ART. XI.-"TRAVELS OF A HINDU." (Continued from the "Calcutta Review" for October 1880.) October 6th, 1876.-The train carried us on from Saharanpur, past the Doub Canal, to Sirsawa, a town of ancient date, which fell on the route of Mahmud of Ghizui from Kanouj, and also on that of Timur from Haridwara. Ten miles west of Sirsawa, we crossed the Western Jumua Canal, or the bed of the Budhi Jumua. Close by this canal, on a spur of high land, lies the village of Sugh, which is identified with the ancient Srughna, or Hwen Thsang's Su-lo-kin-na. In the interval-some three miles-between Sugh and Jagadhri, the next station, the Jumna forms a line of demarcation between the region of sand and the region of alluvium. Nature has set it as a permanent mark between the arid desert on the west, and the verdant valley on the east. To cross the Jumna, is geographically to leave the Doab behind. Between Burrara and Ambala, is passed another river of still greater celebrity and sanctity. If the Jumna calls up associations by hundreds, the Sarasvati does so by thousands. In slowly passing the bridge thrown over it, we looked out from the train to survey this classic stream. The appearance of the Sarasvati is not at all worthy of its great historic fame. It is a poor, small, broken stream, flowing through a bed which, as far as it could be judged by the eye, has not the width of a quarter of a mile; and if it were not for the associations connected with it, a man would turn from it as an uninteresting river. The water is clear and placid-the current having little or no strength. The depth also is inconsiderable-in one place we saw a man wade across. Not a craft of any kind is seen upon its waters; but the banks on both sides are clothed with beautiful verdure, and rich mangoe-topes fringe them all along. The Sarasvati is so named from its peculiar features. Derivatively analysed, the word means "full of lakes," or pools, into which the stream is broken. But this poor appearance of the Sarasvati dates from her disappearance in the sandy desert; before that event, it was a noble stream, included in the Vedic SaptaSindhavas, and held rank with the magnificent Punjab rivers. The Rig Veda applies to it the same words, apasam apastama, or most copious of streams," that are applied to the Sindhu or Indus. The sages of old, dwelling on its banks, speak of it as flowing on "with a protecting current, a support, an iron barrier. The stream rushes on like a charioteer, in her majesty outrunning all other rivers. Sarasvati is known as the one river, flowing on pure from the mountains to the sea,' According to the Nirukta, saras, in Vedic language, means waters. Crossing the Sarasvati, we passed from the Brahmarishidesha into the Devanirmittam Brahmaverttum, or Manu's "tract fashioned by the gods," and the Mahabharata's "Vedi of the Pita-maha"-the seat of the great progenitor. Lying between the "two divine" rivers, Dhrishadvati and Sarasvati-the modern Gaggar and Sursooty-the Brahmaverttam was the abode of our earliest Aryan forefathers, where lived the great patriarchs of our race, our Vedic poets and philosophers. They formed the outermost ripple of the great wave of Aryan emigration, which flowing eastward from the Punjab, broke against and was stopped by the Sarasvati, Owning a common nationality, the Aryans from Central Asia had long lived together undivided in the tract of the Upper Indus. Either becoming straitened for room by multiplication, or pushed from behind by hordes of fresh emigrants, they began to move both westward to Persia, and eastward to India. Those who were carried in the eastern direction, went step by step along the rivers of the Punjab, till, proceeding from the Satadru (Sutlej) by the road skirting the north of the Desert, their vanguard halted, and took up their most advanced position in the Brahmaverttam, bounded by the Sarasvati, By Pita-maha, the Mahabharata must be understood to mean the great leader who conducted and planted the Aryan colony in the Brahmaverttam; who had the merit of binding his followers together, and developing them into a nation and conquering power; who laid down those first simple fundamental rules round which has gathered the mass of laws forming the great Hindu code. The leader of the westeru Aryans seems to have been Zoroaster. The leader of the Eastern Aryans must have been either Manu himself, or one of one of his descendants-Vaivaswata-bearing his patronymic the same who, in after ages, for his supreme intelligence, his great creative genius, became apotheosised, and worshipped under the name of Brahma.