A Fallen Idol

THE PROLOGUE-3

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.