, the brahmacarin, in all exchange of obscenities. In all of these instance. the same incentive is noticeable, viz, fertility. Her very profession involved repeated sexual relations with many men and so potentially symbolized fertility and the power of reproduction. For a community whose prosperity and wealth depended on ensuring fertility of the field and of cattle she symbolised the fertility principle. Hence her place in rituals. This association of fertility of field and cattle with the sexual act, especially, magnified in the prostitute's profession, is not unique to India. In all primitive societies this ritual association can be noticed. And since this has come down from a much older age, society did not dare to ignore it. Such beliefs die hard and in a primarily agricultural country like India the need to ensure fertility was too urgent to disregard. Besides, the unacknowledged awareness that the prostitute offered services indispensable to the society led to this ambivalence.

But apart from this aspect society unambiguously looked down upon the profession. All its efforts at segregation of the rest of the community from contagion through the prostitute's proximity, the rule of allocating an area in the south, Yama's direction, outside the common habitat, for the brothel, the prohibition against eating food offered by her, the rule against touching or associating with her signify this contempt. But this is obviously a later development, for the Kamasutra describes kings, courtiers, and the mercantile nobility of the cities and towns (and also of villages) as indulging in the company of courtesans. The attitude there is totally uninhibited. The Arthasastra, too, presupposes the existence of prostitution as an institution and has no value judgment regarding them. Underlying both of these texts is the assumption that this institution has been brought in to existence not by the perversity of certain women or by an aberration in any section but by a social need. A society which virtually forbade female education and relegated the woman to virtual subordination under the husband and in-laws reduced her to a chattel who could serve and for a time cater to the man's sexual need, but after children started coming and she became sorely taxed in her strenuous household obligations, nursing and bringing up the children, she was no "fun" any more. Altekar says: "courtesans had a peculiar position in ancient India. As persons who had sacrificed what was regarded as specially honourable in a woman, they were held in low estimation. But society treated them with a certain amount of consideration as the custodians of fine arts which had ceased to be cultivated elsewhere in society. Men who had a liking or love for music and dancing could not delight in the company of their own wives who ceased to possess these accomplishments from c 400 B.C. Though despised in one sense, courtesans began to be respected for their achievements in fine arts"108 Apart from this man must have desired companionship in his intellectual and aesthetic pursuits from men friends as well from women. This entirely normal and healthy desire could in no way be satisfied by the wife who, encumbered with household duties and children, soon lost youth and charm and whose husbands were therefore driven to prostitutes. But evidently not all men did so, and those who did, did it in a surreptitious manner. All that charmed a man in a prostitute was forbidden for the wife, who should be uneducated, demure and plainly dressed except on ritual occasions. She was primarily a house wife, busy with her chores, children and in-laws which left her little leisure for the cultivation of either her looks, dress or mental faculties. Society expected her to be good, hard working, devoted and obedient. This was bound to make her less attractive to her husband who craved for charm and companionship in a woman. This very need of combining sexual pleasure with intellectual-aesthetic companionship or simply with the charm of a good-looking, youthful person tastefully decked out in clothes, and jewellery attracted men to prostitutes. And repelled them, precisely because she could not be exclusively possessed, for she was enjoyed by many. In a society where women became a personal possession, a woman who could not be possessed individually provoked this ambivalence.

Women as Chattel

Woman has been a chattel in India ever since the later Vedic times when she was included in the list of daksina along with items like cattle, horses, chariots, etc. Such gifts were given to priests. Evidently they were enjoyed and then sold as slaves or prostitutes. Later in the epics we have references to women as gifts.109 Heroes are said to be rewarded with hosts of beautiful women in heaven; undoubtedly this is a reflection of earthly prizes given to heroes and eminent men. In classical literature too, we meet prostitutes as a decoration to courts, in military and hunting expeditions.110 Women also came with victories as booty and after serving the victorious generals and eminent military personages they would find their way to brothels. Thus Arjuna brought over the women of the enemy as booty;111 King Virata also expressed his pleasure of Arjuna's prowess by giving him pretty maidens.112 In the battlefield Karna declared that who ever pointed out Arjuna to him would receive a hundred well-dressed maidens from him.113 A king who does not give such girls is branded with the epithet rajakali (a koli, i.e., evil spirit of a king).114 At Draupadi's wedding a hundred slave girls in the early bloom of their youth were given away.115 Krsna entertained guests with pretty maidens.116 Also at Subbadra's wedding no less than a thousand girls were offered to guests for enjoyment in the drinking and bathing sports.117 Yudhisthira received ten thousand slave girls.118 King Sasabindu at his horse sacrifice gave away to priest hundreds of thousands of pretty girls;119 so did Bhagiratha.120 We also hear of thousands of beautiful girls as gifts in sraddhas.121 Instances can be multiplied.122 We are told that pretty young girls are natural gifts to Brahmans123 and that whoever gives this gift lavishly on this earth receives plentiful fruits in heaven, i.e., is rewarded with many nymphs there for his enjoyment.124 In the Mahabharata and in the Puranas we have numerous instances where the host entertains his guest by sending his own wife to him at night and/or other pretty women. In the Sanastujatiya section of the Mahabharata five marks of true friendship are enumerated; one of these is to share one's wife with a friend. Pretty girls alto formed part of the dowry. Two things are clear from these references. First, there must have been an easily available source of pretty young girls, a steady supply for instant enjoyment, or for giving away. One wondered where such girls could be found. Prostitutes' daughters is a ready answer. The Mahabharata has an episode: King Yayati's daughter Madhavi was given to Galava; the father lent her in lieu of money so that she could be hired out to four kings in turn for a year each. The king gave Galava handsome rewards with which he paid his school-leaving fees to his preceptor. Clearly here Madhavi is a money-earner to her father and the latter satisfies Galava by prostituting her to four different kings. Apart from this kind of distress sale in times of crisis, women as war-booty was another big source of supply. Wives caught in certain cases of adultery were also driven out; such unwanted women congregated in the brothel, as also women who could be bought and kept in palaces as occasional gifts. In the royal courts and rich households where many abducted women were kept for service and as status symbol, these proliferated and became yet another source of supply.

The second point that strikes us is that these women were regarded as inanimate objects of enjoyment. They figure in lists of material gifts, sacrificial fees, donations, entertainment, prizes, rewards, and dowry. And after the temporary enjoyment the recipient or donee could not but turn them loose; at least in most cases they did so. Thus there were hosts of women who eventually ended up in the brothel where they catered commercially to men. All along this dismal history we notice that women had very little initiative or choice about their destiny. They were pawned, lost or gained in battles, given as gifts at sacrifices and weddings, were relegated to the position of slaves and chattel in palaces and rich households, sexually enjoyed whenever their owners so desired and discarded when the desire abated.

They got paid only in brothels; in other instances they were only fed, clothed and decked out with jewellery so that their masters would find them attractive. Even in brothels their labour could, and frequently was, exploited, as many rules in the scriptures testify. Vatsyayana has a long section on how the harlots could play-act, feign, seduce, cheat and deceive their customers with or without the help of middlemen and procuresses. So does Damodaragupta teach novices how to make the best use of youth and charm and extort money from customers by hook or by crook. Other texts also teach similar lessons. None of these texts is authored by women. When after being trained in the art of deception, the prostitutes practised these arts, they are given foul names by the entire community. The very nature of the profession entailed a degree of deceit and the entire social set-up and its attitude encouraged it. Instead of accepting responsibility for it and admitting that prostitutes act as men force them to act and that they exist because they render a service that society needs, the entire blame is loaded on the prostitutes themselves. The situation was very different in Greece and Rome as Aristophanes, Menander or Terence's plays testify. Here in India the exploitation is redoubled because male customers frequently sought to cheat prostitutes of their rightful wages as the law books bring out clearly. And on top of this they tried to rob them of their rightful place in society. But when literature does not seek to be respectable but truthful as Kautilya and Vatsyayana's works or the Bhana (which decidedly belongs to a lower, less respectable genre). prostitutes come into their own. The customer looks upon them if not with positive respect yet not with contempt and society, betrays his awareness of the necessity and significance of their role and profession. But the major, respectable literary tradition is that which reflects the upper class reaction to the institution, a class which is not a bit averse to use their services but is yet too respectable to regard them as human beings. Once this attitude is fostered and becomes prevalent, depriving prostitutes of their fees, manhandling or insulting them is condoned. But this was only true of the common harlot with little charm and no accomplishment. The well-trained and well-preserved beauty, the ganika, who belonged to the upper class enjoyed the patronage of royalty or nobility and was comparatively secure and comfortable.

Since the prostitute's labour was regarded as a necessary evil -- the evil being much more magnified than the necessity -- male society seemed to bear her a grudge born of its fundamental ambivalence and this seems to have given it the right to exploit the victim, the common prostitute.

