09 The Neves of Kashmir
Chapter 9 THE NEVES OF KASHMIR THE vale of Kashmir! There is enchantment in the name, Kashmir!
’ A vale of purple glens and snow-cold streams, Calm lakes that bear the lotus on their breast." Where lies this valley of legend and wondrous beauty, along whose borders " A hundred miles of snow-clad mountain peak On either side uprear their heads to heaven "?
If you would find it, follow the Himalaya ranges into the most northern reaches of India’s borders, where in summer the high mountain passes permit adventurous travelers to cross over into other lands whose names fascinate by their suggestion of wildness and obscurity - Afghanistan, Turkestan and Tibet. These three names alone conjure up scenes of alien and barbaric charm. In many respects this most northerly province controlled by the government of India is not unlike Switzerland. There are fertile valleys and hillsides, watered by streams that trickle from glaciers on mountains many thousand feet higher than the Jungfrau, the Matterhorn or Mont Blanc, and just as beautiful. Not one of these great Swiss mountains is 16,000 feet high, yet hundreds of tourists visit them every year, to admire and to wonder. What would these same tourists say on visiting a great valley ninety miles long, traversed by a beautiful river, and enclosed by towering white peaks, loftier far than those of Switzerland? From the melting snows on these great mountains come rushing, foaming torrents, icy-cold, that are in time quieted into clear rivers, or are becalmed into lakes which mirror the snow-capped peaks. In lower altitudes the shores of these lakes are glorified with borders of lotus, that lovely, large pink flower with blue-green leaves, red underneath. Wild flowers are everywhere. Red poppies fill the wheat fields in spring. Purple iris grows along the paths and on the river banks. The white and crimson anemone, the first signs of spring, are followed by yellow crocuses. Red sorrel gives color to entire hillsides. Of course the rose of Kashmir, with its peculiar perfume, is the most famous flower of the land, but the water-lily, the honeysuckle, the hazel, the hawthorn, the wild plum, the clematis, the balsam, the forget-me-not, and the columbine must not be overlooked. And besides countless flowers, there are forests of fir and spruce and birch. Goats, sheep, buffaloes and other animals graze on the hillsides. It is indeed a land where " every prospect pleases." If man were entirely the creature of natural environment, we might expect the inhabitants of Kashmir to be a remarkable people.
Nothing is known of the aborigines of Kashmir. However, there is a written record of a succession of Kashmiri kings from 3120 B.C. to 1445 B.C. Unfortunately, most of the old Hindu books in Kashmir were destroyed in the fourteenth century by the Tartar invader, Zulzer, whose work of devastation was carried farther by Sikander the Iconoclast. Only a few old manuscripts escaped. The earliest legends surviving are Hindu, but we do not know when that cult made its appearance in Kashmir. Some Kashmiri Hindus claim that certain massive temples in their land were built by giants or by the gods.
Possibly two or three centuries before the Christian era Buddhism made its appearance in Kashmir, but by the middle of the seventh century A.D. monasteries were few and Buddhists were moving eastward into Tibet and across China. Then came a period of control by Hindu kings, followed by the Tartar Invasion. In 1323 Mohammedan rule began and, with a brief interruption, continued for nearly four hundred and fifty years. Afghans and Sikhs had in turn oppressed the country for short periods when, in 1846, Kashmir was ceded to the British Government by the Sikhs, in place of war indemnity. Under British direction came peace, reform, and development of natural resources, together with the introduction of many institutions for the uplift of the people. The people of Kashmir, usually of light brown complexion, are often dirty in appearance. Their loose shirts, with wide sleeves originally white, soon take on another color. A woolen blanket is thrown about the shoulder, while short trousers and straw sandals complete the costume for the men. The women wear caps with cloths attached that serve as veils, and dark blue gowns stamped in red. Officials and other persons of position dress more pretentiously. Many wear charms, such as leopards’ claws or metal ornaments. The people are usually happy and good-tempered. They are strong physically, but nervous, and will often weep on slight provocation. They have a fairly well developed moral sense, are affectionate in their homes, and attentive to sick relatives. Their mud houses are without chimneys, and in consequence are smoke-begrimed. Their language is of Hindu origin. In religion, more than nine-tenths are Mohammedans, the remainder being Hindus. In general they are grossly illiterate. Such were the people to whom Arthur Neve, M.D., was sent by the Church Missionary Society, in 1882.
