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Title: Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official
Author: Sleeman, William, 1788-1856
Language: English
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GENERAL SIR W. H SLEEMAN. K.C.B.
RAMBLES
AND
RECOLLECTIONS
OF AN
INDIAN OFFICIAL
BY
MAJOR-GENERAL SIR W. H. SLEEMAN, K.C.B.
REVISED ANNOTATED EDITION
BY
VINCENT A. SMITH
M.A. (DUBL. ET OXON.), M.R.A.S., F.R.N.S., LATE OF THE
INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE,
AUTHOR OF 'THE EARLY HISTORY OF INDIA'
'A HISTORY OF FINE ART IN INDIA AND CEYLON'. ETC.
HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW
NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE BOMBAY
1915
Transcriber's Note
In producing this e-text the numerous notes have been moved to the
end of their respective chapters and renumbered. The printed
'Additions and Corrections' have been included in the relevant text.
In the printed edition the spelling of certain words is not always
consistent. This is especially true of the use of diacritical marks
on certain words, even within a single page. This e-text attempts to
reproduce the spellings exactly as used in the printed edition.
The use of italics is shown as _italics_.
AUTHOR'S DEDICATION
MY DEAR SISTER,
Were any one to ask your countrymen in India what has been their
greatest source of pleasure while there, perhaps nine in ten would
say, the letters which they receive from their sisters at home.
These, of all things, perhaps, tend most to link our affections with
home by filling the landscapes, so dear to our recollections, with
ever varying groups of the family circles, among whom our infancy and
our boyhood have been passed; and among whom we still hope to spend
the winter of our days.
They have a very happy facility in making us familiar with the new
additions made from time to time to the _dramatis personae_ of these
scenes after we quit them, in the character of husbands, wives,
children, or friends; and, while thus contributing so much to our
happiness, they no doubt tend to make us better citizens of the
world, and servants of government, than we should otherwise be, for,
in our 'struggles through life in India', we have all, more or less,
an eye to the approbation of those circles which our kind sisters
represent--who may, therefore, be considered in the exalted light of
a valuable species of _unpaid magistracy_ to the Government of India.
No brother has ever had a kinder or better correspondent than I have
had in you, my dear sister; and it was the consciousness of having
left many of your valued letters unanswered, in the press of official
duties, that made me first think of devoting a part of my leisure to
you in these _Rambles and Recollections_, while on my way from the
banks of the Nerbudda river to the Himâlaya mountains, in search of
health, in the end of 1835 and beginning of 1836. To what I wrote
during that journey I have now added a few notes, observations, and
conversations with natives, on the subjects which my narrative seemed
to embrace; and the whole will, I hope, interest and amuse you and
the other members of our family; and appear, perchance, not
altogether uninteresting or uninstructive to those who are strangers
to us both.
Of one thing I must beg you to be assured, that I have nowhere
indulged in fiction, either in the narrative, the recollections, or
the conversations. What I relate on the testimony of others I believe
to be true; and what I relate upon my own you may rely upon as being
so. Had I chosen to write a work of fiction, I might possibly have
made it a good deal more interesting; but I question whether it would
have been so much valued by you, or so useful to others; and these
are the objects I have had in view. The work may, perhaps, tend to
make the people of India better understood by those of my own
countrymen whose destinies are cast among them, and inspire more
kindly feelings towards them. Those parts which, to the general
reader, will seem dry and tedious, may be considered, by the Indian
statesman, as the most useful and important.
The opportunities of observation, which varied employment has given
me, have been such as fall to the lot of few; but, although I have
endeavoured to make the most of them, the time of public servants is
not their own; and that of few men has been more exclusively devoted
to the service of their masters than mine. It may be, however, that
the world, or that part of it which ventures to read these pages,
will think that it had been better had I not been left even the
little leisure that has been devoted to them.
Your ever affectionate brother,
W. H. SLEEMAN.
CONTENTS
AUTHOR'S DEDICATION
EDITOR'S PREFACES
MEMOIR
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER 1
Annual Fairs held on the Banks of Sacred Streams in India
CHAPTER 2
Hindoo System of Religion
CHAPTER 3
Legend of the Nerbudda River
CHAPTER 4
A Suttee on the Nerbudda
CHAPTER 5
Marriages of Trees--The Tank and the Plantain--Meteors--Rainbows
CHAPTER 6
Hindoo Marriages
CHAPTER 7
The Purveyance System
CHAPTER 8
Religious Sects--Self-government of the Castes--Chimneysweepers--
Washerwomen [1]--Elephant Drivers
CHAPTER 9
The Great Iconoclast--Troops routed by Hornets--The Rânî of
Garhâ--Hornets' Nests in India
CHAPTER 10
The Peasantry and the Land Settlement
CHAPTER 11
Witchcraft
CHAPTER 12
The Silver Tree, or 'Kalpa Briksha'--The 'Singhâra', or _Trapa
bispinosa_, and the Guinea-Worm
CHAPTER 13
Thugs and Poisoners
CHAPTER 14
Basaltic Cappings of the Sandstone Hills of Central India--Suspension
Bridge--Prospects of the Nerbudda Valley--Deification of a Mortal
CHAPTER 15
Legend of the Sâgar Lake--Paralysis from eating the Grain of the
_Lathyrus sativus_
CHAPTER 16
Suttee Tombs--Insalubrity of deserted Fortresses
CHAPTER 17
Basaltic Cappings--Interview with a Native Chief--A Singular
Character
CHAPTER 18
Birds' Nests--Sports of Boyhood
CHAPTER 19
Feeding Pilgrims--Marriage of a Stone with a Shrub
CHAPTER 20
The Men-Tigers
CHAPTER 21
Burning of Deorî by a Freebooter--A Suttee
CHAPTER 22
Interview with the Râjâ who marries the Stone to the Shrub--Order of
the Moon and the Fish
CHAPTER 23
The Râjâ of Orchhâ--Murder of his many Ministers
CHAPTER 24
Corn Dealers--Scarcities--Famines in India
CHAPTER 25
Epidemic Diseases--Scape-goat
CHAPTER 26
Artificial Lakes in Bundêlkhand-Hindoo, Greek, and Roman Faith
CHAPTER 27
Blights
CHAPTER 28
Pestle-and-Mortar Sugar-Mills--Washing away of the Soil
CHAPTER 29
Interview with the Chiefs of Jhânsî--Disputed Succession
CHAPTER 30
Haunted Villages
CHAPTER 31
Interview with the Râjâ of Datiyâ--Fiscal Errors of Statesmen--
Thieves and Robbers by Profession
CHAPTER 32
Sporting at Datiyâ--Fidelity of Followers to their Chiefs in India--
Law of Primogeniture wanting among Muhammadans
CHAPTER 33
'Bhûmiâwat'
CHAPTER 34
The Suicide-Relations between Parents and Children in India
CHAPTER 35
Gwâlior Plain once the Bed of a Lake--Tameness of Peacocks
CHAPTER 36
Gwâlior and its Government
CHAPTER 37 [2]
Contest for Empire between the Sons of Shah Jahân
CHAPTER 38 [2]
Aurangzêb and Murâd Defeat their Father's Army near Ujain
CHAPTER 39 [2]
Dârâ Marches in Person against his Brothers, and is Defeated
CHAPTER 40 [2]
Dârâ Retreats towards Lahore--Is robbed by the Jâts--Their Character
CHAPTER 41 [2]
Shâh Jahân Imprisoned by his Two Sons, Aurangzêb and Murâd
CHAPTER 42 [2]
Aurangzêb Throws off the Mask, Imprisons his Brother Murâd, and
Assumes the Government of the Empire
CHAPTER 43 [2] Aurangzêb Meets Shujâ in Bengal, and Defeats him,
after Pursuing Dârâ to the Hyphasis
CHAPTER 44 [2]
Aurangzêb Imprisons his Eldest Son--Shujâ and all his Family are
Destroyed
CHAPTER 45 [2]
Second Defeat and Death of Dârâ, and Imprisonment of his Two Sons
CHAPTER 46 [2]
Death and Character of Amîr Jumla
CHAPTER 47
Reflections on the Preceding History
CHAPTER 48
The Great Diamond of Kohinûr
CHAPTER 49
Pindhârî System--Character of the Marâthâ Administration--Cause of
their Dislike to the Paramount Power
CHAPTER 50
Dhôlpur, Capital of the Jât Chiefs of Gohad--Consequence of Obstacles
to the Prosecution of Robbers
CHAPTER 51
Influence of Electricity on Vegetation--Agra and its Buildings
CHAPTER 52
Nûr Jahân, the Aunt of the Empress Nûr Mahal,[3] over whose Remains
the Tâj is built
CHAPTER 53
Father Gregory's Notion of the Impediments to Conversion in India--
Inability of Europeans to speak Eastern Languages
CHAPTER 54
Fathpur-Sîkrî--The Emperor Akbar's Pilgrimage--Birth of Jahângîr
CHAPTER 55
Bharatpur--Dîg--Want of Employment for the Military and the Educated
Classes under the Company's Rule
CHAPTER 56
Govardhan, the Scene of Kriahna's Dalliance with the Milkmaids
CHAPTER 57
Veracity
CHAPTER 58
Declining Fertility of the Soil--Popular Notion of the Cause
CHAPTER 59
Concentration of Capital and its Effects
CHAPTER 60
Transit Duties in India--Mode of Collecting them
CHAPTER 61
Peasantry of India attached to no existing Government--Want of Trees
in Upper India--Cause and Consequence--Wells and Groves
CHAPTER 62
Public Spirit of the Hindoos--Tree Cultivation and Suggestions for
extending it
CHAPTER 63
Cities and Towns, formed by Public Establishments, disappear as
Sovereigns and Governors change their Abodes
CHAPTER 64
Murder of Mr. Fraser, and Execution of the Nawâb Shams-ud-dîn
CHAPTER 65
Marriage of a Jât Chief
CHAPTER 66
Collegiate Endowment of Muhammadan Tombs and Mosques
CHAPTER 67
The Old City of Delhi
CHAPTER 68
New Delhi, or Shâhjahânâbâd
CHAPTER 69
Indian Police--Its Defects--and their Cause and Remedy
CHAPTER 70
Rent-free Tenures--Right of Government to Resume such Grants
CHAPTER 71
The Station of Meerut--'Atâlîs' who Dance and Sing gratuitously for
the Benefit of the Poor
CHAPTER 72
Subdivisions of Lands--Want of Gradations of Rank--Taxes
CHAPTER 73
Meerut-Anglo-Indian Society
CHAPTER 74
Pilgrims of India
CHAPTER 75
The Bêgam Sumroo
CHAPTER 76
ON THE SPIRIT OF MILITARY DISCIPLINE IN THE NATIVE ARMY OF INDIA
Abolition of Corporal Punishment--Increase of Pay with Length of
Service--Promotion by Seniority
CHAPTER 77
Invalid Establishment
Appendix:
Thuggee and the part taken in its Suppression by General Sir W. H.
