Chapter I
The Child of the Forest; An Orphan; A Pilgrim; A
Wife; And a Widow ii
CHAPTER n
The Hindu Widow Begins Her Life-work: Lessons
Learned in England and America 30
CHAPTER HI
Dreams Become Reality; The School for High-caste
Widows Established in India 38
CHAPTER IV
A Visit to the " Sharada Sadan," and a Glimpse at Some
of its Pupils 47
CHAPTER V
Some of Ramabai's Pupils Become Christians ; Opposition
and Persecution 57
CHAPTER VI
The Marble Halls of Hinduism 66
CHAPTER VII
Plans for the Future; Ramabai's Spiritual Experiences. . T7
lo CONTENTS
CHAPTER VIII
PAGE Asking Great Things of God 91
CHAPTER IX
The Famine of 1897, and the Rescue of Starving Widows 100
CHAPTER X
"Mukti"—the New Settlement at Khedgaon 113
CHAPTER XI
Material Progress and Spiritual Advancement 129
CHAPTER XII
Rescue Work During the Famine of 1900 145
PANDITA RAMABAI:
The Story of Her Life
CHAPTER I.
THE CHILD OF THE FOREST ; AN ORPHAN ; A PILGRIM ; A wife; and a WIDOW.
" God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound
the things which are mighty ; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:
that no flesh should glory in His presence."—I Cor. i.
27-29. AN
eloquent commentary on these inspired words may be found in the life and work of Pandita Ramabai. For in her " God hath chosen " a weak Indian widow to do mighty works in His great
name. An emancipated member of a class of women held
in the bondage of idolatry and superstition for ages,
Ramabai, having found light, liberty, and salvation for
herself, seeks the same for her fellow-widows, her race,
and her country. Measurably in sight of a comfortable
Government appointment—the Eldorado of thousands
12 PANDITA RAMABAI
in India—she gave it up, in the prospect of devoting
herself to the uplifting and enlightening of Hindu
widows.
It is characteristic of Ramabai that she works with
all her heart and soul for the highest ideal she knows
and as soon as more light dawns upon her, she leaves
the things that are behind, and reaches out to that
which opens up in the vista of the future. This thought
explains the developments of her work and plans dur-
ing the past years, and prepares those who know her
well for further surprising developments in the future.
If Ramabai's work has not patterned itself after the
exact ideal set out in her mind when she returned to
India in 1887—to begin a school that should open the
paths of knowledge to young widows in such a way
that they should not have to dread the loss of their
ancestral religion—it has been prosecuted according to
the pattern revealed to her " in the Mount." ^
While still holding open a door to a liberal education to
the high caste Hindu widow, without causing her to
break her caste, Ramabai has herself become the mov-
ing spirit in an aggressive. Evangelistic, and Indus-
trial Mission.
To sketch the developments of this work as per-
sonally observed by the writer, is the object of these
chapters; but an outline of the life-story of this re-
*Heb. viii. 5-
THE CHILD OF THE FOREST 13
markable woman is necessary for those unacquainted
with her history.
There are factors in making Ramabai the woman
she is which date back to forty years before her birth, when her father, Ananta Shastri, a student at Poona,
was witness of the (to him) astonishing fact that a woman could be taught to read and recite Sanskrit.
His tutor was also tutor to one of the princesses in the
household of the Royal Peishwa; and Ananta Shastri made up his mind that knowledge was an excellent
thing for a woman as well as for a man, and that his
wife should be taught to read also. In due time he re-
turned to his ancestral home in the Mangalore district
but his bride and his mother both opposed his efforts
to teach the former, and he was obliged to relinquish
the plan.
Years passed ; his family grew up, his wife died, and
he set out on pilgrimage. From a fellow-pilgrim with
daughters he obtained a fine little girl of nine years
for his second wife, took her home and delivered her
to his mother, as usual, for domestic training, but as-
serted his right to teach the child to read. Continual
opposition caused him to realize that this experiment
was likely to fail also ; so he took his wife and started
off into the forest, where a rude home was made. The
child-wife was tenderly cared for, but sedulously
taught; so that in the process of years, when woman-
14 PANDITA RAMABAI
hood and the cares of family life came on, it was her
voice that taught the sacred learning of the Brahmins
to the children of the family. The father was revered
as a holy as well as a learned man, and pilgrims and
students flocked into his forest home. Ramabai ven-
erates the memory of her father, believing that, like
Cornelius, the old Brahmin scholar was one of the
class whom Peter confessed to be " accepted " with
God.^
It was in this forest home that Ramabai's childhood
was spent; and among her earliest recollections are
those of being awakened in the early mornings by a
loving mother to hear and repeat her lessons. Her
love of reading was from a child remarkable. San-
skrit, in which all the classics of Hinduism are writ-
ten, was to her as her mother tongue. The ponderous
volumes which form the scriptures of Hinduism were
all accessible to her, and she became familiar with their
contents and doctrines. At twelve years of age she
had committed to memory eighteen thousand verses
from the Puranas. This religious learning forms the
highest education of the Brahmin or priestly caste, to
which Ramabai's family belonged. She says that
though she was not formally taught Marathi, yet hear-
ing her parents speak it, and being in the habit of
reading newspapers and books in that language, she
*Acts X, 35.
