Previous - Next

' He looked round
proudly.

'There was need,' said the young sepoy drily, and the travellers'
laugh turned against the banker.

'Clean - to return again to the Gods,' the lama muttered. 'And to
go forth on the round of lives anew - still tied to the Wheel.'
He shook his head testily. 'But maybe there is a mistake. Who,
then, made Gunga in the beginning?'

'The Gods. Of what known faith art thou?' the banker said,
appalled.

'I follow the Law - the Most Excellent Law. So it was the Gods
that made Gunga. What like of Gods were they?'

The carriage looked at him in amazement. It was inconceivable
that anyone should be ignorant of Gunga.

'What - what is thy God?' said the money-lender at last.

'Hear!' said the lama, shifting the rosary to his hand. 'Hear:
for I speak of Him now! O people of Hind, listen!'

He began in Urdu the tale of the Lord Buddha, but, borne by his
own thoughts, slid into Tibetan and long-droned texts from a
Chinese book of the Buddha's life. The gentle, tolerant folk
looked on reverently. All India is full of holy men stammering
gospels in strange tongues; shaken and consumed in the fires of
their own zeal; dreamers, babblers, and visionaries: as it has
been from the beginning and will continue to the end.

'Um!' said the soldier of the Ludhiana Sikhs. 'There was a
Mohammedan regiment lay next to us at the Pirzai Kotal, and a
priest of theirs - he was, as I remember, a naik - when the fit
was on him, spake prophecies. But the mad all are in God's
keeping. His officers overlooked much in that man.'

The lama fell back on Urdu, remembering that he was in a strange
land. 'Hear the tale of the Arrow which our Lord loosed from the
bow,' he said.

This was much more to their taste, and they listened curiously
while he told it. 'Now, O people of Hind, I go to seek that
River. Know ye aught that may guide me, for we be all men and
women in evil case.'

'There is Gunga - and Gunga alone - who washes away sin.' ran the
murmur round the carriage.

'Though past question we have good Gods Jullundur-way,' said the
cultivator's wife, looking out of the window. 'See how they have
blessed the crops.'

'To search every river in the Punjab is no small matter,' said
her husband. 'For me, a stream that leaves good silt on my land
suffices, and I thank Bhumia, the God of the Home-stead.' He
shrugged one knotted, bronzed shoulder.

'Think you our Lord came so far North?' said the lama, turning to
Kim.

'It may be,' Kim replied soothingly, as he spat red pan-juice on
the floor.

'The last of the Great Ones,' said the Sikh with authority, 'was
Sikander Julkarn [Alexander the Great]. He paved the streets of
Jullundur and built a great tank near Umballa. That pavement
holds to this day; and the tank is there also. I never heard of
thy God.'

'Let thy hair grow long and talk Punjabi,' said the young soldier
jestingly to Kim, quoting a Northern proverb. 'That is all that

Previous - Next