In corroboration of the statement in the above letter regarding the now famous conversation in St. James's Park, which, indeed, in substance was all on his (Manning's) side,' I may fitly recite a passage from an earlier letter, dated Biarritz, the 2nd of February, 1896, written before Mr. Gladstone knew even of the existence of Father Smith, far less that he had been betrayed into the folly of misrepresenting Mr. Gladstone's letters and conversations given in the Life of Cardinal Manning. The passage is as follows:

'I have just been looking into a point which you might have emphasised more strongly the utter contradiction between the spontaneous declaration to me in St. James's Park, in June, I think, or July, 1848, and the letter he had written in March to Robert Wilberforce'

1896

BHOWANI, THE CHOLERA-GODDESS

SOME EXPERIENCES IN HINDOO SANITATION

THAT an Englishman on visiting an Indian village in which cholera was raging should be able to offer the inhabitants no advice which he was certain was good and at the same time practicable, except that they should pray to Bhowáni, the Cholera-Goddess, may appear a matter for surprise to people in England. When it is further explained that the Englishman had come to the village furnished with such resources of modern science as a portable bacteriological laboratory, which included an autoclave and an immersion lens, and that he had had some experience of cholera epidemics under different conditions in India, the surprise will not be lessened; neither will it be diminished when it is learnt that Bhowáni is another form of Kali, the terrible goddess of the Thugs, those road murderers who used to appease her by offering human sacrifices. Nevertheless, this was my experience on the occasion of a visit which I made to the Balrampur district in the autumn of the year 1894, and I venture to think that an account of my experience may prove of some interest.

Balrampur is a small native state, about half as large as England, situated to the north of the River Gogra, and lying within sight of the snow-clad ranges of the Himalaya Mountains. Much of it is frequently flooded. Fever is constantly present, and cholera breaks out almost every year. No railway exists nearer than Gonda, which is twenty-six miles distant from Balrampur, the chief town of the state. One or two roads run through the district, away from which travelling is difficult, especially during the rains, when, as was my own experience, the tracts are impassable for horses and heavy going even for elephants.

My object in spending a few days' leave in this place was to see if it might not be possible to check the march of cholera by disinfecting wells. Thanks to the kindness of Colonel Anson, the Political Agent, I found myself installed in a comfortable bungalow, with the town in which cholera was present on one side, and the village of Dhusaha, in which the disease was also raging, on the other. A soldier belonging to the state had died in the compound, and one of the only two Europeans in the place had died of the same disease, in each case a

few days before I arrived. I afterwards found that two out of the three wells in use in the compound contained the microbe of cholera, and were probably responsible for these deaths.

The villagers at first objected to my putting any medicine in their wells. I regret to say that, so far as my experience goes, the first symptom of civilisation among the lower classes in India is that they develop a sort of inverted conscience, which pricks them whenever they tell the truth. In Dhusaha this influence had not yet arrived, and consequently my suggestion to put a medicine in their wells was met with a plain-spoken and unambiguous refusal. I therefore spent my first few days in the place in making bacteriological observations and in studying the beliefs and customs of the inhabitants.

The village Dhusaha consists of a collection of mud huts. There had been about 320 inhabitants, but seventy-eight had died of cholera in the epidemic that was then existing. The water supply is obtained from four shallow wells. The mud huts are constantly falling down in the rains, and mud to repair them being taken from a piece of waste land, the hollow thus formed has gradually formed a tank. Refuse is usually thrown down on the margins of the tank; hence, its water is so putrid that the inhabitants not only do not drink it, but I believe do not use it even for washing clothes. The inhabitants pointed out to me that the reason why the water in one of the wells was bad was that it was situated near the tank, and that the bad water from the tank travelled along under the ground to the well and gave a disagreeable taste to the water. I afterwards found that the water of this particular well contained no less than 7,000 microbes per cubic centimetre, and thus thoroughly deserved the character the villagers gave it.

The inhabitants are all high-caste Hindoos, mostly Brahmins. Not a single sweeper or other low-caste man was in the place. Being of high caste they only eat food which has been cooked by themselves, and this only when it is perfectly fresh. They eat no sweetmeats or other food brought from the bazaar in the neighbouring town. Their food consists almost entirely of rice and pulse, with occasionally a little unrefined sugar or dried mangoes.