Sleeman, K.C.B., by Captain J. L. Sleeman
Supplementary Note by the Editor
Additions and Corrections
INDEX
Notes:
1. A blunder for 'Sweepers' and 'Washermen'
2. Chapters 37 to 46, inclusive, are not reprinted in this edition.
3. A mistake. See _post_, Chapter 52, note 1.
EDITOR'S PREFACE (1893)[1]
The _Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official_, always a
costly book, has been scarce and difficult to procure for many years
past. Among the crowd of books descriptive of Indian scenery,
manners, and customs, the sterling merits of Sir William Sleeman's
work have secured it pre-eminence, and kept it in constant demand,
notwithstanding the lapse of nearly fifty years since its
publication. The high reputation of this work does not rest upon its
strictly literary qualities. The author was a busy man, immersed all
his life in the practical affairs of administration, and too full of
his subject to be careful of strict correctness of style or minute
accuracy of expression. Yet, so great is the intrinsic value of his
observations, and so attractive are the sincerity and sympathy with
which he discusses a vast range of topics, that the reader refuses to
be offended by slight formal defects in expression or arrangement,
and willingly yields to the charm of the author's genial and
unstudied conversation.
It would be difficult to name any other book so full of instruction
for the young Anglo-Indian administrator. When this work was
published in 1844 the author had had thirty-five years' varied
experience of Indian life, and had accumulated and assimilated an
immense store of knowledge concerning the history, manners, and modes
of thought of the complex population of India. He thoroughly
understood the peculiarities of the various native races, and the
characteristics which distinguish them from the nations of Europe;
while his sympathetic insight into Indian life had not orientalized
him, nor had it ever for one moment caused him to forget his position
and heritage as an Englishman. This attitude of sane and
discriminating sympathy is the right attitude for the Englishman in
India.
To enumerate the topics on which wise and profitable observations
will be found in this book would be superfluous. The wine is good,
and needs no bush. So much may be said that the book is one to
interest that nondescript person, the general reader in Europe or
America, as well as the Anglo-Indian official. Besides good advice
and sound teaching on matters of policy and administration, it
contains many charming, though inartificial, descriptions of scenery
and customs, many ingenious speculations, and some capital stories.
The ethnologist, the antiquary, the geologist, the soldier, and the
missionary will all find in it something to suit their several
tastes.
In this edition the numerous misprints of the original edition have
been all, and, for the most part, silently corrected. The extremely
erratic punctuation has been freely modified, and the spelling of
Indian words and names has been systematized. Two paragraphs,
misplaced in the original edition at the end of Chapter 48 of Volume
I, have been removed, and inserted in their proper place at the end
of Chapter 47; and the supplementary notes printed at the end of the
second volume of the original edition have been brought up to the
positions which they were intended to occupy. Chapters 37 to 46 of
the first volume, describing the contest for empire between the sons
of Shâh Jahân, are in substance only a free version of Bernier's work
entitled, _The Late Revolution of the Empire of the Great Mogol_.
These chapters have not been reprinted because the history of that
revolution can now be read much more satisfactorily in Mr.
Constable's edition of Bernier's Travels. Except as above stated, the
text of the present edition of the Rambles and Recollections is a
faithful reprint of the Author's text.
In the spelling of names and other words of Oriental languages the
Editor has 'endeavoured to strike a mean between popular usage and
academic precision, preferring to incur the charge of looseness to
that of pedantry'. Diacritical marks intended to distinguish between
the various sibilants, dentals, nasals, and so forth, of the Arabic
and Sanskrit alphabets, have been purposely omitted. Long vowels are
marked by the sign ^. Except in a few familiar words, such as
Nerbudda and Hindoo, which are spelled in the traditional manner,
vowels are to be pronounced as in Italian, or as in the following
English examples, namely: â, as in 'call'; e, or ê, as the medial
vowel in 'cake'; i, as in 'kill'; î, as the medial vowels in 'keel';
u, as in 'full'; û, as the medial vowels in 'fool'; o, or ô, as in
'bone'; ai, or âi, as 'eye' or 'aye', respectively; and au, as the
medial sound in 'fowl'. Short a, with stress, is pronounced like the
u in 'but'; and if without stress, as an indistinct vowel, like the A
in 'America'.
The Editor's notes, being designed merely to explain and illustrate
the text, so as to render the book fully intelligible and helpful to
readers of the present day, have been compressed into the narrowest
possible limits. Even India changes, and observations and criticisms
which were perfectly true when recorded can no longer be safely
applied without explanation to the India of to-day. The Author's few
notes are distinguished by his initials.
A copious analytical index has been compiled. The bibliography is as
complete as careful inquiry could make it, but it is possible that
some anonymous papers by the Author, published in periodicals, may
have escaped notice.
The memoir of Sir William Sleeman is based on the slight sketch
prefixed to the _Journey through the Kingdom of Oude_, supplemented
by much additional matter derived from his published works and
correspondence, as well as from his unpublished letters and other
papers generously communicated by his only son, Captain Henry
Sleeman. Ample materials exist for a full account of Sir William
Sleeman's noble and interesting life, which well deserves to be
recorded in detail; but the necessary limitations of these volumes
preclude the Editor from making free use of the biographical matter
at his command.
The reproduction of the twenty-four coloured plates of varying merit
which enrich the original edition has not been considered desirable.
The map shows clearly the route taken by the Author in the journey
the description of which is the leading theme of the book.
EDITOR'S PREFACE (1915)
My edition published by Archibald Constable and Company in 1893 being
out of print but still in demand, Mr. Humphrey Milford, the present
owner of the copyright, has requested me to revise the book and bring
it up to date.
This new edition is issued uniform with Mr. Beauchamp's third edition
of _Hindu Manners, Customs, and Ceremonies_ by the Abbé J. A. Dubois
(Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, 1906), a work bearing a strong
resemblance in substance to the _Rambles and Recollections_, and,
also like Sleeman's book in that it 'is as valuable to-day as ever it
was--even more valuable in some respects'.
The labour of revision has proved to be far more onerous than was
expected. In the course of twenty-one years the numerous changes
which have occurred in India, not only in administrative
arrangements, but of various other kinds, necessitate the emendation
of notes which, although accurate when written, no longer agree with
existing facts. The appearance of many new books and improved
editions involves changes in a multitude of references. Such
alterations are most considerable in the annotations dealing with the
buildings at Agra, Sikandara, Fathpur-Sîkrî, and Delhi, and the
connected political history, concerning which much new information is
now available. Certain small misstatements of fact in my old notes
have been put right. Some of those errors which escaped the notice of
critics have been detected by me, and some have been rectified by the
aid of criticisms received from Sir George Grierson, C.I.E., Mr.
William Crooke, sometime President of the Folklore Society, and other
kind correspondents, to all of whom I am grateful. Naturally, the
opportunity has been taken to revise the wording throughout and to
eliminate misprints and typographical defects. The Index has been
recast so as to suit the changed paging and to include the new
matter.
Captain James Lewis Sleeman of the Royal Sussex Regiment has been
good enough to permit the reproduction of his grandfather's portrait,
and has communicated papers which have enabled me to make corrections
in and additions to the Memoir, largely enhancing the interest and
value of that section of the book.
Notes:
1. Certain small changes have been made.
MEMOIR
OF
MAJ.-GEN. SIR WILLIAM HENRY SLEEMAN, K.C.B.
The Sleemans, an ancient Cornish family, for several generations
owned the estate of Pool Park in the parish of Saint Judy, in the
county of Cornwall. Captain Philip Sleeman, who married Mary Spry, a
member of a distinguished family in the same county, was stationed at
Stratton, in Cornwall, on August 8, 1788, when his son William Henry
was born.
In 1809, at the age of twenty-one, William Henry Sleeman was
nominated, through the good offices of Lord De Dunstanville, to an
Infantry Cadetship in the Bengal army. On the 24th of March, in the
same year, he sailed from Gravesend in the ship Devonshire, and,
having touched at Madeira and the Cape, reached India towards the
close of the year. He arrived at the cantonment of Dinapore, near
Patna, on the 20th December, and on Christmas Day began his military
career as a cadet. He at once applied himself with exemplary
diligence to the study of the Arabic and Persian languages, and of
the religions and customs of India. Passing in due course through the
ordinary early stages of military life, he was promoted to the rank
of ensign on the 23rd September, 1810, and to that of lieutenant on
the 16th December, 1814.
Lieutenant Sleeman served in the war with Nepal, which began in 1814
and terminated in 1816. During the campaign he narrowly escaped death
from a violent epidemic fever, which nearly destroyed his regiment.
'Three hundred of my own regiment,' he observes, 'consisting of about
seven hundred, were obliged to be sent to their homes on sick leave.
The greater number of those who remained continued to suffer, and a
great many died. Of about ten European officers present with my
regiment, seven had the fever and five died of it, almost all in a
state of delirium. I was myself one of the two who survived, and I
was for many days delirious.[1]
The services of Lieutenant Sleeman during the war attracted
attention, and accordingly, in 1816, he was selected to report on
certain claims to prize-money. The report submitted by him in
February, 1817, was accepted as 'able, impartial, and satisfactory'.
After the termination of the war he served with his regiment at
Allahabad, and in the neighbouring district of Partâbgarh, where he
laid the foundation of the intimate knowledge of Oudh affairs
displayed in his later writings.
In 1820 he was selected for civil employ, and was appointed Junior
Assistant to the Agent of the Governor-General, administering the
Sâgar and Nerbudda territories. Those territories, which had been
annexed from the Marâthâs two years previously, are now included in
the jurisdiction of the Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces.
In such a recently-conquered country, where the sale of all widows by
auction for the benefit of the Treasury, and other strange customs
still prevailed, the abilities of an able and zealous young officer
had ample scope. Sleeman, after a brief apprenticeship, received, in
1822, the independent civil charge of the District of Narsinghpur, in
the Nerbudda valley, and there, for more than two years, 'by far the
most laborious of his life', his whole attention was engrossed in
preventing and remedying the disorders of his District.
Sleeman, during the time that he was in charge of the Narsinghpur
District, had no suspicion that it was a favourite resort of Thugs. A
few years later, in or about 1830, he was astounded to learn that a
gang of Thugs resided in the village of Kandêlî, not four hundred
yards from his court-house, and that the extensive groves of Mandêsar
on the Sâgar road, only one stage distant from his head-quarters,
concealed one of the greatest _bhîls_, or places of murder, in all
India. The arrest of Feringheea, one of the most influential Thug
leaders, having given the key to the secret, his disclosures were
followed up by Sleeman with consummate skill and untiring assiduity.
