A Fallen Idol E-Book

F. Anstey

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

In the cool of an early morning, more than a hundred years ago, an elderly priest was sitting under the pilastered portico of a little temple, just outside the village of Chandra-gurry, in Southern Mysore.
It was the ordinary village of the place and period, fortified by a low mud wall, and consisting of lines of two-storied houses, gay with broad vertical stripes of red and white, and roofed with tile or ragged Palmyra leaves. On three sides it was surrounded by peepul and tamarind groves, and level plantations of rice, cotton, and millet, intersected by gleaming water-channels; on the other, the ground rose, by gradual slopes and plateaux, with stretches of velvety grass and stately trees, towards the rugged heights beyond.
The temple stood on a knoll at the head of the first of these slopes — a graceful building, with its cluster of snow-white domes arranged in pyramid form, crowned by an elaborately carved pinnacle, upon which rose a pole, ending in a gilded ball.

Leseprobe

A FALLEN IDOL

F. ANSTEY(1856–1934)

1886

© 2022 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782383832881

CONTENTS

THE PROLOGUE

THE STORY

1 … Self-Restraint

2 … A Remonstrance

3 … From a Pedestal

4 … Last Touches

5 … Explanations

6 … The Private View

7 … A Painful Interview

8 … Reopened Wounds

9 … Put to the Test

10 … Conviction

11 … Mystifications

12 … For Old Sake’s Sake

13 … In Which the Luck Turns More than Once

14 … Anteus the Second

15 … The Day After

16 … Braved!

17 … Brutum Fulmen

THE PROLOGUE

In the cool of an early morning, more than a hundred years ago, an elderly priest was sitting under the pilastered portico of a little temple, just outside the village of Chandra-gurry, in Southern Mysore.

It was the ordinary village of the place and period, fortified by a low mud wall, and consisting of lines of two-storied houses, gay with broad vertical stripes of red and white, and roofed with tile or ragged Palmyra leaves. On three sides it was surrounded by peepul and tamarind groves, and level plantations of rice, cotton, and millet, intersected by gleaming water-channels; on the other, the ground rose, by gradual slopes and plateaux, with stretches of velvety grass and stately trees, towards the rugged heights beyond.

The temple stood on a knoll at the head of the first of these slopes — a graceful building, with its cluster of snow-white domes arranged in pyramid form, crowned by an elaborately carved pinnacle, upon which rose a pole, ending in a gilded ball.

It was not an orthodox Hindu temple — that was down below, a great staring structure of red granite dominating the humble roofs of the village — it was the place of worship for such portion of the population as belonged to the sect of Jains. The Jains profess a perverted form of Buddhism, under which reverence is claimed for no less than seventy-two earthly Buddhas — namely, twenty-four of a past era, twenty-four of the present, and twenty-four who are still to come. These Buddhas they call “Jinas,” “Arhats,” or “Tirthankars;” they are saints who have lived on earth as mere mortals, but who have vanquished vice and virtue, and obtained nirvana, or emancipation from further existence on earth.

The last saint of the present era was Mahâvîra, who was translated more than two thousand years ago. To him this particular temple had been dedicated, and his image consequently was the largest and the most luxuriously installed in the idol chamber, where each of the twenty-four was represented in effigy.

The temple was the private property of the old priest, Acharya Chick, who, though subject to the supervision and control of the head guru of the Jains, was free in most respects to conduct his ministrations as he pleased.

Chick, however, being a good and earnest old man, with the simplicity of a child, was strictly conscientious in the performance of his duties, took an honest pride in the appointments of his temple, and derived no more than a modest livelihood from his priestly calling.

As he sat outside on the stone bench, where he was accustomed to collect his thoughts for the service which began the working day, he was troubled by doubts and perplexities which had only of late begun to assail his tranquil faith.

Quite recently he had been called upon to include a new saint in his Pantheon, and to one of his conservative instincts, this was disturbing.

It came about in this wise. Some twenty years or so before, a lad had run wild about the village bazaar; he was of unknown parentage, and adopted by one of the workers in brass who formed a section of the inhabitants and were Jains to a man.

There was nothing, to an uninitiated eye, to distinguish him from other naked children, unless it was the superior force of will and ingenuity which procured him the leadership in all mischievous enterprises, until one day, when the guru from the Jain headquarters at Belligola came over on his periodical visit of inspection and made a startling discovery.

It was two thousand years, as has been said, since the last tirthankar of the present era had passed away, and the first of the succeeding one was already considerably overdue.

Now the guru had perceived that this expected tirthankar had actually taken up his mortal habitation in the body of this lad! There could be no possible mistake on this point, for the body bore every one of the mystic signs and marks which denoted his high mission.

This revelation, as might be expected, made all the difference in the world to the youth’s prospects. For he could not be left to develop unaided — since he might conceivably fail, and then all the business of incarnating a tirthankar would have to be gone through over again; he must be trained, and trained carefully.

