DHARMAPALA’S MISSION IN INDIA, AND HIS LECTURE IN ALBERT HALL, CALCUTTA.
The Anagarika Dharmapala is doing his best for the elevation of India. Though he is a Singhalese from Ceylon and not a Hindu from the valley of the Ganges, he takes a great interest in the country which gave birth to Buddha, his master and teacher. Having seen the enormous benefits of a thorough and scientific education, the Anagarika has decided to found a school in Isipatane, Benares, in which he proposes to teach poor children such arts and crafts as will enable them to become self-reliant men and women. We have before us reports of Indian newspapers discussing his plans and recapi¬tulating an address of his, delivered on this subject in Albert Hall, Calcutta. For an explanation of his arguments and plans we give a resume of Mr.
Dharmapala’s lecture, following mainly the account of the Indian Mirror of May 4, 1904:
“The Anagarika Dharmapala in his lecture on Friday last, at Albert Hall, Calcutta, at the Wesaka festival, said that he had been devoting himself as a travelling student, working for the good of India, and that for ten years he had journeyed in the North, East, South, and West of India, and that hav¬ing seen the wretchedness, the distressing poverty, the crass ignorance of the people, and the way the poor children were neglected, he made up his mind to work for their elevation.
“With this resolution he left India for Japan, to study the educational system of the Japanese. He gave a delightfully charming picture of the cheerful people of the land of the rising sun, where men, women, and chil¬dren live such sober, artistic, refined, polite lives; of their daily work and progressive ways; of the schools, where children from five years of age are taught to be patriotic, useful, cleanly, diligent, and fearless.
“In 1889, when Mr. Dhamapala first visited Japan, even lamps had to be imported from foreign countries, but in 1901, unaided, they were building battleships of 6000 tons in their own dockyards. This wonderful development made a great impression on his mind. He visited the trade schools, the com¬mercial schools, the technical schools, the orphanages, where, at the expense of the Municipalities or State, and also by private contributions, orphans are taught the different arts and crafts. Youths were never found loafing in the streets, for all were active, and if they had no other work to do, their time would be spent in cleaning the doors, windows, glass-panes, or watering the streets in front of their houses.
“Children are taken care of in Japan as a florist would of a flower, and floriculture is taught to every girl. Paper-making, soap-making, enamelling, mat-making, gardening, japannning, umbrella and fan-making, and various other things are taught in the different manual training schools.
“The religion of the country, Mr. Dharmapala said, is Buddhism, and the activity of the people is due to Buddhism which came from India and taught the people arts and crafts, and gave them a religion. The pre-Buddhistic art was rude and clumsy. The development of the people is due to their religion which teaches the development of the individual. Buddha in the one word appamada, “non-delay,” expressed the essence of his religion. It is a religion that teaches a higher development according to the energetic effort one makes daily. There should be the overwhelming desire to do the good, to be great, to progress, to advance, and not remain without making strenuous exertion. Desire to progress is absolutely essential, and according to the desires and the exertions one makes, his development takes place.
“When Mr. Dharmapala had finished his description of Japan, he gave a pleasant picture of American school life with its beautifully constructed palatial buildings, where the children from their fifth year are given a free education, the State providing them with books, pens, paper, ink, etc., free. The children of the immigrants that come to the United States from Eng¬land, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Russia, Italy, Austria, and even India, are received and educated free. 900 million rupees are spent yearly for the education of 15 million children. In the manual training schools clay-modelling, weaving of carpets, cooking, physical culture, gardening, drawing, carpentry, forging, and other arts and crafts are taught.
MISCELLANEOUS
The child is never neglected, and its latent potentialities are developed by scientific and enlightened teachers.’
“The speaker then gave an enthusiastic picture of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial School, founded by the emancipated negro slave, Booker T. Washington. Mr. Dharmapala found therein palatial buildings, workshops, a farm of 600 acres, baths, dairy, gymnasiums, etc. All this phenomenal work had been completed within twenty years by the efforts of one young slave, who started the school in a village with twenty negro children in a delapidated shanty. To-day there are 1,500 students taught daily in every art and craft that is requisite for a civilised community. “ ‘When I saw this institution,’ the Anagarika said, ‘I thought of the man who had founded it. A negro slave in twenty years had built up this wonder¬ful institution. Why should not I, with the noble traditions of thirty cen¬turies behind me, begin the work of training children in a very modest way, taking about 10 children and teaching them agriculture, elementary science, hygiene, etc.?’
