A SEARCH FOR TRUTH
I knew Bangarapu Thatiah seventeen years ago, when he was yet in his prime, honoured and loved by all. I saw him again when old age rested heavily upon him and his memory failed him when he tried to recall the happenings of yesterday. But when I asked him about the far-away past, his almost sightless eyes seemed to peer into the distance, and he told me many things.
“I called our Dora and he came,” he said to me, and then relapsed into silence. I looked about on the mission-houses, the school-houses, and the busy activity of the mission compound. And I remembered how this man, many years ago, came to this spot, his heart burning within him, to see whether the white teacher had not come. He found it overgrown with cactus, and Gundla Pentiah living in a hut in one corner of the compound, a faithful man, who told him that the Ongole Missionary was yet in Nellore, but was soon coming.
Thatiah’s plea was the last link in the chain of circumstances that brought the Ongole Missionary to this place. He could justly say before the younger generation, when he leaned heavily on the sturdy shoulders of the young men, “I called our Dora, and he came.”
I said, “Thatiah, tell me about the old days.” He looked about helplessly, and one of the younger men said, “Grandfather, the Dorasani wants to know about the time when the Dora first came here.”
“When the Dora first told me to go and preach, I said, ‘How can I go about alone all the time?’ But he said, ‘Take your wife with you and you will be two.’ After that Satyamah and I always went together. Sometimes she carried the bundle, sometimes I put it on my shoulder. What I preached, she preached; what I ate, she ate. Satyamah was always with me.”
“Did not men persecute you in the old days?”
Thatiah’s face, grown passive with age, brightened with animation, as he assured me, “No one ever abused me, no one persecuted me; men always treated me kindly and respectfully.”
“They tell me that you were much with Rajayogi Gurus. Did you learn anything from them?”
“Did I learn anything from them? They told me that there is one God, and that He is Spirit; that He has created all things, and pervades all things. It was well that they told me this, and I believed it. But nothing satisfied my soul till I heard of Jesus Christ.”
Thatiah told me this, without hesitation, as one of the facts of his life. He was too old for meditation. Thus I had the summary of Thatiah’s search for truth. He had found a nugget of gold in the Rajayogi sect, but the pearl of great price he had found when he heard of the Christ.
Thatiah had, years before, written a sketch of his life, at the request of the Missionary. This was supplemented by the story of many a man, who could not tell of the old days without bringing in Thatiah at decisive points. A singularly pure and holy life this man led before the eyes of thousands of his people.
He was born when his parents were advanced in years. The duty of caring for them fell upon him. It never occurred to him that he might learn to read. There was no one in those days who would teach a Madiga boy to read. He learned of his father to tan leather, and sew the sandals which the Sudras ordered.
In the time of his grandfather, a Guru of the Ramanuja sect had been invited by the family to come with the idols of Vishnu and perform sacred rites before them. This was repeated on special occasions, and the fees demanded by the priest were paid out of the scant earnings. When his father died, Thatiah took pride in having the funeral ceremonies performed according to the dictates of a Guru of the Ramanuja sect. This was considered an advance, both religiously and socially, upon the cults and customs of the ordinary Madiga.
Neither Thatiah nor any other Madiga has ever told me that he had gained in spiritual truth by joining the Ramanuja sect. The Madigas know nothing of the doctrines of the sect, nor do they see any deeper meaning in the several incarnations of Vishnu. This utter lack of apprehension concerning the tenets of a sect which they had joined shows that the Aryan cults do not find congenial soil among the aborigines. With the worship of Siva, in the Rajayogi sect, it was different. It was from this direction that a strong influence made itself felt in Thatiah’s life.
A very old woman, bent with age, came to Thatiah’s neighbourhood to visit her married daughter. This old woman, Bandikatla Veeramah, was a disciple of the Yogi Pothuluri Veerabramham. She must have been a spiritually-minded woman, and of strong personality. Thatiah and several others soon sat at her feet and learned of her.
The Yogi Veerabramham was one of the many reformers who rise up in India, influence thousands during several generations, and are then forgotten. This Yogi’s influence seems to have been more far-reaching and more pure than that of many another. He has inspired thousands with a hope which in some of its features resembles the millennial hope in the mind of the Christian, who looks forward to a speedy second coming of the Christ. He taught that God is spirit, and must be worshipped in spirit. That which is not of the spirit was denounced by him. “Those who say ‘Rama! Rama!’ will fall away,” he said, “because it is lip-service, and not of the spirit.” In the book in which his disciples preserved much of his teaching, he calls upon the multitude to turn from wickedness and look forward to a coming incarnation. This expectation of a re-incarnation of the Deity was the central thought in his preaching, and he has so filled the minds of his followers with this hope that they look for its fulfilment in the immediate future.