Another proof of the double standard is that although associating with prostitutes or accepting their food was punishable there is no rule against accepting benefits from them. Thus Ardhakasi gave away her vast wealth to various charitable institutions, and laid a vast sum at the Buddha's feet. In the Jain text Brhatkalpasutrabha125 we hear of many good and generous courtesans. One ran a picture gallery (as did Amrapali in Buddhist literature), others gave vast sums to the poor and the order. "When the courtesans grew rich they often set up works of public utility such as wells, temples, tanks, gardens, groves, bridges, chaityas and provided perfumes and rice."126 Records in the Tiruvarriyur temple show that the devadasis there made rich endowments. Evidently such works of public utility were enjoyed by all, i.e., by the community for whom it was a sin to touch a prostitute or to eat her food. Thus society had no hesitation in using the fruits of her labour while looking down upon her. Presumably, by enjoying such charitable institutions set up by her society was kindly deigning to offer her an opportunity to expiate for the sins of her profession, a profession which could not flourish without the patronage of a section of the male population. This section was punished only notionally.127

Society thus created situations in which many women were deprived of the right to remain respectable and be regarded so, so that such women were pushed to this profession. And they could live as prostitutes because a steady supply of male customers was ensured. These men found their wives dull as companions and so flocked to the prostitutes. In return society ostracized the prostitutes, but not their customers. Whether in the palace, or in the temples or in brothels they served men with an uncertainty regarding payment and the fear of molestation, mutilation, torture and death. They had scant provision for old age and infirmity. Their bodies, accomplishments, and gifts and charity were enjoyed by the community which otherwise treated them as untouchables and showered curses and imprecation on the profession itself, as if prostitutes alone could mike prostitution viable as a profession. Penalty for maltreatment or deceit is mentioned but one wonders how few wronged prostitutes could actually sue the state for their flouted rights and dues. Such was the precarious existence of prostitutes who could, with a few exceptions of really upper class or outstanding individuals, be exploited by men at will and with impunity.

_______________

Notes:

1. Cf. the sacrificer's wife being publicly questioned by the officiating priest regarding her secret lovers at the Varunapraghasa sacrifice: "with whom (plural) hast thou had secret affairs?" But though she confessed we hear of no penalty for her transgression.

2. Cf. the terms svatantra, independent, or svadhinayauvana, she who can freely enjoy her youth, as synonyms for the prostitute. Scriptures lay down that women are wards of their fathers in childhood, of their husbands in youth and of sons at old age.

3. A woman with whom men take turns (vara) i.e., one who can be possessed or enjoyed by different men in turns.

4. Described in the Mausalaparvan.

5. Eastern Punjab and western U.P.

6. VIII: 27, 30, 57-59.

7. ch. 70.

8. Samayamatrka III: 18.

9. III: 5: 14-26.

10. Visnupurana, ch. 37; Yajnavalk ya Smrti 240.

11. Megasthenes also bears this out in his account.

12. Women of the vanquished side.

13. Arthasastra II: 27, X: 1-3.

14. Padina-Purana, Srstikhanda 52: 97.

15. Cf. the Meghaduta, verse 35.

16. IV: 19, 9; 16, 19, 30.

17. I: 167, 4; II: 13, 12, 15, 17.

18. XV: e; Also the Pancavimsa Brahmana VIII: 1: 10; Kausitaki Br. XXVII: 1; Latyayana Srautasutra IV: 3: 11; Vajasaneyi Samhita XXX: 22.

19. XIV: 1: 36; XX: 136: 5. Also Aitareya Brahmana I: 27: 2.

29. III: 4: 11: 1

21. Vaja. Sam XXX: 12, Tait. Br. III: 4: 7: 1.

22. Vaja. Sam. XXX: 12; Tait Br. III: 4: 7.

23. Jalm. Br II: 404 ff, Kat. Gr. S. XII: 3: 6.

24. I: 43.

25. Vinaya Pitaka III: 138.

26. Cf. the English synonyms: courtesan, prostitute, harlot, strumpet, hetaira, whore trollop, slut etc. bearing different connotations and also signifying the social strata to which they belong.

27. Artha V: 2.

28. Ibid I: 20.

29. Ibid III: 20.

30. Ibid VIII: 17.

31. Kamasutra VI: 6: 54.

32. Arthasastra II: 27; Jatakas mention the vannadasi in II: 380; III: 59-63, 69-72; 475: 8.

33. Jataka III: 59-63.

34. R. Shamasastry (ed.): Kautilya's Arthasastra, Mysore, 1st edn., 1915, 6th edn. 1960, section on the ganikadhyaksa, superintendent of prostitutes.

35. Brhatkalpabha, (ed.) by Punyavijayaji, Bhavnayar, 1933-38. Kautilya includes reading and writing, Vatsyayana mentions reading and composing poems, and deciphering code words in her syllabus.

36. Manusamhita II: 67.

37. Probably to the first century A.D.

38. From Sanskrit word bhrti, fees.

39. Sanskrit parivyayam, expenses.

40. Cf. Diyavadana ed. by P.L. Vaidya, p. 218.

41. Jnatadharmakatha I.

42. Moti Chandra: The World of Courtesans, Vikash, 1973, p. 48.

43. Arthasastra IV: 12.

44. Yajnavalkyasamhita II: 295.

45. Kamasutra VI: I: 10, 12.

46. Ibid VI: 5: 1-6.

47. Ibid VI: 6: 31.

48. Ibid VI: 3: 28-31.

49. Arthasastra IV: 13.

50. V: 195: 18-19.

51. V: 15: 51-58.

52. III: 238 ff.

53. IV: 64: 24-29.

54. XII: 88: 14, 15; XIII: 125: 9 et al.

55. Mahabharata XIV: 85: 18.

56. Ibid XIV: 80: 32.

57. Ibid VII: 65: 6.

58. Ibid VII: 60: 1, 2, XII: 29: 65.

59. Ibid XV: 14: 4; 39: 20; XVII: 1: 4, XVIII; 6: 12, 13.

60 Mahabharata III: 186-7, VIII: 49: 76-78, XII: 64: 17; 30; XII: 96: 18, 19, 83, 85-6, 88; 106; 6ff. Also in the Ramayana II: 71; 22, 25, 26; VV: 20: 13.

61. XVI: 36, 48.

62. XII: 50.

63. IX: 51.

64. XVIII: 60, 61.

65. IV: 34: 17, 18.

66. XI: 30-35.

67. Mahabharata I; 115: 39.

68. I: 4: 34-41.

69. I: 4: 42.

70. I: 4: 49.

71. The synonyms varangana, varavilasini, varastri, varamukhya, etc., for the prostitute: the word vara, means 'turn.' This was true of the socially lower class of prostitutes.

72. Cf. the important drama Mrcchakatika where the heroine is a beautiful courtesan, accomplished in the various arts; she is described as 'an ornament to the city.'

73. Rahula Sankrityayana's Hindi tr., Benares 1936, pp. 73-88.

74. By the same translator, Benares 1964, pp. 321-325.

75. 47: 20: 23.

76. Sacred Books of the East, vol. XVII, pp. 106-7, 171-72.

77. Dhammapada commentary, Pali Text Socy., London, 1906-14, pp. 308-9.

78. Vinayapitaka; Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XX, pp. 360-61.

79. Cf. Samayamatrka VIII: 102, 103, 112, Kuttanimata 532. Sarngadharapaddhati, 4052.

80. Samayamatrka II: 28-80.

81. III: 33.

82. Kamasutra VII: 23, 24.

83. Yajnavalkya Smrti II: 290, Narada, 78, 79.

84. Kamasutra I: 62-65.

85. II: 290.

86. Esp. in Asvaghosa and Sudraka's dramas.

87. All this and much more are taught in the Kuttanimata of Damodaragupta and also in the Desopadesa IV: 12, 19, 30, 36.

88. Samayamatrka I: 40, 45. Kamasutra VII: 1: 13-17; See also Dasarupaka II: 34.

89. I: 4: 48.

90. II: 293.

91. Gautama, Dharmasutra XXII: 2.

92. IX: 259-60.

93. Kamasutra I: 4: 45.

94. Dasarupaka II: 8.

95. Cf. Visnupurana, ch. 70.

96. VI: 1: 4.

97. A woman in any case, like a child or a slave, was not allowed to own property. Mahabharata I: 82: 22, II: 71: 1; V: 33: 64.

98. VI: 2: 3-23.

99. 103: 4; also in Atri Samhita 267, Sanivarta S, 161; Parasara S. 10: 15, et al.

100. Kamasutra I: 3: 20.

101. Arthasastra II: 27.

102. As a mark of gratitude for divine favours received or as a gift given in faith for favours expected from the temple deity.

103. Ch. VIII.

104. Like those at Nasik, Kuda, Mahada, Junagad, Sitabenga Ratnagiri.

105. Arthasastra II: 23.

106. The term may have a secondary reference to tarnishing the family's (kula) prestige. However, the etymology is not clear.