Arthur Neve was born in Brighton, England, in 1858, and in time he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. While yet a student, David Livingstone’s life appealed to him strongly, and he decided to volunteer for service in Africa. Suddenly, however, the Church Missionary Society was confronted with an urgent need for a medical man for Kashmir, to take charge of the hospital at Srinagar. Dr. Elmslie, the first medical missionary ever appointed by the Church Missionary Society, had died, and his successor, Dr. Maxwell, had broken down in health a year or two later. A third medical missionary, Dr. Downes, was retiring on account of ill health. The Kashmir Mission had been opened about 1863 by the Rev. Robert Clark. The first attempt at medical mission work met with great opposition. The governor and other officials were antagonistic and apparently permitted, if they did not incite, mob violence. In 1864 Mr. Clark made the following entry in his diary:
" The house was literally besieged with men and noisy boys. They stood by hundreds on the bridge, and lined the river on both sides, shouting, and one man striking a gong, to collect the people. Not a chuprasse, or police officer, or soldier, or official of any kind appeared. The tumult quickly increased, and no efforts were made to stop it. The people began to throw stones and some of them broke down the wall of the compound and stables. Our servants became greatly alarmed, for they threatened to burn the house down. The number present was between one thousand and one thousand five hundred. When I went to the Wazir to ask for protection, it was said that he was asleep. He kept me waiting for two hours and then did not even give me a chair. He promised to send a guard and never did so. The police also announced that if any one rented a house to the missionaries, all the ’ skin would be taken off their backs." A few weeks later Mr. Clark wrote in his journal:
’ Men are again stationed on the bridge, as they were for weeks together last year, to prevent any one from coming to us. Our servants cannot buy the mere necessaries of life, and we have to send strangers to the other end of the city to purchase flour." For several years Dr. Elmslie received treatment similar to that accorded Mr. Clark, and the opposition to medical missionaries yielded slowly. However, when Dr. Arthur Neve arrived, he found the hospital established and the doors for service wide open in every direction. His predecessors’ unselfish labors for the sufferers in Kashmir had overcome much of the prejudice.
Dr. Neve was thrilled as he crossed the mountain range and enjoyed his first panorama of the Kashmir Valley. At the summit of the pass he stood entranced. What a vision of grandeur he beheld! Twenty miles to the north the peaks, covered with snow and glaciers, rose to enormous heights, orange and pink in the afternoon sun, and fading into purple in the shadows of the valleys. Wular Lake, far down in the emerald valley, reflected the surrounding glory, and the wilder regions of the Himalayas to the east seemed to be calling him already to explorations which he was to attempt so often in the future. But if the young missionary expected beauty and purity everywhere in the romantic Vale of Kashmir, he was quickly disillusioned upon arrival at his station. The capital city, Srinagar, is surrounded by scenes of Alpine beauty. The Kashmir Mission Hospital, perched on a jutting hillside overlooking the city, commands also a view of a vale of purple glens and clear, snow-cold streams. Srinagar has a population of 126,000 people, living in crowded houses, and using for their chief and central highway the Jhelum River, with intersecting canals that would make of Srinagar a second Venice, if people and architecture only lent themselves appropriately. While Srinagar has been called The City of the Sun," it has also been suggested that it might be called " The City of Appalling Odors.’ The dense population is ignorant of sanitation. The drainage of a city without sewers runs into stagnant canals in which people bathe and wash their clothes, and from which women fill their jars with water for drinking and cooking. Portions of the crowded city never receive a direct ray of sunlight, and in consequence there is a deposit of vile black mud in winter and nothing less than a riot of pestilential odors in summer. In 1886 Dr. Arthur Neve was joined by his brother, Dr. Ernest F. Neve, who had also studied at the University of Edinburgh, where he established a record for thorough work in his classes, activity in religious organizations, and service for the poorer classes. The younger physician declared that Srinagar, from a sanitary standpoint, was like a powder magazine waiting for a spark. The spark fell into the magazine a few months after his arrival, when a case of cholera appeared in the city, and soon he and his brother and the Superintendent of the State Hospital were face to face with a baffling situation. When the outbreak occurred, the Mission Hospital was crowded with more than a hundred patients, while great numbers daily thronged the waiting-rooms. On one day alone the two doctors admitted thirty patients to the hospital and performed fifty-three operations. Two of the patients died from cholera, and in a few hours the hospital was empty. The people were panic-stricken. In two months, more than ten thousand died in the city. Dr. Ernest Neve, cooperating with the state physician, took charge of a large section of Srinagar; and Dr. Arthur Neve visited almost every section of the valley (nearly ninety miles long) where deaths were reported. Wherever pure water could be secured in good supply, the people escaped to a great extent. To teach the populace a few simple principles of safeguarding their health by suitable food and water was the privilege of the physicians.