THE CHILD OF THE FOREST 15
acquired a correct knowledge of it. In the same manner when travelHng about she acquired also a knowledge of Kanarese, Hindustani, and Bengali. In fact, she may be said to have a knowledge of all those dia-
lects of India which are based on the Sanskrit, the sacred language of the East. With her parents and brother all enthusiasts in Brahminic learning, and pioneers in the education of women, it was no wonder that Ramabai's remarkable talents were cultivated, till she became, under their instruction, a "prodigy of
erudition.*'
I have before me a photograph taken in Bombay between thirty and forty years ago. It is a copy of an old daguerreotype, a family group. The father, an aged man
; the mother, a comely woman under thirty
a boy and a girl in their teens ; and Ramabai, a little maiden of seven, nestling at her mother's side. Their Spartan adherence to all Hindu customs was well illustrated by this journey to Bombay. They came from the Malabar coast by sea in a country vessel, and not a morsel of food or a drop of water passed the lips of one of them while on the journey, which lasted three days—Ramabai remembers them keenly now, as days of misery.
The poverty that overtook the family in Ramabai's early teens was partly caused by the open house kept for so many years for pilgrims and students; and then
J 5 PANDITA RAMABAI
came the beginnings of the terrible famine which cul-
minated in South India in 1876-77, but which, Ramabai
says, was keenly felt by many three years before. The
share of the ancestral land, to which her brother was
heir, was sold, with his consent, to pay the family
debts, and the family went on pilgrimage. How they
parted with all their money, jewels, and valuables in
the vain hope of propitiating the gods and securing a
return of fortune's favours, Ramabai has pathetically
told in her " Famine Experiences," as follows :-—
" My recollections carry me back to the hard times
some twenty-two years ago. The last great famine
of Madras presidency reached its climax in the years
1876-77, but it began at least three years before that
time. I was in my teens then, and so thoroughly igno-
rant of the outside world that I cannot remember ob-
serving the condition of other people, yet saw enough
of distress in our own and a few other families to rea-
lize the hard-heartedness of unchanged human nature.
" High caste and respectable poor families, who are
not accustomed to hard labour and pauperism, suffered
then, as they do now, more than the poorer classes. My own people, among many others, fell victims to
the terrible famine. We had known better days. My
father was a land-holder and an honoured Pandit,* and
had acquired wealth by his learning. But by-and-by,
*A learned man or teacher.
THE CHILD OF THE FOREST 17
when he became old and infirm and blind in the last
days of his earthly life, he lost all the property in one
way or another. My brother, sister, and myself, had
no secular education to enable us to earn our liveli-
hood by better work than manual labour. We had all
the sacred learning necessary to lead an honest religious
life, but the pride of caste and superior learning and
vanity of life prevented our stooping down to acquire
some industry whereby we might have saved the pre-
cious lives of our parents.
" In short, we had no common sense, and foolishly
spent all the money we had in hand in giving alms to
Brahmins to please the gods, who, we thought, would
send a shower of gold mohurs upon us and make us
rich and happy. We went to several sacred places and
temples, to worship different gods and to bathe in
sacred rivers and tanks to free ourselves from sin and
curse, which brought poverty on us. We prostrated
ourselves before the stone and metal images of the
gods, and prayed to them day and night ; the burden of
our prayer being that the gods would be pleased to give
us wealth, learning, and renown. My dear brother,
a stalwart young fellow of twenty-one, spoilt his health
and wasted his finely built body by fasting months and
months. But nothing came of all this futile effort to
please the gods—the stone images remained as hard as
ever, and never answered our prayers. Oh that we had
i8 PANDITA RAMABAI
found out then that, 'Every man is brutish in his
knowledge, every founder is confounded by the graven
* The idols
image ; for his molten image is falsehood ' ;
have spoken vanity, and the diviners have seen a lie, and
have told false dreams ; they comfort in vain.'