So they put him under fit teachers, and the mystic name of Chalanka was conferred upon him, and he studied natural magic, in which he soon became a proficient, at the feet of an eminent yogi of great sanctity and uncleanliness.

It was said, indeed, that Chalanka did not invariably make the highest use of his occult knowledge, and that his miracles, to the end of his days, rather resembled the more ill-natured kind of practical joke; but these miracles will have that tendency when the saint is enthusiastic and young

Chalanka grew up strong, bold, by no means uncomely, and in time he passed his novitiate, becoming a yati or ascetic of the first class; he cut off his hair, wore robes of a tawny hue — which became much tawnier — and confined his personal luggage to a bundle of peacock’s feathers and an earthen pot.

He devoted his energies to contemplating the abstract, which he did with perseverance and entire success; he overcame all human passions and infirmities for that was expected from him — and he trained himself to regard his body as a bubble, though it need hardly be said it was a bubble which had no connection whatever with soap.

And from time to time he stalked through the Jain quarter of the village, blowing a chank [conch] shell to attract attention, and soliciting the alms of the charitable, and occasionally his wanderings led him unconsciously around the compound of the big Brahman temple, much to the annoyance of the priests and the amusement of the dancing girls.

Years went on, and his wisdom was pronounced ripe for gathering; he had his remaining hairs plucked out by the roots; he unrobed at his simple meals, and disciples were told off to attend upon him, to hearken to his discourses and store them up for future transmission.

Unfortunately no records have been preserved of his doctrines, which seem to have been found too complicated or too advanced to be divulged at present. All that is known of him at this stage is that he inspired his disciples with a salutary fear.

Another period elapsed, and Chalanka dismissed his grateful disciples, and established himself in a sort of hermitage up amongst the rocks, where he was to remain for years, silent, in self-centred contemplation.

He was not often to be seen there by the curious, for he possessed the power of making himself invisible. Sometimes at night in the thicket near the Brahman temple a shadowy form was seen gliding and prowling, the projection from the holy hermit who sat like stone in the cell far above among the heights; sometimes, a fierce wild laugh rang out over the crags and cliffs, and those who heard knew then that Chalanka was in one of his holy frenzies, and would not have disturbed him for their lives.

And then, in the most unforeseen way, he died. They found his corpse lying stiff and swollen at the foot of a precipice, which, had he been an ordinary person, it would have been said he had fallen over.

Now nobody had expected him to die for years to come, still less to cease from existence with such an entire absence of parade; but he was the first of the new era, and consequently entitled to make his own precedents. He was obviously dead, and the only thing to be done was to burn his body and cast the ashes into water.

Chalanka’s untimely end brought to the surface a question which many had secretly entertained in his lifetime. Was he, in sober truth, a tirthankar at all? Compared with his predecessors, he did not show to great advantage; his fame was limited, his supernatural feats were of a low and even pettifogging order, and he had enriched the faith with no fresh precepts of any value.

And those, too, who had had opportunities of observing him (amongst whom was Acharya Chick himself) could not but see certain shortcomings — a disposition to arrogance, for instance, a hankering after admiration, traces of greed, unscrupulousness, cruelty, which, without being serious in themselves, were slightly inconsistent with a complete conquest of the flesh.

Upon the whole, a dead man has perhaps a better chance of being canonised if the matter is postponed for a hundred years, as in the Roman Catholic faith, than when, as here, his claims must be settled at his decease; but none of Chalanka’s co-religionists chose to play the advocatus diaboli in this case, feeling that his admission amongst the Jain divinities would reflect distinction upon the village and temple, and not improbably have a stimulating effect upon the brass-founding trade, in which they were all largely interested.

And the head guru, to whom the point was referred, not unnaturally backed his original opinion; Chalanka was a genuine arhat, the first of a new order, and, as such, he was entitled to the reverence of all devout Jains, and an image must consequently be set up in his honour, and assigned a niche in the temple of his native village.

The guru’s decision was of course final, the idol-carver was set to work, and soon produced a small seated image, which was as faithful a representation of the real Chalanka as could be expected or desired.

The new idol had only spent one night under the temple roof on the morning which witnessed Acharya Chick’s perplexity beneath the portico — a perplexity of which it was the unconscious cause.

For the worthy Jain, though toy humble-minded to think of questioning, even to himself, the wisdom of his superior, could not consider his latest deity an acquisition, His little Pantheon had been quite large enough before; he was too old to relish having a new object of veneration thrust upon him in this way.

And so, in apportioning the day’s offerings on the previous evening, he had, without perhaps any conscious intention, reserved the least tempting fruits and the more faded flowers as the share of the new comer; and now he was not quite certain whether he felt more self-reproach or repugnance as the time drew near when he must again enter the inner shrine.

