AN ANCIENT TRIBE
When it came to pass, twenty years ago, in the town of Ongole, in Southern India, that ten thousand Madigas turned to Christianity in one year, there was questioning as to the causes of this movement. Devout minds saw in the baptism of two thousand two hundred and twenty-two in one day a modern Pentecost, and were filled with wonder and gratitude.
Others enquired with interest concerning accompanying circumstances and conditions, and when they heard of the famine which immediately preceded this movement toward Christianity, they were satisfied that they had here the moving cause. The desire to enter upon the experience of the Christian was considered to stand in direct proportion to the hunger that was gnawing. But the mass movement toward Christianity continued long after the famine was over. Sixty thousand Madigas are to-day counted as Christians. The Madiga community of a part of the Telugu country has become Christianized.
During the months which I spent in listening to tales of this Telugu Pariah tribe, both from Christians and non-Christians, I ever kept in mind the questions that might be asked by those who looked upon this Pentecostal event in modern missions from different standpoints. I looked for traces of a direct manifestation of God’s Spirit upon the minds of men, and I found them. At the same time I was on the alert to detect the special features of environment that made a mass movement toward Christianity possible. I found these also.
The methods of historical criticism are singularly inadequate when they approach the phenomenon of God’s Spirit working in the hearts and minds of a multitude of men. Reason, with its limited range of comprehension, cannot analyze, differentiate and explain that which belongs to the realm of faith. God’s power is there. He whose faith delights in the sublime mysteries of God is satisfied to know that God’s presence is manifest. But he also who sets aside the supernatural, because beyond the reach of analysis and criticism, and looks upon this movement among the Madigas from the sociological standpoint, will find that after he has reckoned with each factor of environment, an unknown factor still remains, and this factor is the divine power inherent in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Much seemed to me explained when I found that the nucleus of the Ongole Mission was formed by men who, long years before the missionary came to Ongole, had become dissatisfied with the cults of the Madiga village, and had carried on a search for truth by listening to the teaching of Hindu Gurus. They took the first step out of polytheism into theism by learning from their Yogi teachers that there is one God and that He is spirit. This represented spiritual gain of a high order. But what was more valuable than this, perhaps, was the receptive attitude, the thirst which could not be quenched. When the Gospel of Jesus Christ came to these men, there was a gratitude in their hearts that formed a tremendous impetus toward Christian activity.
Another condition which I found had largely affected the movement toward Christianity among the Madigas was their strong family cohesion. During the course of many centuries, through famines, pestilence and warfare that swept over the land, the Madigas have retained their distinctness as a tribe. We see them to-day, despised as Pariahs, yet forming a unit among the many other units which comprise the social life of India. They preserve their traditions; they have a cult which is distinctively a Madiga cult; they even have their own village jurisdiction on a tribal basis.
In going back to the earliest days of the Ongole Mission, I found several centres from which the influence radiated, and they were family centres. The man who first brought the tale of the strange new religion had to be identified as belonging to such and such Madiga family; he was invited to the evening meal, and the family listened to him as a family in the hours of the night. There was family deliberation as to whether this religion was true and right, and the family stood together to meet the petty persecutions that followed so surely in many a case.
There were men also who met Jesus Christ in the way, alone, and went home to face the hard ordeal that falls to him who is cast off by his family as a heretic, as a promulgator of a strange new religion. These men were determined that their families must come with them. They went to distant relations; they journeyed to reason with the connections of the wife. The sense of family cohesion was so strong upon them, the thought that they might lead a separate life henceforth seemed unnatural and scarcely to be entertained.
Family cohesion was the channel through which spiritual truth spread rapidly. It was also the channel that carried precepts directed toward uplifting of a social nature. When the Sudras saw how Christianity proved in the case of the Madigas a power to make life on earth more wholesome and clean, they considered it social redemption of a tribal nature. They said: “This religion has come to them. It would be well for us also if a religion came to us that would educate our children and make us respected.” Christianity found in tribal characteristics a powerful ally.