" We knew the Vedanta, and knew also that we wor-
shipped not the images, but some gods whom they repre-
sented—still all our learning and superior knowledge
was of no avail. We bowed to the idols as thousands
of learned Brahmins do. We expected them to speak
to us in wonderful oracles. We went to the astrologers
with money and other presents, to know from them the
minds of the gods concerning us. In this way we spent
our precious time, strength, and wealth, in vain. When no money was left in hand we began to sell the
valuable things belonging to us—^jewelry, costly gar-
ments, silver-ware; and even the cooking vessels of
brass and copper were sold to the last, and the money
spent in giving alms to Brahmins till nothing but a
few silver and copper coins were left in our possession. We bought coarse rice with them and ate very sparing-
ly ; but it did not last long. At last the day came when
we had finished eating the last grain of rice—and noth-
ing but death by starvation remained for our portion. Oh the sorrow, the helplessness, and the disgrace of the
situation
" We assembled together to consider what we should
THE CHILD OF THE FOREST 19
do next; and after a long discussion came to the con-
clusion that it was better to go into the forest and die
there than bear the disgrace of poverty among our own
people. And that very night we left the house in which we were staying at Tirpathy—a sacred town situated on
the top of Venkatghiri—and entered into the great for-
est, determined to die there. Eleven days and nights
in which we subsisted on water and leaves and a handful
of wild dates—were spent in great bodily and mental
pain. At last our dear old father could hold out no
longer—the tortures of hunger were too much for his
poor, old, weak body. He determined to drown himself
in a sacred tank near by, thus to end all his earthly suf-
fering. It was suggested that the rest of us should
either drown ourselves, or break the family and go our
several ways. But drowning ourselves seemed most*
practicable. To drown oneself in some sacred river or
tank is not considered suicide by the Hindus; so we
felt free to put an end to our lives in that way. Father
wanted to drown himself first; so he took leave of all
the members of the family one by one. I was his
youngest child, and my turn came last. I shall never
forget his last injunctions to me. His blind eyes could
not see my face; but he held me tight in his arms, and
stroking my head and cheeks, he told me, in a few words
broken with emotion, to remember how he loved me,
and how he taught me to do right, and never depart
20 PANDITA RAMABAI
from the way of righteousness. His last loving command to me was to lead an honourable life if I lived at
all, and to serve God all my life. He did not know
the only true God, but served the—to him—unknown God with all his heart and strength; and he was very
desirous that his children should serve Him to the last.
' Remember, my child,' he said, * you are my youngest, my most beloved child. I have given you into the hand
of our God; you are His, and to Him alone you must
belong, and serve Him all your life.'
" He could speak no more. My father's prayers for me were, no doubt, heard by the Almighty, the all-
merciful Heavenly Father, whom the old Hindu did not
know. The God of all flesh did not find it impossible
to bring me, a great sinner and unworthy child of His,
out of heathen darkness into the saving light of His
love and salvation. I can now say to the departed
spirit of the loving parent—
' Yes, dear father, I will
serve the only true God to the last.' But I could not
say so when my father spoke to me for the last time.
I listened to him, but was too ignorant, too bewildered
to understand him, or make an intelligent answer. We
were after this dismissed from father's presence; he
wanted an hour for meditation and preparation before
death.
" While we were placed in such a bewildering situ-
ation, the merciful God, who so often prevents His
THE CHILD OF THE FOREST 21
sinful children from rushing headlong into the deep pit
of sin, came to our rescue. He kept us from the dread-
ful act of being witnesses to the suicide of our own
loved father. God put a noble thought into the heart of my brother, who said he could not bear to see the sad
sight. He would give up all caste pride and go to work
to support our old parents ; and as father was unable to
walk, he said he would carry him down the mountain
into the nearest village, and then go to work. He made
his intentions known to father, and begged him not to
drown himself in the sacred tank. So the question was
settled for that time. Our hearts were gladdened, and we prepared to start from the forest. And yet we
wished very much that a tiger, a great snake, or some
other wild animal would put an end to our lives. We
v/ere too weak to move, and too proud to beg or work
to earn a livelihood. But the resolution was made, and
we dragged ourselves to the jungle as best we could.
*' It took us nearly two days to come out of the forest
into the village at the foot of the mountain. Father
suffered intensely throughout this time. Weakness
caused by starvation and the hardships of the life in the
wilderness hastened his death. We reached the village
with great difficulty, and took shelter in a temple; but
the Brahmin priests of the temple would not let us stay
there. They had no pity for the weak and helpless.
So we were obliged again to move from the temple and
22 PANDITA RAMABAI
go out of the village into the ruins of an old temple
where no one but the wild animals dwelt in the night.