In the years 1831 and 1832 the reports submitted by him and other
officers at last opened the eyes of the superior authorities and
forced them to recognize the fact that the murderous organization
extended over every part of India. Adequate measures were then taken
for the systematic suppression of the evil. 'Thuggee Sleeman' made it
the main business of his life to hunt down the criminals and to
extirpate their secret society. He recorded his experiences in the
series of valuable publications described in the Bibliography. In
this brief memoir it is impossible to narrate in detail the thrilling
story of the suppression of Thuggee, and I must be content to pass on
and give in bare outline the main facts of Sleeman's honourable
career.[2]
While at Narsinghpur, Sleeman received on the 24th April, 1824,
brevet rank as Captain. In 1825, he was transferred, and on the 23rd
September of the following year, was gazetted Captain. In 1826,
failure of health compelled him to take leave on medical certificate.
In March, 1828, Captain Sleeman assumed civil and executive charge of
the Jabalpur (Jubbulpore) District, from which he was transferred to
Sâgar in January, 1831. While stationed at Jabalpur, he married, on
the 21st June, 1829, Amélie Josephine, the daughter of Count Blondin
de Fontenne, a French nobleman, who, at the sacrifice of a
considerable property, had managed to escape from the Revolution. A
lady informs the editor that she remembers Sleeman's fine house at
Jabalpur. It stood in a large walled park, stocked with spotted deer.
Both house and park were destroyed when the railway was carried
through the site.
Mr. C. Eraser, on return from leave in January, 1832, resumed charge
of the revenue and civil duties of the Sâgar district, leaving the
magisterial duties to Captain Sleeman, who continued to discharge
them till January, 1835. By the Resolution of Government dated 10th
January, 1835, Captain Sleeman was directed to fix his head-quarters
at Jabalpur, and was appointed General Superintendent of the
operations for the Suppression of Thuggee, being relieved from every
other charge. In 1835 his health again broke down, and he was obliged
to take leave on medical certificate. Accompanied by his wife and
little son, he went into camp in November, 1835, and marched through
the Jabalpur, Damoh, and Sâgar districts of the Agency, and then
through the Native States of Orchhâ, Datiyâ, and Gwâlior, arriving at
Agra on the 1st January, 1836. After a brief halt at Agra, he
proceeded through the Bharatpur State to Delhi and Meerut, and thence
on leave to Simla. During his march from Jabalpur to Meerut he amused
himself by keeping the journal which forms the basis of the _Rambles
and Recollections of an Indian Official_. The manuscript of this work
(except the two supplementary chapters) was completed in 1839, though
not given to the world till 1844. On the 1st of February, 1837, in
the twenty-eighth year of his service, Sleeman was gazetted Major.
During the same year he made a tour in the interior of the Himalayas,
which he described at length in an unpublished journal. Later in the
year he went down to Calcutta to see his boy started on the voyage
home.
In February, 1839, he assumed charge of the office of Commissioner
for the Suppression of Thuggee and Dacoity. Up to that date the
office of Commissioner for the Suppression of Dacoity had been
separate from that of General Superintendent of the measures for the
Suppression of Thuggee, and had been filled by another officer, Mr.
Hugh Eraser, of the Civil Service. During the next two years Sleeman
passed much of his time in the North-Western Provinces, now the Agra
Province in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, making Murâdâbâd
his head-quarters, and thoroughly investigating the secret criminal
organizations of Upper India.
In 1841 he was offered the coveted and lucrative post of Resident at
Lucknow, vacant by the resignation of Colonel Low; but that officer,
immediately after his resignation, lost all his savings through the
failure of his bankers, and Sleeman, moved by a generous impulse,
wrote to Colonel Low, begging him to retain the appointment.
Sleeman was then deputed on special duty to Bundêlkhand to
investigate the grave disorders in that province. While at Jhânsî in
December, 1842, he narrowly escaped assassination by a dismissed
Afghan sepoy, who poured the contents of a blunderbuss into a native
officer in attendance.[3]
During the troubles with Sindhia which culminated in the battle of
Mahârâjpur, fought on the 29th December, 1843, Sleeman, who had
become a Lieut.-Colonel, was Resident at Gwâlior, and was actually in
Sindhia's camp when the battle unexpectedly began. In 1848 the
Residency at Lucknow again fell vacant, and Lord Dalhousie, by a
letter dated 16th September, offered Sleeman the appointment in the
following terms:
The high reputation you have earned, your experience of civil
administration, your knowledge of the people, and the qualifications
you possess as a public man, have led me to submit your name to the
Council of India as an officer to whom I could commit this important
charge with entire confidence that its duties would be well
performed. I do myself, therefore, the honour of proposing to you to
accept the office of Resident at Lucknow, with especial reference to
the great changes which, in all probability, will take place.
Retaining your superintendency of Thuggee affairs, it will be
manifestly necessary that you should be relieved from the duty of the
trials of Thugs usually condemned at Lucknow.
In the hope that you will not withhold from the Government your
services in the capacity I have named, and in the further hope of
finding an opportunity of personally making your acquaintance,
I have the honour to be,
Dear Colonel Sleeman,
Very faithfully yours,
DALHOUSIE.[4]
The remainder of Sleeman's official life, from January, 1849, was
spent in Oudh, and was chiefly devoted to ceaseless and hopeless
endeavours to reform the King's administration and relieve the
sufferings of his grievously oppressed subjects. On the 1st of
December, 1849, the Resident began his memorable three months' tour
through Oudh, so vividly described in the special work devoted to the
purpose. The awful revelations of the _Journey through the Kingdom of
Oude_ largely influenced the Court of Directors and the Imperial
Government in forming their decision to annex the kingdom, although
that decision was directly opposed to the advice of Sleeman, who
consistently advocated reform of the administration, while
deprecating annexation. His views are stated with absolute precision
in a letter written in 1854 or 1855, and published in _The Times_ in
November, 1857:
We have no right to annex or confiscate Oude; but we have a right,
under the treaty of 1837, to take the management of it, but not to
appropriate its revenues to ourselves. We can do this with honour to
our Government and benefit to the people. To confiscate would be
dishonest and dishonourable. To annex would be to give the people a
government almost as bad as their own, if we put our screw upon them
(_Journey_, ed. 1858, vol. i, Intro., p. xxi).
The earnest efforts of the Resident to suppress crime and improve the
administration of Oudh aroused the bitter resentment of a corrupt
court and exposed his life to constant danger. Three deliberate
attempts to assassinate him at Lucknow are recorded.
The first, in December, 1851, is described in detail in a letter of
Sleeman's dated the 16th of that month, and less fully by General
Hervey, in _Some Records of Crime_, vol. ii, p. 479. The Resident's
life was saved by a gallant orderly named Tîkarâm, who was badly
wounded. Inquiry proved that the crime was instigated by the King's
moonshee.
The second attempt, on October 9, 1853, is fully narrated in an
official letter to the Government of India (Bibliography, No. 15).
Its failure may be reasonably ascribed to a special interposition of
Providence. The Resident during all the years he had lived at Lucknow
had been in the habit of sleeping in an upper chamber approached by a
separate private staircase guarded by two sentries. On the night
mentioned the sentries were drugged and two men stole up the stairs.
They slashed at the bed with their swords, but found it empty,
because on that one occasion General Sleeman had slept in another
room.
The third attempt was not carried as far, and the exact date is not
ascertainable, but the incident is well remembered by the family and
occurred between 1853 and 1856. One day the Resident was crossing his
study when, for some reason or another, he looked behind a curtain
screening a recess. He then saw a man standing there with a large
knife in his hand. General Sleeman, who was unarmed, challenged the
man as being a Thug. He at once admitted that he was such, and under
the spell of a master-spirit allowed himself to be disarmed without
resistance. He had been employed at the Residency for some time,
unsuspected.
Such personal risks produced no effect on the stout heart of Sleeman,
who continued, unshaken and undismayed, his unselfish labours.
In 1854 the long strain of forty-five years' service broke down
Sleeman's strong constitution. He tried to regain health by a visit
to the hills, but this expedient proved ineffectual, and he was
ordered home. On the 10th of February, 1856, while on his way home on
board the Monarch, he died off Ceylon, at the age of sixty-seven, and
was buried at sea, just six days after he had been granted the
dignity of K.C.B.
Lord Dalhousie's desire to meet his trusted officer was never
gratified. The following correspondence between the Governor-General
and Sleeman, now published for the first time, is equally creditable
to both parties:
BARRACKPORE PARK,
January 9th, 1856.
MY DEAR GENERAL SLEEMAN,
I have heard to-day of your arrival in Calcutta, and have heard at
the same time with sincere concern that you are still suffering in
health. A desire to disturb you as little as possible induces me to
have recourse to my pen, in order to convey to you a communication
which I had hoped to be able to make in person.
Some time since, when adjusting the details connected with my
retirement from the Government of India, I solicited permission to
recommend to Her Majesty's gracious consideration the names of some
who seemed to me to be worthy of Her Majesty's favour. My request was
moderate. I asked only to be allowed to submit the name of one
officer from each Presidency. The name which is selected from the
Bengal army was your own, and I ventured to express my hope that Her
Majesty would be pleased to mark her sense of the long course of
able, and honourable, and distinguished service through which you had
passed, by conferring upon you the civil cross of a Knight Commander
of the Bath.
As yet no reply has been received to my letter. But as you have now
arrived at the Presidency, I lose no time in making known to you what
has been done; in the hope that you will receive it as a proof of the
high estimation in which your services and character arc held, as
well by myself as by the entire community of India.
I beg to remain,
My dear General,
Very truly yours,
DALHOUSIE.
Major-General Sleeman.
Reply to above. Dated 11th January, 1856.
MY LORD,
I was yesterday evening favoured with your Lordship's most kind and
flattering letter of the 9th instant from Barrackpore.
I cannot adequately express how highly honoured I feel by the
mention that you have been pleased to make of my services to Her
Majesty the Queen, and how much gratified I am by this crowning act
of kindness from your Lordship in addition to the many favours I have
received at your hands during the last eight years; and whether it
may, or may not, be my fate to live long enough to see the honourable
rank actually conferred upon me, which you have been so considerate
and generous as to ask for me, the letter now received from your
Lordship will of itself be deemed by my family as a substantial
honour, and it will so preserved, I trust, by my son, with feelings
of honest pride, at the thought that his father had merited such a
mark of distinction from so eminent a statesman as the Marquis of
Dalhousie.
My right hand is so crippled by rheumatism that I am obliged to make
use of an amanuensis to write this letter, and my bodily strength is
so much reduced, that I cannot hope before embarking for England to
pay my personal respects to your Lordship.