107. Prakrtikhanda, chs. XXVII & XXVII.

108. The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, Motilal Banarasidas, 1st edn. 1938, pp. 181-82.

109. Cf. Ramayana II: 11, 22, 25, 26; IV: 20: 13; 24: 34, Mahabharata III: 186: 7, VIII; 49: 76-78, XII: 98; 46, XIII; 96: 18, 19, 82.

110. Cf. Kumarasambhava XVI: 36, 48; Raghuvamsa VII; 50.

111. Mahabharata II: 8: 27.

112. Ibid., IV: 34: 5.

113. Ibid, VIII: 38: 4ff.

114. Ibid, XII: 12: 366.

115. Ibid, I: 198: 16.

116. Ibid, IV: 72: 16.

117. Ibid, I: 221: 49, 50.

118. Ibid, II: 51: 8, 9; 52: 11, 29.

119. Ibid, VII: 65-6.

120. Ibid, VII: 60: 1, 2, XII: 29: 65.

121. Ibid, XV: 11: 4; 39: 20; XVII: 1: 4; XVIII: 6; 12, 13.

122. Cf. Sagara's gifts to Brahmins; Vainya's to the sage Atri, etc.

123. Op. cit., III: 315: 2, 6; 233: 4; IV: 18-21; XII: 68: 33, 171: 5; 173: 16 ff.

124. Op. cit., XIII: 145: 2.

125. Ed. Punyavijayaji, Bhavnagar, 1933-38.

126. Moti Chandra: The World of Courtesans, Vikash, 1973, p. 72.

127. The prajapatya expiatory rite was seldom honoured by actual performance as is borne out by a vast amount of literature.

Some Primary Sources

1. Bhoja: Srngaramanjarikatha, (ed.) Kalpana Munshi, Bombay, 1969.

2. Damodaragupta: Kuttanimata, (ed.) M. Kaul, Bibliotheke Indica, Calcutta, 1944.

3. Kautilya: Arthasastra, (ed.) R.P. Kangle, University of Bombay, Bombay, 1963 & 1965.

4. Ksemendra: Desopadesa & Narmamala, (ed.) M. Kaul, Poona, 1923.

Kalavilasa in Ksemendra: Laghu-kavya-samgraha, (ed.) Dr. Aryendra Sarman & others, Osmania University, 1961, pp. 219-271.

Samayamatrka in Ksemendra: Laghu-kavya-samgraha.

5. Manusamhita: Manavadharmasastra or the Institutes of Manu, (ed.) Graves Chamney Haughton, New Delhi, 1982 (Vols. I-IV).

6. Vatsyayana: Kamasutra, (ed.) Pancanana Tarkaratpa, Calcutta, 1334 B.S.

7. Somesvara: Manasollasa, (ed.) G.K. Shringondeker, Baroda, 1939.

8. Uddyotansasuri: Kuvalayamala, (ed.) A.N. Upadhye, Bombay, 1959.

9. Mahendra Suri: Nammayasundarikatha, (ed.) Pratibha Trivedi, Bombay, 1960.

Bibliography

A.S. Altekar: The Position of Woman in Hindu Civilization. Motilal Banarasidas, 1st. edn. 1938.

S.C. Banerji: Prantavasini. Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar, 1985.

R. Burton & F.F. Arbuthnot (ed.): The Kamasutra of Vatsyayana, London, 1965.

Moti Chandra: The World of Courtesans. Delhi, 1973.

H.C. Chakladar: Social life in Ancient India. Calcutta, 1929.

S. Chatterji: Devadasi. Calcutta, 1945.

P.C. Chunder: Kautilya on Love and Morals, Calcutta, 1970.

R. Fick: Social Organization in North-East India in Buddha's Time (tr. by S.K. Mitra). Calcutta, 1920.

H.V. Gunther: Yuganaddha. Benares, 1952.

J.B. Horner: Women Under Primitive Buddhism. Delhi, 1945.

E.O. James: Marriage and Society. London, 1959.

R.C. Majumdar: Corporate Life in Ancient India, (Vols, I & II). Bombay.

J.W. McGrindle: Ancient India as Described in Classical Literature, Westminster, 1901.

R.L. Mehta: Pre-Buddhist India. Bombay, 1939.

J.I. Meyer: Sexual life in Ancient India. London, 1930.

A. Mitra Shastri: India as seen in the Kuttanimata of Damodargupta. Delhi, 1975.

C. Sachau (ed.) Alberuni's India. London, 1910.

(ed.) Dandin's Dasakumaracarita, Leipzig. Vol. II, 1902.

S.C. Sarkar: Some Aspects of Earliest History of India. London, 1928.

R. Sewell: A Forgotten Empire. London, 1924.

R. Shamasastry (ed.): Kautilya's Arthasastra.

J.B. Singh: Social life in Ancient India. New Delhi, 1981.

L. Sternbach: "Legal position of prostitutes according to Kautilya's Arthasastra", Journal of American Oriental Society (JAOS), Vol. 71, 1955, pp. 25-60.

R.N. Sharma: Ancient India According to Manu. Nag Publishers, 1980.

A.M. Shastri: India as Seen in Kuttanimata of Damodaragupta. Delhi, 1960.

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Mirra Alfassa
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/5/21

Hurrychund Chintamon had played an important part in the early Theosophical Society and in the move of Blavatsky and Olcott from New York to India. He had been their chief Indian correspondent during 1877-1878, when he was President of the Bombay Arya Samaj (a Vedic revival movement with which the early Theosophical Society was allied). After Blavatsky and Olcott arrived in Bombay in 1879 and met Chintamon in person, they discovered that he was a scoundrel and an embezzler, and expelled him from the Society. Chintamon came to England in 1879 or 1880, and stayed until 1883, when he returned to make further trouble for the Theosophists in India. Perhaps the fact that Chintamon was in England when Burgoyne first met Theon led some to conclude that they were the same person. But this cannot be the whole story. Ayton claimed very clearly and repeatedly that he had proof of Burgoyne’s being in company with Chintamon. In a letter in the private collection, [The Rev W. A.] Ayton writes:

I have since discovered that Hurrychund Chintaman the notorious Black Magician was in company with Dalton at Bradford. By means of a Photograph I have traced him to Glasgow & even to Banchory, under the alias of Darushah Chichgur. Friends in London saw him there just before his return to India. This time coincides with that when I noticed a great change in the management. Chintaman had supplied the Oriental knowledge as he was a Sanskrit scholar & knew much. Theon was Chintaman! Friends have lately seen him in India where he is still at his tricks.

Before her disillusion[ment] with Chintamon, Blavatsky had touted him to the London Theosophists as a “great adept.” After the break that followed on her meeting with him in person, Chintamon allied himself to the rising Western opposition to esoteric Buddhism exemplified by Stainton Moses, C.C. Massey, William Oxley, Emma Hardinge Britten, Thomas Lake Harris, and others. From this formidable group, Burgoyne first contracted the hostility towards Blavatsky’s enterprise that would mark all his writings.

Chintamon also appears in connection with “H.B. Corinni,” the otherwise unidentifiable (and variously spelled) “Private Secretary” of Theon, who was thought by the police to be just another of Burgoyne’s aliases. Ayton, however, believed Corinni to be Chintamon’s son, who he said offered Blavatsky’s old letters for sale to the President of the London Branch of the Theosophical Society, Charles Carleton Massey. [Ayton to unnamed American neophyte, 11 June 1886, based on what he had been told by Massey.] The flaw in Ayton’s thesis is of course the existence of a real and independent Max Theon, of whom we, unlike Ayton, have documentary evidence. Nonetheless, after more than a hundred years, the whole tangle of misidentifications involving Chintamon, “Christamon,” and “Metamon” [see B.9.c-3] with the Order cannot be entirely resolved.

-- Excerpt from The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor: Initiatic and Historical Documents of an Order of Practical Occultism, by Joscelyn Godwin

Max Théon (17 November 1848 – 4 March 1927) perhaps born Louis-Maximilian Bimstein, was a Polish Jewish Kabbalist and Occultist. In London while still a young man, he inspired The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor in 1884...

There is some dispute over whether Théon taught Blavatsky at some stage; the Mother in The Agenda says he did...

Théon gathered a number of students, including Louis Themanlys and Charles Barlet, and they established the "Cosmic Movement". This was based on material, called the Cosmic Tradition, received or perhaps channelled by Théon's wife. They established the journal Cosmic Review, for the "study and re-establishment of the original Tradition"...

Louis Themanlys was a friend of Matteo Alfassa, the brother of Mirra Alfassa (who would later associate with Sri Aurobindo and become The Mother), and in 1905 or 1906 Mirra travelled to Tlemcen to study occultism under Théon (Sujata Nahar, Mirra the Occultist). The Mother mentions that Sri Aurobindo and Théon had independently and at the same time arrived at some similar conclusions about evolution of human consciousness without having met each other. The Mother's design of Sri Aurobindo's symbol is very similar to that of Théon's, with only small changes in the proportions of the central square (Mother's Agenda, vol 3, p. 454, dated December 15, 1962).

