[Sidenote:  Chet Ram claimed to be an apostle.]

The third movement is that of the Chet Ramis, or sect of Chet Ram, whose strange history may be found in East and West for July 1905.  Chet Ram was an illiterate Hindu, a water-carrier and then a steward in the Indian army that took part in the war with China in 1859-1860.  Returning to his native district not far from Lahore, Chet Ram, the Hindu, came under the spell of a Mahomedan ascetic Mahbub Sh[=a]h, left all and followed him as his “familiar” disciple.  How this relationship between Hindu and Mahomedanism is quite possible in India, we have already explained on pages 163-4; Mahbub Sh[=a]h’s strange combination of religious asceticism with the consumption of opium and wine, it takes some years’ residence in India to understand.  Then Mahbub Sh[=a]h died, and the disciple succeeded the master.  According to one account, Chet Ram made his bed on the grave in which his master lay; according to another, for three years his sleeping place was the vault within which his master was buried.  It was at this time that he had the vision of “Jesus God,” already referred to, between the years 1860 and 1865.  Like Caedmon, he has described his vision in verse—­

  “Upon the grave of Master Mahbub Shah
  Slept Sain Chet Earn.

  A man came in a glorious form,
  Showing a face of mercy.

  Sweet was his speech and simple his face,
  Appearing entirely as the image of God.

  He called aloud, ’Who sleeps there? 
  Awake, if thou art sleeping. 
  Thou art distinctly fortunate,
  Thou art needed in the Master’s presence.’

  ’Build a church on this very spot,
  Place the Bible therein.’

  Then said that luminous form,
  Jesus, the image of Mary: 

  ’I shall do justice in earth and heaven,
  And reveal the hidden mysteries.’

  Astonished there alone I stood,
  As if a parrot had flown out of my hands.

  Then my soul realised
  That Jesus came to give salvation.

  I realised that it was Jesus God
  Who appeared in a bodily form."[103]

[Sidenote:  The Followers of Chet Ram.]

[Sidenote:  Their indefinite composite theology.]

Whence came the Christian seed of Chet Ram’s vision?  His master Mahbub Shah was a Mahomedan, and Jesus Christ is reckoned one of the Mahomedan prophets.  But it is the Christ of Christianity, not of Mahomedanism, that Chet Ram saw in his vision of the glorious form showing the face of mercy, at once the dispenser of justice, the revealer of mysteries, and the giver of salvation.  Whatever the source of the vision, Chet Ram saw and believed and began to hold up Jesus Christ before other men’s eyes, and Chet Ram himself thus became the guru or religious teacher of what may be called an indigenous Christian Church.  A moderate estimate reckons the Chet Ramis at about five thousand souls, the religious force