A Tour of the Missions: Observations and ConclusionsStrong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
A Tour of the Missions: Observations and Conclusions
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
East Asia -- Description and travel; Missions
It was a relief to be conducted by a clergyman of the Anglican faith to
the church where lie buried the remains of Schwartz, the first English
missionary to India. It must have required great gifts of mind and heart
and will to brave Hindu opposition, to win the affection and support of
a raja, and to lay the foundations of a Christian community in this
heathen land. Schwartz was a Prussian by birth, though he went out as a
missionary of a Danish society. He gave his life and his fortune to the
cause of missions, and the English work in Tanjore is even now largely
supported by the endowments which he left behind him when he died. Our
good friend Doctor Blake, the English clergyman, took us to the palace
of the princess of Tanjore, also to the raja's library of Oriental
manuscripts within the palace--a priceless collection of eighteen
thousand Sanskrit manuscripts, of which eight thousand are written on
palm-leaves. This library is unique in all India; and it shows that a
raja in Tanjore, in his love for literature, could equal the raja of
Jaipur, in his love for astronomy. The desire for learning was a passion
that survived the fall, an evidence of the presence in humanity of the
preincarnate Christ, "the Light that lighteth every man."
Madura is a hundred miles farther south than Tanjore. It is really the
center of Dravidian worship. While some features of the Tanjore temple
are more beautiful, the temple at Madura is more vast. Five great
pyramidal towers, four of them on the points of the compass, meet the
eye as one looks upon the temple from a distance. The temple is built
about two great shrines or cells, one for the god Siva and the other for
his goddess wife Minakshi, each cell surmounted by a noble dome of
plated gold. On the four sides of the temple are stone porches, arcades,
and pillared halls of great variety, filled with elaborate and grotesque
carvings and sculptures. The extent of the structure may be judged from
the simple statement that the outer walls, twenty-five feet high,
surround a space eight hundred and thirty by seven hundred and thirty
feet, and are surmounted by four lofty gate-pyramids, each of them ten
stories in height. The portico roof of Minakshi's Hall is supported upon
six rows of carved pillars, each made from a single stone. There is an
extensive "Golden Lily Tank," bordered by a granite corridor hung with
cages of parrots, and the putrid waters of the tank furnish purification
preparatory to worship at Minakshi's shrine. The very porch or entrance
pavilion of this shrine is called "The Hall of a Thousand Pillars,"
though the actual number is nine hundred and eighty-five. Here and there
among the pillars are seated learned men or pundits, who place offerings
of flowers and perfumed water before their sacred books and chant the
meaning of Sanskrit scriptures to groups of devout listeners.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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