Srinagar suffered again and again from the scourge of cholera. In reporting an epidemic Dr. Arthur Neve wrote:
" The turbid and lazy stream sweeps against the prow masses of dirty foam, floating straw, dead bodies of dogs, and all other garbage of a great city. How can one admire the great sweep of snow mountains, the deep azure of the sky, and broad rippling sheet of cloud and sky-reflecting water, when every sense is assailed by things that disgust. Upon one bank stands a neat row of wooden huts. This is a cholera hospital. Upon the other bank the blue smoke, curling up from a blazing pile, gives atmosphere and distance to the rugged mountains. It is a funeral pyre. And as our boat passes into the city, now and again we meet other boats, each with its burden of death. All traffic seems to be suspended. Shops are closed. Now and again, from some neighboring barge, we hear the wail of mourners, the shrieks of women as in a torture den, echoed away among the houses on the bank." In 1885 the Kashmir Valley was shaken by a terrific earthquake. It was most violent near Baramula, where villages were reduced to ruins and thousands of persons were killed outright. In one hamlet only seven of the forty-seven inhabitants survived, and four of these seven were severely injured.
Immediately after the earthquake, Dr. Arthur Neve hastened to Baramula and opened an emergency hospital. Other missionaries visited the devastated district to collect in boats the wounded who could be taken to Dr. Neve. In two weeks’ touring, they visited villages where the roll of the dead included not less than three thousand. Besides the dead, there were many injured whose cases became more serious daily, as bones began to knit in unnatural forms, dislocations to stiffen, and wounds to mortify. Such service as was rendered by the missionaries could not fail to reach the hearts of the distressed people. In times of special need, the missionary staff at Srinagar could always rely on the help of the older boys in the Mission School which, by 1912, enrolled about fifteen hundred students of varying ages. Dr. Elmslie, the first medical missionary in Kashmir, had begun the educational work. Fortunate the mission whose pioneers are wise enough to establish good schools and thus prepare the native forces for leadership in Christian movements in their own lands! The Kashmiri boy was not an encouraging subject for Christian education, but Dr. Elmslie and his successors, such men as the Rev. C. E. Tyndale-Biscoe and the Rev. F. E. Lucey had faith in the power of the gospel, taught through daily example as well as by precept, to transform the characters of the unpromising lads of the Kashmir Valley. " In all things be men,’ was the inspiring motto of the school. A pair of canoe paddles, crossed, was the crest. The paddles signified hard work, or strength. The paddle blades, in the shape of a heart, suggested kindness; for true manhood was described by the teachers as a combination of strength and kindness. The crossed paddles suggested the Christian symbol of self-sacrifice and was intended to remind them from Whom they should seek inspiration to be true men.