-- Max Théon, by Wikipedia

Mirra Alfassa
Personal
Born: Blanche Rachel Mirra Alfassa, 21 February 1878, Paris, France
Died: 17 November 1973 (aged 95), Pondicherry, India
Resting place: Pondicherry, India
Religion: Hinduism
Nationality: French, Indian
Notable work(s): Prayers And Meditations, Words of Long Ago, On Thoughts and Aphorisms, Words of the Mother
Pen name: The Mother
Institute: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Auroville
Religious career
Students: Satprem, Nolini Kanta Gupta, Nirodbaran, Amal Kiran, Pavitra

Mirra Alfassa (21 February 1878 – 17 November 1973), known to her followers as The Mother, was a French spiritual guru, an occultist and a collaborator of Sri Aurobindo, who considered her to be of equal yogic stature to him and called her by the name "The Mother". She founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and established Auroville as a universal town; she was an influence and inspiration to many writers and spiritual personalities on the subject of Integral Yoga.

Mirra Alfassa was born in Paris in 1878 to a Sephardic Jewish bourgeois family. In her youth, she traveled to Algeria to practice occultism along with Max Théon. After returning, while living in Paris, she guided a group of spiritual seekers. In 1914, she traveled to Pondicherry, India and met Sri Aurobindo and found in him "the dark Asiatic figure" of whom she had had visions and called him Krishna. During this first visit, she helped publish a French version of a periodical Arya which serialized most of Sri Aurobindo's post-political prose writings. During First World war she was oblised to leave Pondicherry. Thereafter a 4-year stay in Japan, in 1920, she returned to Pondicherry for good. Gradually, as more and more people joined her and Sri Aurobindo, she organised and developed Sri Aurobindo Ashram. In 1943, she started a school in the ashram and in 1968 established Auroville, an experimental township dedicated to human unity and evolution. She left her body on 17 November 1973 in Pondicherry.

The experiences of the last thirty years of Mirra Alfassa's life were captured in the 13-volume work Mother's Agenda by Satprem who was one of her followers.

Early life

Childhood


Mirra Alfassa as a child c. 1885


Mirra Alfassa

Mirra Alfassa was born in 1878 in Paris to Moïse Maurice Alfassa a Turkish Jewish father, and Mathilde Ismalun an Egyptian Jewish mother. They were a bourgeois family, and Mirra's full name at birth was Blanche Rachel Mirra Alfassa. She had an elder brother, Mattéo Mathieu Maurice Alfassa, who later held numerous French governmental posts in Africa. The family had just migrated to France a year before Mirra was born. Mirra was close to her grandmother Mira Ismalum (née Pinto), who was a neighbour and who was one of the first women to travel alone outside Egypt.[1][2]

Mirra learnt to read at the age of seven and joined school very late at the age of nine. She was interested in various fields of art, tennis, music and singing, but was a concern to her mother owing to an apparent lack of permanent interest in any particular field.[3][4] By the age of 14 she had read most of the books in her father's collection, which is believed to have helped her achieve mastery of French.[5] Her biographer Vrekhem notes that Mirra had various occult experiences in her childhood but knew nothing of their significance or relevance. She kept these experiences to herself as her mother would have regarded occult experiences as a mental problem to be treated.[6] Mirra especially recalls at the age of thirteen or fourteen having a dream or a vision of a luminous figure whom she used to call Krishna but had never seen before in real life.[7][8][9]

As an artist and traveller


Mirra Alfassa at the age of 24 with son Andre, circa 1902

In Paris

In 1893 after graduating from school, Mirra joined Académie Julian[10][11] to study art. Her grandmother Mira introduced her to Henri Morisset, an ex-student of the Académie; they were married on 13 October 1897.[12] Both were well off and worked as artists for the next ten years, during an era known for having many impressionist artists. Her son André was born on 23 August 1898. Some of Alfassa's paintings were accepted by the jury of Salon d'Automne and were exhibited in 1903, 1904 and 1905.[13] She recalls herself being a complete atheist at this time, yet was experiencing various memories which she found were not mental formations but spontaneous experiences. She kept those experiences to herself and developed an urge to understand their significance. She came across the book Raja yoga by Swami Vivekananda, which provided some of the explanations she was looking for. She also received a copy of the Bhagavad Gita in French which helped her considerably in learning more about these experiences.[14]

Max Théon and Alma Théon


Mirra Alfassa in Theon's house at Tlemcen, Algeria (1906–1907)

During this time Mirra made the acquaintance of Louis Thémanlys who was the head of the Cosmic Movement, a group started by Max Théon. Through reading a copy of Cosmic Review, she attended Thémanlys's speeches and became active in the group. For the first time, on 14 July 1906, she journeyed alone to the Algerian city of Tlemcen to meet with Max Théon and his wife Alma Théon. She consequently travelled twice more, in 1906 and 1907, to their estate at Tlemcen and there practised and experimented with the teachings of Max Théon & Alma Théon.[15]

Mirra Alfassa and Henri separated in 1908; she then moved to 49 Rue des Lévis, Paris, living alone in a small apartment and involving herself in discussions with Buddhists and Cosmic movement circles. During this time she also made the acquaintance of Madame David Néel.[16] Mirra married Paul Richard in 1911 who after serving four years in the army had involved himself in philosophy & theology. He had come to know Mirra when he was in discussions with Max Théon. Vrekhem, a biographer of Mirra, informs that Richard was undergoing a legal problem in inheriting children from his first marriage to a Dutch woman, and had asked Mirra for help which she had accepted by marrying him.[17]

First meetings with Aurobindo and Japan


Dorothy Hodgson (Dutta), Mirra Alfassa, Paul Richard & Japanese friends in Tokyo c.a 1918

Richard was also an aspiring politician and had attempted to win election to the French senate from Pondicherry, which was then under French control. Despite his initial failure he wanted to make a second attempt, and on 7 March 1914 Mirra along with Richard set sail to India and reached Pondicherry by 29 March.[18][19] After reaching Pondicherry, they fixed an appointment with Sri Aurobindo who was then settled in Pondicherry and had suspended all his activity for Indian independence from British rule. When she first met Sri Aurobindo, Mirra recognized in him the person whom she used to see in her dreams. During a later meeting, she experienced a complete silence of the mind, free from any thought.[20]

Richard lost the elections to Paul Bluysen whom he had supported in previous elections. Richard decided to publish a review of the yoga of Aurobindo, and to be called Arya and be bilingual in both English and French. The Journal was first published on 15 August 1914 and ran for the next six and half years. Consequent journals published were later made into complete books.[21] By this time World War I had erupted and Indian revolutionaries were being prosecuted by the British for being spies of the German army. Although Aurobindo had totally dispensed his activities against British rule he was considered unsafe and all the revolutionaries were asked to move to Algeria. Aurobindo had refused this offer, so the British had written to the French government in Paris asking to hand over revolutionaries staying at French Pondicherry. This request came to Mirra's brother, Mattéo Alfassa, who by then was foreign minister and who filed the request under other working files never to be looked upon again.[22][23]

On the insistence of the British in 1915, Richard was ordered to move out of Pondicherry. After an unsuccessful attempt to stay, both Mirra and Richard left for Paris on 22 February 1915. After a few years Richard was ordered to promote French trade in Japan (which was then an ally of France and Britain) and China. Mirra left for Japan along with Richard, never to return to Paris again.[24]

Mirra and Richard stayed in Japan and made acquaintances among the Indian community. Their time in Japan was relatively peaceful, and they spent the following four years there. On 24 April 1920 Mirra returned with Richard to Pondicherry[25][26] accompanied by Dorothy Hodgson. Mirra moved to live near Aurobindo in the guest house at Rue François Martin. Richard did not stay long in India; he spent a year traveling around North India returning to France and remarried in England after divorcing Mirra. After working a few years as a professor in the United States he died in 1968.[27] On 24 November 1920 due to a storm and heavy rain, Aurobindo asked Mirra and Dorothy Hodgson (later known as Dutta) to move into Aurobindo's house and she started living in the house along with other residents. [28][29]

Foundation of the ashram

Integral yoga

With time many influenced by the Arya Magazine and others who had heard about Aurobindo started to come to his residence either permanently to reside or to practise Aurobindo's yoga. Mirra was initially not totally accepted by the other household members and was considered an outsider. Aurobindo considered her to be of equal yogic stature and started calling her "the mother", and she was known to the whole community as such from then on. Around 1924 onwards Mirra was starting to organise the day-to-day functioning of the household and slowly the house was turning into an ashram with many followers flowing in every day.[30] After 1926 Aurobindo started to retire from regular activities and put his complete focus towards yogic practises. The community had grown to 85 members by then and the group had slowly turned into a spiritual ashram.

Integral yoga and the Siddhi Day

On 24 November 1926, later declared as Siddhi Day (Victory Day) and still celebrated by Sri Aurobindo Ashram,[31] Mirra and Aurobindo declared that overmind consciousness had manifested directly in physical consciousness, allowing the possibility for human consciousness to be directly aware and be in the overmind consciousness[note 1].