† The picture of early Aryan society in the Brahmaverttam is reflected by the hymns of the Rig and Sam Vedas. Fancy paints the members of that society as living in a state of tranquil bucolic felicity. There were shepherds who tended the flock, and agriculturists who tilled the ground. There were spinners, weavers, Hymn 95, Book 7th. See Muir's "Sanscrit Texts." In the earliest Vedic sense, Brahma meant a prayer or bymu, and from that a poet. Afterwards it signified the knowing, and at last the creative power. smiths, carpenters, goldsmiths, jewellers, stone-cutters, brewers of ale, compounders of perfume, and other craftsmen called forth by occasion. The able-bodied members of this community, transformed themselves into warriors, and rallied round their chief. There dwelt not only many men with vigorous powers of body, but also men with vigorous powers of mind. Bards chanted there the songs of heroic deeds. Sages made there the first efforts of the human mind in letters and science. The speech spoken there was undefiled, pure Sanskrit. The religion professed there was nature-worship, which was to call on the good spirits of the creation, offer them thanksgivings, and ask them to participate in the Soma. The Brahmaverttam was the cradle of civilization, the focus from which emanated and radiated the first light. It was the stage on which was played the first scene in the great drama of Hindu national life, the hallowed spot whence, bearing the germs of improvement, issued forth the propagandists of future Hinduism. The region most interesting in the Brahmaverttam must have been that on the banks of the Sarasvati, which wound not then, as now, a poor shrunken stream, but as "the chief of rivers." Thereabouts, probably, was the seat or capital of the hoary Pita-maha. The site of his city is now a matter of pure conjecture. It was somewhere, as it strikes us, in the vicinity of Thaneswara, where it was in that early age little better than an outpost, which, with a secure rear, was planted on the utmost frontier, facing the unconquered regions in "the Orient." The landscape about the Sarasvati then presented objects of which the like is not to be seen in our day. The river bank, in those ages, was dotted with many an imbowered hermitage, overbung with the smoke of sacrifices, and resounding with the chant of sonorous hymns. They were the abodes of our Vedic Rishis, or contemplative sages, who studied and invoked the mysterious agents of Nature in quiet seclusion. Vasistha and Viswamitra, Parasara and Vyasa, had their retreats along the banks of the meandering Sarasvati. Vasistha "had an extensive hermitage in Sthanatirtha," or Thaneswara. To the east of it was Viswamitra's hermitage. These two mighty ascetics exhibited a great rivalry in their austerities." Veda-Vyasa, who has the greatest name in Sanskrit literature, who is one among our six immortals, had his asrama in a place which is still called after him Vysasasthali, and is situated a few miles from Thaneswara. To the imaginations of literary pilgrims, the classic spot, by the side of the Sarasvati, over which hovers * Legend of the Mahabharata in Muir's "Sanskrit Texta.” the glory of his name, is fascinating in the highest degree. The Hindu nation, in European fashion, may not have marked the spot with "storied urn or animated bust" in memorium. But in their own fashion, they have cared to remember its site through every variety of change; to erect into a sacred pilgrimage the place where is left the trace of his mortal footstep, where he collected and fixed the floating literature of the Vedas, where be founded the school in which the Rig Veda was taught to Paila, the Sam Veda to Jaimini, the Yayur Veda to Vaishampayana, and the Athwarvan Veda to Sumantu. Vyasa was not satisfied with having accomplished this great literary undertaking. He yearned to leave behind him something original from his own. great mind. It is said, that walking one day by the side of the Sarasvati, wrapt in musings, he was inspired to celebrate the great war of the Mahabharata. Vyasa was the minstrel and rhapsodist of the Sarasvati, as Homer was the minstrel and rhapsodist of Meles. If Shakespeare is "the sweet swan of Avon," Vyasa may