Throughout the city, schoolboys might be seen wearing this badge, and any one in danger or distress might appeal to them for assistance, since they had been taught to be ready always to serve those in special need. Their sports at school were taught not for their personal pleasure, but to make them stronger in the service of the weak. One of the practical results of the aquatic sports was the saving of eight lives in a single year. If a conflagration was discovered in the city, the school was quickly dismissed for the day, while the principal and his boys hurried to the fire, taking along the fire-engine from the mission-compound and fighting the flames, thus saving the lives of women and children. The boys were taught to protect women from insult, to show kindness to invalids and old people, and to prevent cruelty to animals. One winter a hundred starving donkeys were fed by the boys. Occasionally, a sanitary corps would visit some especially unwholesome section of the city and, with pick and shovel, show what was required to prevent the spread of disease. Convalescents from the hospital were taken out on the lake for an airing. The boys assisted the police in running down gangs of men who terrorized women and children, and they held boat-races on the river when cholera raged, in order to enliven the people and relieve their mental tension. Once, when told that the plague offered many opportunities to them to play the man, the boys actually gave three cheers for the cholera! {When floods swept the valley, they rescued families that were stranded on roofs of houses or on small spots of dry ground. Native teachers in the school gave their personal assistance to the medical missionaries in caring for cholera patients. The big task which Mr. Tyndale-Biscoe undertook was "to teach the boys manliness, loyalty, charity, manners, cleanliness, truth, and Christian doctrine." The Englishman’s determination to take an occasional vacation is a saving grace. The strain of hard labor is relieved and usefulness is enhanced if one knows how to throw aside his usual cares and enjoy new surroundings. Both of the Neves loved the mountains. Dr. Arthur Neve used his first vacation to " spy out the land ’ as a missionary, and also to gratify the love of exploration which had been calling him, from his first day in Kashmir, to journey over some of the highest mountain passes and to place his feet on summits never before scaled. Dr. Ernest Neve made a record for more " first ascents " than any other person in Kashmir. On the first of his many adventures, in scrambling over the glaciers and scaling the peaks far up the Himalayas, Dr. Arthur Neve took along, besides porters, a cook, and a stalwart Sikh, a trained hospital assistant, to help in compounding medicines for sick persons encountered in the villages. It was a relief to the missionary to get out into the silent places of the world and to make friends with birds and flowers and glaciers. It was thrilling, too, to stand on snow-fields several miles higher than the level of the sea, and hear every few moments the crash of ice, as thousands of tons, in a single mass, would be loosened from a glacier and strike against mountainsides with thunderous roar; or to listen to the reverberations from peak to peak of the report of cracking glaciers. The first climb up Alampi Pass was long but increasingly inspiring. It appeared more beautiful than anything Dr. Arthur Neve had seen in Switzerland. The great charm was in the wild, untrammeled freedom of it all. Man seemed not to have touched it anywhere. There were no artificial paths and no bridges except where ice spanned a stream.
Dr. Neve wrote:
’ I had been as a lad on the Breuva glacier, and had seen the huge snow slopes and ice cliffs on the east face of Mont Blanc, but Nanga Parbat is infinitely more stately and impressive... Three great glacier-rivers pour their cascades of ice into the Rupal Nullah. A boulder started at the summit would break to pieces in the fall, but the fragments would only come to a rest 15,000 feet below." On this first adventure, he was satisfied to stop on the top of the pass, nearly 17,000 feet above sea level, and view the peaks towering above him. That day he saw Nanga Parbat, 26,620 feet high. Later, he slept one night at an altitude of 17,000 feet; and the next day the party pressed on with axes and Alpine ropes, up to even greater heights of stone and snow and ice.
" I found a bridge of thin new avalanche snow’ Dr. Neve’s journal for that day chronicles, " and tried to get over it by crawling. It broke away under me and I was hauled up... Several times during the day pieces of the cornice 1,000 feet above us broke away and caused small avalanches. Again I tried to the left, but obviously no old snow-bridges could be expected, and the thought of our porters and servants demanded retreat."
Many were the expeditions into the mountains that renewed the strength of the missionaries for further service in Srinagar, with its careless people and its fetid odors. And in time the fame of the brothers had spread over Kashmir so widely that wherever one of them camped overnight, unless it were too high for permanent human habitation, the sick, the blind, and the lame, came to him for treatment. Such occasions were used, also, to tell the people of the Healer of Souls, for both men were constrained by the love of Christ and felt that they must witness for Him by word as well as by deed. The work of the two brothers grew apace. In the year 1899 no less than 35,000 visits had been registered at the hospital, besides patients seen in the villages when camping. Some came from the balconied houses overhanging the canals, the homes of the well-to-do; others came from the Rajah’s family or the homes of Mohammedan mullahs. Most of them came from ’the narrow, crowded alleys where the sun scarcely penetrates, and courts where the festering heaps of filth poison the air; quarters of the town where disease is ever rampant, and epidemics are bred." A large proportion of the medical cases were from the city, but most of the surgical cases came from the villages, of which there were thousands on the plains and hillsides. Mountaineers came over the snowy passes in summer, or sent their sick. Even in remote Baltistan, more than a hundred miles north of Srinagar, the hospital, its Christian physicians, and their sister, Miss Nora Neve, who became Superintendent of Nurses at this station of love and mercy, were known. Discharged patients returned to little groups of neighbors in many sections of the country to report what they had seen at the Mission Hospital, and perhaps to repeat the messages they heard there of Him in whose name it was all being done.