Under these unfortunate circumstances, I now beg to take my leave of
your Lordship; to offer my unfeigned and anxious wishes for your
Lordship's health and happiness, and with every sentiment of respect
and gratitude, to subscribe myself,
Your Lordship's most faithful and
Obedient servant,
W. H. SLEEMAN,
Major-General.
To the Most Noble
The Marquis of Dalhousie, K.T.,
Governor-General, &c., &c.,
Calcutta.
Sir William Sleeman was an accomplished Oriental linguist, well
versed in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, and also in possession of a good
working knowledge of Latin, Greek, and French. His writings afford
many proofs of his keen interest in the sciences of geology,
agricultural chemistry, and political economy, and of his intelligent
appreciation of the lessons taught by history. Nor was he insensible
to the charms of art, especially those of poetry. His favourite
authors among the poets seem to have been Shakespeare, Milton, Scott,
Wordsworth, and Cowper. His knowledge of the customs and modes of
thought of the natives of India, rarely equalled and never surpassed,
was more than half the secret of his notable success as an
administrator. The greatest achievement of his busy and unselfish
life was the suppression of the system of organized murder known as
Thuggee, and in the execution of that prolonged and onerous task he
displayed the most delicate tact, the keenest sagacity, and the
highest power of organization.
His own words are his best epitaph: 'I have gone on quietly,' he
writes, '"through evil and through good report", doing, to the best
of my ability, the duties which it has pleased the Government of
India, from time to time, to confide to me in the manner which
appeared to me most conformable to its wishes and its honour,
satisfied and grateful for the trust and confidence which enabled me
to do so much good for the people, and to secure so much of their
attachment and gratitude to their rulers.' [5]
His grandson. Captain J. L. Sleeman, who, when stationed in India
from 1903 to 1908, visited the scenes of his grandfather's labours,
states that everywhere he found the memory of his respected ancestor
revered, and was given the assurance that no Englishman had ever
understood the native of India so well, or removed so many oppressive
evils as General Sir W. H. Sleeman, and that his memory would endure
for ever in the Empire to which he devoted his life's work.
This necessarily meagre account of a life which deserves more ample
commemoration may be fitly closed by a few words concerning the
relatives and descendants of Sir William Sleeman.
His sister and regular correspondent, to whom he dedicated the
_Rambles and Recollections_, was married to Captain Furse, R.N.
His brother's son James came out to India in 1827, joined the 73rd
Regiment of the Bengal Army, was selected for employment in the
Political Department, and was thus enabled to give valuable aid in
the campaign against Thuggee. In due course he was appointed to the
office of General Superintendent of the Operations against Thuggee,
which had been held by his uncle. He rose to the rank of Colonel, and
after a long period of excellent service, lived to enjoy nearly
thirty years of honourable retirement. He died at his residence near
Ross in 1899 at the age of eighty-one.
In 1831 Sir William's only son, Henry Arthur, was gazetted to the
16th (Queen's) Lancers, and having retired early from the army, with
the rank of Captain, died in 1905.
His elder son William Henry died while serving with the Mounted
Infantry during the South African War. His younger son, James Lewis,
a Captain in the Royal Sussex Regiment, who also saw active service
during the war, and was mentioned in dispatches, has a distinguished
African and Indian record, and recently received the honorary degree
of M.A. from the Belfast University for good work done in
establishing the first Officers' Training Corps in Ireland. The
family of Captain James Lewis Sleeman consists of two sons and a
daughter, namely, John Cuthbert, Richard Brian, and Ursula Mary.
Captain Sleeman, as the head of his family, possesses the MSS. &c. of
his distinguished grandfather. The two daughters of Sir William who
survived their father married respectively Colonel Dunbar and Colonel
Brooke.
Notes:
1. _Journey through the Kingdom of Oude_, vol. ii, p. 105.
2. The general reader may consult with advantage Meadows Taylor, _The
Confessions of a Thug_, the first edition of which appeared in 1839;
and the vivid account by Mark Twain in _More Tramps Abroad_, chapters
49,50.
3. The incident is described in detail in a letter dated December 18,
1842, from Sleeman to his sister Mrs. Furse. Captain J. L. Sleeman
has kindly furnished me with a copy of the letter, which is too long
for reproduction in this place.
4. This letter is printed in full in the _Journey through the Kingdom
of Oude_, pp. xvii-xix.
5. Letter to Lord Hardinge, dated Jhansee, 4th March, 1848, printed
in _Journey through the Kingdom of Oude_, vol. i, p. xxvii.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
OF THE
WRITINGS OF
MAJOR-GENERAL SIR W. H. SLEEMAN, K.C.B.
_I.--PRINTED_
(1.) 1819 Pamphlet.
Letter addressed to Dr. Tytler, of Allahabad, by Lieut. W. H.
Sleeman, August 20th, 1819.
Copied from the _Asiatic Mirror_ of September the 1st, 1819.
[This letter describes a great pestilence at Lucknow in 1818, and
discusses the theory that cholera may be caused by 'eating a certain
kind of rice'.]
(2.) Calcutta, 1836, 1 vol. 8vo.
_Ramaseeana_, or a Vocabulary of the Peculiar Language used by the
Thugs, with an Introduction and Appendix descriptive of the Calcutta
system pursued by that fraternity, and of the measures which have
been adopted by the Supreme Government of India for its suppression.
Calcutta, G. H. Huttmann, Military Orphan Press, 1836.
[No author's name on title-page, but most of the articles are signed
by W. H. Sleeman.]
Appendices A to Z, and A.2, contain correspondence and copious
details of particular crimes, pp. 1-515. Total pages (v,+270+515)
790.
A very roughly compiled and coarsely printed collection of valuable
documents. [A copy in the Bodleian Library and two copies in the
British Museum. One copy in India Office Library.]
(2a.) Philadelphia 1839, 1 vol. 8vo.
The work described as follows in the printed Catalogue of Printed
Books in the British Museum appears to be a pirated edition of
_Ramaseeana_:
_The Thugs or Phansîgars of India: comprising a history of the rise
and progress of that extraordinary fraternity of assassins; and a
description of the system which it pursues, &c._
Carey and Hart. Philadelphia, 1839. 8vo.
A Hindustani MS. in the India Office Library seems to be the
original of the vocabulary and is valuable as a guide to the spelling
of the words.
(3.) (?)1836 or 1837, Pamphlet.
On the Admission of Documentary Evidence.
_Extract._
[This reprint is an extract from _Ramaseeana_. The rules relating to
the admission of evidence in criminal trials are discussed. 24
pages.]
(4.) 1837, Pamphlet.
Copy of a Letter
which appeared in the _Calcutta Courier_ of the 29th March, 1837,
under the signature of 'Hirtius', relative to the Intrigues of Jotha
Ram.
[This letter deals with the intrigues and disturbances in the Jaipur
(Jyepoor) State in 1835, and the murder of Mr. Blake, the Assistant
to the Resident. (See post, chap, 67, end.) The reprint is a pamphlet
of sixteen pages. At the beginning reference is made to a previous
letter by the author on the same subject, which had been inserted in
the _Calcutta Courier_ in November, 1836.]
(5.) Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. vi. (1837), p. 621.
_History of the Gurha Mundala Rajas, by Captain W. H. Sleeman._
[An elaborate history of the Gond dynasty of Garhâ Mandlâ, 'which is
believed to be founded principally on the chronicles of the Bâjpai
family, who were the hereditary prime ministers of the Gond princes.'
(_Central Provinces Gazetteer,_ 1870, p. 282, note.) The history is,
therefore, subject to the doubts which necessarily attach to all
Indian family traditions.]
(6.) W. H. Sleeman. _Analysis and Review of the Peculiar Doctrines of
the Ricardo or New School of Political Economy._
8vo, Serampore, 1837.
[A copy is entered in the printed catalogue of the library of the
Asiatic Society of Bengal.]
(7.) Calcutta (Serampore), 1839, 8vo.
A REPORT on THE SYSTEM OF MEGPUNNAISM,
or
The Murder of Indigent Parents for their Young Children (who are sold
as Slaves) as it prevails in the Delhi Territories, and the Native
States of Rajpootana, Ulwar, and Bhurtpore.
By Major W. H. Sleeman.
----
From the Serampore Press.
1839.
[Thin 8vo, pp. iv and 121.
A very curious and valuable account of a little-known variety of
Thuggee, which possibly may still be practised. Copies exist in the
British Museum and India Office Libraries, but the Bodleian has not a
copy.]
(8.) Calcutta, 1840, 8vo.
REPORT ON THE DEPREDATIONS COMMITTED BY THE THUG GANGS of UPPER AND
CENTRAL INDIA,
From the Cold Season of 1836-7, down to their Gradual Suppression,
under the operation of the measures adopted against them by the
Supreme Government in the year 1839.
By Major Sleeman
_Commissioner for the Suppression of Thuggee and Dacoitee._
Calcutta:
G. H. Huttmann, Bengal Military Orphan Press.
1840.
[Thick 8vo, pp. lviii, 549 and xxvi.
The information recorded is similar to that given in the earlier
_Ramaseeana_ volume. Pages xxv-lviii, by Captain N. Lowis, describe
River Thuggee. Copies in the British Museum and India Office, but
none in the Bodleian. This is the only work by Sleeman which has an
alphabetical index.]
(9.) Calcutta 1841, 8vo.
On the SPIRIT OF MILITARY DISCIPLINE
in our
NATIVE INDIAN ARMY.
By Major N.[_sic_] H. Sleeman, Bengal Native Infantry.
'Europaeque saccubuit Asia.'
'The misfortune of all history is, that while the motives of a few
princes and leaders in their various projects of ambition are
detailed with accuracy, the motives which crowd their standards with
military followers are totally overlooked.'--_Malthus._
Calcutta:
Bishop's College Press.
M.DCCC.XLI.
[Thin 8vo. Introduction, pp. i-xiii; On the Spirit of Military
Discipline in the Native Army of India, pp. 1-59; page 60 blank;
Invalid Establishment, pp. 61-84. The text of these two essays is
reprinted as chapters 28 and 29 of vol. ii of _Rambles and
Recollections_ in the original edition, corresponding to Chapters 21
and 22 of the edition of 1893 and Chapters 76, 77 of this (1915)
edition. Most of the observations in the Introduction are utilized in
various places in that work. The author's remark in the Introduction
to these essays--'They may never be published, but I cannot deny
myself the gratification of printing them'--indicates that, though
printed, they were never published in their separate form. The copy
of the separately printed tract which I have seen is that in the
India Office Library. Another is in the British Museum. The pamphlet
is not in the Bodleian.]
(10.) 1841 Pamphlet.
MAJOR SLEEMAN
on the
PUBLIC SPIRIT of THE HINDOOS.
_From the Transactions of the Agricultural and Horticultural
Society,_ vol. 8.