The personal history of Veerabramham is clothed in much that is legendary. His father was a devotee of Siva; he himself, when a young man, saw a vision in the field, which invited him to a certain shrine, where he henceforth often held converse with the Deity. After the manner of the Yogi he entered his grave alive, and ordered to have the door closed. His chief disciple, Siddapa, who had been absent, came to the grave and called aloud to his master, for he had not given him the final initiation. With an invisible hand, the words which his master had to say to him were written on his tongue. He departed, and directed his preaching mainly against caste; and prophesied, in the name of his master that in the day when God again became incarnate caste would vanish and all men would be equal.
This was the teaching which Thatiah received from Bandikatla Veeramah. Her life was an illustration of her precepts. People of all castes came and went in her house, even Madigas, though she belonged to the goldsmith caste, and was, therefore, far above them.
The woman in whose house she and her daughter were living began to object to the custom of her tenants. She said, “All these people are coming and going. They may touch our cooking utensils, and thus spoil our caste. You can look for another house.” Rather than ask her followers of low degree to stay away, Veeramah looked for another house. Her heart was large, she loved them all.
When she went away, she talked most lovingly to them: “You must be like the children of one mother, for you are the followers of one Guru. Be full of faith, don’t go and sin. Strive without ceasing to earn salvation.”
Thatiah had received his initiation as a Rajayogi Guru from Bandikatla Veeramah. For an hour every day he sat in meditation, his eyes closed, his fingers pressed over ears and nostrils, so that objects of sense might be completely shut out, and the soul might perceive the great, all-pervading Divine Being. He was much with the Rajayogi people, and seems to have been looked upon as a leader among them, because of his religious fervour.
In the Kanigiri Taluk, where Thatiah lived, the soil was dry and hard, and the Sudras had to dig wells in their fields to water the growing crops. In large buckets they brought the water to the surface, and these buckets were made of leather, and had to be made and kept in repair by the Madigas. Thatiah heard that much cattle was dying in the Godavery district, stung by a poisonous fly, and that, therefore, hides were cheap. He decided, with a kinsman, to go north on trade.
It was during his stay in that northern district that Thatiah first heard of the Christ. A Madiga, who was also bent on trade, told him of a Dora who was preaching this new religion. They decided to go and see him, and were kindly received. They went again. Thatiah said, “This religion is true. My soul is now satisfied.” The Padre said, “You are going back to your home. Inquire from time to time, for soon a white teacher is coming to Ongole. Go to him; he will tell you more about this religion.”
When Thatiah turned toward home, he was determined to break away from the old life and begin the new. He refused to bow before the village idols. He told the Rajayogi people that he was no longer one of them, that he had found something far better than they had to give. When they asked him which swami he was going to worship, he told them that he bowed to one, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who had died for men. A Dora had told him, and another Dora was soon coming who would tell him more.
So bold a declaration from a man of the influence of Thatiah was not to be accepted with indifference. Some of the Madigas, who feared the demons and fiends of the village, predicted that their vengeance would smite them all, because of Thatiah’s daring words. Nor were the Sudras pleased with his determination. His friends reasoned with him, “You are believing a God not of this country, but a new God. You are bringing new standards of living among us. Our old-time gods, Poleramah and Ankalamah, you no longer come to worship; you stay away when we beat the drums on their festal days. Don’t you know that they will turn from us and curse us on your account?”
Thatiah was not a man to be abused. No one dared to insult him or ill-treat him. All the more keenly he felt the isolation when all withdrew from him. Those who had heretofore looked up to him as a spiritual leader now passed him by. Work that had been promised him by the Sudras was quietly withdrawn; the pay for work which he had done was not forthcoming.
But the grief that was deepest in all his sore trial came through the desertion of his wife Satyamah. She did not stand by him. Perhaps she was not greatly to blame; for she had not been with Thatiah when he opened his heart to the religion of Jesus Christ. He had told her all when he returned, but at the same time she saw him opposed on every hand. The change in him seemed like a wall between them; she felt that she was losing her husband, and when relatives and friends, who knew that Thatiah held her dear, told her that she must save him by sternly opposing him, she lent a willing ear.
Her former care for his comforts was turned to neglect. His food was often late or unsavoury, and sometimes he had to go hungry. When he wanted to drink there was no water. His remonstrances were met by reproaches from her. Finally he said to her: “By thus plunging me into all kinds of trouble, you cannot keep me here. I shall join the people of the Christian sect as soon as I can find them, and I shall eat with them.” The strife was ended. When referring to this circumstance in later life, Thatiah said simply, “God in His great mercy changed her mind.”
In all the forsaken condition of those days, Thatiah never forgot that a missionary was coming to Ongole. Could it be that he had already come? Satyamah agreed with him that it might be well to go and see.
Tired and footsore Thatiah came to the compound in Ongole, which was said to belong to the Nellore Missionary. In the midst of it was a little bungalow, but no white teacher living in it. As Thatiah went about the compound, he must have looked like a man who wanted something, for Gundla Pentiah saw him, and came out of his hut toward him, and asked, “Why did you come here?”