But what chiefly aroused my interest was their views of cholera, and their religious observances in the presence of this scourge. If cholera breaks out in a village, the inhabitants say that it is due to Bhowáni their goddess, or to the army of Bhowáni being present in the place. They regard it as a judgment for their sins and shortcomings, and, as in other religions, they consider this evil to be a blessing in disguise. They immediately commence to propitiate the goddess by sacrificing flowers and rice. When travelling through the district the first sign of the presence of cholera which struck the eye was a small booth of grass mats surmounted by flags borne on

long bamboos. In Dhusaha such a booth had been erected on the margin of a well which contained the cholera microbe, and in this booth the chief 'jogi,' or priest, of the village prayed with about a dozen of the older villagers. I myself heard him praying on three successive days in a loud voice, and I believe he prayed the whole day long with scarcely an interval for refreshment. I shall mention him again later on.

The villagers in this district, however, not only attempt to propitiate Bhowáni by prayers and sacrifices, but also by certain rules of conduct, which appear to me to be of interest and importance. Firstly, they say that Bhowáni will be angry if any of the inhabitants leave the village. Secondly, they say that she will be angry if any outsiders are allowed to come into the village at a time when cholera is present. A curious incident illustrating the good effect of this belief happened at about this time in a couple of villages some. distance from the town of Balrampur. There was only one well between the two villages. Cholera one day broke out in the village which possessed the well. On the next morning women came as. usual from the other village to fetch water. But the inhabitants of the first village turned out and refused to allow them to approach, on the grounds that Bhowani was among them and would be angry at being disturbed. The inhabitants of this second village had to get their water from elsewhere, and consequently came into the town to make a complaint. It may be noted that the official to whom they chose to bring their complaint was not the native prime minister or the native secretary for home affairs, or any other native official, who might be supposed to be better able to sympathise with their wrongs, but the head stableman, who was the only English official in the district at the time. I have no doubt that he pointed out to them that if they could not get their water, they were equally unable to get the cholera through this source.

Granting that the spread of cholera is chiefly furthered by human intercourse (and this at the present time few people seem inclined to doubt), it appears to me difficult to see how cholera could spread if these simple rules were rigidly enforced.

But there are other ways of avoiding the wrath of Bhowáni which appear to me to be only slightly less admirable than those above mentioned.

Firstly, they say that Bhowáni will be angry if any one takes medicine when cholera is about. Perhaps I owe some apology to medical men in suggesting that this rule is good. But when it is considered that if the natives were willing to take medicine, they would often have to walk twenty miles to the dispensary to get it, thus increasing the risk of spreading the disease through the four thousand villages that are in the district in question, it will be seen that there are advantages in the plan. Further, it would often

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happen that the medicine would arrive too late to have any effect on the patient, and probably it would have a bad effect on the relatives in making them doubt the efficacy of English drugs. Cholera in this district often kills in a few hours, and when a fairly unanimous choice has been made as to which of the thousand and one now existing remedies is most likely to be able to cope with it, it will be time to object to the custom in question. The wish to do something when one sees a fellow creature in pain is very natural. I saw an old woman dying of cholera in Dhusaha. The sole treatment to which she had been subjected was that a mud plaster had been spread over the stomach, and small doses of holy water from the Ganges were being poured into her mouth. The latter treatment was intended as a medicine for her soul rather than for her body, as every Hindoo should, according to the prevalent belief, drink this water before his death. Her relatives were too troubled by the occurrence to object to my putting some salol which I happened to have with me into this water, but it certainly did no good to the patient, and had I at the time known more about their religion, I should have avoided the risk of hurting their feelings.

When Bhowáni is in the village, it is also necessary to avoid feasting and other forms of indulgence. The excellence of these rules is sufficiently obvious.

What is the origin of this worship of Bhowáni, every detail of which, excepting the sacrifices, appears to be a sanitary precaution? Is Bhowáni the name of some primeval bacteriologist, who has since been deified? Or of some early sanitary commissioner, whose studies on the nature of cholera have since earned him a place in the Hindoo pantheon? Or, on the other hand, has the form of worship arisen by some process of evolution from a simpler and perhaps less admirable model? A priori the latter alternative would appear to be the most probable, and it agrees the better with some inquiries I have instituted since my return to Agra. Bhowáni is another name or incarnation of the goddess Kali.' There are not many worshippers of this goddess in the parts of the North-West Provinces with which I am acquainted. They occur more frequently, however, in the neighbourhood of Calcutta; and here I made inquiries. I found, however, no trace in her worship of the above-described sanitary precautions. After some search, I met in Agra with a most devout worshipper of Kali, who had given up his business in order to be able to devote his time to religion. He showed great willingness to tell me everything connected with the ritual, and further gave me free permission to chop off his head if he could not stop a cholera epidemic by offering sacrifices and prayers. He was, however, more

'Kali is the Destroyer. Diseases and pestilences are caused by her emissaries. The views of the Thugs were that they could please her by acting as her emissaries. Consequently they regarded the murder of their fellow creatures as a religious act.