However, these unpleasant meditations of his were to receive as unpleasant an interruption. From his seat he could command a view of the winding path which led up the knoll from the village gates, and now he saw advancing a tall and stately figure, in which his eyes were keen enough to recognise his bitterest enemy, Ram Chunga, the Brahman who presided over the massive temple where Brahma, and Siva and Parvati, and Geneswara, their son, were worshipped.

He was evidently coming to the Jains’ temple; he was almost at the palisade already, and Chick felt a certain flutter at the prospect of such a visitor, much as might a Dissenting minister of the old school on seeing a shovel hat and a pair of gaiters coming down his garden path.

The minister feels he has as good a right to the title of “reverend” as the bishop; but then, he is only too well aware that the bishop is of a different opinion. So Acharya Chick claimed to be of the Brahman caste, and had an uncomfortable suspicion all the time that Ram Chunga would probably deny his right to any caste worth belonging to.

He thought he could guess the other’s errand. It had come to Ram Chunga’s ears that the Jain temple contained, as such buildings frequently did, an exceedingly handsome image of Siva, and on one or two occasions when the rival priests had met in the bazaar the Brahman had made offers to purchase an idol which, as he urged, could be but out of place in an alien sanctuary.

That Ram Chunga had any real wish to acquire the Siva was more than the Jain could believe; he was probably acting out of pure aggravation, or with a tyrannical desire to dictate and domineer, which Chick was determined to withstand, even while his mild and gentle nature shrank from the impending wrangle.

As the Brahman came in with a general and highly offensive air of precaution against moral and physical contamination, the Jain rose and saluted him as courteously as he could bring himself to do.

Ram Chunga declined the seat which the other indicated on the stone bench, and, remaining at some distance, began by saying that the errand which alone could bring him to such a place would probably be guessed.

If, said the Jain, his visitor had come to renew his offer to purchase the Siva, he must, with every respect, make the same answer as before.

The Brahman replied that he no longer proposed to purchase the image;-he now demanded that it should be surrendered to him without a price.

That, said Acharya Chick, was obviously unjust. The Siva was his own, he had brought it at his own expense from one of the Jain temples at Padan-guddy, how then could the Brahman claim it from him?

As the ministrant of Siva, the azure-throated, Ram Chunga replied, it was intolerable to him to know that the image of that mighty one was forced to share the offerings and suffer the companionship of such a herd of insignificant little demigods as he understood were venerated in the temple of the Jain.

To which Acharya Chick answered peaceably that his brother was mistaken. It was true indeed that many of the Vedantic emblems were to be found in Jain temples, and he instanced Erabma, Indra, Indrani, and the bull Nandi, as well as Siva; but they were not at any time considered as more than devatas or attendants upon the various tirthankars, and this particular image of Siva was a mere ornament, and never received offerings or adoration.

His reply did not improve matters, for the Brahman retorted that this only increased the impiety. Why should Siva go unhonoured while these tawdry little tirthankars were loaded with gifts? Which were more powerful, a handful of deified men or a god who was before all things began?

“You mistake, Ram Chunga, you do not grasp the spirit of our creed”(the Brahman’s thin lips curled contemptuously); “we lay our humble tributes of fruit and flowers before the emblems of these our arhats, the pure existences, the sages, the teachers, but with no purpose to please or propitiate. They themselves are infinitely beyond our poor homage; but to honour what is pure and good is beneficial in itself, and acts of devotion purify the heart, though there is no other reward.”

“And this newest god of yours,” said the Brahman, “who and what was he?”

The Jain gave an embarrassed cough. “You speak of Chalanka, who was but yesterday amongst us and now has passed away? He, too, is worthy of our worship; he had overcome the eight great crimes, fasting in silence (even as did the blessed Mahâvîr, who for months kept his eyes fixed upon the tip of his nose); he had vanquished all human passion and infirmity, and now therefore that he has crossed the ocean of existence, his life remains to us for an example.”

The Brahman made a guttural sound of intense contempt. “An example truly!” he exclaimed; and then coming nearer and lowering his voice as he bent his cold keen eyes upon the other’s face, he asked, “Know you how he died — and why? Hear then!”

It was a wild story that was poured into the Jain’s unwilling ears, a story of stolen joys, of detection, hideous punishment and fierce despair; it was small wonder that Acharya Chick utterly refused to believe it.

“Where is this perjured dancing girl of yours?” he said. “I would fain question her.”

“The girl?” said the Brahman drily. “Where not you, Acharya Chick, nor any man will see her more. And this man, forsooth, is to take his place amongst your divinities — his shrine is to be decked whilst the idol of sacred Siva craves garlands in vain! Nay, this shall not be. I, his unworthy priest, protest against this last outrage. Let this image depart, which you know not how to honour — let it depart, I say!”

Mild as the Jain was, he was not going to be bullied in his own temple; the attack on Chalanka had roused his flagging enthusiasm; besides, the Brahman’s demand was too unconscionable to be treated seriously.