“I have come to look for the white teacher. Why is he not here?”
Pentiah was a Christian from Nellore, sent to Ongole to watch the compound and await the coming of the Missionary. He took Thatiah into his hut, and they talked it over. Pentiah grasped the situation; he sympathized with Thatiah, and he knew that there would be joy in the mission house at Nellore should a message be received that there was a man in Ongole, that spot of many prayers, who was hungering and thirsting after righteousness.
Pentiah knew of a way to do. He said, “Come with me to the house by the hillside, to a lady who is a friend of the Nellore Missionary. She will know what to do.” They went, made a respectful salaam, and Pentiah, as spokesman said : " Ammah, this man, Thatiah, as he went north on trade, saw a missionary who told him that a white teacher would come to Ongole. He believes in Christ as God, and has come to see this teacher. As he does not find him here, he is very sad, and wants to know the reason of the delay. We have, therefore, come to make his request known to you."
The lady understood. She said to Thatiah : " I shall write to the Nellore Missionary. Be ready to come at any time when I send for you."
Not many days had passed when a cooley arrived in Thatiah’s village, asking him to come to Ongole, for the Missionary had come. With his wife, Satyamah, he hastened on his way, barely taking needed rest as they walked the fifty miles. The joy when he saw the Nellore Missionary, and with him a younger man, who was soon to become the Ongole Missionary, is described by Thatiah as unspeakable. The older of the two men had been stoned in the bazaar of Ongole in the years gone by. But now, in the spot where his message had been spurned, he had a man before him who could not hear enough. A holy joy shone in the face of the one man; a yearning desire to hear more was in the face of the other as he sat hour after hour quenching his thirst.
Outcasts from their own community, Thatiah and his wife had made their way to Ongole. Received into the religious fellowship of the race that rules over India, they returned home. They could not have had more than a very dim conception of the fact that they were now counted among the hosts of men and women who represent the salt of the earth, yet they knew that their days of isolation were over. With a bundle of tracts and books on their shoulders, as many as they could carry, with the words of benediction from their white teachers ringing in their ears, and a new light in their countenances, they returned to their own village.
And now that ceaseless activity began that bore such abundant fruit. With untiring devotion Thatiah journeyed from village to village, his wife Satyamah always with him. The women loved Satyamah, and would gather about her and ask her whether she was not tired and thirsty after her journey, and take her away to refresh her. Late in life a mild insanity rendered her helpless. With a display of the same faithfulness which she had shown in accompanying her husband during twenty years, he now cared for her with a gentleness which called forth comment in the Madiga community. When her mind wandered, he took her by the hand, bade her sit down, and gave her to eat.
Thatiah stood like a granite pillar in the early days of the mission. He was a leader among his people, when the Madiga community was astir in discarding the old beliefs and accepting the new. He carried himself like a man of experience, of authority, in his humble sphere, to whose opinions deference should be paid. His bold features, measured gait, and a certain innate dignity, blended with a childlike humility, won for him the respect of all whom he addressed.
In his preaching he was not like other men, who had not pondered Rajayogi problems. He was wont to begin his discourses with some of the peculiar combinations of the Shastris. He would say, " The alphabet has five lines each way, thus also the body is composed of five elements. There is another five : two to hear, two to see, one to speak. But there is yet another five : the five wounds of Christ." By this time the interest of his hearers was aroused ; it was a mode of proceeding congenial to the Hindu mind. In later years, when men trained in the Theological Seminary made their influence felt, critics arose, who said Thatiah might at last wheel into line. It was a species of the old strife between philosophy and theology. But Thatiah held his own. Hundreds believed in the Christ through his preaching. Spiritually-minded to an eminent degree, there was power in his words and his example.
In his old age Thatiah journeyed to Ongole once more. Slowly they brought him to his accustomed place on the platform of the chapel on Sunday morning. The Missionary stopped in his sermon to put him in his own chair. He saw the look of wonder on the faces of some of the younger generation, who knew little of the old days and its leaders. His heart was very tender toward the man who had never moved an inch from his God-appointed task, who had stood by his side in the days of small beginnings, in the days of calamity and of overwhelming responsibility.
He turned to the hundreds of listeners before him : " Do you want to know who this man is? I will tell you. When you get to heaven—and I hope you will all get there—you will see some one who looks radiant with light, far above you. You will almost need a telescope to see him distinctly, the distance between you and him will be so great. And you will ask some one, ’ Who is that man clothed in exceeding brightness? ’ Then you will be told, ’ That man is Bangarapu Thatiah from the Telugu country.’ And you will strain your eyes to behold him."
There was a look of reverence on many a face as the Missionary proceeded with his sermon. A year later Thatiah’s spirit took its flight.