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Updated: May 2, 2025
This went on for months with little interruption, except what was caused by the serious and continued illness of Mrs. Lyon, which, to the great regret of all their friends, led before the end of the year to the departure of Mr. and Mrs. L. for Europe. In the seventh or eighth month of my residence at Benares I wrote a short sermon in Hindustanee on John i. 29, and read it at the native service.
"See that he is not bitten!" and then he slowly walked over to where a dozen menials, with heavy clubs, had beaten the writhing cobra into a shapeless mass. "Come away, all of you!" cried the captain, in Hindustanee. "Run, some of you, and get the snake catcher!"
I commanded him to forbear, but speaking half in English and half in Hindustanee, made myself better understood by look and gesture than by words. The unhappy infant seemed to know that I interfered in its behalf, for it gazed upon me with a piteous but grateful expression; it could not have been more than three years old, and was really very pretty and interesting in its tears.
I supposed he was telling her of some wild tribe festival when he spoke of dances bearing the names of animals and fowls. It was all as incomprehensible to me as Hindustanee. At last he said to her, "Well, girlie, I'm about due to leave now. I am sorry, but I must be moving." Then more softly, "Remember to-morrow night. You take a wrap and I'll see to the lunch. Boat will be ready at eight.
That much was perfectly clear. Whether Buddha spoke or not is doubtful. Certain of the spectators thought that he said, 'Must a fagotnit', which is Hindustanee for "Blessings on this house." To Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown's distracted mind it seemed as if Buddha said, "I must have forgotten it" But this wild fancy she never breathed to a soul.
He has to learn the two I have named, the Hindustanee and the Hindee. The Hindustanee arose from intercourse between the Muhammadan invaders and the people they had subdued. It is written in the Persian or Arabic character, and draws its vocabulary mainly from the Persian and Arabic languages. It is the language of law, of commerce, and of ordinary life to many millions.
There were men who could talk Hindustanee who whispered to us to surrender to the Germans at the first opportunity, promising in that case that we shall be well treated. The German kaiser, these men assured us, had truly turned Muhammadan; as if that were anything to Sikhs, unless perhaps an additional notch against him!
Perhaps no such words had ever before gone out over that part of the Atlantic; for Frank Harley was a missionary's son, "going home to be educated;" and the sweet, low-voiced song was a Hindustanee hymn which his mother had taught him in far-away India. Suddenly the hymn was cut short by the hoarse voice of the "lookout," as it announced, "A white light, close aboard, on the windward bow."
It is said that a regular Hindustanee carrier, with a weight of 80 pounds on his shoulder, carried, of course, in two divisions, hung on his neck by a yoke, will, if properly paid, lope along over 100 miles in twenty-four hours a feat which would exhaust any but the best trained runners.
At first my teacher and myself had to put things into many forms before reaching mutual intelligibility; but gradually our work became easier, and when two or three months had passed we fairly understood each other I trying to express myself in Hindustanee, and he performing the much-needed work of correcting my words and idiom.
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