Forlong - Rivers of Life

Preface. xix
from this retreat that he passed into the busy life of the world in Bānāres; but his
disciples then forsook him and fled. At Nalanda he planted his first woodland colleges,
from which issued teachers who changed the whole face of Indian life, and swept away
an effete faith which had become an oppressive scourge to all ranks and conditions
except the pampered priestly castes. Here too lay the early scenes of that mongrel
Budhism which has in India outlived Sakya Muni’s in the Jainas of Gujerat and Malwa.
But older far than all these may be seen the ancient sites of the: aboriginal Nature Worshipers,
as at Deogarh, Parsu-Rāma’s mountain, and at no doubt many another, sacred
to more primitive divine-ideas than this Hindu Avatâr and Jaina saint, aye, even more
ancient than Vedik gods, if one had only the necessary knowledge and leisure for
such researches.
From these provinces the author was transferred. to the north-west—“Agra and
Central India,” as the vast and wild districts are called which stretch from the fertile
plains of the Jamuna over all the lands watered by its great tributaries the Chambul,
Sind, etc., which rise amidst the Aravalis and the Vindhyâs Here indeed he who
desires to study the most ancient histories, mythologies and faiths, has a wide
and intensely interesting field before him, which would require a volume to give any
clear conception of. To the north, on the Jamuna or mythik Kal-linga, lie all the
scenes of the youthful Krishna’s life, including those of his amorous follies, which
fanciful solo-phalik worshipers have woven around him as their Apollo. Further
north are the fields where in mature life he warred with gods and Titans and all
those Herakleidæ of ancient India as depicted and immortalized in the great epik
of the Mahābhārata. Everywhere also the old Nature faiths are vigorous, though on
tha Jamna usually hidden under a thin disguise of Hinduism; but it has no such
covering southwards amidst the wilds of Central India and Bundelkand. There we
find Druid-like shrines of all kinds; ancient peoples Worshiping stones and divers
other objects symbolical of nature’s fertile agencies, and keeping high festivals similar
to the Phallaphoria of Egypt and of Greece.
After some four years spent in developing Public Works throughout these provinces,
the writer was transferred on similar duty to Rājputāna, where the seat of
the Government is on the sacred and beautiful mountain of Abu, the ancient Ara-
Budha. Here Brahman and Budhist had often striven for mastery, and from thence
had many of their Reformers gone forth to redeem India; but now Abu is only the
timeous resort of pious Hindus and Jains and, at certam seasons, of pilgrims who
come to worship at its exquisitely carved aud famous Jaina temples or at very