Aurobindo had received a few complaints against Mirra on the daily running of the ashram. To settle this matter in finality Aurobindo declared 'The Mother' to be in sole charge of further activities of the ashram through a letter in April 1930.[32] By August 1930, the ashram members had grown to a number of 80 to 100 residents, a self-sustaining community with all basic amenities fulfilled. [33]

Aurobindo and Mirra's work and principles of yoga was named by them: integral yoga, an all-embracing yoga. This yoga was in variance with older ways of yoga because the follower would not give up the outer life to live in a monastery, but would be present in regular life and practise spirituality in all parts of life. [34]

By 1937 the ashram residents had grown to more than 150, so there was a need for an expansion of buildings and facilities, helped by Diwan Hyder Ali, the Nizam of Hyderabad who had made a grant to the ashram for further expansion. Under the guidance of Mirra, Antonin Raymond, the chief architect, assisted by Franticek Sammer and George Nakashima, constructed a dormitory building. By this time the second world war erupted delaying the construction but was finally completed after ten years and was named Golconde.[35] In 1938 Margaret Woodrow Wilson, the daughter of US President Woodrow Wilson, came to the ashram and chose to remain there for the rest of her life.[36]

By 1939 World War Two had broken out. Although some of the members of the ashram may have supported Hitler indirectly because Britain was attacked, both Mirra and Aurobindo publicly declared their support for the Allied forces, mainly by donating to the Viceroy's war fund, much to the surprise of many Indians.[37]

School in ashram and death of Sri Aurobindo

On 2 December 1943 Mirra started a school for about twenty children inside the ashram. She considered this was a considerable movement away from usual life in the ashram, which was until then about practising total renunciation of the outside world. However she found that the school would gradually align to the principles of Sri Aurobindo's integral yoga.[38] The school later became known as the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education. From 21 February 1949 she started a quarterly magazine called "The Bulletin" in which Aurobindo published a series of eight articles under the title "The supramental manifestation upon earth" wherein for the first time he wrote about transitional being between man and superman.[39]


Mirra's painting: ‘Divine Consciousness Emerging from the Inconscient’, 1920–1925

Aurobindo's health had deteriorated and he died on 5 December 1950. This was a very difficult experience for Mirra.[39] All the activities in the ashram were suspended for twelve days, after which Mirra had to decide the future course of the ashram. Mirra decided to take up the entire work of the ashram and also to continue the integral yoga internally. The years from 1950 to 1958 were the years where she was mostly seen by her disciples.[40]

Pondicherry, India

On 15 August 1954 French Pondicherry became a union territory of India. Mirra declared dual citizenship for India and France.[41] Jawaharlal Nehru visited the ashram on 16 January 1955 and met with Mirra for a few minutes. This meeting cleared many doubts he had about the ashram. During his second visit to the ashram on 29 September 1955, his daughter Indira Gandhi accompanied him. Mirra had a profound effect on her, which developed into a close relationship in later years.[42] Mirra continued to teach French after the death of Aurobindo. She started with just simple conversations and recitations, which later expanded into deeper discussions about integral yoga where she would read a passage from Aurobindo's or her own writings and comment on them. These sessions grew into a seven-volume book called Questions and Answers. [43]

After 1958, Mirra slowly started to withdraw from outer activities. The year 1958 was also marked by greater progress in yoga.[44] She stopped all her activities from 1959 onwards to devote herself completely towards yoga. On 21 February 1963, on her 85th birthday, she gave her first darshan from the terrace that had been built for her. From then on she would be present there, on darshan days where visitors below would gather around to catch a glimpse of her.[45] Mirra Alfassa regularly met with one of her disciples Satprem. He had recorded all their conversations, which later he gathered in a volume of 13 books called Mother's Agenda.


Mirra Alfassa playing tennis

Establishing Auroville

Main article: Auroville


Matrimandir, in Auroville, near Pondicherry

Mirra had published an article titled "The Dream" in which she suggested a place on earth that no nation could claim as its sole property, for all humanity with no distinction.[46] In 1964 it was finally decided to build this city. On 28 February 1968 they drew up a charter for the city, Auroville, meaning City of the Dawn (derived from the French word aurore), a model universal township where one of the aims would be to bring about human unity. The city still exists and continues to grow. [47] Today Auroville is managed by a foundation set up by the Indian government.

Later years

Many politicians visited Mirra on a regular basis for her guidance. She had visits from V.V. Giri, Nandini Satpathy, Dalai Lama, and especially Indira Gandhi who was in close contact with her and often visited her for guidance. [48] By the end of March 1973 she became critically ill. After 20 May 1973 all meetings were cancelled. She gave her final darshan on 15 August of the same year, visiting the outside balcony where thousands of followers were waiting to catch a glimpse of her. Mirra died at 7:25 p.m on 17 November 1973. On 20 November she was buried next to Aurobindo in the courtyard of the main ashram building.[49]


Mirra Alfassa on a 1978 stamp of India

References

Notes

1. A detailed description of the Overmind is provided in Book I ch.28, and Book II ch.26, of Aurobindo's philosophical opus The Life Divine

Citations

1. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 4–7.
2. Mother's Chronicles Bk I; Mother on Herself – Chronology p.83.
3. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 8.
4. Iyengar 1978, pp. 6–7.
5. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 10.
6. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 11–13.
7. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 14.
8. Bulletin of the Sri Aurobindo Centre of Education, 1976 p.14, Mother on Herselfpp.17–18.
9. Bulletin 1974 p.63.
10. "The Mother". sriaurobindoashram.org. 2013. Archived from the original on 9 November 2014. Retrieved 11 March 2013.
11. Mirra Alfassa, paintings and drawings, P. 157-158
12. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 15–20.
13. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 24.
14. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 29.
15. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 37–67.
16. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 73–75.
17. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 84.
18. Interview with Prithwindra Mukherjee, The Sunday Standard, 15 June 1969; The Mother by Prema Nandakumar, National Book Trust, 1977, p9.
19. Karmayogi no date, Van Vrekhem 2001.
20. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 140–155.
21. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 160–172.
22. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 175–177.
23. Purani 1982, pp. 9–12[full citation needed]
24. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 178–180.
25. Iyengar 1978, p. 182.
26. Collected Works 1978, volume 8, pp. 106–107.
27. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 215–216.
28. Vrekhem 2004, p. 225.
29. Mother's Agenda 1979, volume 2, pp. 371–372.
30. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 228–248.
31. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 250–251.
32. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 258–259.
33. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 286–287.
34. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 270–271.
35. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 303–305.
36. Nirodbaran 1972, Karmayogi[full citation needed]
37. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 310–326.
38. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 334–335.
39. Jump up to:a b Vrekhem 2004, pp. 353–354.
40. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 385.
41. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 408–409.
42. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 412–413.
43. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 414.
44. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 479–486.
45. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 541.
46. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 547–549.
47. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 559–562.
48. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 573.
49. Vrekhem 2004, pp. 593–598.

Bibliography

• Heehs, Peter (2008), The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, Columbia University Press, ISBN 978-0-231-14098-0
• Vrekhem, Georges Van (2004), the Mother the story of her life, Rupa & Co, ISBN 8129105934
• Jones, Constance; Ryan, James D., eds. (2007), Encyclopedia of Hinduism, New York: Facts on File Inc, ISBN 978-0-8160-5458-9

Further reading

• Anon., The Mother – Some dates
• Aurobindo, Sri (1972). Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo (Birth Centenary ed.). Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry.
• (1972b) The Mother, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry
• Iyengar, K. R. S. (1978). On the Mother: The Chronicle of a Manifestation and Ministry (2nd ed.). Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education / Pondicherry. (2 vols, continuously paginated)
• Alfassa, Mirra (1977) The Mother on Herself, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry
• Collected Works of the Mother (Centenary ed.). Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry. 1978(17 vol set)
• Mother's Agenda. New York, NY: Institute for Evolutionary Research. 1979(13 vol set)
o (date?) Flowers and Their Messages, Sri Aurobindo Ashram
o (date?) Flowers and Their Spiritual Significance, Sri Aurobindo Ashram
• Das, Nolima ed., (1978) Glimpses of the Mother's Life vol.1, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry
• Mukherjee, Prithwindra (2000), Sri Aurobindo: Biographie, Desclée de Brouwer, Paris
• Nahar, Sujata (1986) Mother's chronicles Bk. 2. Mirra the Artist, Paris: Institut de Recherches Evolutives, Paris & Mira Aditi, Mysore.
o (1989) Mother's chronicles Bk. 3. Mirra the Occultist. Paris: Institut de Recherches Evolutives, Paris & Mira Aditi, Mysore.
• K.D. Sethna, The Mother, Past-Present-Future, 1977
• Satprem (1982) The Mind of the Cells (transl by Francine Mahak & Luc Venet) Institute for Evolutionary Research, New York, NY
• Van Vrekhem, Georges: The Mother – The Story of Her Life, Harper Collins Publishers India, New Delhi 2000, ISBN 81-7223-416-3 (see also Mother meets Sri Aurobindo – An excerpt from this book)
• Van Vrekhem, Georges: Beyond Man – The Life and Work of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, HarperCollins Publishers India, New Delhi 1999, ISBN 81-7223-327-2

