The Sending of Dana Da

When the Devil rides on your chest remember the _chamar.--Native Proverb_.

Once upon a time, some people in India made a new Heaven and a new Earth
out of broken tea-cups, a missing brooch or two, and a hair-brush. These
were hidden under brushes, or stuffed into holes in the hillside, and an
entire Civil Service of subordinate Gods used to find or mend them again;
and every one said: "There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are
dreamed of in our philosophy." Several other things happened also, but the
Religion never seemed to get much beyond its first manifestations; though
it added an air-line postal service, and orchestral effects in order to
keep abreast of the times, and choke off competition.

This Religion was too elastic for ordinary use. It stretched itself and
embraced pieces of everything that the medicine-men of all ages have
manufactured. It approved of and stole from Freemasonry; looted the
Latter-day Rosicrucians of half their pet words; took any fragments of
Egyptian philosophy that it found in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_;
annexed as many of the Vedas as had been translated into French or
English, and talked of all the rest; built in the German versions of what
is left of the Zend Avesta; encouraged White, Grey and Black Magic,
including spiritualism, palmistry, fortune-telling by cards, hot
chestnuts, double-kerneled nuts and tallow droppings; would have adopted
Voodoo and Oboe had it known anything about them, and showed itself, in
every way, one of the most accommodating arrangements that had ever been
invented since the birth of the Sea.

When it was in thorough working order, with all the machinery, down to the
subscriptions, complete, Dana Da came from nowhere, with nothing in his
hands, and wrote a chapter in its history which has hitherto been
unpublished. He said that his first name was Dana, and his second was Da.
Now, setting aside Dana of the New York _Sun_, Dana is a Bhil name, and Da
fits no native of India unless you except the Bengali De as the original
spelling. Da is Lap or Finnish; and Dana Da was neither Finn, Chin, Bhil,
Bengali, Lap, Nair, Gond, Romaney, Magh, Bokhariot, Kurd, Armenian,
Levantine, Jew, Persian, Punjabi, Madrasi, Parsee, nor anything else known
to ethnologists. He was simply Dana Da, and declined to give further
information. For the sake of brevity and as roughly indicating his origin,
he was called "The Native." He might have been the original Old Man of the
Mountains, who is said to be the only authorized head of the Tea-cup
Creed. Some people said that he was; but Dana Da used to smile and deny
any connection with the cult; explaining that he was an "Independent
Experimenter."

As I have said, he came from nowhere, with his hands behind his back, and
studied the Creed for three weeks; sitting at the feet of those best
competent to explain its mysteries. Then he laughed aloud and went away,
but the laugh might have been either of devotion or derision.

When he returned he was without money, but his pride was unabated. He
declared that he knew more about the Things in Heaven and Earth than those
who taught him, and for this contumacy was abandoned altogether.

His next appearance in public life was at a big cantonment in Upper India,
and he was then telling fortunes with the help of three leaden dice, a
very dirty old cloth, and a little tin box of opium pills. He told better
fortunes when he was allowed half a bottle of whiskey; but the things
which he invented on the opium were quite worth the money. He was in
reduced circumstances. Among other people's he told the fortune of an
Englishman who had once been interested in the Simla Creed, but who, later
on, had married and forgotten all his old knowledge in the study of babies
and things. The Englishman allowed Dana Da to tell a fortune for charity's
sake, and gave him five rupees, a dinner, and some old clothes. When he
had eaten, Dana Da professed gratitude, and asked if there were anything
he could do for his host--in the esoteric line.

"Is there any one that you love?" said Dana Da. The Englishman loved his
wife, but had no desire to drag her name into the conversation. He
therefore shook his head.

"Is there any one that you hate?" said Dana Da. The Englishman said that
there were several men whom he hated deeply.

"Very good," said Dana Da, upon whom the whiskey and the opium were
beginning to tell. "Only give me their names, and I will despatch a
Sending to them and kill them."

Now a Sending is a horrible arrangement, first invented, they say, in
Iceland. It is a Thing sent by a wizard, and may take any form, but, most
generally, wanders about the land in the shape of a little purple cloud
till it finds the Sendee, and him it kills by changing into the form of a
horse, or a cat, or a man without a face. It is not strictly a native
patent, though _chamars_ of the skin and hide castes can, if irritated,
despatch a Sending which sits on the breast of their enemy by night and
nearly kills him, Very few natives care to irritate _chamars_ for this
reason.

