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OLD DANIEL; OR, MEMOIR OF A CONVERTED HINDOO AND DESCRIPTION OF VILLAGE
LIFE IN INDIA.

BY THOMAS HODSON, WITH INTRODUCTION BY THE REV W. ARTHUR, M.A.

PREFACE.

I can now, in my mind's eye, see Chickka, the washerman, as if I had met
him yesterday; and I can see the mud houses of Singonahully, the mud
wall of the village, and the temple of Runga, as if they were all before
me. Yet five and thirty years are passed and gone since the afternoon
when, in quest of medical aid, I rode past the village, hoping yet to
see it the abode of many follower's of Christ, not knowing that I was
never to see it more. At that time Chickka was still a heathen. He was
then between forty and fifty years of age, a grey-headed, resolute,
self-controlled looking man.

At the mission-house of Goobbe we knew Chickka well. He was often
present at our family prayer, but gave no signs of any religious
conviction; and I cannot remember that he ever expressed more
disapproval of idolatry than many did, who to this day have continued in
their heathenism. Certainly I had no idea of the processes through
which the mind of the washer man had passed. It would have been hard to
conceive that one so ignorant and so simple, had as a boy, all untaught,
seen as clearly the vanity of idols as well-instructed men could do, and
had in his own simple way taken practical and striking steps to convince
others of the justice of his views.

In the lifelike narrative of Mr Hodson,--where every touch is that of
one who has lived among the people, till their sayings and their doings,
their surrounding scenes and modes of thought, are all familiar,--the
reader will find a very curious light upon the processes of thought
which, in the deepest night of paganism, may be passing in the mind of a
labourer's lad who knows not a letter. We may feel assured that similar
lights are shining in the darkest places now, and that millions of young
minds are being prepared, as was the mind of Chickka, to turn from dumb
idols to serve the living and the true God. Even were the incidents
detailed in the following pages those only of the life of a single boy,
they would be of great interest. But it is not as incidents that give
interest to the story of an inward change of one mind, or of the outward
windings of one life, but as a sign of what is going on in multitudes,
and as a foretoken of the changes that are to come,