There we stayed for four days. A young Brahmin see-
ing the helplessness of our situation gave us some food.
" The same day on which we reached that village, my father was attacked by fever from which he did not
recover. On the first day, at the beginning of his last
illness, he asked for a little sugar and water. We gave
him water, but could not give sugar. He could not eat
the coarse food, and shortly after he became un-
conscious, and died on the morning of the third day.
" The same kind young Brahmin who had given us
some food came to our help at that time. He could
not do much. He was not sure whether we were
Brahmins or not ; and as none of his co-villagers would
come to carry the dead, he could not, for fear of being
put out of caste, come to help my brother to carry the
remains of my father. But he had the kindness to let
some men dig a grave at his own expense, and follow
the funeral party as far as the river. Father had en-
tered the Order of a Sannyasin before his death. So
his body was to be buried in the ground according to
the commands of the Shastras. As there was no one
else to carry the dead, my brother tied the body in his
dhoti like a bundle, and carried it alone over two miles
to its last resting-place. We sadly followed to the river
bank, and helped him a little. So we buried our father
THE CHILD OF THE FOREST 23
outside that village, away from all human habitation,
and returned with heavy hearts to the ruins of the old
temple where we had taken up our abode. That same
evening our mother was attacked by fever, and said she
would not live much longer. But we had to leave the
place ; there was no work to be found, and no food to be
had. We walked with our sick mother for awhile, and
then some kind-hearted people gave us a little food and
money to pay our fare as far as Raichur. There we
stayed for some weeks, being quite unable to move from
that town, owing to the illness of our mother. Our life
at Raichur was a continuous story of hopelessness and
starvation. Brother was too weak to work, and we
could not make up our minds to go to beg. Now and
then kind people gave us some food. Mother suffered
intensely from fever and hunger. We, too, suffered
from hunger and weakness; but the sufferings of our
mother were more than we could bear to see. Yet we
had to keep still through sheer helplessness. Now and
then, when delirious, mother would ask for different
kinds of food. She could eat but little; yet we were
unable to give her the little she wanted.
" Once she suffered so much from hunger that she
could bear it no longer, and sent me into a neighbour's
house to beg a little piece of coarse bajree cake. I went
there very reluctantly. The lady spoke kindly to me;
but I could on no account open mv mouth to beg that
24 PANDITA RAMABAI
piece of bajree bread. With superhuman effort and a
firm resolution to keep my feelings from that lady, I
kept the tears back; but they poured out of my nose
instead of my eyes, in spite of me, and the expression of my face told its own story. The kind Brahmin lady,
guessing what was in my mind, asked me if I would
like to have some food ; so I said, * Yes, I want only a
piece of bajree bread.' She gave me what I wanted,
and I felt very grateful; but could not say a word to
express my gratitude. I ran to my mother fn great
haste, and gave it to her. But she could not eat; she
was too weak. The fever was on her; she
became unconscious, and died in a few days after that.
Her funeral was as sad as that of my father, with the
exception that two Brahmins came to help my brother
and me to carry her body to the burning ground, about
three miles from the town.
" I need not lengthen this account with our subse-
quent experiences. My elder sister also died of starv-
ation, after suffering from illness and hunger. Dur-
ing those few months before our sister died, we three
travelled on foot from place to place in search of food
and work; but we could not get much of either. My
brother and myself continued our sad pilgrimage to the
northern boundary of India, and back to the east as far
as Calcutta. Brother got work here and there ; but most
of the time we lived wanderers' lives. Very often we
THE CHILD OF THE FOREST 25
had to go without food for days. Even when my
brother had work to do, he got so Httle wages—only
four rupees a month, and sometimes much less than
that—that we were obliged to live on a handful of grain
soaked in water, and a little salt. We had no blankets
or thick garments to cover ourselves ; and, when trav-
elling, we had to walk barefoot, without umbrellas, and to rest in the night, either under the trees on the
roadside or the arches of bridges, or lie down on the
ground in the open air. Once on the banks of the
Jhelum, a river in the Punjab, we were obliged to rest
at night in the open air, and tried to keep off the intense
cold by digging two grave-like pits, and putting our-
selves into them and covering our bodies—except our
heads—with dry sand of the river bank. Sometimes
the demands of hunger were so great that we would
satisfy our empty stomachs by eating a handful of wild
berries, and swallowing the hard stones together with
their coarse skins."
