Autobiography of a Yogi
a sixth a theological disputation, the exact language of which had
to be quoted in the precise order in which the disputants conducted
it, and a seventh man was all the while turning a wheel, the number
of revolutions of which had to be counted. The memory expert had
simultaneously to do all these feats purely by mental processes,
as he was allowed no paper and pencil. The strain on the faculties
must have been terrific. Ordinarily men in unconscious envy are
apt to depreciate such efforts by affecting to believe that they
involve only the exercise of the lower functionings of the brain.
It is not, however, a pure question of memory. The greater factor
is the immense concentration of mind.”
CHAPTER: 41
AN IDYL IN SOUTH INDIA
“You are the first Westerner, Dick, ever to enter that shrine. Many
others have tried in vain.”
At my words Mr. Wright looked startled, then pleased. We had just
left the beautiful Chamundi Temple in the hills overlooking Mysore
in southern India. There we had bowed before the gold and silver
altars of the Goddess Chamundi, patron deity of the family of the
reigning maharaja.
“As a souvenir of the unique honor,” Mr. Wright said, carefully
stowing away a few blessed rose petals, “I will always preserve
this flower, sprinkled by the priest with rose water.”
My companion and I {FN41-1} were spending the month of November,
1935, as guests of the State of Mysore. The Maharaja, H.H.
Sri Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV, is a model prince with intelligent
devotion to his people. A pious Hindu, the Maharaja has empowered
a Mohammedan, the able Mirza Ismail, as his Dewan or Premier.
Popular representation is given to the seven million inhabitants
of Mysore in both an Assembly and a Legislative Council.
The heir to the Maharaja, H.H. the Yuvaraja, Sir Sri Krishna
Narasingharaj Wadiyar, had invited my secretary and me to visit
his enlightened and progressive realm. During the past fortnight
I had addressed thousands of Mysore citizens and students, at the
Town Hall, the Maharajah’s College, the University Medical School;
and three mass meetings in Bangalore, at the National High School,
the Intermediate College, and the Chetty Town Hall where over
three thousand persons had assembled. Whether the eager listeners
had been able to credit the glowing picture I drew of America,
I know not; but the applause had always been loudest when I spoke
of the mutual benefits that could flow from exchange of the best
features in East and West.
Mr. Wright and I were now relaxing in the tropical peace. His travel
diary gives the following account of his impressions of Mysore:
“Brilliantly green rice fields, varied by tasseled sugar cane
patches, nestle at the protective foot of rocky hills-hills dotting
the emerald panorama like excrescences of black stone-and the play
of colors is enhanced by the sudden and dramatic disappearance of
the sun as it seeks rest behind the solemn hills.
“Many rapturous moments have been spent in gazing, almost absent-mindedly,
at the ever-changing canvas of God stretched across the firmament,
for His touch alone is able to produce colors that vibrate with the
freshness of life. That youth of colors is lost when man tries to
imitate with mere pigments, for the Lord resorts to a more simple
and effective medium-oils that are neither oils nor pigments, but
mere rays of light. He tosses a splash of light here, and it reflects
red; He waves the brush again and it blends gradually into orange
and gold; then with a piercing thrust He stabs the clouds with a
streak of purple that leaves a ringlet or fringe of red oozing out
of the wound in the clouds; and so, on and on, He plays, night and
morning alike, ever-changing, ever-new, ever-fresh; no patterns,
no duplicates, no colors just the same. The beauty of the Indian
change in day to night is beyond compare elsewhere; often the sky
looks as if God had taken all the colors in His kit and given them
one mighty kaleidoscopic toss into the heavens.
“I must relate the splendor of a twilight visit to the huge
Krishnaraja Sagar Dam, {FN41-2} constructed twelve miles outside
of Mysore. Yoganandaji and I boarded a small bus and, with a small
boy as official cranker or battery substitute, started off over a
smooth dirt road, just as the sun was setting on the horizon and
squashing like an overripe tomato.
“Our journey led past the omnipresent square rice fields, through
a line of comforting banyan trees, in between a grove of towering
coconut palms, with vegetation nearly as thick as in a jungle,
and finally, approaching the crest of a hill, we came face-to-face
with an immense artificial lake, reflecting the stars and fringe
of palms and other trees, surrounded by lovely terraced gardens
and a row of electric lights on the brink of the dam-and below
it our eyes met a dazzling spectacle of colored beams playing on
geyserlike fountains, like so many streams of brilliant ink pouring
forth-gorgeously blue waterfalls, arresting red cataracts, green
and yellow sprays, elephants spouting water, a miniature of the
Chicago World’s Fair, and yet modernly outstanding in this ancient
land of paddy fields and simple people, who have given us such a
loving welcome that I fear it will take more than my strength to
bring Yoganandaji back to America.
“Another rare privilege-my first elephant ride. Yesterday the
Yuvaraja invited us to his summer palace to enjoy a ride on one of
his elephants, an enormous beast. I mounted a ladder provided to
climb aloft to the HOWDAH or saddle, which is silk-cushioned and
boxlike; and then for a rolling, tossing, swaying, and heaving down
into a gully, too much thrilled to worry or exclaim, but hanging
on for dear life!”
