Evening star., 1928-12-09
BY PAUL WRIGHT.

1--WE shall count .themw proposed
one Of the women in the party and
she began: "One, two, three, five, ten
seventeen, guess, twenty-one-oh, my
goodness" There was dismay In her
voice. They come so fast and look SO
queer that I'm hypnotized. They're all
hypnotized. tool There is witchcraft
in this eclipsel'
Anyway" she continued, "the whole
thing Is impossible and / don't believe
1t while I'm looking at it. This CAL
cutta Is the second city In all the Brit
ish empire and 1t has street cars and
hot and cold water. some times. and
telephones. Those things don't match
with this, this moon worship"
That is the point of this story. Moon
worship and modernism do not agree.
Therein lies one of the facts that must
be remembered in any consideration of
India. The ceremonial we were watch
ing. with its blind obedience to ira
dition, evidenced India's most aston
ishing state Of potential explosiveness,
that becomes more critical with every
passing hour, the mixture of conflicting
concepts.
India Has Many Crises.
Ali this was contrary to what we
have been told rs anything happen
ing in India?" we. asked before we ar
rived. Nothing" was the calm re-
usual. There is no crisis" The answer
was silly, for though India Is very old
1t is not yet finished, it has never
reached its angle of repose. At this
moment 1t Is particularly aching with
internal stresses. : Moreover, India is
faced with not one crisis but many. To
mention only three of them, there are
the contests between Briton and Indian,
between Hindu and Mohammedan, be-
tween dead PHILOSOPHERS and modern
emancipation.
We stood watching the drift along
the civilized, asphalted Calcutta streets,
under the moons anemic light The
stream of Hindus moved without hurry
ing, without delay, The automobiles
the motor busses, emblems of the Vests
detested industrialism, interfered as
little as possible. Men, women and chill
dren marched riverward, through the
dusk of the, eclipse, and that half light
was kindly to the spirit Of the occa-
sion. Full moonlight would have Jared.
As they marched they sang hymns.
they blew on conch shells. Some of
unconsciously, like marionettes or like
frog legs galvanized into action.
Moon worship 1t was and 1t was not.
That is to say, while what we saw was
not ayoWedly alteration of the yellow
orb, the effect was the same. for thou
sands of HinduS were reverently con-
Tossing the power Of the moon for good
and evil and doing homage because the
eclipse, while 1t lasted, had some myS-
tic power to magnify and concentrate
the moons good and evil potencies.
Hence they marched to bathe in the
Hoogly and be spiritually purified and
perhaps protected from the moons
malefic influence by the sacred stream.
Hence also they gave aims, achieved
much more than the average virtue
therefron because good deeds-like
their oppositeA-done during an eclipse
have multiplied power. Hence also they
acted or refrained from acting in a
multitude of other ways according to
the prescribed formulas.
Hordes Flock to Hoogly.
Hundreds of thousands of Hindus
that night, wherever the earth's cone
shaped shadow could be discerned NOV
ing over the face Of the moon, were
taking part, and some thousands OF
these were marching past us to the
river. We watched the endless exodus
from the crowded and suffocatirg war
rens beyond the park to the Hoogly,
whose dark waters would cool their
bodies while the eclipse endured.
Presently we took taxicab driven
by reckless Sikh, who carried us
across the great bridge that leads to
the Howrah railway station. Here the
crowds of believers were thicker than
ever. From the Howrah bridge we
looked upstream and downstream and
everywhere saw the people sitting and
standing in the water. waiting for the
eclipse to pass and with 1t the manifold
taboos of their dark belief
We had seen professions IN !ndla
before, and had watched the purif1ca-
ton parade to the Hoogly during the
Dusserah festival and found nothing
particularly disturbing or astonishing
about them. The bathing IN the river
has its modern allegorical counter
part in the West. But this moon affair
was different. 1t was burdened with
an unholy antiquity, like something
that has outlived its time. 1t suggested
an era when men were more closely
associated with dogs and wolves, and
anybody who has ever seen wolf run
ming irlsancly through the woods in the
full Of the moon can appreciate our
sensations. There was an aroma OF
the cave-man period about the exhibit
ton. It connoted strange and terrible
rites that go along with jungle lives and
jungle minds. This "reminiscences OF re-
mote and unholy old times was guarded
by disciplined police and made safe for
the bathers by galaxy Of electric
searchlights along the muddy but sacred
banks.
Here was vestigial remnant that the
Western World sloughed of long ago.
Very few of us paw much attention to
the moon. except poets and lovers. and