Art. XXII, _Public Spirit among the Hindoo Race as indicated in
the flourishing condition of the Jubbulpore District in former times,
with a sketch of its present state: also on the great importance of
attending to Tree Cultivation and suggestions for extending it. By
Major Sleeman, late in charge of the Jubbulpore District._
[Read at the Meeting of the Society on the 8th September, 1841.]
[This reprint is a pamphlet of eight pages. The text was again
reprinted verbatim as Chapter 14 of vol. 2 of the _Rambles and
Recollections_ in the original edition, corresponding to Chapter 7 of
the edition of 1893, and Chapter 62 of this (1915) edition. No
contributions by the author of later date than the above to any
periodical have been traced. In a letter dated Lucknow, 12th January,
1853 (_Journey,_ vol. 2, p. 390) the author says-'I was asked by Dr.
Duff, the editor of the _Calcutta Review,_ before he went home, to
write some articles for that journal to expose the fallacies, and to
counteract the influences of this [_scil_. annexationist] school; but
I have for many years ceased to contribute to the periodical papers,
and have felt bound by my position not to write for them.']
(11.) London, 1844, 2 vols. large 8vo.
RAMBLES AND RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN OFFICIAL
by
Lieutenant-Colonel W. H. Sleeman, of the Bengal Army.
'The proper study of mankind is man.'--POPE.
In Two Volumes.
London:
J. Hatchard and Son, 187, Piccadilly.
1844.
[Vol. I, pp. v and 478. Frontispiece, in colours, a portrait of 'The
late Emperor of Delhi', namely, Akbar II. At end of volume, six full-
page coloured plates, numbered 25-30, viz. No. 25, 'Plant'; No. 26,
'Plant'; No. 27, 'Plant'; No. 28, 'Ornament'; No. 29, 'Ornament'; No.
30, 'Ornaments'.
Vol. 2, pp. vii and 459. Frontispiece, in colours, comprising five
miniatures; and Plates numbered 1-24, irregularly inserted, and with
several misprints in the titles.
The three notes printed at the close of the second volume were
brought up to their proper places in the edition of 1893, and are
there retained in this (1915) edition. The following paragraph is
prefixed to these notes in the original edition: 'In consequence of
this work not having had the advantage of the author's
superintendence while passing through the press, and of the
manuscript having reached England in insulated portions, some errors
and omissions have unavoidably taken place, a few of which the
following notes are intended to rectify or supply.' The edition of
1844 has been scarce for many years,]
(11a.) Lahore 1888, 2 vols. in one 8vo.
RAMBLES AND RECOLLECTIONS, &o.
(Title as in edition of 1844.)
Republished by A. C, Majumdar.
Lahore:
Printed at the Mufid-i-am Press.
1888.
[Vol. 1, pp. xi and 351. Vol. 2, pp. v and 339. A very roughly
executed reprint, containing many misprints. No illustrations. This
reprint is seldom met with.]
(11b.) Westminster, 1893, 2 vols. in 8vo.
RAMBLES AND RECOLLECTIONS, &c.
A New Edition, edited by Vincent Arthur Smith, I.C.S.; being vol. 5
of Constable's Oriental Miscellany. The book is now scarce.
(12.) Calcutta, 1849.
REPORT
On
BUDHUK
Alias
BAGREE DECOITS
and other
GANG ROBBERS BY HEREDITARY PROFESSION,
and on
The Measures adopted by the Government of India
for their Suppression.
By Lieut.-Col. W. H. Sleeman, Bengal Army.
Calcutta:
J. C. Sherriff, Bengal Military Orphan Press.
1849.
[Folio, pp. iv and 433. Map. Printed on blue paper. A valuable work.
In their Dispatch No. 27, dated 18th September, 1850, the Honourable
Court of Directors observe that 'This Report is as important and
interesting as that of the same able officer on the Thugs'. Copies
exist in the British Museum and India Office Libraries, but there is
none in the Bodleian. The work was first prepared for press in 1842
(Journey, vol. 1, p, xxvi).]
(13.) 1852, Plymouth, Pamphlet.
AN ACCOUNT of WOLVES NURTURING CHILDREN IN THEIR DENS.
By an Indian Official.
Plymouth:
Jenkin Thomas, Printer,
9, Cornwall Street.
1852.
[Octavo pamphlet. 15 pages. The cases cited are also described in the
_Journey through the Kingdom of Oude_, and are discussed in V. Ball,
_Jungle Life in India_ (De la Rue, 1880), pp. 454-66. The only copy
known to me is that in possession of the author's grandson.]
(14.)Lucknow, 1852.
Sir William Sleeman printed his _Diary of a Journey through Oude_
privately at a press in the Residency. He had purchased a small
press and type for the purpose of printing it at his own house, so
that no one but himself and the compositor might see it. He intended,
if he could find time, to give the history of the reigning family in
a third volume, which was written, but has never been published. The
title is: Diary of a Tour through Oude in December, 1849, and January
and February, 1850.
By The Resident
Lieutenant-Colonel W. H. Sleeman.
Printed at Lucknow in a Parlour Press.
1852.
Two vols. large 8vo. with wide margins. Printed well on good paper.
Vol. 1 has map of Oude, 305 pp. text, and at end a printed slip of
errata. Vol. 2 has 302 pp. text, with a similar slip of errata. The
brief Preface contains the following statements:
'I have had the Diary printed at my own expense in a small parlour
press which I purchased, with type, for the purpose. . . . The Diary
must for the present be considered as an official document, which may
be perused, but cannot be published wholly or in part without the
sanction of Government previously obtained.' [1]
Eighteen copies of the Diary were so printed and were coarsely bound
by a local binder. Of these copies twelve were distributed as
follows, one to each person or authority: Government, Calcutta; Court
of Directors; Governor-General; Chairman of Court of Directors;
Deputy Chairman; brother of author; five children of author, one each
(5); Col. Sykes, Director E.I.C.
A Memorandum of Errata was put up along with some of the copies
distributed. (_Private Correspondence,_ Journey, _vol._ 2, _pp._ 357,
393, _under dates 4 April, 1852, and 12 Jan., 1853._) The Bodleian
copy, purchased in June, 1891, was that belonging to Mrs, (Lady)
Sleeman, and bears her signature 'A. J. Sleeman' on the fly-leaf of
each volume. The book was handsomely bound in morocco or russia, with
gilt edges, by Martin of Calcutta. The British Museum Catalogue does
not include a copy of this issue. The India Office Library has a copy
of vol. 1 only. Captain J. L. Sleeman has both volumes.
(15.) 1853, Pamphlet.
Reprint of letter No. 34 of 1853 from the author to J, P. Grant,
Esq., Officiating Secretary to the Government of India, Foreign
Department, Fort William. Dated Lucknow Residency, 12th October,
1853.
[Six pages. Describes another attempt to assassinate the author on
the 9th October, 1853. See ante, p. xxvi.]
(16.) London 1858, 2 vols. 8vo.
_A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, in 1849-50, by direction of
the Right Hon. the Earl of Dalhousie, Governor-General._
With Private Correspondence relative to the Annexation of Oude to
British India, &c.
By Major-General Sir W. H. Sleeman, K.C.B., Resident at the Court of
Lucknow.
In two Volumes.
London:
Richard Bentley, Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty. 1858.
[Small 8vo. Frontispiece of vol. 1 is a Map of the Kingdom of Oude.
The contents of vol. 1 are: Title, preface, and contents, pp. i-x;
Biographical Sketch of Major-General Sir W. H. Sleeman, K.C.B., pp.
xi-xvi; Introduction, pp. xvii-xxii; Private Correspondence preceding
the Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, pp. xxiii-lxxx; Diary of a
Tour through Oude, chapters i-vi, pp. 1-337. The contents of vol. 2
are: Title and contents, pp. i-vi; Diary of a Tour through Oude, pp.
1-331; Private Correspondence relating to the Annexation of the
Kingdom of Oude to British India, pp. 332-424. The letters printed in
this volume were written between 5th Dec., 1849, and 11th Sept.,
1854, during and after the Tour. The dates of the letters in the
first volume extend from 20th Feb., 1848, to 11th Oct., 1849. The
Tour began on 1st Dec., 1849, The book, though rather scarce, is to
be found in most of the principal libraries, and may be obtained from
time to time.]
_II.--UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS_
(1.) 1809.
Two books describing author's voyage to India round the Cape.
(2.) 1837.
Journal of a Trip from Simla to Gurgoohee.
[Referred to in unpublished letters dated 5th and 30th August, 1837.]
(3.) _Circa_1824.
Preliminary Observations and Notes on Mr. Molony's Report on
Narsinghpur.
[Referred to in _Central Provinces Gazetteer_, Nâgpur, 2nd ed., 1870,
pp. xcix, cii, &c. The papers seem to be preserved in the record room
at Narsinghpur.]
(4.) 1841.
History of Byza Bae (Baiza Bâî).
[Not to be published till after author's death. See unpublished
_letter dated Jhânsî,_ Oct. 22nd, 1841.]
(5.)
History of the Reigning Family of Oude.
[Intended to form a third volume of the _Journey._ See Author's
_Letter to Sir James Weir Hogg, Deputy Chairman, India House,_ dated
Lucknow, 4th April, 1852; printed in _Journey,_ vol. 2, p. 358.]
The manuscripts Nos. 1, 2, 4, and 5, and the printed papers Nos. 1,
3, 4, 10, 13, and 15, are in the possession of Captain J, L. Sleeman,
Royal Sussex Regiment, grandson of the author. The India Office
Library possesses copies of the printed works Nos. 2, 7, 8, 9, 11a,
12, 14 (vol. 1 only) and 16.
Notes:
1. The book was written in 1851, and the Directors' permission to
publish was given in December, 1852. (_Journey,_ ii, pp. 358, 393,
ed. 1858. The Preface to that ed. wrongly indicates December, 1851,
as the date of that permission.)
COMPARATIVE TABLE OF CHAPTERS
_Edition_ 1844. _Edition_ 1893. _Edition_
1915.
Vol. 1, chap. 1-36 Vol. 1, chap. 1-36 Chap. 1-36
" " 37-46 " " 37-46 titles only " 37-46
titles only
" " 47,48 " " 47,48 " 47,48
Vol. 2, " 1 " " 49 " 49
" " 2 " " 50 " 50
" " 3 " " 51 " 51
" " 4 " " 52 " 52
" " 5 " " 53 " 53
" " 6 " " 54 " 54
" " 7 " " 55 " 55
" " 8 Vol. 2 " 1 " 56
" " 9 " " 2 " 57
" " 10 " " 3 " 58
" " 11 " " 4 " 59
" " 12 " " 5 " 60
" " 13 " " 6 " 61
" " 14 " " 7 " 62
" " 15 " " 8 " 63
" " 16 " " 9 " 64
" " 17 " " 10 " 65
" " 18 " " 11 " 66
" " 19 " " 12 " 67
" " 20 " " 13 " 68
" " 21 " " 14 " 69
" " 22 " " 15 " 70
" " 23 " " 16 " 71
" " 24 " " 17 " 72
" " 25 " " 18 " 73
" " 26 " " 19 " 74
" " 27 " " 20 " 75
" " 28 " " 21 " 76
" " 29 " " 22 " 77
ABBREVIATIONS
A.C. After Christ.
