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HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA : M. M. NINAN Visit to Tibet On his first journey in 1908, when he was scarcely nineteen years of age, he started alone and was unacquainted with the language spoken in Tibet. He took the help of two Moravian missionaries staying in Tibet. In Tibet, he soon found the people of Tibet resented his teaching, land wherever he went; he was met with bitter opposition and hatred, especially from the Lamas. Notwithstanding this, he reached the important town of Tashigang in safety and was astonished and pleased to receive kindly treatment at the hands of the head Lama of the place. This man was a person of importance and under him served some hundreds of inferior Lamas. The Lama not only received the Sadhu with kindness but also provided him with food and shelter, and as the weather was bitterly cold, this hospitality was most acceptable. Moreover, the Lama called a gathering of the persons under his control to hear the Sadhu’s message, and so he preached the gospel with great thankfulness of heart. Journeying on from this place, he was fortunate enough to arrive at a town under the rule of another Lama who was a friend of the Lama of Tashigang, and here again he was accorded a welcome and a good hearing. From this place he visited several other towns and villages, but in these he met with even greater opposition than in his earlier work. He was constantly threatened and warned to get out of the country lest some evil should befall him. However, he was not to be thus terrorized, and he continued his work amidst many difficulties. At a town called Rasar he was arrested and arraigned before the head Lama on the charge of entering the country and preaching the gospel of Christ. He was found guilty, and amidst a crowd of evil-disposed persons, he was led away to the place of execution. The two favorite forms of capital punishment are being sewn up in a wet yak skin and pout out in the sun until death ends the torment, or being cast into the depth of a dry well, the top being firmly fastened over the head of the culprit. The latter was chosen for the Sadhu. Arrived at the place he was stripped of his clothes, and cast into the dark depths of this ghastly charmelhouse with such violence that his right arm was injured. Many others had gone down this same well before him never to return, and he alighted on a mass of human bones land rotting flesh. Any death seemed preferable to this. Wherever he laid his hands, they met putrid flesh, while the odor almost poisoned him. In the words of his Savior, he cried, “Why hast Thou forsaken me?” Day passed into night, making no change in the darkness of this awful place and bringing no relief by sleep. Without food or even water, the hours grew into days, and Sundar felt he could not last much longer. On the third night, just when he had been crying to God in prayer, he heard a grating sound overhead. Someone was opening the locked lid of his dismal prison. He heard the key turn and the rattle of the iron covering as sit was drawn away. Then a voice reached him from the top of the well, telling him to take hold of the rope that was being let down for his rescue. As the rope reached him he grasped it with all his remaining strength, and was strongly but gently pulled up from the evil place into the fresh air above. When he arrived at the top of the well, the lid was drawn over again and locked. When he looked round, his deliverer was nowhere to be seen, but the pain in his arm was gone, and the clean air filled him with new life. All that the Sadhu felt able to do was to praise God for His wonderful deliverance, and when morning came, he struggled back to the town, where he rested in the Serai (which means a resting 214
HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA : M. M. NINAN place) until he was able to start preaching again. Back in the city at his old work again was cause for a great commotion. The news was quickly taken to the Lama. The Sadhu was again arrested and brought to the judgment seat, and being questioned as to what happened he told the story of his marvelous escape. The Lama was greatly angered, declaring that someone must have secured the key and gone to hiss rescue, but when search was made for the key and it was found on his own girdle, he was speechless with amazement and fear. He then ordered Sundar to leave the city and get away as far as possible, lest his powerful God should bring some untold disaster upon himself and his people. Perseverance in service He had a great desire to visit Palestine and re-live some of the happenings in Jesus' life. In 1908, he went to Bombay, hoping to board a convenient ship. However, to his intense disappointment, the government refused him a permit, and he had to return to the north. It was on this trip that he suddenly recognized a basic dilemma of the Christian mission to India. A Brahmin had collapsed in the hot, crowded carriage and, at the next station, the Anglo-Indian stationmaster came rushing with a cup of water from the refreshment room. The Brahmin -- a high-caste Hindu -- thrust it away in horror. He needed water, but he could only accept it in his own drinking vessel. When that was brought he drank, and revived. In the same way, Sundar Singh realized, India would not widely accept the gospel of Jesus offered in Western guise. That, he recognized, was why many listeners responded to him in his Indian Sadhu's robe. There was still sharper disillusionment to come. In 1909, he was persuaded to begin training for the Christian ministry at the Anglican college in Lahore. From the beginning, he found himself being tormented by fellow students for being "different" and no doubt too self-assured. This phase ended when their ringleader heard Singh quietly praying for him, with love in his tones and words. However, other tensions remained. Much in the college course seemed irrelevant to the gospel as India needed to hear it, and then, as the course drew to an end, the principal stated that he must now discard his Sadhu's robe and wear "respectable" European clerical dress; use formal Anglican worship; sing English hymns; and never preach outside his parish without special permission. Never again visit Tibet, he asked? That would be, to him, an unthinkable rejection of God's call. With deep sadness he left the college, still dressed in his yellow robe, and in 1912 began his annual trek into Tibet as the winter snows began to melt on the Himalayan tracks and passes. Kailash Maharishi A North Indian newspaper had published the following: Our world less, selfless and godly brother Sundar Singh has discovered the Christian hermit, the Maharishi at Kailash, who has for years been on the snowy Himalayas praying and interceding for the worldYou have revealed to the world the secret of one of the members of our mission the Maharishi at Kailash. On the summit of one of the mountains of the Kailash Range was a deserted Buddhist temple, and then rarely visited by man. A few miles from this temple dwelt the great saint known as the Majority of Kailash, in a cave some 13,000 feet above the sea level. All this region is the Olympus of India, the seat of Hindu holy myths, and it is associated in Hindu sacred books with the names of great and devout souls of all 215
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PREFACE This book is the result of
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Kolla Varsham (Malayalam Era) HISTO
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1321 Friar Odoric of Pordenone HIST
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"Third Wave of Migration". HISTORY
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Bible Studies Six Enigmas in the Bi
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