S. M. Edwardes

Legend and tradition have rendered many a spot in India sacrosanct for all time; and to no tract perhaps have such traditions clung with greater tenacity than to the western littoral which in the dawn of the centuries watched the traders of the ancient world sail down from the horizon to barter in its ports. As with Gujarat and the Coast of Kathiawar, so with the Konkan it is a broken tale of strange arrivals, strange building, strange trafficking in human and inanimate freight that greets the student of ancient history and bewilders the ethnologist.

  "The singer only sang the Joy of Life,
    For all too well, alas! the singer knew,
  How hard the daily toil, how keen the strife,
    How salt the falling tear, the joys how few."

by S. M. Edwardes

A FISHERMAN'S LEGEND.

A friend has supplied me with the following quaint history of a well-known Marathi ballad, which is widely chanted by the lower classes in and around Bombay. Composed originally as a song of seed-time, it has now lost its primary significance and is sung by men at their work or by mothers hushing their children in the dark alleys of the city. The verse runs thus: -

  "Nakhwa Koli jat bholi,
  Ghara madhye dravya mahamar,
  Topiwalyane hukum kela,
  Batliwalyachya barabar."

A STUDY IN PROTECTIVE MAGIC.

A NASIK PILGRIMAGE.

MORNING.

  "Binishin bar sari juyo guzari umr bibin
   kin isharat zi jahani guzeran mara bas."

We had wandered off the main thoroughfare, where the trams, hurtling past the Irani's tea shop, drown from time to time the chatter of Khoda Behram's clientele; and skirting a group of Mahomedans who nightly sit in solemn conclave, some on the 'otlas,' others on charpoys or chairs placed well in the fairway of traffic, we reached at length a sombre and narrow 'gali,' seemingly untenanted save by the shadows.

There are certain clubs in the city where a man may purchase nightly oblivion for the modest sum of two or three annas; and hither come regularly, like homing pigeons at nightfall, the human flotsam and jetsam, which the tide of urban life now tosses into sight for a brief moment and now submerges within her bosom. Halt in that squalid lane which looks out upon the traffic of one of the most crowded thoroughfares and listen, if you will, for some sign of life in the dark, ungarnished house which towers above you.

A REMINISCENCE.

(Written August. 1908)