_Ann. Rep. Annual Report._
A.S. Archaeological Survey.
_A.S.R. Archaeological Survey Reports,_ by Sir Alexander Cunningham
and his assistants; 23 vols. 8vo, Simla and Calcutta, 1871-87, with
General Index (vol. xxiv, 1887) by V. A. Smith.
_A.S.W.I. Archaeological Survey Reports, Western India._
Beale. T. W. Beale, _Oriental Biographical Dictionary,_ ed. Keene,
1894.
C.P. Central Provinces.
E.& D. Sir H. M. Elliot and Professor J. Dowson, _The History of
India as told by its own Historians, Muhammadan Period;_ 8 vols. 8vo,
London, 1867-77.
_E.H.I._ V. A. Smith, _Early History of India,_ 3rd ed., Oxford,
1914.
_Ep. Ind. Epigraphia Indica,_ Calcutta.
Fanshawe. H. C. Fanshawe, _Delhi Past and Present,_ Murray, London,
1902.
_H.F.A._ V. A. Smith, _A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon,_
4to, Oxford, 1911.
_I.G. Imperial Gazetteer of India_, Oxford, 1907, 1908.
_Ind. Ant. Indian Antiquary,_ Bombay.
_J.A.S.B. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,_ Calcutta.
_J.R.A.S. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,_ London.
_N.I.N.& Qu. North-Indian Notes and Queries,_ Allahabad, 1891-6
N.W.P. North-Western Provinces.
_Z.D.M.G. Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft,_
Leipzig.
CHAPTER 1
Annual Fairs held upon the Banks of Sacred Streams in India.
Before setting out on our journey towards the Himâlaya we formed once
more an agreeable party to visit the Marble Rocks of the Nerbudda at
Bherâghât.[1] It was the end of Kârtik,[2] when the Hindoos hold
fairs on all their sacred streams at places consecrated by poetry or
tradition as the scene of some divine work or manifestation. These
fairs are at once festive and holy; every person who comes enjoying
himself as much as he can, and at the same time seeking purification
from all past transgressions by bathing and praying in the holy
stream, and making laudable resolutions to be better for the future.
The ceremonies last five days, and take place at the same time upon
all the sacred rivers throughout India; and the greater part of the
whole Hindoo population, from the summits of the Himâlaya mountains
to Cape Comôrin, will, I believe, during these five days, be found
congregated at these fairs. In sailing down the Ganges one may pass
in the course of a day half a dozen such fairs, each with a multitude
equal to the population of a large city, and rendered beautifully
picturesque by the magnificence and variety of the tent equipages of
the great and wealthy. The preserver of the universe (_Bhagvân_)
Vishnu is supposed, on the 26th of Asârh, to descend to the world
below (_Pâtâl_) to defend Râjâ Bali from the attacks of Indra, to
stay with him four months, and to come up again on the 26th
Kârtik.[3] During his absence almost all kinds of worship and
festivities are suspended; and they recommence at these fairs, where
people assemble to hail his resurrection.
Our tents were pitched upon a green sward on one bank of a small
stream running into the Nerbudda close by, while the multitude
occupied the other bank. At night all the tents and booths are
illuminated, and the scene is hardly less animated by night than by
day; but what strikes a European most is the entire absence of all
tumult and disorder at such places. He not only sees no disturbance,
but feels assured that there will be none; and leaves his wife and
children in the midst of a crowd of a hundred thousand persons all
strangers to them, and all speaking a language and following a
religion different from theirs, while he goes off the whole day,
hunting and shooting in the distant jungles, without the slightest
feeling of apprehension for their safety or comfort. It is a singular
fact, which I know to be true, that during the great mutiny of our
native troops at Barrackpore in 1824, the chief leaders bound
themselves by a solemn oath not to suffer any European lady or child
to be injured or molested, happen what might to them in the collision
with their officers and the Government. My friend Captain Reid, one
of the general staff, used to allow his children, five in number, to
go into the lines and play with the soldiers of the mutinous
regiments up to the very day when the artillery opened upon them;
and, of above thirty European ladies then at the station, not one
thought of leaving the place till they heard the guns.[4] Mrs.
Colonel Faithful, with her daughter and another young lady, who had
both just arrived from England, went lately all the way from Calcutta
to Lûdiâna on the banks of the Hyphasis, a distance of more than
twelve hundred miles, in their palankeens with relays of bearers, and
without even a servant to attend them.[5] They were travelling night
and day for fourteen days without the slightest apprehension of
injury or of insult. Cases of ladies travelling in the same manner by
_dâk_ (stages) immediately after their arrival from England to all
parts of the country occur every day, and I know of no instance of
injury or insult sustained by them.[6] Does not this speak volumes
for the character of our rule in India? Would men trust their wives
and daughters in this manner unprotected among a people that disliked
them and their rule? We have not a garrison, or walled cantonments,
or fortified position of any kind for our residence from one end of
our Eastern empire to the other, save at the three capitals of
Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay.[7] We know and feel that the people
everywhere look up to and respect us, in spite of all our faults, and
we like to let them know and feel that we have confidence in them.
Sir Thomas Munro has justly observed, 'I do not exactly know what is
meant by civilizing the people of India. In the theory and practice
of good government they may be deficient; but, if a good system of
agriculture, if unrivalled manufactures, if the establishment of
schools for reading and writing, if the general practice of kindness
and hospitality, and, above all, if a scrupulous respect and delicacy
towards the female sex are amongst the points that denote a civilized
people; then the Hindoos are not inferior in civilization to the
people of Europe'.[8]
Bishop Heber writes in the same favourable terms of the Hindoos in
the narrative of his journey through India; and where shall we find a
mind more capable of judging of the merits and demerits of a people
than his?[9]
The concourse of people at this fair was, as usual, immense; but a
great many who could not afford to provide tents for the
accommodation of their families were driven away before their time by
some heavy showers of, to them, unseasonable rains. On this and
similar occasions the people bathe in the Nerbudda without the aid of
priests, but a number of poor Brahmans attend at these festivals to
receive charity, though not to assist at the ceremonies. Those who
could afford it gave a trifle to these men as they came out of the
sacred stream, but in no case was it demanded, or even solicited with
any appearance of importunity, as it commonly is at fairs and holy
places on the Ganges. The first day, the people bathe below the rapid
over which the river falls after it emerges from its peaceful abode
among the marble rocks; on the second day, just above this rapid; and
on the third day, two miles further up at the cascade, when the whole
body of the limpid stream of the Nerbudda, confined to a narrow
channel of only a few yards wide, falls tumultuously down in a
beautiful cascade into a deep chasm of marble rocks. This fall of
their sacred stream the people call the 'Dhuândhâr', or 'the smoky
fall', from the thick vapour which is always seen rising from it in
the morning. From below, the river glides quietly and imperceptibly
for a mile and a half along a deep, and, according to popular belief,
a fathomless channel of from ten to fifty yards wide, with snow-white
marble rocks rising perpendicularly on either side from a hundred to
a hundred and fifty feet high, and in some parts fearfully
overhanging. Suspended in recesses of these white rocks are numerous
large black nests of hornets ready to descend upon any unlucky wight
who may venture to disturb their repose;[10] and, as the boats of the
curious European visitors pass up and down to the sound of music,
clouds of wild pigeons rise from each side, and seem sometimes to
fill the air above them. Here, according to native legends, repose
the Pândavas, the heroes of their great Homeric poem, the
Mahâbhârata, whose names they have transferred to the valley of the
Nerbudda. Every fantastic appearance of the rocks, caused by those
great convulsions of nature which have so much disturbed the crust of
the globe, or by the slow and silent working of the, waters, is
attributed to the god-like power of those great heroes of Indian
romance, and is associated with the recollection of scenes in which
they are supposed to have figured.[11]
The strata of the Kaimûr range of sandstone hills, which runs
diagonally across the valley of the Nerbudda, are thrown up almost
perpendicularly, in some places many hundred feet above the level of
the plain, while in others for many miles together their tops are
only visible above the surface. These are so many strings of the oxen
which the arrows of Arjun, one of the five brothers, converted into
stone; and many a stream which now waters the valley first sprang
from the surface of the earth at the touch of his lance, as his
troops wanted water. The image of the gods of a former day, which now
lie scattered among the ruins of old cities, buried in the depth of
the forest, are nothing less than the bodies of the kings of the
earth turned into stone for their temerity in contending with these
demigods in battle. Ponds among the rocks of the Nerbudda, where all
the great fairs are held, still bear the names of the five brothers,
who are the heroes of this great poem;[12] and they are every year
visited by hundreds of thousands who implicitly believe that their
waters once received upon their bosoms the wearied limbs of those
whose names they bear. What is life without the charms of fiction,
and without the leisure and recreations which these sacred imaginings
tend to give to the great mass of those who have nothing but the
labour of their hands to depend upon for their subsistence! Let no
such fictions be believed, and the holidays and pastimes of the lower
orders in every country would soon cease, for they have almost
everywhere owed their origin and support to some religious dream
which has commanded the faith and influenced the conduct of great
masses of mankind, and prevented one man from presuming to work on
the day that another wished to rest from his labours. The people were
of opinion, they told me, that the Ganges, as a sacred stream, could
last only sixty years more, when the Nerbudda would take its place.
The waters of the Nerbudda are, they say already so much more sacred
than those of the Ganges that to see them is sufficient to cleanse
men from their sins, whereas the Ganges must be touched before it can
have that effect.[13]
At the temple built on the top of a conical hill at Bherâghât,
overlooking the river, is a statue of a bull carrying Siva, the god
of destruction, and his wife Pârvatî seated behind him; they have
both snakes in their hands, and Siva has a large one round his loins
as a waistband. There are several demons in human shape lying
prostrate under the belly of the bull, and the whole are well cut out
of one large slab of hard basalt from a dyke in the marble rock
beneath. They call the whole group 'Gaurî Sankar', and I found in the
fair, exposed for sale, a brass model of a similar one from Jeypore
(Jaipur), but not so well shaped and proportioned. On noticing this
we were told that 'such difference was to be expected, since the
brass must have been made by man, whereas the "Gaurî Sankar" of the
temple above was a real Pâkhân, or a conversion of living beings into
stone by the gods;[14] they were therefore the exact resemblance of
living beings, while the others could only be rude imitations'.