“Mr. Dharmapala had written to a lady friend in Honolulu, Mrs. T. R. Foster, and the benevolent lady sent him at once Rs. 10,000 to start the first school. That the money should come from the remote little Island in the far-off Pacific for India’s neglected children was to him auspicious. How much more shoud the people of India feel, and contribute for the move¬ment? He had further gained the assistance of a young Englishman who accompanied him to India, and now the Anagarika declared that he hoped to start the school somewhere in a village either in Bengal or Benares.
“In concluding his speech, M. Dharmapala made a thrilling appeal which went deep into the hearts of the audience, stirring them into action, and ask¬ing them not to sit with folded hands, and cry for extraneous help. He said that the Great Master, Buddha, 2,400 years ago exhorted the people of India to activity, to study; and that he brought the message of the Gospel of cheerfulness and activity to the people. He said: ‘Sacrifice your selfish de¬sires for the large good of your country, devote yourselves to the elevation of the neglected children. Wake up from your slumbers, don’t be like the crying goat of the Jataka tale that flattered the tiger and was eaten by him, but be like the clever goat that showed presence of mind and escaped from the tiger’s jaws.’”
We are inclined to believe that the Anagarika underrates the difficulties of the enterprise, but we do not deny its feasibility, provided he shows sufficient energy and wisdom to accomplish his aim. We will watch his further progress and shall be very glad to see him succeed.
India exercises a strange fascination and the hearts of many Western people beat in sympathy with her needs. Miss Christine Albers, an Ameri¬can lady of German extraction, who has been working in Ceylon and Cal¬cutta for several years, performs on a small scale this very same work which the Anagarika proposes to do. She writes:
“I have opened a little girls’ school in the heart of the Bengalee quarters, where I am trying to carry out my ideals. I am endeavoring to give to these little girls a good education in their own Bengalee, and after they are well able to read and write that, Sanskrit and English are added, besides the ordinary school branches, including needle work and religious instruction in their own faith. I find these little girls very able, and most of them take to education very well indeed. They have it in them to make most superior women; and in the regeneration of this great race, the education of the women is one of the most important points. I trust I will continue to be able to work for some years more, so as to establish this work well.” Miss Albers defrays her own expenses by working elsewhere three days in the week, and for the expenses of her missionary work she receives but a scanty support from personal friends.
Prof William North Rice, a scientist and a Christian, attempts in this book a reconciliation of his scientific convictions with Christianity, and while in our opinion he does not succeed, we become acquainted in the book with one who is both religious and thoughtful. He has gone deep and has succeeded in settling the problem to his own satisfaction. He is well aware of the change that has taken place by the expansion of science. He knows that the world has moved, that our knowledge has grown. The earth is no longer a flat territory covered with the heavens, and governed by a god who has his residence above the firmament. The universe has grown in space to be infinite, in time to be eternal, and the unity of the laws of the universe has to be recognized as an indispensable truth. To be just to the author we let him speak for himself. In the face of the intellectual growth of man-kind he says:
“The question, then, before us is whether Christianity can survive the prodigious change which has taken place in the intellectual environment. It is obvious that so great a change in the knowledge and thought of the world must involve changes in the many beliefs more or less closely connected with Christianity. An alleged miraculous event is necessarily regarded in a very different light at the beginning of the twentieth century from that in which it was regarded in the first century. The miraculous character of a narrative was then no reason why any one should fail to believe it. In this age of scientific thought, every alleged miracle labors under a heavy burden of a priori improbability. There may be sufficient reason for accepting certain miracles as historic, but they can no longer be accepted in the unquestionable way which once was possible. The status of miracle in relation to scientific thought is of special importance, since one alleged miracle—the resurrection of Jesus—is not an incidental fact connected with Christianity, nor merely an evidence of Christianity, but an integral part of Christianity. The denial of the resurrection of Jesus would involve a radical reconstruction of Christian doctrine.
“In the Gospel according to Luke, and in the Acts of the Apostles, we are told that Jesus led his disciples to the Mount of Olives, and that after talking with them, ‘he was taken up. and a cloud received him out of their sight.’ Those men accordingly saw, or thought they saw, the body of Jesus ascending vertically from the earth until it was hidden from them by a cloud.