The Madigas are without doubt a very ancient tribe. It is possible that they are among the aboriginal tribes of Southern India who are descendants of the Kolarian race, a very rude and primitive race, which may have occupied India previous to the advent of the Dravidians. It is also possible that there were several migrations of Dravidian tribes. Perhaps the Madigas were among the earliest of the Dravidian invaders, but yet of the same stock. In support of this hypothesis I would point to the fact that the legends and cults of the Madigas bear the family resemblance of Dravidian tribes, and that in their hamlets the same self-government exists, on a small scale, which marked the ancient Dravidian village community. I have not found proof of equal weight to support the theory that they are of pre-Dravidian racial affinity.
If scholars were agreed concerning the racial origin of the Dravidians, we might proceed to assign to the Madigas their place in the human family. But we meet with conflicting theories. Both Blumenbach and Haeckel, the one by the characteristics of the skull, the other by the structure of the hair, find that the Dravidians are neither Caucasian nor Mongolian, but have their place between the two races. According to Haeckel’s hypothesis, the Dravidians advanced into India from the south, from that continent Lemuria, which he considers man’s primeval home, now sunk below the surface of the Indian Ocean. Dr. Logan finds an Indo-African element in the Dravidian physiognomy, and supposes that a negro race overspread India before the arrival of the Scythians. Dr. Caldwell applies the philological test. He claims that the Dravidians came from the north, because vestiges of Dravidian dialects mark the pathway. A Scythian invasion preceded the Aryan invasion. The Dravidian dialects bear distinct affinity to the Scythian group of languages. He argues, therefore, that the Dravidians are of Scythian race. The racial origin of the Dravidians is not yet ultimately settled.
Concerning the Indo-Aryans, scholars are agreed that they are of Caucasian race, pure and simple. They are the Sanscrit-speaking branch of the Indo-Germanic races, and entered India from the north, perhaps about the year 3000 B.C. Wars and conquests marked their course in Northern India.
The ancient Rishis in the hymns of the Rig Veda praise the Vedic god of battle: “Thou, O Indra, hast with thy weapon smitten the mouthless Dasyus; in the battle thou hast pierced the imperfect-speaking people.”
When, at a later period, their southward progress began, they had neither weapons in their hands nor appeals to Indra on their lips. They employed the arts of peace. Aryan hermits settled in the southern forests, and became the friends and instructors of the Dravidians. Previous to this contact between Aryans and Dravidians we have no means of knowing anything about the ancient Dravidians.
They were evidently not to be despised by the proud Aryans, for they had considerable resources. Governed by kings, they lived in fortified cities, fought with weapons, and possessed much wealth. Four cognate languages were spoken by the Dravidians, the Tamil, Telugu, Canarese and Malayalim. It is doubtful whether they had a literature anterior to Aryan influences. In abstract ideas they were deficient, but for every other range of ideas their languages afforded ample means of expression. They were a practical people. The Aryan colonists were compelled to acquire the Dravidian dialects and to content themselves by introducing Sanscrit terms into the local vernaculars.
In their social organization the two races differed widely. Among the Aryans of the north the caste system was already developed when their colonists began to migrate to the south. The only distinction known to the Dravidians was that of high and low, patricians and plebeians, as is found in all primitive communities. The Aryans had their strong Brahminical hierarchy, while the priests of the Dravidians were self-created, respected according to their skill in magic and sorcery. The Aryans burned their dead; their widows were not allowed to re-marry; they abhorred the eating of flesh and the spilling of blood. The Dravidians, on the other hand, buried their dead; their widows re-married; they ate flesh of all kinds, and no ceremony could take place without the excessive use of strong drink and the spilling of blood.
When the two races first came in contact there seems to have been antagonism in religious lines. The Brahminical settlers complained in the exaggerated language of the East concerning “the faithless creatures that inject frightful sounds into the ears of the faithful and austere eremites.” Hiding in the thickets adjoining the hermitages, “these frightful beings delighted in terrifying the devotees.” At the time of sacrifice they came and snatched away the jars, the flowers and the fuel, they cast away the sacrificial ladles and vessels, and polluted with blood the cooked oblations and offerings.
The mingling of tribes and races and the fusion of cults and religious systems which constitute modern Hinduism was then in its infancy. The Madigas were there and bore their part. With their Matangi cult they reach far back into antiquity. Leather-workers by occupation, they are among the lowest of the Pariah tribes. Yet the social and religious customs found among them to-day have their root in the India of thousands of years ago. The first contact between Christianity and this ancient tribe must, therefore, be of a unique character.