"Let me despatch a Sending," said Dana Da; "I am nearly dead now with
want, and drink, and opium; but I should like to kill a man before I die.
I can send a Sending anywhere you choose, and in any form except in the
shape of a man."

The Englishman had no friends that he wished to kill, but partly to soothe
Dana Da, whose eyes were rolling, and partly to see what would be done, he
asked whether a modified Sending could not be arranged for--such a Sending
as should make a man's life a burden to him, and yet do him no harm. If
this were possible, he notified his willingness to give Dana Da ten rupees
for the job.

"I am not what I was once," said Dana Da, "and I must take the money
because I am poor. To what Englishman shall I send it?"

"Send a Sending to Lone Sahib," said the Englishman, naming a man who had
been most bitter in rebuking him for his apostasy from the Tea-cup Creed.
Dana Da laughed and nodded.

"I could have chosen no better man myself," said he. "I will see that he
finds the Sending about his path and about his bed."

He lay down on the hearth-rug, turned up the whites of his eyes, shivered
all over and began to snort. This was Magic, or Opium, or the Sending, or
all three. When he opened his eyes he vowed that the Sending had started
upon the war-path, and was at that moment flying up to the town where Lone
Sahib lives,

"Give me my ten rupees," said Dana Da, wearily, "and write a letter to
Lone Sahib, telling him, and all who believe with him, that you and a
friend are using a power greater than theirs. They will see that you are
speaking the truth."

He departed unsteadily, with the promise of some more rupees if anything
came of the Sending,

The Englishman sent a letter to Lone Sahib, couched in what he remembered
of the terminology of the Creed. He wrote: "I also, in the days of what
you held to be my backsliding, have obtained Enlightenment, and with
Enlightenment has come Power." Then he grew so deeply mysterious that the
recipient of the letter could make neither head nor tail of it, and was
proportionately impressed; for he fancied that his friend had become a
"fifth-rounder." When a man is a "fifth-rounder" he can do more than Slade
and Houdin combined,

Lone Sahib read the letter in five different fashions, and was beginning a
sixth interpretation when his bearer dashed in with the news that there
was a cat on the bed. Now if there was one thing that Lone Sahib hated
more than another, it was a cat. He scolded the bearer for not turning it
out of the house. The bearer said that he was afraid. All the doors of the
bedroom had been shut throughout the morning, and no _real_ cat could
possibly have entered the room. He would prefer not to meddle with the
creature.

Lone Sahib entered the room gingerly, and there, on the pillow of his bed,
sprawled and whimpered a wee white kitten; not a jumpsome, frisky little
beast, but a slug-like crawler with its eyes barely opened and its paws
lacking strength or direction--a kitten that ought to have been in a
basket with its mamma. Lone Sahib caught it by the scruff of its neck,
handed it over to the sweeper to be drowned, and fined the bearer four
annas.

That evening, as he was reading in his room, he fancied that he saw
something moving about on the hearth-rug, outside the circle of light from
his reading-lamp. When the thing began to myowl, he realized that it was a
kitten--a wee white kitten, nearly blind and very miserable. He was
seriously angry, and spoke bitterly to his bearer, who said that there was
no kitten in the room when he brought in the lamp, and _real_ kittens of
tender age generally had mother-cats in attendance.

"If the Presence will go out into the veranda and listen," said the
bearer, "he will hear no cats. How, therefore, can the kitten on the bed
and the kitten on the hearth-rug be real kittens?"

Lone Sahib went out to listen, and the bearer followed him, but there was
no sound of any one mewing for her children. He returned to his room,
having hurled the kitten down the hillside, and wrote out the incidents of
the day for the benefit of his co-religionists. Those people were so
absolutely free from superstition that they ascribed anything a little out
of the common to Agencies. As it was their business to know all about the
Agencies, they were on terms of almost indecent familiarity with
Manifestations of every kind. Their letters dropped from the
ceiling--unstamped--and Spirits used to squatter up and down their
staircases all night; but they had never come into contact with kittens.
Lone Sahib wrote out the facts, noting the hour and the minute, as every
Psychical Observer is bound to do, and appending the Englishman's letter
because it was the most mysterious document and might have had a bearing
upon anything in this world or the next. An outsider would have translated
all the tangle thus: "Look out! You laughed at me once, and now I am going
to make you sit up,"

Lone Sahib's co-religionists found that meaning in it; but their
translation was refined and full of four-syllable words. They held a
sederunt, and were filled with tremulous joy, for, in spite of their
familiarity with all the other worlds and cycles, they had a very human
awe of things sent from Ghost-land. They met in Lone Sahib's room in
shrouded and sepulchral gloom, and their conclave was broken up by
clinking among the photo-frames on the mantelpiece. A wee white kitten,
nearly blind, was looping and writhing itself between the clock and the
candlesticks. That stopped all investigations or doubtings. Here was the
Manifestation in the flesh. It was, so far as could be seen, devoid of
purpose, but it was a Manifestation of undoubted authenticity.