Partial bibliography

• Commentaries on the Dhammapada, Lotus Press, Twin Lakes, WI 2004, ISBN 0-940985-25-X
• Flowers and Their Messages, Lotus Press, Twin Lakes, WI ISBN 0-941524-68-X
• Search for the Soul in Everyday Living, Lotus Press, Twin Lakes, WI ISBN 0-941524-57-4
• Soul and Its Powers, Lotus Press, Twin Lakes, WI ISBN 0-941524-67-1

External links

• Writings by The Mother

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Thomas H. Burgoyne (1855-1894)
by Encyclopedia.com
Updated Mar 4 2021

Thomas H. Burgoyne, an astrologer and founder of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, was born April 14, 1855, and grew up in his native Scotland. Spontaneously psychic, he claimed that as a child he came into contact with the Brotherhood of Light, a group of discarnate, advanced beings who attempt to guide the destiny of humankind. Today that group continues as the Church of Light. At a later date he met a M. Theon, purported to be an earthly representative of the brotherhood who taught Burgoyne about the Brotherhood.

Burgoyne moved to the United States around 1880 and soon afterward his writings began to appear in various periodicals. He was brought into contact with Norman Astley of Carmel, California, who also claimed to be in contact with the Brotherhood of Light. Astley suggested that Burgoyne write a set of lessons to introduce the brotherhood's teachings to the public, and Burgoyne accepted Astley's hospitality at Carmel while he worked on the lessons. They were published in 1889 as The Light of Egypt. The writing of the lessons occasioned the establishment of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor as an esoteric occult order and outer expression of the Brotherhood of Light. The Hermetic Brotherhood was structured with three leaders, a seer, a scribe/secretary, and an astrologer. Burgoyne became the scribe.

As Burgoyne understood it, the Brotherhood of Light was an occult order formed to oppose the dominant religious powers of the day in ancient Egypt. As the members died, they continued the brotherhood from their new plane of being.

Burgoyne wrote several more books, including The Language of the Stars (1892), Celestial Dynamics (1896), and a second volume of The Light of Egypt (1900). He died in March 1894, in Humboldt County, California, still a relatively young man, before the last two were published. Henry and Belle Wagner continued his work. Henry Wagner owned the Astro-Philosophical Publishing House in Denver, Colorado, which published Burgoyne's books. Belle M. Wagner succeeded Burgoyne as scribe of the Hermetic Brotherhood.

Occult historian Arthur Edward Waite claimed that Burgoyne was, in fact, a name assumed by Thomas Henry Dalton, who had been imprisoned in Leeds, England, in 1883, on charges of fraud. Waite asserts that it was only after his release that he met a Peter Davidson (also known as M. Theon and Norman Astley), the real founder of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor. Waite asserts that Dalton fled to the United States to escape the scandal of his arrest and continued the work of the order in California.

Sources:

Burgoyne, Thomas H. Celestial Dynamics. Denver: Astro-Philosophical Publishing, 1896.

——. The Language of the Stars. Denver: Astro-Philosophical Publishing, 1892.

——. The Light of Egypt. 2 vols. Denver: Astro-Philosophical Publishing, 1889, 1900.

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Biography of Thomas Burgoyne
by Blackcatcaboodle.com
Accessed: 3/5/21

Thomas Henry Burgoyne (born Thomas Dalton) 1855 – 1894 was a Scottish occultist, who founded the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor in Britain and was an editor of the The Occult Magazine. Burgoyne moved to America, wrote The Light of Egypt, and founded the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light in America. Burgoyne was a staunch advocate of homeopathy, and he was a colleague of William Alexander Ayton, Emma Hardinge Britten, Peter Davidson, Gerard Anaclet Vincent Encausse, Hargrave Jennings, Kenneth Robert Henderson MacKenzie, Paulos Metamon, Paschal Beverly Randolph, Max Theon, John Yarker and many others.

Thomas H Burgoyne, an astrologer and founder of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, was born April 14, 1855, and grew up in his native Scotland. Spontaneously psychic, he claimed that as a child he came into contact with the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light, a group of discarnate, advanced beings who attempt to guide the destiny of humankind. Today that group continues as the Church of Light. At a later date he met a Max Theon, purported to be an earthly representative of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light who taught Burgoyne about the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light. Burgoyne write a set of lessons to introduce the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light‘s teachings to the public. They were published in 1889 as The Light of Egypt. The writing of the lessons occasioned the establishment of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light as an esoteric occult order and outer expression of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light. The Hermetic Brotherhood of Light was structured with three leaders, a seer, a scribe/secretary, and an astrologer. Burgoyne became the scribe. As Burgoyne understood it, the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light was an occult order formed to oppose the dominant religious powers of the day in ancient Egypt. As the members died, they continued the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light from their new plane of being.

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Thomas H. Burgoyne [Thomas Dalton]

Unlike the case of Peter Davidson, there are no descendants or local historians anxious to bear witness to the virtues and achievements of Thomas Henry Dalton (1855?-1895? [Date of birth deduced from prison records; death record searched for, without success, by Mr. Deveney.]), better known as T.H. Burgoyne, whose misdemeanors are amply chronicled in the Theosophical literature [B.6]. The “Church of Light,” a still active Californian group which descended from Burgoyne’s teachings, disposes of his life up to 1886 as follows:

T.H. Burgoyne was the son of a physician in Scotland. He roamed the moors during his boyhood and became conversant with the birds and flowers. He was an amateur naturalist. He also was a natural seer. Through his seership he contacted The Brotherhood of Light on the inner plane, and later contacted M. Theon in person. Still later he came to America, where he taught and wrote on occult subjects. [“The Founders of the Church of Light.”]

While this romanticized view cannot entirely be trusted, there is no doubt that Burgoyne was a medium and that he was developed as such by Max Theon. Burgoyne told Gorham Blake that he “visited [Theon’s] house as a student every day for a long time” [B.8.k], and gave this clue to their relationship in The Light of Egypt:

… those who are psychic, may not know WHEN the birth of an event will occur, but they Feel that it will, hence prophecy.

The primal foundation of all thought is right here, for instance, M. Theon may wish a certain result; if I am receptive, the idea may become incarnated in me, and under an extra spiritual stimulus it may grow and mature and become a material fact.

Burgoyne was making enquiries in occult circles by 1881, when he wrote to [The Rev W. A.] Ayton asking to visit him for a discussion of occultism. The clergyman was shocked when he met this “Dalton,” who (Ayton says) boasted of doing Black Magic [B.6.f], and forthwith sent him packing [B.6.k]. Later Ayton would be appalled to learn that it was this same young man with whom, as “Burgoyne,” he had been corresponding on H.B. of L. business. Having decided that the mysterious Grand Master “Theon” was really Hurrychund Chintamon, Ayton deduced that the young Scotsman must have learned his black magic from this Indian adventurer.

This lovely picture raises as many questions as it answers. Adam McLean tells me in a private e-mail (3-18-08) that the book Philalethes Illustratus is about alchemy. He adds:

The ouroboros is a well know symbol in alchemy, as is the interwoven triangles. These were often brought together in alchemical emblems. There was a particular focus on this image in the early 18th century, through its use as an illustration in the influential 'Golden Chain of Homer', written or edited by Anton Josef Kirchweger, first issued at Frankfurt and Leipzig in four German editions in 1723, 1728, 1738 and 1757. A Latin version was issued at Frankfurt in 1762, and further German editions followed. In the late eighteenth century Sigismund Bacstrom made a rather poor translation of the work into English. Blavatsky was very interested in this work and apparently wanted to write a commentary on it. Part of this was published in the Theosophical Society Journal 'Lucifer' in 1891. The Rev W. A. Ayton, the alchemical enthusiast, and contact of Blavatsky, used a variation of this image as a letterhead on his papers.

This is a copy of the letterhead of Rev W. A. Ayton which Adam McLean sent me. Ayton is mentioned in Blavatsky's diary in 1878 and 1879 (BCW I, p 410, 421 and II, p. 42). Note that where Blavatsky's seal has astrological connotations with for instance the sign of the Leo in the right-bottom corner, Ayton has an actual lion in exactly the same spot as well as a sun and moon. Adam McLean notes (3-18-08) that Ayton was a member of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor and his seal is similar to theirs.

It's clear at this point that the Theosophical Seal has a western esoteric background. Seen through the Eliphas Levi seal the cross was turned into an Egyptian cross, which makes sense as an Egyptian source for the early theosophical adepts was hinted at in their name: the Brotherhood of Luxor (whether a connection with the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor should be assumed is an open question of theosophical history).

