Book Title: Indian Antiquary Vol 59
Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications
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August, 1930 ]
THE MYSTERY AND MENTAL ATMOSPHERE
ceremonies. The sailors were turning a Muslim saint, who was presumably an Indian, into an emanation of the Buddha, because they were within the influence of a Buddhist country; and it may be added that along the Arakan-Burma-Tenasserim seaboard there are other Buddhamakâns, or more properly Badarmakams.
The Muslim saint Badar of Chittagong, whose memory was thus travestied, was Badru'd. din Aulia, a typical fifteenth century saintly hero, who, like other similar personages, came from nowhere,' settled in Chittagong for many years as a holy man, and finally died further west into Bihar, leaving shrines in both places in his memory. Further enquiry showed that he was mixed up with the sea and sailors, because he had become identified with perhaps the most ubiquitous and mysterious of all holy personages in the East, whose ordinary Indian title is Khizar Khân, but he is also widely known there and in Persia as Khwaja Khizr, and in all the lands further west as al-Khidr. This al-Khidr, as we know from the researches of Friedländer, Hasluck and many more, bears among numerous other qualities that of patron saint and even godling of the sea and seafarers. For reasons that will become plain later on, it is necessary to lay stress on the numerous other qualities,' for it will be seen that al-Khidr is a general holy personage in Eastern folklore. He has usually no form and no genealogy. He is just something mysterious, something powerful and wholly unorthodox in any formal religion, but universally acknowledged nevertheless. It will be perceived then that the enquiry as to why the sailors in the steamer performed particular ceremonies off the shrine of Badru'd-din Aulia on the Arakan coast soon took on a universal form and became as wide as it could be.
It is however important to notice here that the enquiry was nevertheless limited, and this address will not therefore take the shape of a general philosophical discussion. It will not touch on the field of the philosophy of formal religion as such. There will be no attempt to ascertain the abstract reason why religious beliefs as such should have arisen--no attempt to answer such a question as that lately propounded: If God made the world, what made God?' Such speculations are beside the present point, which is actually to investigate certain beliefs which have been in the past and are still held by the peoples of a certain class of nations in the world. An effort will be made to enquire into the nature of the beliefs that led to the creation of al-Khidr in the minds of peoples coming generally under the influence of the religion promulgated by Muhammad, from Morocco to the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago -a sufficiently large portion of the world in all conscience to essay to cover in an address.
It is now proposed to show where the result of such an inyestigation is likely to lead us and how that result may be achieved scientifically. The theories that your lecturer has arrived at have come about as follows, and it is for you to judge them at leisure and ascertain how far you think his efforts may constitute a guide for future study.
Al-Khidr in his proper form is a Muhammadan personage, and though he is not mentioned by name in the Koran, there is a well-known story therein which has been referred to him by the earliest of the Arabic commentatore thereon. But though Arabia and the Near East constitute a far cry from the Bay of Bengal, there is nothing to be surprised at in his early transfer thither with the all-absorbing spread of Islam in that region, and the spread can be easily traoed overland from its beginning in the seventh century in Sind in the extreme west of India. The Koran itself was brought into being in the seventh century, and by the eighth and ninth the followers of Muhammad were not only all over the Persian Empire, but had obtained a firm hold on western India both along the coast and in Sind. With them came legends of al-Khidr up and down the Indus, with specific local applications and a mingling with Hindu deities and holy personages of animistic origin and names quite