It was during these wanderings with her brother that
Ramabai's faith in the Hindu religion was shaken,
though until twenty years of age she worshipped the
gods of brass and stone. The freedom of their lives
had given to the brother and sister keen powers of ob-
servation, and they resolved to test the teachings of the
sacred books whenever possible. The following is but
one of many tests that exposed the hollowness of their
26 PANDITA RAMABAI
religion, and the deception of the priests. They had
been taught that in the Himalayas there was a beautiful
lake, in which were seven floating mountains—the
forms in which seven sages, or Mahatmas, appeared. When sinless pilgrims came to the shore, the Mahatrnas
floated toward them, and received their worship; but
before the wicked they were immovable. During their
journeyings, Ramabai and her brother, to their surprise
and joy, found themselves near this lake, and beheld the
mountains. They prostrated themselves, but received
no sign. The priests warned them against going into
the water, lest they be devoured by crocodiles; but the
brother, early in the morning, when the priests were not
on the watch, dared the crocodiles, and swam out to
the mountains. He found them to be masses of stone
and mud planted with trees, standing on rafts. The
whole mystery was soon cleared. Behind the moun-
tains a little boat was concealed. When a poor pilgrim,
desirous of being considered sinless, crossed the palm
of a priest's hand with sufficient coin, and called on the
Mahatmas to float toward him, a priest in the boat gave
the raft a push toward him, and he went away happy in
his delusion.
While wandering from place to place, Ramabai had
free access to the homes of the high-caste Hindus ; saw
the home-life in all its cruel details, and resolved to de-
THE CHILD OF THE FOREST 27
vote her life to the redemption of her unfortunate sis-
ters, especially the child-widows.
Ramabai and her brother gradually developed into
public lecturers in the cause of the education of women.
In Calcutta, Ramabai attracted much attention; and a
solemn conclave of Pandits bestowed on her the title of
Sarasvati, on account of her learning. She is the only
woman who has been permitted to call herself Pandita.
The Pandits were astonished at her learning. Beside
her thorough knowledge of their sacred books, she had
acquired fluency in seven of the languages of India ; and
her ideas on reform were remarkable for so young a
person.
Echoes of Ramabai's lectures reached England even
at this early date (December, 1880). A gentleman in
India, writing to a friend there, told of an accomplished
Brahmin lady travelHng through Bengal with her
brother, holding meetings on the education and emanci-
pation of women. " They were received everywhere,"
said this Indian correspondent, " with great enthusiasm
by the Hindus, who were delighted to hear their holy
Sanskrit from a woman's lips. It seemed to them as if
Sarasvati (the goddess of eloquence) had come down
to visit them. Instead of a hot, confined room, we
had a long and broad terrace open to the sky, and with
the Ganges flowing at our feet. The meeting was at
28 PANDITA RAMABAI
half-past four in the afternoon, by which time the ter-
race was shaded from the sun by trees and houses to
the westward. At the eastern end of the terrace a
small marble table, with a glass of flowers on it, and
some chairs were set, and there Ramabai stood up fac-
ing the west and addressed her audience. On her right
was the Ganges, covered with large, broad-sailed boats,
of a type which perhaps has lasted for two thousand
years. There was little or nothing around to remind
her or her audience of European civilization. The
clear, blue sky and the broad river coming sweeping down from the walls of Benares dominated everything
else." This writer adds that " the young lady is
twenty-two years of age, the daughter of a learned
Pandit, slight and girlish looking, with a fair com-
plexion and light grey eyes. She is now engaged to
be married to a Bengali pleader, an M.A. of Calcutta
University."
Ramabai's parents had, contrary to custom, refrained
from marrying her at an early age. They had be-
trothed the elder daughter in infancy to a youth whose
parents solemnly promised should be educated to equal
his bride. But these people broke their promise, and
great trouble resulted when the time for consummating
the marriage arrived. Thus it came to pass that to
prevent such a calamity occurring in the case of their
THE CHILD OF THE FOREST 29
second daughter, her marriage was put off; and then,
at the age of sixteen, the parents passed away within
six weeks of each other.
Before Ramabai and her brother had been long in
Calcutta, the latter, weakened by years of privation, was
taken ill and died. His chief concern during his brief
illness was for his unprotected sister. " God will take
care of me," said/she, to comfort him. " Then," he
replied, " all will be well." .
Shortly after, Ramabai was married to the educated
Bengali gentleman mentioned above, who took her to
his home in Assam. The marriage was a civil rite, for
they had rejected Hinduism, and knew nothing of
Christ. The marriage was a happy one, but of pain-
fully short duration. In nineteen months, cholera
snatched away the husband, leaving Ramabai, with her
little daughter, Manorama (heart's joy), to begin her
career as an Indian widow.