be styled the tuneful Chakravaca of the Sarasvati; and, like the dramas of Shakespere, the epic of Vyasa has not suffered the less from the hands of copyists, editors, and interpolaters. By making Vyasa a Bengali, a native of the Brahmaputra, Mr. Wheeler does a very great honor to the people of Bengal. But suffice it to say, with reference to this opinionLaugh where we must, be candid where we can.' In the Brahmaverttam, the Aryans kept themselves pure and orthodox,-Aryans in type, speech, manners, and faith. Originally come, not as conquerors like Baber and Nadir Shah, but as nomadic wanderers and emigrants, just as the English had come as traders, till conquest became an inevitable necessity for them both, they had with them their wives and daughters, their flocks and herds, from the last of which probably is the fine race of kine in Hurriana. They lived closely drawn together as a united body amidst strangers, without degrading their blood. Here and there, they took an aboriginal wife, and had mixed progeny, like Viswamitra. They ate beef then. They drank soma-brewed beer then, There was no caste. It was the Satiya Yuga. The purity of its people, the patriarchs there whose adventures form the first traditions of national glory, the sages from whom where derived the first treasures of thought and arts of life, made the Brahmaverttam regarded for many ages as holy land, the abode of gods. It was loved and yearned for as Turkestan was by Baber, as England is by Anglo-Indians. Including the Punjab, it long formed an intermediate locality and link between the seceding Zoroastrians on the one hand, and the seceding Brahmins on the other, between Iran and India. But, in later ages, when the inhabitants of inner India, the occupants of the Brahmarishidesha and the Madhiyadesha, became thoroughly cast in the Hindu mould, and took a deep impress of the Hindu characteristics, the Sarasvati, at first the utmost eastern boundary of Aryan dominion, came to be regarded as the utmost western boundary of "the pure land, governed by Brahminical law." To bid farewell to the Sarasvati, which has detained us long, let us give the legend of her disappearance. "She was coming down the country with a book in her hand, when she entered the sandy desert, and was unexpectedly assailed by numerous demons with frightful consequences, making a dreadful noise. Ashamed of her own want of foresight, she sank into the earth, lest the Nishadas should become acquainted with her."* The place of her disappearance is called Vinasana in Manu's code. It would seem that the term vedi, or raised seat, used in the Mahabharata, was applied as much from a religious, as from a geographical point of view. The tract between the Gaggar and Sarasvati, is a little plateau interposed by Nature between the higher basin of the Jumna and the lower basin of the Sutlej. This elevation may be either from the upheaval of the land accompanying the submergence of the Sarasvati, or from the sub-Himalyan torrents annually overflowing and overlaying the region with alluvial deposits. It is still the same green country. But the arid region of the desert, with its "sandhills in endless succession like the waves of the ocean," is not far off. The warm breath of the loo, felt every now and then, is coming from that quarter. No more are the Sivalik hills a soft, bluish streak upon the horizon. The eye now grasps them in a much clearer form. Every thing seems to improve the country, the cattle, and the men. The stalwart specimens of humanity are particularly interesting. The highroad through this tract has shifted its line many a time. The oldest route for communication between Hindustan and the Punjab, lay skirting the desert, and came out near Thaneswara. It was the route by which the Aryans pushed their way; by which Alexander meant to advance to the Ganges; by which Hwen Thsang travelled; by which Mahomed of Ghizni, Mahomud Ghori, and Timur, poured down with their troops. This old line being encroached upon by the desert, a new line was carried up, via Ambala and Sarhind-the same that is spoken of by Bernier, and has existed to form a part of our modern Grand Trunk Road. At Ambala the first object to attract our notice, was the corps of Sikh guards, in blue uniform on the platform of the station. Tall and stately, their persons were remarkable for a manly vigour, such as Thornton's Gazetteer. Tod's Rajasthan. |