They drafted a Round Robin to the Englishman, the backslider of old days,
adjuring him in the interests of the Creed to explain whether there was
any connection between the embodiment of some Egyptian God or other (I
have forgotten the name) and his communication. They called the kitten Ra,
or Toth, or Tum, or some thing; and when Lone Sahib confessed that the
first one had, at his most misguided instance, been drowned by the
sweeper, they said consolingly that in his next life he would be a
"bounder," and not even a "rounder" of the lowest grade. These words may
not be quite correct, but they accurately express the sense of the house.

When the Englishman received the Round Robin--it came by post--he was
startled and bewildered. He sent into the bazar for Dana Da, who read the
letter and laughed, "That is my Sending," said he. "I told you I would
work well. Now give me another ten rupees."

"But what in the world is this gibberish about Egyptian Gods?" asked the
Englishman,

"Cats," said Dana Da, with a hiccough, for he had discovered the
Englishman's whiskey bottle. "Cats, and cats, and cats! Never was such a
Sending. A hundred of cats. Now give me ten more rupees and write as I
dictate."

Dana Da's letter was a curiosity. It bore the Englishman's signature, and
hinted at cats--at a Sending of Cats. The mere words on paper were creepy
and uncanny to behold.

"What have you done, though?" said the Englishman; "I am as much in the
dark as ever. Do you mean to say that you can actually send this absurd
Sending you talk about?"

"Judge for yourself," said Dana Da. "What does that letter mean? In a
little time they will all be at my feet and yours, and I--O Glory!--will
be drugged or drunk all day long."

Dana Da knew his people.

When a man who hates cats wakes up in the morning and finds a little
squirming kitten on his breast, or puts his hands into his ulster-pocket
and finds a little half-dead kitten where his gloves should be, or opens
his trunk and finds a vile kitten among his dress-shirts, or goes for a
long ride with his mackintosh strapped on his saddle-bow and shakes a
little squawling kitten from its folds when he opens it, or goes out to
dinner and finds a little blind kitten under his chair, or stays at home
and finds a writhing kitten under the quilt, or wriggling among his boots,
or hanging, head downward, in his tobacco-jar, or being mangled by his
terrier in the veranda,--when such a man finds one kitten, neither more
nor less, once a day in a place where no kitten rightly could or should
be, he is naturally upset. When he dare not murder his daily trove because
he believes it to be a Manifestation, an Emissary, an Embodiment, and half
a dozen other things all out of the regular course of nature, he is more
than upset. He is actually distressed. Some of Lone Sahib's
co-religionists thought that he was a highly favored individual; but many
said that if he had treated the first kitten with proper respect--as
suited a Toth-Ra-Tum-Sennacherib Embodiment--all this trouble would have
been averted. They compared him to the Ancient Mariner, but none the less
they were proud of him and proud of the Englishman who had sent the
Manifestation. They did not call it a Sending because Icelandic magic was
not in their programme.

After sixteen kittens, that is to say after one fortnight, for there were
three kittens on the first day to impress the fact of the Sending, the
whole camp was uplifted by a letter--it came flying through a window--from
the Old Man of the Mountains--the Head of all the Creed--explaining the
Manifestation in the most beautiful language and soaking up all the credit
of it for himself. The Englishman, said the letter, was not there at all.
He was a backslider without Power or Asceticism, who couldn't even raise a
table by force of volition, much less project an army of kittens through
space. The entire arrangement, said the letter, was strictly orthodox,
worked and sanctioned by the highest Authorities within the pale of the
Creed. There was great joy at this, for some of the weaker brethren seeing
that an outsider who had been working on independent lines could create
kittens, whereas their own rulers had never gone beyond crockery--and
broken at best--were showing a desire to break line on their own trail. In
fact, there was the promise of a schism. A second Round Robin was drafted
to the Englishman, beginning: "O Scoffer," and ending with a selection of
curses from the Rites of Mizraim and Memphis and the Commination of
Jugana, who was a "fifth-rounder," upon whose name an upstart
"third-rounder" once traded. A papal excommunication is a _billet-doux_
compared to the Commination of Jugana. The Englishman had been proved,
under the hand and seal of the Old Man of the Mountains, to have
appropriated Virtue and pretended to have Power which, in reality,
belonged only to the Supreme Head. Naturally the Round Robin did not spare
him.