Although the work at the hospital was always heavy, both doctors considered it advisable to go out occasionally on camping trips, not only for recreation, but in order to get close to the people by living among them, and to minister to many who would never come to Srinagar. They would place medicines, surgical instruments, dressings, tents and bedding aboard a flat-bottomed boat, and drift down the river, paddle across Wular Lake, and secure porters to carry the baggage over the mountain passes. On one such trip, after walking through forests where the bear and leopard, as well as troops of monkeys, made their home, Dr. Ernest Neve took up his quarters in a log hut with a flat earthen roof, on the border of dense stretches of pine, cedar, and spruce, and close to groves of walnut trees sheltering other dark brown huts, where the people lived on the borders of their flooded rice fields. At such a time it is quickly noised about that one of the far-famed doctors of Srinagar is in the hut on the edge of the forest, and early next morning a hundred and fifty or two hundred country people are to be seen among the pine trees, waiting for a man of whose ability to heal the sick they have heard. The medicines and instruments are arranged on a table, while the peasants gather in a semicircle facing the doctor and his native assistants. Dr. Neve tells them of the purpose of his visit; that he has come down from the hospital at Srinagar hoping to help those who are sick. Possibly several in the group remark that they have been to the hospital, where they were well treated and where they recovered. The kindly doctor tells them, too, that he has come to give them the good news of the gospel of Christ, and then he reads a few verses of Scripture, commenting in simple language on the old story of man’s sinful condition, God’s love for sinful men, and Christ as the Savior from sin. He tells them that his work at the hospital and in the villages is Christ’s work, for it is done by one of His disciples, at His command, in His name, and for His honor. Then, after a brief prayer, the medical work is begun and is continued until all have received treatment.
Interest becomes intense whenever chloroform is administered, and a hush falls over the crowd. Possibly they regard it as some kind of mystic rite. The next day the attendance is larger still, and so on, day after day, until the crowds become almost unmanageable. Then the camp is moved over a high mountain-pass into another valley, for the gospel must be preached in other villages also.
It is regrettable that the stories of thrilling adventure and of unselfish services rendered on various journeys by both men, can be barely mentioned here. Each missionary found delight in scaling high mountain peaks, while the journeys to Tibet furnished excellent opportunity for exploration among the ice crags. Dr. Arthur Neve camped one night on his journey thither at an altitude of 19,000 feet, where water boiled at a point a trifle below 180 degrees. Another night he camped among ice and snow at 20,000 feet, where the boiling-point was 178 degrees. Frequently he found himself among peaks more than 25,000 feet high. At last he reached Leh, the chief market of Western Tibet, where traders from China, Russia, and India meet for an exchange of wares. The streets of this remarkable town in the desert, the meeting place of the Aryan and Mongol races, are full of picturesque characters. Leh is also the center of Lamaism, a variety of Buddhism. Numerous Buddhist images and monasteries are seen in that region. One monastery at Hemis, twenty miles from Leh, shelters about 300 Buddhist priests and is famed for its Devil Dance. The object of this dance seems to be to illustrate the struggle of demons for the soul of man and the value of intercession by the priests. Each of the doctors from Kashmir was made welcome, at different times, by the monks in their massive dwellings on the barren hills, which the visitors found full of interest. Of one of the monasteries Dr. Ernest Neve wrote:
" Time fails to tell of all the wonders we saw the steep stairs and ladders, the tunnel-like passages, giddy precipices, curious little cells and fierce Tibetan mastiffs, the rows of prayer cylinders, the painted stones, and, strangest of all, the large wall frescoes of hideous demons." On the journeys to Tibet there were numerous occasions for preaching the gospel through interpreters and for practising it in unselfish service, which is its own interpreter. The Christian missionaries rejoiced at every opportunity to serve the Buddhist monks. Many of the priests had cataracts removed from their eyes, and besides restoring physical sight, doubtless many were made to see more clearly the nature of the Christ whose messengers had served them so effectively.