Southern India, rich with historical and archaeological remains,
is a land of definite and yet indefinable charm. To the north of
Mysore is the largest native state in India, Hyderabad, a picturesque
plateau cut by the mighty Godavari River. Broad fertile plains,
the lovely Nilgiris or “Blue Mountains,” other regions with barren
hills of limestone or granite. Hyderabad history is a long, colorful
story, starting three thousand years ago under the Andhra kings,
and continuing under Hindu dynasties until A.D. 1294, when it passed
to a line of Moslem rulers who reign to this day.
The most breath-taking display of architecture, sculpture, and painting
in all India is found at Hyderabad in the ancient rock-sculptured
caves of Ellora and Ajanta. The Kailasa at Ellora, a huge monolithic
temple, possesses carved figures of gods, men, and beasts in the
stupendous proportions of a Michelangelo. Ajanta is the site of
five cathedrals and twenty-five monasteries, all rock excavations
maintained by tremendous frescoed pillars on which artists and
sculptors have immortalized their genius.
Hyderabad City is graced by the Osmania University and by the
imposing Mecca Masjid Mosque, where ten thousand Mohammedans may
assemble for prayer.
Mysore State too is a scenic wonderland, three thousand feet above
sea level, abounding in dense tropical forests, the home of wild
elephants, bison, bears, panthers, and tigers. Its two chief cities,
Bangalore and Mysore, are clean, attractive, with many parks and
public gardens.
Hindu architecture and sculpture achieved their highest perfection
in Mysore under the patronage of Hindu kings from the eleventh to
the fifteenth centuries. The temple at Belur, an eleventh-century
masterpiece completed during the reign of King Vishnuvardhana, is
unsurpassed in the world for its delicacy of detail and exuberant
imagery.
The rock pillars found in northern Mysore date from the third
century B.C., illuminating the memory of King Asoka. He succeeded
to the throne of the Maurya dynasty then prevailing; his empire
included nearly all of modern India, Afghanistan, and Baluchistan.
This illustrious emperor, considered even by Western historians to
have been an incomparable ruler, has left the following wisdom on
a rock memorial:
This religious inscription has been engraved in order that our sons
and grandsons may not think a new conquest is necessary; that they
may not think conquest by the sword deserves the name of conquest;
that they may see in it nothing but destruction and violence; that
they may consider nothing as true conquest save the conquest of
religion. Such conquests have value in this world and in the next.
Asoka was a grandson of the formidable Chandragupta Maurya (known
to the Greeks as Sandrocottus), who in his youth had met Alexander
the Great. Later Chandragupta destroyed the Macedonian garrisons
left in India, defeated the invading Greek army of Seleucus in the
Punjab, and then received at his Patna court the Hellenic ambassador
Megasthenes.
Intensely interesting stories have been minutely recorded by Greek
historians and others who accompanied or followed after Alexander
in his expedition to India. The narratives of Arrian, Diodoros,
Plutarch, and Strabo the geographer have been translated by Dr. J.
W. M’Crindle {FN41-3} to throw a shaft of light on ancient India.
The most admirable feature of Alexander’s unsuccessful invasion
was the deep interest he displayed in Hindu philosophy and in the
yogis and holy men whom he encountered from time to time and whose
society he eagerly sought. Shortly after the Greek warrior had
arrived in Taxila in northern India, he sent a messenger, Onesikritos,
a disciple of the Hellenic school of Diogenes, to fetch an Indian
teacher, Dandamis, a great sannyasi of Taxila.
“Hail to thee, O teacher of Brahmins!” Onesikritos said after
seeking out Dandamis in his forest retreat. “The son of the mighty
God Zeus, being Alexander who is the Sovereign Lord of all men,
asks you to go to him, and if you comply, he will reward you with
great gifts, but if you refuse, he will cut off your head!”
The yogi received this fairly compulsive invitation calmly, and
“did not so much as lift up his head from his couch of leaves.”
“I also am a son of Zeus, if Alexander be such,” he commented.
“I want nothing that is Alexander’s, for I am content with what I
have, while I see that he wanders with his men over sea and land
for no advantage, and is never coming to an end of his wanderings.
“Go and tell Alexander that God the Supreme King is never the Author
of insolent wrong, but is the Creator of light, of peace, of life,
of water, of the body of man and of souls; He receives all men when
death sets them free, being in no way subject to evil disease. He
alone is the God of my homage, who abhors slaughter and instigates
no wars.
“Alexander is no god, since he must taste of death,” continued the
sage in quiet scorn. “How can such as he be the world’s master,
when he has not yet seated himself on a throne of inner universal
dominion? Neither as yet has he entered living into Hades, nor
does he know the course of the sun through the central regions of
the earth, while the nations on its boundaries have not so much as
heard his name!”
After this chastisement, surely the most caustic ever sent to assault
the ears of the “Lord of the World,” the sage added ironically,
“If Alexander’s present dominions be not capacious enough for
his desires, let him cross the Ganges River; there he will find a
region able to sustain all his men, if the country on this side be
too narrow to hold him. {FN41-4}
“Know this, however, that what Alexander offers and the gifts he
promises are things to me utterly useless; the things I prize and
find of real use and worth are these leaves which are my house,
these blooming plants which supply me with daily food, and the water
which is my drink; while all other possessions which are amassed
with anxious care are wont to prove ruinous to those who gather