So the meeting went on, till four speakers had spoken long, and the late moon was moving up among the clouds and stars. Then a new speaker rose—tall, dark, and aged, with clearly cut features, and a shaven head. His dress was of deep salmon-coloured cotton—saffron, with a tinge of red—and in one hand he held a wanderer’s staff, symbolic of control over thought, speech, and action. Once he had been a rich man, a barrister, a councillor, a leader of public life. Now he had given away all he possessed. He had discarded the mark of worship and the sacred thread. Having said farewell to family and friends, to business, politics, and all transitory things, he had set off with only a staff to wander through India, begging his bread and teaching the divine realities, on which he meditated day and night. To this meeting he had come, not to discuss mortal justice or the British rule—things that hardly throw a shadow on the radiance of eternity—but only to say that in his wanderings he had met with Lajpat Rai, and had found in him a saintly human soul, simple-hearted, austere, and regardless of possessions. He spoke in his childhood’s Tamil, and when he had finished speaking he went upon his way, while the meeting dispersed, and dying shouts of “Bande Mataram!” mingled with the roaring of the surf. FOOTNOTES: [33] Introduction, p. 20. [34] See Introduction, p. 26 ff., Mr. Morley’s speech at Arbroath. CHAPTER VII THE FLOODS OF ORISSA The holy region of Orissa, where stand the temples of Juggernath, “Lord of the World,” and of Tribhuvaneshwar, less famous but “Lord of Three Worlds” all the same, needs what wealth of holiness it has got, for its earthly fortunes are small. The ancient Uriya people live there, speaking a strange and separate language, though it is said to be near akin to an ancient Sanscrit form, and using a script like wire netting or a series of circles in a row. In the southern district near Ganjam they are still counted as part of the Madras Presidency, but all the rest of their country is now limited to Bengal, and its officials are responsible to the Lieutenant-Governor in Calcutta. The greater part of the land is held by Tributary Chiefs and Rajahs, under the control of a Political Agent, but a good deal is owned by ordinary zemindars or landlords who sublet to peasants much in the usual way, come under the authority of the usual Commissioners and Collectors of the Civil Service, and about two-thirds of them pay a land-tax or rent to Government, nominally fixed every thirty years, because they are not included in the Permanent Settlement of Bengal. There are also a few cultivators holding direct from Government.