“I have spoken, O Ram Chunga,” he said; “leave me to administer my own temple and go in peace.”

“You refuse?” said Ram Chunga, and his brows grew black.

“I refuse!” said Acharya Chick.

“Then hear my warning. Not long can such obstinacy go unpunished. Our gods at least have not dreamed themselves to eternal apathy. They can reward, and, what is more, they can punish. Quick are they to feel a slight — yea, and to revenge it. Have you never heard of the bag of insufficient peas, and the insulted idol of Mahadeva, which is Iswara, which is Siva?”

And, as the Jain made no reply, Ram Chunga told him the story: how a pious but parsimonious worshipper repaired to the village of Tady Malingy, where are many temples to Mahadeva; how, being desirous to pay each shrine the compliment of an offering if he could do so with prudence, he solved the problem by procuring a bag of peas, a single one of which he laid before each idol. How, unhappily for him, there were not enough peas to go round, and one idol was left out in the cold, at which he was highly offended, and mortified into the bargain by the insolent boasting of the other gods, who seem, by the way, to have been somewhat easily elated. How, in his anger, the incensed idol transported itself miraculously across the river in chase of the unsuspecting worshipper, who was trudging home in calm satisfaction with his own economical genius. And how something too dreadful to describe befell the pilgrim, and how the idol evermore refused to return, and all its former companions and their temples lie fathoms deep under the sand to this day.

This marvellous tale Ram Chunga repeated with impressive solemnity. “Such is Siva, the glorious, the conqueror of death, in whose sacred name I now speak.” He concluded, “Think once, aye and twice, ere you thwart him!”

Acharya Chick rose with a mild dignity. “I must leave you, O Ram Chunga,” he said; “it is the hour at which I begin my ministrations.”

The Brahman shrugged his shoulders. “Upon your own head be the consequences,” he said. “You are warned, and I say to you, Acharya Chick, that this image will yet be mine!”

He turned and strode down the path with his aquiline nose high in the air, while the Jain stood in the portico for a few moments, watching the Brahman’s scarlet cap as it burned in the sun every time he passed out of the shade, before he went into his temple with a new reason for disquietude.

He could not, he would not, believe so terrible a slander, and yet he wished more than ever that the head guru had not been so positive about the new idol. He was more determined than before to observe a marked moderation in the offerings he laid before it.

Thus resolved, he shook off his slippers on the marble pavement of the vestibule under the central dome, and unfastened the heavy and richly inlaid doors which communicated with the idol-chamber, a large, cool, and dimly lighted place, where the air was charged with the accumulated fragrance of constantly renewed blossoms of the champak and a kind of oleander.

The whole of one wall was elaborately carved and divided into two tiers of highly ornamented niches. In the centre of the upper tier, supported by two other arhats, sat Mahâvîra, the presiding deity of the temple, whose image was painted yellow and bathed in a flood of mysterious glory from an unseen opening above, through which came the only light that was admitted.

In the lower tier were the other tirthankars, each idol painted its characteristic colour, and in a separate compartment; its sacred cognizance carved below, and the mystic triple umbrella forming a kind of finial over its head. The attitude was the same in every case: all the idols squatted cross-legged, their hands being laid, one on the other, over the feet, whose soles turned upwards; most of the images had been hung with earrings and necklaces of more or less value, and before each niche was a kind of slab or altar for the reception of offerings.

In the corner, by the doors, stood the image of Siva, which the Brahman coveted for his own temple; a large and imposing figure, pot-bellied, painted a sickly blue, with a superfluous eye in the middle of its forehead, and more arms than even a deity could manage with either comfort or dexterity.

It had not been found possible to accommodate Chalanka in the tier of niches, but they had contrived a very comfortable little recess and a temporary altar for him in the opposite wall. His image, it may be said, was in its general character of the same pattern as the rest, though — owing to a hint which Acharya had given the idol-carver — considerably smaller; his cognizance was the hunting-leopard, or cheetah.

The gloom when the priest entered made it difficult to distinguish objects very clearly for a time, but, as his eyes became more accustomed to it, he made a startling discovery. Some impious person had entered during the night and stripped the idols of their jewellery! The robber had even dared to carry off the freshly dedicated flowers and fruit, for the altars which Acharya himself had seen heaped the night before were bared.

But the next moment brought a certain relief. It was not sacrilege after all; neither jewellery, fruit, nor flowers had been actually removed! The earrings and necklaces loaded the idol of the new tirthankar, before which the whole of the previous day’s offerings were heaped in profusion.

The sight made Acharya extremely angry notwithstanding; the temple ministrant (for Acharya himself merely superintended the ceremonies) was youthful and fervid, but still it was ill-judged of him to give this invidious welcome to the idol of a local celebrity.