One time, as Dr. Arthur Neve was leaving Tibet, three blind women at the wayside, one evening at dusk, begged him to have mercy on them. He told them to go to the Moravian Mission Hospital at Leh, where he had been so warmly received by the seven missionaries at this remotest outpost of Christian missions in Central Asia. The women asked him if they, blind, could be expected to go over a high mountain pass. The argument was conclusive. " Come at daybreak’ was the reply. The three blind women waited patiently all night, and for breakfast they had no food but a little raw dough. When daylight came, the doctor found he had no way to sterilize his instruments. For some reason, no fire and no matches were at hand. Flint and steel were not sufficient to ignite wet wood. At last, fraying out part of a shirt, and using powder and flint and steel, a fire was lighted under a cooking-pot in which the instruments were boiled. Kneeling in the sand, the doctor removed cataracts from the eyes of the three patient women, before hastening on his journey back to Kashmir.
Doctors Arthur and Ernest Neve and their devoted sister have built wisely and nobly on foundations which were laid by their predecessors; laid securely, in spite of opposition that finally melted in the presence of unselfish Christian love. The first mud buildings have been replaced by substantial structures whose wide verandas, graceful towers, and red roofs and gables break the line of green foliage for nearly a quarter of a mile, on a high ridge overlooking the city and valley. The Red Cross flag, waving over the buildings, has sent a message of cheer and love to thousands of persons. The splendid work done in this distant city is worthy of all praise. Year after year thousands of sufferers go to the hospital for relief. As long ago as 1912 it was estimated that, since the work was begun in a small way in 1865, more persons applied to the hospital for help than there were inhabitants in the great and famous Valley of Kashmir. In ten years, as many as 400,000 came to the hospital for medical aid, while 14,500 patients were treated in the hospital wards. It is not uncommon to find persons from more than a hundred different villages among the hospital patients of a single day. Some of the patients are brought to the hospitals on houseboats that ply up and down the Jhelum River and through a maze of intersecting canals.
It is a pathetic line of humanity that daily makes its way up that hill of hope, and waits under the shade of the trees until the doors of the hospital are opened. Some are carried in beds or chairs. Others climb the steep in pain. When the doors are opened, the waiting-room is soon packed with sufferers. The babel of voices subsides as the doctor appears and reads a story from the Gospels which he afterward explains. A brief prayer follows, after which the medical and surgical work begins. The doctors, nurses, and thirty assistants deal as effectively as possible with all who come. As many as seventy operations, of varying degrees of difficulty, have been performed in a day, and as many as four hundred ordinary patients have been treated in the same period. There is also a hospital for lepers, with an average of ninety inmates, where everything possible is done for their comfort, and where they are given the consoling teachings of the Savior concerning the life beyond. This leper hospital is largely supported by the Maharajah. The medical missionaries are glad to give their services in this attempt to furnish comfort and cheer to sufferers from such a dreadful malady. Much, too, is being done to stop the spread of this disease.
Although the work was begun in the face of extreme opposition, even the Moslem’s, who are usually fanatical in their attitude in other parts of India and elsewhere, now are friendly around Srinagar and speak in such words as these: " Your religion, Sahib, is really the same as ours. You have the Law and the Gospel, which we also acknowledge, and we read the creed of the Holy Jesus." But prejudice is strong against a change in religion. Nevertheless, the leaven is at work. In one year the gospel was preached by members of the mission staff in as many as fifty villages around Srinagar, and there were few towns that had not sent patients to the hospital. The missionaries believed in "the policy of having well-manned, adequately equipped, institutions." They wrote to their Board: "In the long run, such work not only goes deeper, but spreads wider than an equal amount of effort expended in a desultory manner over the whole Kashmir territory of 68,000 square miles." May many years be added to the fine record of the two brothers and their sister, in their labor of love for an unprogressive people in one of earth’s most beautiful regions. The Kingdom of Christ on earth is hastened by the work of three such devoted disciples.