The circle on top with the swastika inside is present in Blavatsky’s seal. I have not been able to find any precursors to that. In this respect Blavatsky’s seal was clearly the example for the Theosophical Seal.

-- Early history of the Theosophical Seal, by Katinka Hesselink 2006, 2008

Hurrychund Chintamon had played an important part in the early Theosophical Society and in the move of Blavatsky and Olcott from New York to India. He had been their chief Indian correspondent during 1877-1878, when he was President of the Bombay Arya Samaj (a Vedic revival movement with which the early Theosophical Society was allied). After Blavatsky and Olcott arrived in Bombay in 1879 and met Chintamon in person, they discovered that he was a scoundrel and an embezzler, and expelled him from the Society. Chintamon came to England in 1879 or 1880, and stayed until 1883, when he returned to make further trouble for the Theosophists in India. Perhaps the fact that Chintamon was in England when Burgoyne first met Theon led some to conclude that they were the same person. But this cannot be the whole story. Ayton claimed very clearly and repeatedly that he had proof of Burgoyne’s being in company with Chintamon. In a letter in the private collection, Ayton writes:

I have since discovered that Hurrychund Chintaman the notorious Black Magician was in company with Dalton at Bradford. By means of a Photograph I have traced him to Glasgow & even to Banchory, under the alias of Darushah Chichgur. Friends in London saw him there just before his return to India. This time coincides with that when I noticed a great change in the management. Chintaman had supplied the Oriental knowledge as he was a Sanskrit scholar & knew much. Theon was Chintaman! Friends have lately seen him in India where he is still at his tricks.

Before her disillusion[ment] with Chintamon, Blavatsky had touted him to the London Theosophists as a “great adept.” After the break that followed on her meeting with him in person, Chintamon allied himself to the rising Western opposition to esoteric Buddhism exemplified by Stainton Moses, C.C. Massey, William Oxley, Emma Hardinge Britten, Thomas Lake Harris, and others. From this formidable group, Burgoyne first contracted the hostility towards Blavatsky’s enterprise that would mark all his writings.

Chintamon also appears in connection with “H.B. Corinni,” the otherwise unidentifiable (and variously spelled) “Private Secretary” of Theon, who was thought by the police to be just another of Burgoyne’s aliases. Ayton, however, believed Corinni to be Chintamon’s son, who he said offered Blavatsky’s old letters for sale to the President of the London Branch of the Theosophical Society, Charles Carleton Massey. [Ayton to unnamed American neophyte, 11 June 1886, based on what he had been told by Massey.] The flaw in Ayton’s thesis is of course the existence of a real and independent Max Theon, of whom we, unlike Ayton, have documentary evidence. Nonetheless, after more than a hundred years, the whole tangle of misidentifications involving Chintamon, “Christamon,” and “Metamon” [see B.9.c-3] with the Order cannot be entirely resolved.

By October 1882, Burgoyne was in Leeds, working in the menial trade of a grocer. [This is the trade ascribed to him in the court records. The records of the Leeds Constabulary call him “medium and astrologer.”] Here he tried to bring off an advertising fraud [B.6.d] so timid as to cast serious doubt on his abilities as a black magician! As a consequence, he spent the first seven months of 1883 in jail. He had probably met Theon before his incarceration, and, as we have seen, worked for a time in daily sessions as Theon’s medium. On his release he struck up or resumed relations with Peter Davidson, and became the Private Secretary to the Council of the H.B. of L. when it went public the following year.

Burgoyne contributed many letters and articles to The Occult Magazine, usually writing under the pseudonym “Zanoni.” He also contributed to Thomas Johnson’s Platonist [see B.7.c], showing considerably more literacy than in the letter that so amused the Theosophists [B.7.b]. But he never claimed to be an original writer. In the introduction to the “Mysteries of Eros” [A.3.b] he states his role as that of amanuensis and compiler. The former term reveals what the H.B. of L. regarded as the true source of its teachings – the initiates of the Interior Circle of the Order. The goal of the magical practice taught by the H.B. of L. was the development of the potentialities of the individual so that he or she could communicate directly with the Interior Circle and with the other entities, disembodied and never embodied, that the H.B. of L. believed to populate the universes. If Gorham Blake is to be credited [B.6.k], Davidson and Burgoyne “confessed” to him that Burgoyne was an “inspirational medium” and that the teachings of the Order came through his mediumship. Stripped of the bias inherent in the terms “medium,” and “confess,” there is no reason to doubt the statement of Burgoyne’s role. In the Order’s own terminology, however, his connection with the spiritual hierarchies of the universe was through “Blending” – the taking over of the conscious subject’s mind by the Initiates of the Interior Circle and the Potencies, Powers, and Intelligences of the celestial hierarchies – and through the “Sacred Sleep of Sialam” (see Section 15, below).

Shortly after arriving in Georgia, for all the Theosophists’ efforts to intercept him [B.6.1], Burgoyne parted with Davidson. From then on, the two communicated mainly through their mutual disciples, squabbling over fees for reading the neophytes’ horoscopes and over Burgoyne’s distribution of the Order’s manuscripts, with each man essentially running a separate organization. This split may be reflected in the French version of “Laws of Magic Mirrors” [A.3.a], which was prepared in 1888 and which bears the reference “Peter Davidson, Provincial Grand Mater of the Eastern Section.”

Burgoyne made his way from Georgia first to Kansas, then to Denver, and finally to Monterey, California, staying with H.B. of L. members as he went. According to the Church of Light, Burgoyne now met Normal Astley, a professional surveyor and retired Captain in the British Army. After 1887 Astley and a small group of students engaged Burgoyne to write the basic H.B. of L. teachings as a series of lessons, giving him hospitality and a small stipend. Astley is actually said to have visited England to meet Theon – something which is hardly credible in the light of what is known of Theon’s methods. We do know, however, that Burgoyne advertised widely and took subscriptions for the lessons, and that they were published in book form in 1889 as The Light of Egypt; or The Science of the Soul and the Stars, attributed to Burgoyne’s H.B. of L. sobriquet “Zanoni.”

With The Light of Egypt, the secrecy of the H.B. of L.’s documents was largely broken, and they were revealed – to those who could tell – to be fairly unoriginal compilations from earlier occultists, presented with a strongly anti-Theosophical tone. Only the practical teachings were omitted. The book was translated into French by Rene Philipon, a friend of Rene Guenon’s, and into Russian and Spanish, and a paraphrase of it was published in German. We present [B.8] the most important reactions to this work, which has been reprinted frequently up to the present day.

After the political upheavals in Tibet in the 1950s, Pallis became active in the affairs of the Tibetan [Tibet] Society, the first Western support group created for the Tibetan people. Pallis also was able to house members of the Tibetan diaspora in his London flat. Pallis also formed a relationship with the young Chögyam Trungpa, who had just arrived in England. Trungpa asked Pallis to write the foreword to Trungpa’s first, autobiographical book, Born in Tibet. In his acknowledgment, Trungpa offers Pallis his “grateful thanks” for the “great help” that Pallis provided in bringing the book to completion. He goes on to say that “Mr. Pallis when consenting to write the foreword, devoted many weeks to the work of finally putting the book in order”.

Pallis studied music under Arnold Dolmetsch, the distinguished reviver of early English music, composer, and performer, and was considered “one of Dolmetsch's most devoted protégés”. Pallis soon discovered a love of early music—in particular chamber music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—and for the viola da gamba. Even while climbing in the region of the Satlej-Ganges watershed, he and his musically-minded friends did not fail to bring their instruments.


Viola da gamba

Pallis taught viol at the Royal Academy of Music, and reconstituted The English Consort of Viols, an ensemble he had first formed in the 1930s. It was one of the first professional performing groups dedicated to the preservation of early English music. They released three records and made several concert tours in England and two tours to the United States.

According to the New York Times review, their Town Hall concert of April 1962 “was a solid musical delight”, the players having possessed “a rhythmic fluidity that endowed the music with elegance and dignity”. Pallis also published several compositions, primarily for the viol, and wrote on the viol’s history and its place in early English music.

The Royal Academy of Music, in recognition of a lifetime of contribution to the field of early music, awarded Pallis an Honorary Fellowship. At age eighty-nine his Nocturne de l’Ephemere was performed at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London; his niece writes that “he was able to go on stage to accept the applause which he did with his customary modesty.” When he died he left unfinished an opera based on the life of Milarepa...



Pallis described "tradition" as being the leitmotif of his writing. He wrote from the perspective of what has come to be called the traditionalist or perennialist school of comparative religion founded by René Guénon, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, and Frithjof Schuon, each of whom he knew personally.