'Gaurî', or the Fair, is the name of Pârvatî, or Dêvî, when she
appears with her husband Siva. On such occasions she is always fair
and beautiful. Sankar is another name of Siva, or Mahâdêo, or Rudra.
On looking into the temple at the statue, a lady expressed her
surprise at the entireness as well as the excellence of the figures,
while all round had been so much mutilated by the Muhammadans. 'They
are quite a different thing from the others', said a respectable old
landholder; 'they are a conversion of real flesh and blood into
stone, and no human hands can either imitate or hurt them.' She
smiled incredulously, while he looked very grave, and appealed to the
whole crowd of spectators assembled, who all testified to the truth
of what he had said; and added that 'at no distant day the figures
would be all restored to life again, the deities would all come back
without doubt and reanimate their old bodies again'.
All the people who come to bathe at the fair bring chaplets of yellow
jasmine, and hang them as offerings round the necks of the god and
his consort; and at the same time they make some small offerings of
rice to each of the many images that stand within the same apartment,
and also to those which, under a stone roof supported upon stone
pillars, line the inside of the wall that surrounds the circular
area, in the centre of which the temple stands. The images inside the
temple are those of the three great gods, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva,
with their primaeval consorts;[15] but those that occupy the piazza
outside are the representations of the consorts of the different
incarnations of these three gods, and these consorts are themselves
the incarnations of the primaeval wives, who followed their husbands
in all their earthly ramblings. They have all the female form, and
are about the size of ordinary women, and extremely well cut out of
fine white and green sandstone; but their heads are those of the
animals in which their respective husbands became incarnate, such as
the lion, the elephant, &c., or those of the '_vâhans_', or animals
on which they rode, such as the bull, the swan, the eagle, &c. But
these, I presume, are mere _capricios_ of the founder of the temple.
The figures are sixty-four in number, all mounted upon their
respective '_vâhans_', but have been sadly mutilated by the pious
Muhammadans.[16]
The old 'Mahant', or high priest, told us that Mahâdêo and his wife
were in reality our Adam and Eve; 'they came here together', said he,
'on a visit to the mountain Kailâs,[17] and being earnestly solicited
to leave some memorial of their visit, got themselves turned into
stone'. The popular belief is that some very holy man, who had been
occupied on the top of this little conical hill, where the temple now
stands, in austere devotions for some few thousand years, was at last
honoured with a visit from Siva and his consort, who asked him what
they could do for him. He begged them to wait till he should bring
some flowers from the woods to make them a suitable offering. They
promised to do so, and he ran down, plunged into the Nerbudda and
drowned himself, in order that these august persons might for ever
remain and do honour to his residence and his name. They, however,
left only their 'mortal coil', but will one day return and resume it.
I know not whether I am singular in the notion or not, but I think
Mahâdêo and his consort are really our Adam and Eve, and that the
people have converted them into the god and goddess of destruction,
from some vague idea of their original sin, which involved all their
race in destruction. The snakes, which form the only dress of
Mahâdêo, would seem to confirm this notion.[18]
Notes:
1. The Nerbudda (Narbadâ, or Narmadâ) river is the boundary between
Hindustan, or Northern India, and the Deccan (Dakhin), or Southern
India. The beautiful gorge of the Marble Rocks, near Jubbulpore
(Jabalpur), is familiar to modern tourists (see _I.G._, 1908, s.v.
'Marble Rocks'). The remarkable antiquities at Bherâghât are
described and illustrated in _A.S.R._, vol. ix, pp. 60-76, pl. xii-
xvi. Additions and corrections to Cunningham's account will be found
in _A.S.W.I Progr. Rep._, 1893-4, p. 5; and _A.S. Ann. Rep., E.
Circle_, 1907-8, pp. 14-18.
2. The eighth month of the Hindoo luni-solar year, corresponding to
part of October and part of November. In Northern India the year
begins with the month Chait, in March. The most commonly used names
of the months are: (1) Chait; (2) Baisâkh; (3) Jêth; (4) Asârh; (5)
Sâwan; (6) Bhâdon; (7) Kuâr; (8) Kârtik; (9) Aghan; (10) Pûs; (II)
Mâgh; and (12) Phâlgun.
3. _Bhagvân_ is often used as equivalent for the word God in its most
general sense, but is specially applicable to the Deity as manifested
in Vishnu the Preserver. _Asârh_ corresponds to June-July, _Pâtâl_ is
the Hindoo Hades. Râjâ Bali is a demon, and Indra is the lord of the
heavens. The fairs take place at the time of full moon.
4. Barrackpore, fifteen miles north of Calcutta, is still a
cantonment. The Governor General has a country house there. The
mutiny of the native troops stationed there occurred on Nov. 1, 1824,
and was due to the discontent caused by orders moving the 47th Native
Infantry to Rangoon to take part in the Burmese War. The outbreak was
promptly suppressed. Captain Pogson published a _Memoir of the Mutiny
at Barrackpore_ (8vo, Serampore, 1833).
5. Lûdiâna, the capital of the district of the same name, now under
the Punjab Government. Hyphasis is the Greek name of the Biâs river,
one of the five rivers of the Punjâb.
6. Railways have rendered almost obsolete the mode of travelling
described in the text. In Northern India palankeens (pâlkîs) are now
seldom used, even by Indians, except for purposes of ceremony.
7. This statement is no longer quite accurate, though fortified
positions are still very few.
8. The editor cannot find the exact passage quoted, but remarks to
the same effect will be found in _The Life of Sir Thomas Munro,_ by
the Rev. G. R. Gleig, in two volumes, a new edition (London, 1831),
vol. ii, p. 175.
9. _Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, from
Calcutta to Bombay, 1834-5, and a Journey to the Southern Provinces
in 1826_ (2nd edition, 3 vols. 8vo, London, 1828.)
10. The bees at the Marble Rocks are the _Apis dorsata_. An
Englishman named Biddington, when trying to escape from them, was
drowned, and they stung to death one of Captain Forsyth's baggage
ponies (Balfour, _Cyclopaedia of India,_ 3rd ed., 1885, s.v. Bee').
11. The vast epic poem, or collection of poems known as the
Mahâbhârata, consists of over 100,000 Sanskrit verses. The main
subject is the war between the five Pândavas, or sons of Pândû, and
their cousins the Kauravas, sons of Dhritarâshtra. Many poems of
various origins and dates are interwoven with the main work. The best
known of the episodes is that of _Nala and Damayantî,_ which was well
translated by Dean Milman, See Macdonell, _A History of Sanskrit
Literature_ (Heinemann, 1900).
12. The five Pândava brothers were Yudhishthira, Bhîmia, Arjuna,
Nakula, and Sahadeva, the children of Pândû, by his wives Kuntî, or
Prithâ, and Madrî.
13. 'The Narbadâ has its special admirers, who exalt it oven above
the Ganges, . . . The sanctity of the Ganges will, they say, cease in
1895, whereas that of the Narbadâ will continue for ever' (Monier
Williams, _Religious Thought and Life in India,_ London, 1883, p.
348), See _post,_ Chapter 27.
14. Sleeman wrote 'Py-Khan', a corrupt spelling of pâkhân, the
Sanskrit pâshâna or pâsâna, 'a stone'. The compound pâshâna-mûrti is
commonly used in the sense of 'stone image'. The sibilant _sh_ or _s_
usually is pronounced as _kh_ in Northern India (Grierson,
_J.R.A.S.,_ 1903, p. 363).
15. Sarasvatî, consort of Brahma; Dêvî (Pârvatî, Durgâ, &c.), consort
of Siva; and Lakshmî, consort of Vishnu. All Hindoo deities have many
names.
16. The author's explanation is partly erroneous. The temple, which
is a very remarkable one, is dedicated to the sixty-four Joginîs.
Only five temples in India are known to be dedicated to these demons.
For details see Cunningham, _A.S.R.,_ vol. ix, pp. 61-74, pl. xii-
xvi; vol. ii, p. 416; and vol. xxi, p. 57. The word _vâhana_ means
'vehicle'. Each deity has his peculiar vehicle.
17. The heaven of Siva, as distinguished from Vaikuntha, the heaven
of Vishnu. It is supposed to be somewhere in the Himâlaya mountains.
The wonderful excavated rock temple at Ellora is believed to be a
model of Kailâs.
18. This 'notion' of the author's is not likely to find acceptance at
the present day.
CHAPTER 2
Hindoo System of Religion.
The Hindoo system is this. A great divine spirit or essence,
'Brahma', pervades the whole universe; and the soul of every human
being is a drop from this great ocean, to which, when it becomes
perfectly purified, it is reunited. The reunion is the eternal
beatitude to which all look forward with hope; and the soul of the
Brahman is nearest to it. If he has been a good man, his soul becomes
absorbed in the 'Brahma'; and, if a bad man, it goes to 'Narak',
hell; and after the expiration of its period there of _limited
imprisonment_, it returns to earth, and occupies the body of some
other animal. It again advances by degrees to the body of the
Brahman; and thence, when fitted for it, into the great 'Brahma'.[1]
From this great eternal essence emanate Brahma, the Creator, whose
consort is Sarasvatî;[2] Vishnu, the Preserver, whose consort is
Lakshmî; and Siva, _alias_ Mahâdêo, the Destroyer, whose consort is
Pârvatî. According to popular belief Jamrâj (Yamarâja) is the
judicial deity who has been appointed by the greater powers to pass
the final judgement on the tenor of men's lives, according to
proceedings drawn up by his secretary Chitragupta. If men's actions
have been good, their souls are, as the next stage, advanced a step
towards the great essence, Brahma; and, if bad, they are thrown back,
and obliged to occupy the bodies of brutes or of people of inferior
caste, as the balance against them may be great or small. There is an
intermediate stage, a 'Narak', or hell, for bad men, and a
'Baikunth', or paradise, for the good, in which they find their
felicity in serving that god of the three to which they have
specially devoted themselves while on earth. But from this stage,
after the period of their sentence is expired, men go back to their
pilgrimage on earth again.
