OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF BOMBAY. A VISIT TO NASIK ON THE OPENING DAYS OF THE PRESENT SINHAST PILGRIMAGE.1 BY SHAMS-UL-ULMA, DR. JIVANJI JAMSHEDJI MODI, Introduction. (Read on 27th August, 1920.) I. At times, I like to be in the midst of crowds, because crowds give us good opportunities of studying Human Nature and the different phases of that nature. The largest crowd, in which I remember having ever been, was that at Paris on 6th November 1889, the closing day of the great Exhibition of that year which had lasted for more than six months.2 1 This paper was unavoidably kept back from publication at the proper time. - ૐ I find in my note book the following note of that day's crowd: “ એ ! માજના જેવી ભીડ હું ધારૂં છું કે હું કે દહાડે જોઇશ નહી. ટ્રાકાંડે। તરફ જવાના રસ્તાના પુલના દાદર ઉપરથી ભીડના ગજાવર દેખાવ માજા માફક આવી અડે. ત્યાંથી ફારાની ને ઘણે ગજાવર દેખાવ......... કદાચ એવી આજના જેવી સુંદર શૈારાનો પણ હું કદી જોવા નહીં. આટલી ભીડ છતાં મ ખુરા મીજાજી.’ i.., “Ah ! Perhaps I will never see a crowd like that of to-day's. A grand sight of the crowd from the top of the steps of the bridge leading to the Trocodero. Waves after waves coming and striking; a good sight of the illumination also . . . . . . . Perhaps I will never see again such grand illuminations like those of to-day. Notwithstanding such a great crowd and rush, all were in good humour." Sir Walter Scott thus speaks of the gaiety and folly of crowds :"It was that gay and splendid confusion, in which the eye of youth sees all that is brave and brilliant, and that of experience much that is doubtful, deceitful, false, and hollow; hopes that will never be gratified, promises that will never be fulfilled; pride in the disguise of humility; and insolence in that of frank and generous bounty." It was with the eye of youth, that I saw and moved about in the great crowds that met at the Paris Exhibition on Sundays and especially in the great crowd referred to above; but it was with the eye of experience of a man of advanced years, that I saw the crowd at Nasik,-though not at all as great as that at Paris-on the 15th of July 1920, the second opening day of the great twelve-yearly pilgrimage of the river Godavri at Nasik. It is in a beautiful way that a poetess, Mary Howell; describes the thoughts, with which, and the ways in which, both the young and the old pilgrims of Christendom went to the Holy Pilgrimage of Shrines and Pilgrimage of Life. Land of Palestine for a holy pilgrimage. "With hoary hair, and bowed by age, An old man, from his forest-cell, His sight is dim, his steps are slow, Though the times are changed and the ways of travelling are, for the majority, more convenient than before, both in Palestine and in India, we are reminded of the above picture of old Pilgrims, when we are moving about among the present day Pilgrims of the sacred Godavery, especially on the road leading to the sacred hill of Trimbak, about 18 miles from Nasik. The same poetess gives us a picture of young pilgrims. "Now see another pilgrim, gay And heartsome as a moon in May; Young, beautiful, and brave, and strong, Like a wild stag he bounds along; Oh!' tis a fond and ardent quest; Yet leaves its pilgrim ill at rest!" You see all this at Godavri also. The poetess seems to refer only to male pilgrims, but, at Nasik, you see old and young pilgrims of both the sexes. Even in these days of railways and automobiles, thousands of pilgrims, and these mostly of the Sâdhu or monastic class,-whose number during the first two or three days of the pilgrimage was, as said by a Police Officer, about 50,000, about 50,000, came by foot from long distances. One of my frequent questions to some of those pilgrims was: "From which part of the country you come?" The replies showed, that pilgrims came from all the four corners of India, from the Himalayas in the North to the furthest end of the Madras Presidency in the South, from Sindh and Punjab in the West to Bengal in the East. |