He sent for his too zealous subordinate and censured him severely; but unfortunately a vow of silence for that day prevented the offender from making any attempt at self-defence beyond shaking his head with much vehemence.

That evening, as Acharya presided over the distribution of the day’s offerings, he was even more careful than before to restrict Chalanka’s portion both in quantity and quality. It was vain to tell himself that the Brahman’s story had had no influence upon him — a slandered saint is like a damaged plum, something is gone from him that can never be restored — and then, too, the Jain had had his doubts from the beginning.

But the very next morning revealed an outrage of the grossest irreverence. Every one of the tirthankars had been turned upside-down in his niche, except Chalanka, who was almost hidden under a mass of flowers!

Acharya well knew that no Jain would be guilty of such impiety; he saw in it the hand of his unscrupulous adversary, Ram Chunga, and was struck with mingled consternation and wrath.

He got the idols replaced in a normal position before the worshippers arrived, and as soon as the morning’s rites were ended he went down to the village and had an interview with the headman, Fattekhan Gûl, to whom he disclosed what had happened.

The headman sent him a Mussulinan guard, who, having a splendid contempt for Jains and Brahmans alike, might be trusted to remain impartial, and who were posted around the temple in such a manner that none could approach unchallenged.

And then the idols were all carefully oiled and bathed with sandal water, and left for the night with a strong conviction on Acharya’s part that their tranquillity was not likely to be again invaded.

But when he entered the idol-chamber at dawn next day it was to find it in a condition at the sight of which he staggered back confounded and appalled. All that had gone before was child’s play to this. Every niche on the lower tier was bare, and in the centre of the pavement was a pile of images, each one of which proved to have been mutilated — its nose, its ears (which were disproportionately large, and stuck out like the African elephant’s), and the triple umbrella above its head had all been chipped off, and upon each altar a nose, an umbrella, and a pair of ears were laid out with derisive neatness!

Acharya almost lost his senses at the sight, for he had spent the whole night in watching, in going from post to post, and he knew that for this second outrage the Brahman could not by any possibility be responsible.

Yet a complete and valuable set of images had been ruthlessly defaced by someone, and the pious Jains would soon be at the gates to perform their morning’s devotions. What would they think — what explanation could he give them?

To his more enlightened mind the images were but emblems; but this was a doctrine wholly beyond his flock, and he trembled to think of the view they might take of such a wholesale destruction.

The reader, who was quick of resources, proposed to restore the idols to their niches, and trust to the semi-darkness to conceal their imperfect condition, but Acharya was too dejected, and, be it added, too conscientious, to resort to any such evasion.

And so, when the earliest braziers and coppersmiths, after depositing their offerings in the porch, came into the idol-chamber, to walk round three times and make obeisances to the images as usual, they found their priest standing with bent head and his white robes torn, behind a heap of mutilated divinities, and they stood aghast.

Gradually the chamber filled, and a buzz of dismayed curiosity rose from the various groups. If their gods were cast from their shrines, what was left for them to worship? and while some of the less devotionally-minded were rather relieved to have a legitimate excuse for non-attendance in future, the majority felt a pious regret for their gods — their bland, sleepy, smiling gods, who never gave any trouble, and whose faces had become as the faces of old friends.

“My children,” faltered the priest, perceiving they were waiting for some explanation, “the destroyer has been at work in the darkness. I know no more than ye why this has come upon us, to humble me and perplex your hearts.”

“It is the evil spirits!” whispered Murli Dass, the coppersmith, and the congregation took it up and cried, “Yes, it is the evil spirits — it is the saktis!” And they fell on their knees, and struck the floor with their foreheads; and Acharya, whatever his private opinions might be, did not contradict them now.

But there was a sudden stir in the crowd; several rose to their feet, and made way, as if for some personage of distinction, and Acharya, with an agony of mortification, saw his rival Ram Chunga approach — the very last person he wished to witness his enibarrassment.

A village in any part of the world is not the place for a secret. The Jain’s suspicions and request for a guard had not been long in reaching the Brahman’s ears; he had come up to repudiate the charge indignantly, when he gathered from the stir outside the temple that something extraordinary was going on within, and, with his habitual contempt for all prejudices but his own, strode in to discover what the matter might be for himself.

Ram Chunga, avoiding contact with the rest as much as possible, stood taking in the situation with no small bewilderment. “What is this, O Acharya Chick?” he inquired at last,

“Behold,” said the Jain, “the effigies of our blessed arhats have been found mutilated and dishonoured, as you see, and by whose hand we cannot tell!”

“Why,” the Brahman asked himself, “had this wretched old creature destroyed the gods by which he lived? for of course this was his work.” Ram Chunga was not above conducting a manifestation or arranging miracles himself, but he did not understand a portent on such a scale as this; it seemed wanting in common judgement.

And then suddenly he saw through the design: this Jain priest in his mulish obstinacy had actually destroyed his Siva rather than deliver it to his rival, and then, to divert suspicion, had been forced to deface his own images.

