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hands unwashed (Matthew VII, 2[WEH NOTE: not Matthew, Mark VII,2], Luke XI, 38) Yogis will not
wash, because the ceremonial Law of the orthodox is so strict they should do so; this being universal in
the east, it is also universal for dirt to be a sign of sancitity. Now imagine Jesus dipping one of the said
hands in the dish with eleven other very imperfect ablutioners. If this fail, give him a few more intimate
Eastern details; explain exactly why cleanliness in cooking and eating is so vitally important in such
countries as Syria.
The understanding of Eastern customs is imperative, if the life of Jesus is to be truly imagined and
realized. A few years travel in India and North Africa familiarizes one with the atmosphere, and it is to
smile when people talk of the 'wonderful life' of Jesus. By every roadside in India you may find a holy
man today - you might have found me in 1901! - who is living exactly the life recorded of Jesus. He begs
his food, or else 'women minister to him of their substance' (Luke VIII, 3.) just as happens to the idle and
vicious rascals who come out of India to America and England to pose as 'yogis' at the expense of lazy
and good-for-nothing society women in search of a new fad. Only, in India, the support of yogis is decent
and honourable. The men are really saints, and demand nothing but a little rice and curry. You can
support one for a year on the price of a lunch at the Claridge. {209}
Most yogis in India are solitaries. Very likely they have a vow of silence. But in some few the itch of
teaching works, and they wander from place to place picking up disciples. Now and then they go mad
under the strain of the life, or the use of drugs, or the abuse of religious ecstasies, become ferocious run
'amok' perhaps do murder, perhaps attack the temple of a rival sect on some pretext, or try to reform their
own temples in some such violent way as Jesus took with the money-changers. Sometimes they get
politically drunk, and start a campaign against the powers that be. Every Indian official will tell you what
a plague such men often become; half the raids on the frontier are due to some such 'exalte'. England at
large (even) has heard of the Madhi, and the Mad Mullah, and the Senussi, and perhaps even in older
days of the Druses and the Old Man of the Mountain, with his Hashish-maddened disciples, from whom
we have our word 'assassin'. The good people of England may be shocked to hear that there is not a
penny to choose between such men and their idolized Jesus. But it is the fact.
All these men have their disciples, and their following of women - usually loose women, hermits and holy
men having a great reputation everywhere for sexual prowess. They have their sayings, they make up
their parables and fables to amuse their followers by the camp-fire at nightfall, they do their miracles, and
fulfil the ancient prophecies in exactly the same way as Jesus did. The complaints of the Pharisees against
Jesus are the stock complaints of the Orthodox in India to-day against the Yogis. They omit ceremonial
washings; they eat filthy food; they take no heed of religious festivals or of the prescriptions of the Rishis
and {210} other great teachers. They care nothing for caste; they are shiftless, idle, and vagabond; they
pray instead of working; and so on. Similarly, nine-tenths of the injunctions of Jesus are aimed at the most
cherished rules or fads of the Pharisees; and so are most of the Wise sayings of the 'holy man' of India and
all Islam to-day.
+ The little dialogues in which Jesus refutes the Scribes and Pharisees are extremely characteristic. The
Oriental loves to have his 'darwesh' outwit the heckler. Every Eastern story-teller has (a) hundred such in
his repertoire. Here is a sample. A certain king asks a darwesh: How is it possible that Iblis (Satan), who
is made of fire, should be tormented by fire? The holy man picks up a clod of earth and throws it at the
king, who howls. What! impossible! exclaims the darwesh, you who are made of earth cannot be hurt by
earth. Here the saint has the right end both of the argument and of the brick. The type of story is as
common as the desert sand itself.
What Mr. Shaw calls the 'comic miraculous overdraught of fishes' is also an absolutely universal story.
The greedy man tries to exploit the powers of the thaumaturgist, and has his prayer granted to his own
confusion. There is hardly a book of Fairy Tales in the world that has not some such story. One need only [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]