Henri Michaux - A Barbarian in Asia

The Hindu does not kill the cow. No, evidently, but everywhere you will see cows eating old newspapers. Do you believe that the cow is naturally partial to old newspapers? This would be saying you don’t know the cow. She likes green grass, which is good to crop, and, in a pinch, vegetables. Do you believe that the Hindu is ignorant in the matter of the cow’s tastes? Come, come! After five thousand years of living together! Only he is as hard as leather, and that’s that.

When he saw Europeans looking after animals he was amazed. When a dog goes into a kitchen, one must immediately throw out all the food, and wash the pots; the dog is impure.

But, pure or impure, he does not like animals. He is not fraternal.

One day, at a Bengali theater, I saw a famous social reformer impersonated — Ramanan or Kabir himself who, in some century or another, tried to do away with caste. Some individuals of different castes came to him. He blessed them all equally and prevented them from bowing down to him, then all the other characters raised both arms and sang of the equality and the fraternity of men.

This sounded false, false! Every five minutes they raised their arms to the sky. The audience was delighted. Yes, they raised their arms to the sky, but they did not stretch them out toward one another. Ah! no! nothing like that — lame, poor, blind, get along the best you can. How false it all sounded, and how it was applauded.

Everybody knows these poets who, year after year, pile up thousands of verses, with a tear in every one. All very fine, but try to borrow a penny from them, just to see. The ‘poetic faculty’ and the ‘religious faculty’ are more alike than one would think.

What a pity that instead of the lungs it is not the heart that can be exercised; you have it there in your breast for life, and good will doesn’t change it much. It is the cause of good will and ill will. What enthusiasms we would have if we could manipulate it! Physically manipulate it!

Alas! The fact is that some objects will have to be found that are worth enthusiasm.

It is very difficult to judge an opera from the libretto and a song from the words. The words are only a support.

That is why Homer is difficult to judge. All the more so is the Ramayana .

When reading it, one thinks it boundless, every piece of it boundless, too huge, a great part of it no aid to the comprehension of it as a whole. But if you hear the same pieces sung, what was too long turns out to be precisely ‘what matters,’ now becomes a superhuman litany. And this, one perceives, is where demigods are an advantage. Achilles is but a man, Roland is but a man. But Arjuna is god and man. He intervenes for and against the gods and the sun is a mere soldier in the affair.

When the combat is not going as well as he would like, the hero, having shot ‘twenty thousand arrows in one morning,’ retires under a tree to meditate, and beware! when he returns to the fray with his psychic power and his bow.

One day, in a little town, I went into the courtyard of a house, and saw six men naked to the loins, Sivaists, who were seated on the ground, around books written in Hindu, with the expressions of bulldogs tearing a piece of meat apart, holding little cymbals in their hands, and madly singing, in rapid, diabolic rhythm, a damnable song of sorcery that took hold of you irresistibly, that trumpeted, was ecstatic, overpowering — yes, the song of the superman.

On account of songs such as this, one throws oneself under the wheels of the chariot of the gods at the October festival. I myself would likewise throw myself under the wheels for such a song. Song of the psychic affirmation, of the irresistible triumph of the superman.

Now that song was the same Ramayana I had found so unnecessarily long and boastful.

In this courtyard there was a very old man; he bowed to me, but I perceived the bow too late. The music was resumed and I said to myself: ‘If he would only look at me again!’ He was a pilgrim, not from this region. It seemed to me that he felt friendly toward me. The music ended. I was transported. He turned in my direction, looked intently at me and went away. In his look there was something for me, particularly. What it said to me I am still seeking. Something important, essential. He looked at me, me and my destiny, with a sort of acquiescence and rejoicing, but through it ran a thread of compassion and almost of pity, and I wonder what that means.

I have here in Puri province of Orissa somewhat the same impression that I had in Darjeeling; an immense relief, as soon as I meet other men than Bengalis. But it is in Bengal that I preferred to stay and I was always convinced that when I returned to France I would miss them a great deal, and already in this place I miss them. I left Bengal two days ago and regret it. Here there are charming people who smile at you… well? But there, one went about in the ‘dark.’

The God of the Hebrews was far away. He revealed Himself on Mount Sinaï, from afar, in lightning and thunder, to one man alone, and all this in order to give him ten commandments graven on stone.

One day His son was incarnated. From that moment a new era opens in the world. Nothing is as it used to be. A sort of enthusiasm and security invades the world.

But for the Hindu, in whose country one does not have to wait twenty years for a god to be incarnated, Vishnu alone having been incarnated twelve times, this is nothing. He feels extraordinarily at home with his gods, hoping to have them for sons, and the young girls for husbands. Also the shaktas (prayers) resemble, in their familiarity, the worst prose, and even invective has a prominent place in them.

When you ask a southern Hindu the names of the gods who figure on the gopurams , there are sure to be some among them whom he does not recognize. ‘There are so many of them,’ he says, and then one sees on his face that particular smile of the sated rich man, who does not have to deny himself anything, and you wonder whether feeling thus is not a necessity to the Hindu.

In the south, particularly, when you see the hundreds of gods with ominous faces in the temples, the separation between the religious conception of the West and that of the Hindu seems an abyss.

It is a religion of demons, you say to yourself, that is obvious.

Now when you read the Ramayana , you see that three quarters of the book are composed of villainy and of the supernatural powers of villains, demons, hermits and inferior gods, all busy most of the time doing evil, or at war, controlled with difficulty and inefficiency by the big gods, who are plainly improvident and irresponsible. But then, what is the difference between gods and men?

It boils down to this: They possess magic power . As they are bad, there is probably exactly the same proportion of badness as in the Hindus; they use their magic power to do evil, for their cupidity, for their concupiscence, and that with vile cunning.

Now, any other people would be revolted. Not the Hindu. Psychic power is all that counts. The ideal, even up to a few years ago, was to acquire a mastery over psychic forces. A man who can destroy a palace by magic, a man who can weave a spell, has always been considered by them the ne plus ultra .