“Where is the image of Siva the undying?” he demanded with a black frown. “Bring it forth that I may look upon it.”

“It is there, behind you,” said the Jain dejectedly, and Ram Chunga, turning, beheld for the first time the idol on which he had grounded so pretty a quarrel. Till then he had had no particular desire to possess it for its own sake; now the sight of it strengthened his determination to get it out of alien hands.

It really was a handsome idol, rather antiquated perhaps in design, but still of excellent workmanship and, notwithstanding its somewhat questionable origin, orthodox in all its details; it would do credit to the best-appointed temple.

And, to his intense surprise, he found it absolutely uninjured. Evidently this old fool had not had the nerve, when it came to the point, to deface it, and render it useless (a mutilated Hindoo idol being, of course, about as formidable as a spiked gun).

What could have made him attempt such a piece of reckless folly? Was it — and the Brahman’s brows grew darker at the idea — was it intended to throw suspicion on him? If that were so, he should find he had made a slight miscalculation.

He turned upon the Jains with a magnificent gesture. “Hear me, 0 Acharya Chick,” he said, “and answer truly. Did not I but two days since make demand of you for the restoration of this image of the god from which you and your followers have turned away? Did I not warn you of the indignity you did him in introducing a miserable yogi, who but yesterday was in our streets, to be his fellow-god and companion in your idol-chamber?”

“Even so, Ram Chunga,” said the Jain, “nor will I now deny it.”

“Behold the warning fulfilled!” the Brahman cried. “Siva, the beautiful, the blue-necked, has spoken; he has shattered the gods whom he has suffered so long!”

The Jains were deeply impressed by this; less enlightened than their teacher, their idols were for them concrete divinities who could hear their humble prayers and satisfy their moderate wants. They had always felt a secret conviction that it was not quite respectful to ignore Siva so pointedly, and now this neglected Siva had suddenly developed into a tremendous deity, who could manifest his displeasure in a very practical manner.

But Acharya’s suspicions of the Brahman rose again at this attempt to turn the situation to his own advantage; he was resolved to dispose of these outrageous pretensions if he could. “What sign have you, O Ram Chunga, that it is as you have said?” he inquired.

“A sign?” said the Brahman. “Is not the image of Siva unharmed? Are not yours defaced and discredited? And you ask for a sign!”

Acharya, in glancing round the idol-chamber, had already observed a fact which he did not at first mention, for it only perplexed him more, but now he turned it to account with desperate readiness.

“Siva has wrought it, because his image has gone unharmed!” he exclaimed. “How then has he spared the very image which you assert to be the main cause of his wrath? If Siva is untouched, much more then is the image of Chalanka, for look you to what honour has he been exalted!”

He pointed as he spoke to the centre niche in the topmost tier, the niche lately occupied by the portly idol of Mahâvîra. There, looking ludicrously disproportioned to its cell, squatted the newest and smallest tirthankar, basking with a smile of subdued and private enjoyment in the flood of mysterious glory which had so lately belonged to the deposed Mahâvîra!

The congregation, who had not noticed this before, saw it now with a cry of rapture — surely Chalanka, who had weathered a storm in which so many deities of, so to speak, far higher tonnage had foundered, surely he must be a god of sound and solid qualities, a god who could hold his own with the whole Hindu mythology!

The Brahman sneered. So this, after all, was what the Jain had been scheming for! He had sacrificed the greater part of his sacred stock to increase the value of the remainder — well, he would checkmate him there at all events! “Does a tiger lie in wait for a rat?” he said, “or shall an elephant charge a tortoise? Fools, all of ye, and blind, not to see that this Chalanka of yours owes his immunity to his insignificance! These others are in a measure divinities, but he is less than all, and therefore the mighty magnanimous Siva scorns to lift up so much as the little finger of his sixth hand in wrath against him. He hath set him thus on high in his derision, as the god before whom it is indeed fit that such as ye should bow!”

The Jains veered round again. Ram Chunga was wise and spoke with assurance; he must know best.

“Set up your maimed idols,” the Brahman continued, with biting scorn, “worship them as before, for what concern is it of mine or Siva’s? But detain his image no longer, yield it to me, his servant. For the last time I demand it!”

“Ram Chunga,” said the Jain, mildly but with determination, “since first it was removed hither, yonder idol has refrained from all disturbance, nor has it given the least sign of displeasure. I will not believe that these dread signs proceed from it now, nor will I ever consent to dishonour the chamber which is concentrated to the arhats by robbing it of such an embellishment. Never will I—” But here, with a groan of horror, he covered his eye with his band, and rushed into the vestibule followed by his anxious flock.

“A fly in it, my children!” he gasped; “in the name of the blessed arhats and the pure existences, take it out ere it die!”

