January 25 Saturday – In Bombay, Sam’s notebook:

It was Mr. Ghandi (delegate to Chicago World’s Fair Congress of Religions) who explained everything to us yesterday at the Jain temple.

From there went to the house of a wealthy Parsee to assist at a gathering in honor of knighthood being bestowed upon H H The Prince of Politana….

Afterward Parsee palace. Owner had heard me in London 22 years ago [NB 36 TS 24-5].

Note: This guide was Virchand Raghavji Gandi, not Mohandas Karamchand Ghandi, the famous Indian reformer. As for “Politana,” Ahluwalia gives it as “Palitana”; also “Gandhi” [10].

Sam spent nearly two hours looking at the buildings and statues with jewelry. He was scheduled to be entertained by the Byculla Club in the evening. Ahluwalia writes,

According to V.R. Gandhi, who escorted them, MT, Olivia, and Clara went to the Jain temple in the company of United States Consul and his wife, and the Vice-Consul, “accompanied by Mr. Fakirchand and myself.” All three Clemenses had questions about the beliefs of the Jains, and how they differed from those of the Brahmins. Citing Parsons, “Mark Twain: Sightseer in India” and Clara’s My Father Mark Twain, Mutalik says Olivia and Clara, without MT, had also attended an earlier reception, ‘at the house of a Hindu,’ honoring the Prince of Palitana” [See MFMT 156-7; Keshav Mutalik, Mark Twain in India (Bombay: Noble, 1978); Parsons “MT India”].

Parsons writes of the next attraction:

From the temple the party went to Lovelane in the Byculla section. There, in the large hall of the bungalow of Premchand Roychand, a wealthy broker once known as “the uncrowned king of Bombay,” Mark awaited the arrival of the begemmed Thakur Saheb Masinghji of Palitania, whom the Queen-Empress Victoria had just created a Knight Commander of the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India. …

A Hindu ceremony which the Americans attended toward midnight made a different impression on Clara and on her father. Clara remembered joining a foot procession from the home of the twenty-year old bridegroom to that of the twelve-year old bride, where a wedding took place, and Mark recalled betrothal festivities at the bride’s house. As they drove down the streets, they saw hundreds of blanket-wrapped forms strewn like victims of pestilence or pogrom….Twain had a premonition which was realized eight months later in bubonic plague… [“MT India” 77-8]. (emphasis added.)

Mehrjibhai N. Kuka in Bombay wrote to Sam, sending his book, The Wit and Humour of the Persians (1894), which Kuka hoped Sam would accept “as a token of…sincere admiration for your genius” [MTP]. See Gribben 390.