1.07.05. Book 7: 5. Signboards

5. SIGNBOARDS "WHAT is the first thing you read when you open a book?"

"Oh, the conversations, of course."

I listened to the question and answer with some regret, for Perowne does not lend him­self to conversations. He deals chiefly in letters. The first six months were spent in language study and in getting to know the people, an interesting and lovable people whose language commands the respect of students for its clever grammar system and vigorous colloquial, strewn with wise sayings, shrewd proverbs and aphorisms, and morsels of thoughtful poetry packed into fewest words. Can anyone know a people with­out a knowledge of their intimate talk? Tamil poetry, as a study, lies far ahead of the first few years; but the beautiful endless play of allusion contained in the lightest idiom is something that breaks upon one from the first, if indeed one lives on Tamil, not English ground, and listens and loves enough to want to understand.

Ragland much wanted to understand, and soon he found that almost everything he saw, as well as all that he heard, was a door that opened into rooms that belonged to the soul of the land. One such room he early strove to enter, for its signboard hung conspicuous wherever he turned to look. The marks on the forehead of his pundit, what did they mean? The marks he saw were various.

Here is a man with a curved white line like a U painted between his eyes, and in the middle of the U a red dot, this U to represent the foot of Vishnu, and the red dot his wife Lakshmi. He tells you that he is a Vadagalai, a Northman, his title is Iyengar, and he must never be con­founded with a Tengalai, a Southman, whose title is Iyer, though both are Hindus. He accepts the Sanskrit Vedas, and views the human spirit’s dependence on the divine as a voluntary act on its part. It clings of its own will, as a young monkey clings to its mother.

Here is the Southman whose Vedas are in Tamil, and who paints on his forehead a device signifying both of Vishnu’s feet, and draws the line down his nose, to show the throne in which the feet are set, while a red or yellow line enclosed shows Lakshmi. He declares that the human spirit is laid hold of by the divine, apart from its own volition, and his illustration is the cat seizing her kitten. Count­less lawsuits have been fought over the disputes which have arisen between these two sects of Hindus and, as it occurs to neither that possibly both are right-for truth does sometimes lie in both extremes-the controversy is likely to continue. The Northmen shave their Brahman widows and the Southmen sensibly refuse, so in walking down a Brahman street you can tell at a glance to which theological party the inhabitants belong. "Mere duffers, most ignoramus," was a Southman’s remark the other day about his neighbours, for he was a lately appointed Government official who found him­self unhappily planted in a streetful of North­men; and so it goes on.

Then-and he is also a Hindu-there is the man who uses neither of these signs, for he is a worshipper of Siva and smears ashes on his fore­head, breast and arms, because Siva in a moment of fury burnt up the gods by a flash of wrath from his eye and rubbed their ashes over himself. His religious tenets cannot be described in a line (nor indeed fairly can any other). All three may be good friends in spite of lawsuits provoked by theological discussions, for, even in religious India, not theology but custom reigns supreme, and if a man keeps his caste rules he is acceptable to his brethren, unless some question rises that touches his dignity, such as who shall take precedence at a big temple tamasha-then the sparks fly, a suit is filed that proceeds from court to court and supplies sweet food for the talk of the country­side for months and maybe years. Of such curious clay are we made. But long before Ragland had fathomed all this, before he had done more than catch a glimpse of the inward ways of the language and its people, he had to travel south to become acquainted with the missionaries there and see their work; for the committee wanted to make him Secretary at Madras, and for that work such a knowledge was required. It was a loss to him, for it handicapped him, as we shall see, in later years; but it was a gain to the mission at large, and wherever he went he was loved; his charm is remembered to this day. "I love the men," was his word concerning those whom afterwards he had to oppose. Only for a little, though; he won them all in the end.