A European’s chief solicitude under the circumstances would scarcely be lavished on the fly; but the stricter Jains are most averse to the destruction of any form of life, and take every imaginable precaution — even to wearing cloth respirators against the involuntary swallowing of the minuter insects.

So for some moments of intense excitement the priest’s eye was surrounded by an eager group, all anxious to save the fly if possible; Murli Dass, the oilman, got it out with a strip of linen from his loin-cloth, but unhappily the fly had ceased to live — in fact, it was hardly to be recognised as a fly at all, for the priest, in the first agony of smarting, had so far forgotten himself as to rub his eye with fatal violence.

When Acharya Chick realised this, he sank down heavily, quite overcome by the blow, upon the nearest stone bench, amidst cries of fresh consternation from his people. He never sat down anywhere as a general rule without having first carefully dusted his proposed seat with a small feather brush, not because he was afraid of sullying his robe, but from the aforesaid unwillingness of all Jains to destroy even the lowest forms of life.

In his agitation he omitted to use his brush on this occasion; a large red spider had dropped upon the bench but one instant before, and the most humane person cannot sit upon a spider without putting it to the gravest inconvenience.

The Jain prostrated himself in unavailing penitence before its flattened form, cast dust upon his shaven head, and vowed to accomplish various uncomfortable penances — but the spider would never spin a web again!

His congregation edged away from him with horror-stricken haste; of course similar mishaps had occurred to them all now and then, but for a priest to transgress twice in such close succession seemed to show that he was pursued by some evil destiny.

Ram Chunga, whose tenets did not go to quite such lengths, had been a spectator of the scene, which, as usual, he sought to adapt to his own ends.

“Are you still obdurate?” he said, “or do you recognise in this the hand of Siva?”

The Jains might have resisted the evidence of the fly, but, corroborated by the spider, it was irresistible; they fell on their faces: Siva, Lord Siva, have pity upon us!, they cried. Had Ram Chunga cared to proselytize, he could have carried them all over to his own sect there and then; but their belief was a matter of total indifference to him: these brass-workers were too poor to be profitable.

“And you, Acharya Chick,” he said, “you will yield the image?”

The Jain was about to refuse once more, but his followers would not hear of it. “Yield it,” they cried, “oh, yield it, lest harm overtake us also!”

And Archarya Chick knew that his hold over them was rudely shaken, if not lost forever. Sullenly he turned to the Brahman and said, “Take it, and trouble us no more!”

Thus had Ram Chunga triumphed, winning a twofold victory; he had acquired a most desirable addition to his temple, an idol which would have all the interest of a trophy, and probably tell favourably for months upon the temple receipts, and, which pleased him better still, he had thoroughly crushed the rival whose temple had always been an eyesore to him — the Jain was worsted, humbled, struck by his own cobra.

The Brahman was not precisely the man to spare a defeated adversary a single pang. It was good policy to make as much of his advantage as possible, and, besides, it was clearly impossible to walk out with the surrendered idol under his arm.

“This submission is tardy, but prudent,” he said, “and I accept it in the mighty name of Siva, conqueror of death. With glory and rejoicing shall the sacred image of Iswara be conducted to a more seemly abode. At the hour of kunset the idol of ever-living Brahma shall come himself to escort him. See that your gates are open to us when we arrive, and should any unseemly encounter take place between our respective followers, I shall hold you responsible.”

Acharya Chick bent his head in silent resignation; he felt a sullen impatience to have the measure of his humiliation filled to the brim; the mainspring of his simple inoffensive life was snapped, the good he had tried to do all undone, and he felt a bitter protest against the apathy which could allow such things to be.

He stood in the vestibule for some time after the Brahman had gone, gazing blankly on the marble flags; the reader and the officiating priest were afraid to ask if the morning services were to take place as usual, and stood apart. Acharya had not courage to order the idols to be replaced, and the usual invocations and lustral ceremonies to be gone through as if nothing had happened; the Jains had all gone back to their daily labours, and it was doubtful whether they would ever consent to do homage again to the noseless idols whom they had seen piled up in an ignominious heap on the floor of the sanctuary.

At last he came out of his reverie with a groan, and fled like a hunted man from his dishonoured temple, and up the rocky heights, till the noonday blaze forced him to fall panting in the shade of a projecting crag; and the temple attendants went their own ways, and the temple itself was deserted.

The Brahman meanwhile had gone down to the village bent upon organising as magnificent a display as could be procured on such short notice. He was excessively pleased at having so completely outwitted the hypocritical and cowardly old Jain, and he arranged in his mind where the new idol should be set up; it only needed a little purification, a few mantrams, to be as good as ever.

And before the day declined the whole Hindu portion of the villagers, thanks to the Brahman’s endeavours, was in a ferment of religious excitement. Acharya had spent the greater part of the day crouched in such shade as he could find, his mind possessed by a kind of stupor, his main impulse the childish determination to mortify himself to the utmost. But as the sun began to set, and the plain below steamed with the mists from the paddy fields, he grew more collected; some powerful attraction seemed to be drawing him down the slope to where his temple stood; he was impelled to be present at his own humiliation.