Frithjof Schuon (/ˈʃuːɒn/; German: [ˈfʀiːtˌjoːf ˈʃuː.ɔn]) (18 June, 1907 – 5 May, 1998), also known as ʿĪsā Nūr ad-Dīn ʾAḥmad (عيسیٰ نور الـدّين أحمد),[1] was an author of German ancestry born in Basel, Switzerland. He was a spiritual master, philosopher, and metaphysician inspired by the Hindu philosophy of Advaita Vedanta and Sufism and the author of numerous books on religion and spirituality. He was also a poet and a painter...

Schuon's father was a concert violinist and the household was one in which not only music but literary and spiritual culture were present.


Violin

-- Frithjof Schuon, by Wikipedia

As a traditionalist, Pallis assumed the "transcendent unity of religions" (the title of Schuon's landmark 1948 book) and it was in part this understanding that gave Pallis insight into the innermost nature of the spiritual tradition of Tibet, his chosen love. He was a frequent contributor to the journal Studies in Comparative Religion (along with Schuon, Guénon, and Coomaraswamy), writings on both the topics of Tibetan culture and religious practice as well as the Perennialist philosophy.

-- Marco Pallis, by Wikipedia

Burgoyne’s last years were spent in unwonted comfort if, as the Church of Light says, Dr. Henry and Belle M. Wagner – who had been members of the H.B. of L. since 1885 – gave $100,000 to found an organization for the propagation of the Light of Egypt teachings. Out of this grew the Astro-Philosophical Publishing Company of Denver, and the Church of Light itself, reformed in 1932 by Elbert Benjamine (=C.C. Zain, 1882-1951). Beside Burgoyne’s other books The Language of the Stars and Celestial Dynamics, the new company issued in 1900 a second volume of The Light of Egypt. This differs markedly from the first volume, for it is ascribed to Burgoyne’s spirit, speaking through a medium who was his “spiritual successor,” Mrs. Wagner. As the spirit said, with characteristically poor grammar: “Dictated by the author from the subjective plane of life (to which he ascended several years ago) through the law of mental transfer, well known to all Occultists, he is enabled again to speak with those who are still upon the objective plane of life.”

Max Theon wrote to the Wagners in 1909 (the year after his wife’s death), telling them to close their branch of the H.B. of L. [Information given to Mr. Deveney by Henry O. Wagner.] By that time, the Order had virtually ceased to exist as such, while the Wagners continued on their own, channeling doctrinal and fictional works. Their son, Henry O. Wagner, told Mr. Deveney that he, in turn, received books from his parents by the “blending” process, to be described below. In 1963 he issued an enlarged edition of The Light of Egypt, which included several further items from his parents’ records. Some of these are known to have circulated separately to neophytes during the heyday of the H.B. of L. (see Section 10, below), while others were circulated by Burgoyne individually on a subscription basis to his own private students (all of whom were in theory members of the H.B. of L.) from 1887 until his death. These include a large body of astrological materials and also treatises on “Pentralia,” “Soul Knowledge (Atma Bodha)” and other topics. They are perfectly consistent with the H.B. of L. teachings, but appear to have been Burgoyne’s individual production, done after his separation from Peter Davidson, and they are not reproduced here.

-- The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor: Initiatic and Historical Documents of an Order of Practical Occultism, by Joscelyn Godwin

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Church of Light
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/5/21


Official Emblem of the Church of Light

The Church of Light was incorporated November 2, 1932 in Los Angeles, California. Its mission is “to teach, practice, and disseminate The Religion of The Stars, a way of life for the Aquarian Age, as set forth in writings of C.C. Zain.” The Church is the continuation of an initiatic organization, the Brotherhood of Light, established in the same city in 1915. The 1932 reorganization as The Church of Light was a response to ordinances passed that year by Los Angeles County “prohibiting both the teaching and practice of astrology.”[1]

Brotherhood of Light


Elbert Benjamine AKA C. C. Zain

The Church is the continuation of an initiatic organization, the Brotherhood of Light, established also in Los Angeles in 1915. The Brotherhood of Light lessons, on the three branches of occult science, were written between the spring of 1910 and 1950 by Elbert Benjamine (also known as C.C. Zain, born Benjamin Parker Williams).[2] Benjamine had been invited in 1909 by the leaders of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor (HBofL) in Denver to join them as successor to Minnie Higgin, who had been the order’s astrologer until her death that year.[3] The surviving Council members proposed to Benjamine that he rewrite the order’s teachings in a systematic form as the basis for a new organization that would “bring occultism to the life of ordinary people.”[4] This change was inspired by orders from Max Theon to close the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor following the death of his wife the previous year.[5] After five years of preparation and study, Elbert Benjamine came to Los Angeles in 1915 and began to hold meetings. “At that point it still operated as a secret society. On November 11, 1918, the Brotherhood of Light opened its doors to the public, offering classes and a home-study course.”[6]

Influences

Astro-Philosophical Publications, founded in Denver in 1892, was a publishing arm of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor created by Henry and Belle Wagner. The authors it published included Thomas H. Burgoyne and Sarah Stanley Grimke, both cited by Benjamine as sources of Brotherhood teachings. He accorded the same status to Ghost Land and Art Magic by Emma Hardinge Britten.[7] Another early HBofL member, Genevieve Stebbins, relocated to California from England in 1917 with her husband Norman Astley, and provided assistance to the Benjamines in establishing the Brotherhood of Light.[8]

Founders

The 1932 reorganization as The Church of Light was a response to ordinances passed that year by Los Angeles County “prohibiting both the teaching and practice of astrology.” The three founding officers were

• C.C. Zain, pen name of Elbert Benjamine (1882-1951) - President
• Fred Skinner (1872-1940) - Vice President
• Elizabeth D. Benjamine (1875-1942) - Secretary-Treasurer

Schisms

Following the 1943 remarriage of Elbert Benjamine, his son and heir apparent Will Benjamine departed in acrimony and established the Stellar Ministry, “a short-lived religious group that taught a mixture of Hermeticism and Christianity.” [9] Another more recent schism in the Church of Light, is the Light of Egypt, headed up by a past president, Linden Liesge.

Activities

The 21 volume Brotherhood of Light lessons are publicly accessible to nonmembers of the church, but only members participate in a system of written examinations covering each volume. Each examination passed advances the member one degree. Seven volumes each are devoted to astrology, alchemy, and magic. Students who complete all 21 degrees (including examinations) are awarded a “Hermetician’s Certificate.”[9]

Church headquarters were located through 1999 at 117 (later 2341) Coral Street in Los Angeles, which had been the home of the Benjamines. After several years based in Brea, California, in 2005 it relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Regular classes and services are held at its headquarters, 2119 Gold Avenue, many of which are viewable as live streams and archived on the church website. The current president is Christopher Gibson.[10]

See also

• Genevieve Stebbins
• Emma Hardinge Britten
• Max Theon
• Hermetic Brotherhood of Light
• Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
• Esotericism
• Theosophy
• Occult
• Mysticism
• Spiritualism

References

Citations

1. Gibson, Christopher, "The Religion of the Stars: The Hermetic Philosophy of C.C. Zain",Gnosis Magazine, Winter 1996, 63.
2. Volume XVI titled 'Stellar Anatomy' Copyright, 1947, Serial No. 197 Reprinted December, 1966 The Church of Light, Los Angeles, California
3. "Elbert Benjamine", Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology, 5th ed. (Detroit: Gale, 2000.)
4. Horowitz, Mitch, Occult America (New York: Bantam, 2009), 217
5. Godwin, Chanel, and Deveney, eds., The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor. (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1995), 39.
6. Gibson, Christopher, "The Religion of the Stars: The Hermetic Philosophy of C.C. Zain,Gnosis Magazine, Winter 1996,61.
7. Zain, C.C., Laws of Occultism, (Los Angeles: The Church of Light, 1994), 152,156.
8. "C.C. Zain", Greer, John Michael, The New Encyclopedia of the Occult.(St. Paul, MN: LLewellyn, 2003, 527.
9. Gibson, Christopher, "The Religion of the Stars: The Hermetic Philosophy of C.C. Zain", Gnosis Magazine, Winter 1996, 62.
10. Meet the Staff

Bibliography

Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology, 5th ed. (Detroit: Gale, 2000.) "Elbert Benjamine."
Gibson, Christopher, "The Religion of the Stars: The Hermetic Philosophy of C.C. Zain," Gnosis Magazine, Winter 1996
Greer, John Michael, The New Encyclopedia of the Occult.(St. Paul, MN: LLewellyn, 2003)
The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor: Initiatic and Historical Documents of an Order of Practical Occultism.Joscelyn Godwin, Christian Chanel, and John Patrick Deveney, eds. (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1995)
Horowitz, Mitch, Occult America. (New York: Bantam, 2009)
Zain, C.C. (Elbert Benjamine), Laws of Occultism. (Los Angeles: The Church of Light, 1994)

Sources

• The Church of Light, "Vision for the 21st Century"[1]
• The Church of Light, "Where We Are Located."[2]

External links

• Church of Light
Authority control
• VIAF: 143417692
• WorldCat Identities: lccn-no2004045954

1. Vision for the 21st Century
2. Where We Are Located