He handed the letter to Dana Da to translate into decent English. The
effect on Dana Da was curious. At first he was furiously angry, and then
he laughed for five minutes.

"I had thought," he said, "that they would have come to me. In another
week I would have shown that I sent the Sending, and they would have
discrowned the Old Man of the Mountains who has sent this Sending of mine.
Do you do nothing. The time has come for me to act. Write as I dictate,
and I will put them to shame. But give me ten more rupees."

At Dana Da's dictation the Englishman wrote nothing less than a formal
challenge to the Old Man of the Mountains. It wound up: "And if this
Manifestation be from your hand, then let it go forward; but if it be from
my hand, I will that the Sending shall cease in two days' time. On that
day there shall be twelve kittens and thenceforward none at all. The
people shall judge between us." This was signed by Dana Da, who added
pentacles and pentagrams, and a _crux ansaia_, and half a dozen
_swastikas_, and a Triple Tau to his name, just to show that he was all he
laid claim to be.

The challenge was read out to the gentlemen and ladies, and they
remembered then that Dana Da had laughed at them some years ago. It was
officially announced that the Old Man of the Mountains would treat the
matter with contempt; Dana Da being an Independent Investigator without a
single "round" at the back of him. But this did not soothe his people.
They wanted to see a fight. They were very human for all their
spirituality. Lone Sahib, who was really being worn out with kittens,
submitted meekly to his fate. He felt that he was being "kittened to prove
the power of Dana Da," as the poet says.

When the stated day dawned, the shower of kittens began. Some were white
and some were tabby, and all were about the same loathsome age. Three were
on his hearth-rug, three in his bath-room, and the other six turned up at
intervals among the visitors who came to see the prophecy break down.
Never was a more satisfactory Sending. On the next day there were no
kittens, and the next day and all the other days were kittenless and
quiet. The people murmured and looked to the Old Man of the Mountains for
an explanation. A letter, written on a palm-leaf, dropped from the
ceiling, but every one except Lone Sahib felt that letters were not what
the occasion demanded. There should have been cats, there should have been
cats,--full-grown ones. The letter proved conclusively that there had been
a hitch in the Psychic Current which, colliding with a Dual Identity, had
interfered with the Percipient Activity all along the main line. The
kittens were still going on, but owing to some failure in the Developing
Fluid, they were not materialized. The air was thick with letters for a
few days afterward. Unseen hands played Glueck and Beethoven on
finger-bowls and clock-shades; but all men felt that Psychic Life was a
mockery without materialized Kittens. Even Lone Sahib shouted with the
majority on this head. Dana Da's letters were very insulting, and if he
had then offered to lead a new departure, there is no knowing what might
not have happened.

But Dana Da was dying of whiskey and opium in the Englishman's godown, and
had small heart for honors.

"They have been put to shame," said he. "Never was such a Sending. It has
killed me."

"Nonsense," said the Englishman, "you are going to die, Dana Da, and that
sort of stuff must be left behind. I'll admit that you have made some
queer things come about. Tell me honestly, now, how was it done?"

"Give me ten more rupees," said Dana Da, faintly, "and if I die before I
spend them, bury them with me." The silver was counted out while Dana Da
was fighting with Death. His hand closed upon the money and he smiled a
grim smile.

"Bend low," he whispered. The Englishman bent.

"_Bunnia_--Mission--school--expelled--_box-wallah_ (peddler)--Ceylon
pearl-merchant--all mine English education--out-casted, and made up name
Dana Da--England with American thought-reading man and--and--you gave me
ten rupees several times--I gave the Sahib's bearer two-eight a month for
cats--little, little cats. I wrote, and he put them about--very clever
man. Very few kittens now in the _bazar_. Ask Lone Sahib's sweeper's
wife."

So saying, Dana Da gasped and passed away into a land where, if all be
true, there are no materializations and the making of new creeds is
discouraged.

But consider the gorgeous simplicity of it all!