So, feeling faint and weak, he clambered painfully down until he reached a banyan grove, from which he could command his own compound, and see all that took place without attracting observation.

Very soon the air thickened with sudden dusk, and part of the village became outlined in flickering lines of fire, while a confused buzzing began to be heard in the direction of the bazaar.

The buzzing grew louder, swelling into a low roar, above which rose the clash of cymbals and the screaming of chank shells; with a little stretching the Jain could make out a dim confused mass swarming up the slope, and knew that the procession had already started to conduct Siva to his new home.

Up they came, with clouds of dust, and waving banners and sacred insignia, with leaping fanatics, and slow serpentine movements of the nautch girls at the head, and in the midst, drawn by bullocks, came the huge clumsy idol-chariot, with its barbaric splendour of carving and gilding, its dome-shaped canopy, which caught the last red ray of the sun. And now the crowd had surged through the temple gates, and there was Ram Chunga with other white-robed Brahmans, keeping what order was possible in the wild throng.

And then, the road being clear for it, the idol-car rolled, creaking and jolting over the threshold, whilst the idol it bore wobbled, with some loss of dignity, upon the lofty seat to which it had very prudently been strapped.

It was a representation of Brahma in one of his numerous avatars, the god being fashioned as a man-lion, with the usual superabundance of arms, one pair of which seemed busy plucking a small figure which lay across his knees and was supposed to be a personal enemy.

This was a very exclusive idol, and a visit from it was esteemed as an overwhelming distinction throughout Mysore; in fact, it only went out once a year to confer with an extremely well-connected idol of Vishnu at a mandapam, or sacred rest-house, half-way from their respective temples, but on this occasion Ram Chunga’s influence had enabled the rule to be relaxed in Siva’s favour.

Here it was accordingly, and a rich pavilion was put up at one end of the compound, within which the distinguished visitor was installed, and, this done, the Brahmans entered the temple and came out bearing the wonder-working image of Siva, which was hailed with acclamations, while it was being reverently deposited in the pavilion by the side of Brahma.

And then, as the gods would necessarily have many things to say to one another, the hangings were drawn, and the priests made a ring round the pavilion, and stood guarding it from vulgar curiosity.

While the conference was supposed to be taking place within, Ram Chunga mounted the footboard of the chariot and addressed the crowd. He rapidly sketched the history of this image of Siva, that had been preserved originally for the lingering homage of heretic Jains, then gradually ignored and degraded to the level of an ornament, till the last indignity was attained in the introduction of Chalanka. The Brahman gave a highly-coloured description of the various marvels by which the offended god had vindicated his majesty, and finally worked up his hearers to a frenzy of wrath against the Jains, which he calmed down to the best of his ability by telling them that their misguided fellow-villagers had acted thus under pure ignorance, having merely followed the leading of their spiritual guide, his worthy, if somewhat self-sufficient brother, Acharya Chick.

There were shouts and yells for Chick, demands that he should be dragged from his shrine, hurled over the rock, and so on, which made the Jain priest grateful to his sheltering banyans, and those of his congregation whom curiosity had driven to follow the procession, sorry that they had not stayed at home.

But now the gods had had sufficient time to exchange views, and it was time to gratify them with the ministrations of the dancing girls, before the united idols were placed upon the chariot and carried home together in pomp.

So the tom-toms were rattled and thumped with fervour, and the torches made the compound light as day, as the dancing girls, in robes of purple and orange and green, edged with glittering silver tissue, prepared to go through their dreamy and deliberate evolutions, accompanied by chants like the cry of the midnight cat, and Ram Chunga gave the signal for the hangings to be drawn back.

A universal shriek marked their withdrawal, as the torchlight shed its fierce glare upon the interior. Ram Chunga grew green, and his teeth chattered, as well they might, and even Acharya Chick, as he gazed from afar, could hardly trust his eyesight. For the sacred idol of Brahma was broken into a dozen pieces, his arms were planted, with considerable taste and fancy, in various corners of the floor; and worse still, the hard-won idol of Siva was in the same plight, its fragments arranged in a pyramid upon the principal throne, upon the very summit of which squatted, with a bland smile on its smug features, the despised image of Chalanka, the least and lowest of the Jain tirthankars!

For once Ram Chunga’s presence of mind deserted him. He could not lay the blame upon the Jains because of the Brahman cordon around the pavilion; it did occur to him to explain so disastrous an occurrence by the legend of some ancient feud between Brahma and Siva, which had prompted their images to fly at one another like fighting cocks, but that would be an admission of want of tact on his own part in throwing them together, and, even then, the interference of this despicable little Jain idol remained unaccounted for!