There are numerous Dêos (Devas), or good spirits, of whom Indra is
the chief; [3] and Daityas, or bad spirits; and there have also been
a great number of incarnations from the three great gods, and their
consorts, who have made their appearance upon the earth when required
for particular purposes. All these incarnations are called 'Avatârs',
or descents. Vishnu has been eleven times on the globe in different
shapes, and Siva seven times.[4] The avatârs of Vishnu are celebrated
in many popular poems, such as the Râmâyana, or history of the Rape
of Sitâ, the wife of Râma, the seventh incarnation;[5] the
Mahâbhârata, and the Bhâgavata [Purâna], which describe the wars and
amours of this god in his last human shape.[6] All these books are
believed to have been written either by the hand or by the
inspiration of the god himself thousands of years before the events
they describe actually took place. 'It was', they say, 'as easy for
the deity to write or dictate a battle, an amour, or any other
important event ten thousand years before as the day after it took
place'; and I believe nine-tenths, perhaps ninety-nine in a hundred,
of the Hindoo population believe implicitly that these accounts were
also written. It is now pretty clear that all these works are of
comparatively recent date, that the great poem of the Mahâbhârata
could not have been written before the year 786 of the Christian era,
and was probably written so late as A.D. 1157; that Krishna, _if born
at all_, must have been born on the 7th of August, A.D. 600, but was
most likely a mere creation of the imagination to serve the purpose
of the Brahmans of Ujain, in whom the fiction originated; that the
other incarnations were invented about the same time, and for the
same object, though the other persons described as incarnations were
real princes, Parasu Râma, before Christ 1176, and Râma, born before
Christ 961. In the Mahâbhârata Krishna is described as fighting in
the same army with Yudhishthira and his four brothers. Yudhishthira
was a real person, who ascended the throne at Delhi 575 B.C., or 1175
years before the birth of Krishna.[7] Bentley supposes that the
incarnations, particularly that of Krishna, were invented by the
Brahmans of Ujain with a view to check the progress of Christianity
in that part of the world (see his historical view of the Hindoo
astronomy). That we find in no history any account of the alarming
progress of Christianity about the time these fables were written is
no proof that Bentley was wrong.[8]
When Monsieur Thevenot was at Agra [in] 1666, the Christian
population was roughly estimated at twenty-five thousand families.
They had all passed away before it became one of our civil and
military stations in the beginning of the present century, and we
might search history in vain for any mention of them (see his
_Travels in India_, Part III). One single prince, well disposed to
give Christians encouragement and employment, might, in a few years,
get the same number around his capital; and it is probable that the
early Christians in India occasionally found such princes, and gave
just cause of alarm to the Brahman priests, who were then in the
infancy of their despotic power.[9]
During the war with Nepal, in 1814 and 1815,[10] the division with
which I served came upon an extremely interesting colony of about two
thousand Christian families at Betiyâ in the Tirhût District, on the
borders of the Tarâi forest. This colony had been created by one man,
the Bishop, a Venetian by birth, under the protection of a small
Hindoo prince, the Râjâ, of Betiyâ.[11] This holy man had been some
fifty years among these people, with little or no support from Europe
or from any other quarter. The only aid he got from the Râjâ was a
pledge that no member of his Church should be subject to the
_Purveyance system_, under which the people everywhere suffered so
much,[12] and this pledge the Râjâ, though a Hindoo, had never
suffered to be violated. There were men of all trades among them, and
they formed one very large street remarkable for the superior style
of its buildings and the sober industry of its inhabitants. The
masons, carpenters, and blacksmiths of this little colony were
working in our camp every day, while we remained in the vicinity, and
better workmen I have never seen in India; but they would all insist
upon going to divine service at the prescribed hours. They had built
a splendid _pucka_[13] dwelling-house for their bishop, and a still
more splendid church, and formed for him the finest garden I have
seen in India, surrounded with a good wall, and provided with
admirable pucka wells. The native Christian servants who attended at
the old bishop's table, taught by himself, spoke Latin to him; but he
was become very feeble, and spoke himself a mixture of Latin,
Italian, his native tongue, and Hindustânî. We used to have him at
our messes, and take as much care of him as of an infant, for he was
become almost as frail as one. The joy and the excitement of being
once more among Europeans, and treated by them with so much reverence
in the midst of his flock, were perhaps too much for him, for he
sickened and died soon after.
The Râjâ died soon after him, and in all probability the flock has
disappeared. No Europeans except a few indigo planters of the
neighbourhood had ever before known or heard of this colony; and they
seemed to consider them only as a set of great scoundrels, who had
better carts and bullocks than anybody else in the country, which
they refused to let out at the same rate as the others, and which
they (the indigo lords) were not permitted to seize and employ at
discretion. Roman Catholics have a greater facility in making
converts in India than Protestants, from having so much more in their
form of worship to win the affections through the medium of the
imagination.[14]
Notes:
1. Men are occasionally exempted from the necessity of becoming a
Brahman first. Men of low caste, if they die at particular places,
where it is the interest of the Brahmans to invite rich men to die,
are promised absorption into the great 'Brahma' at once. Immense
numbers of wealthy men go every year from the most distant parts of
India to die at Benares, where they spend large sums of money among
the Brahmans. It is by their means that this, the second city in
India, is supported. [W. H. S.] Bombay is now the second city in
India, so far as population is concerned.
2. Brahma, with the short vowel, is the eternal Essence or Spirit;
Brahmâ, with the long vowel, is 'the primaeval male god, the first
personal product of the purely spiritual Brahma, when overspread by
Maya, or illusory creative force', according to the Vedanta system
(Monier Williams, _Religious Thought and Life in India_, p. 44).
3. Indra was originally, in the Vedas, the Rain-god. The statement in
the text refers to modern Hinduism.
4. The incarnations of Vishnu are ordinarily reckoned as ten, namely,
(1) Fish, (2) Tortoise, (3) Boar, (4) Man-lion, (5) Dwarf, (6) Râma
with the axe, (7) Râma Chandra, (8) Krishna, (9) Buddha, (10) Kalkî,
or Kalkin, who is yet to come. I do not know any authority for eleven
incarnations of Vishnu. The number is stated in some Purânas as
twenty-two, twenty-four, or even twenty-eight. Seven incarnations of
Siva are not generally recognized (see Monier Williams, _Religious
Thought and Life in India_, pp. 78-86, and 107-16). For the theory
and mystical meaning of _avatârs_, see Grierson, _J.R.A.S._, 1909,
pp. 621-44. The word avatâr means 'descent', _scil_. of the Deity to
earth, and covers more than the term 'incarnation'.
5. Sitâ was an incarnation of Lakshmî. She became incarnate again,
many centuries afterwards, as the wife of Krishna, another
incarnation of Vishnu [W. H. S.]. Reckoning by centuries is, of
course, inapplicable to pure myth. The author believed in Bentley's
baseless chronology.
6. For the Mahâbhârata, see _ante_, note 11, Chapter 1. The Bhâgavata
Purâna is the most popular of the Purânas, The Hindi version of the
tenth book (_skandha_) is known as the 'Prem Sâgar'. The date of the
composition of the Purânas is uncertain.
7. The dates given in this passage are purely imaginary. Parts of the
Mahâbhârata are very ancient. Yudhishthira is no more an historical
personage than Achilles or Romulus. It is improbable that a 'throne
of Delhi' existed in 575 B.C., and hardly anything is known about the
state of India at that date.
8. It is hardly necessary to observe that this grotesque theory is
utterly at variance with the facts, as now known.
9. The existing settlements of native Christians at Agra are mostly
of modern origin. Very ancient Christian communities exist near
Madras, and on the Malabar coast. The travels of Jean de Thevenot
were published in 1684, under the title of _Voyage, contenant la
Relation de l'Indostan_. The English version, by A. Lovell (London,
1687), is entitled _The Travels of Monsieur de Thevenot into the
Levant, in three Parts_. Part III deals with the East Indies, The
passage referred to is: 'Some affirm that there are twenty-five
thousand Christian Families in Agra, but all do not agree in that'
(Part III, p. 35). Thevonot's statement about the Christians of Agra
is further discussed post in Chapter 52.
10. The war with Nepal began in October, 1814, and was not concluded
till 1816. During its progress the British arms suffered several
reverses.
11. The Betiyâ (Bettiah of _I. G_., 1908) Râj is a great estate with
an area of 1,824 square miles in the northern part of the Champâran
District of Bihâr, in the Province of Bihâr and Orissa. A great
portion of the estate is held (1908) on permanent leases by European
indigo-planters.
12. For discussion of this system see post, Chapter 7.
13. 'Pucka' (_pakkâ_) here means 'masonry', as opposed to 'Kutcha'
(_kachchâ_), meaning 'earthen'.
14. Native Christians, according to the census of 1872, number 1,214
persons, who are principally found in Bettiâ thâna [police-circle].
There are two Missions, one at Bettiâ, and the other at the village
of Chuhârî, both supported by the Roman Catholic Church. The former
was founded in 1746 by a certain Father Joseph, from Garingano in
Italy, who went to Bettiâ on the invitation of the Mahârâja. The
present number of converts is about 1,000 persons. Being principally
descendants of Brahmans, they hold a fair social position; but some
of them are extremely poor. About one-fourth are carpenters, one-
tenth blacksmiths, one-tenth servants, the remainder carters. The
Chuhârî Mission was founded in 1770 by three Catholic priests, who
had been expelled from Nepal [after the Gôrkha conquest in 1768].
There are now 283 converts, mostly descendants of Nepâlis. They are
all agriculturists, and very poor (Article 'Champâran District' in
_Statistical Account of Bengal_, 1877).
The statement in _I.G._ 1908, s.v. Bettiah, differs slightly, as
follows:
'A Roman Catholic Mission was established about 1740 by Father
Joseph Mary, an Italian missionary of the Capuchin Order, who was
passing near Bettiah on his way to Nepâl, when he was summoned by
Râjâ Dhruva Shah to attend his daughter, who was dangerously ill. He
succeeded in curing her, and the grateful Raja invited him to stay at
Bettiah and gave him a house and ninety acres of land.' The Bettiah
Mission still exists and maintains the Catholic Mission Press, where
publications illustrating the history of the Capuchin Missions have
been printed. Father Felix, O.C., is at work on the subject.
CHAPTER 3
Legend of the Nerbudda River.
The legend is that the Nerbudda, which flows west into the Gulf of
Cambay, was wooed and won in the usual way by the Sôn river, which
rises from the same tableland of Amarkantak, and flows east into the
Ganges and Bay of Bengal.[1] All the previous ceremonies having been
performed, the Sôn [2] came with 'due pomp and circumstance' to fetch
his bride in the procession called the 'Barât', up to which time the
bride and bridegroom are supposed never to have seen each other,
unless perchance they have met in infancy. Her Majesty the Nerbudda
became exceedingly impatient to know what sort of a personage her
destinies were to be linked to, while his Majesty the Sôn advanced at
a slow and stately pace. At last the Queen sent Johilâ, the daughter
of the barber, to take a close view of him, and to return and make a
faithful and particular report of his person. His Majesty was
captivated with the little Johilâ, the barber's daughter, at first
sight; and she, 'nothing loath', yielded to his caresses. Some say
that she actually pretended to be Queen herself; and that his Majesty
was no further in fault than in mistaking the humble handmaid for her
noble mistress; but, be that as it may, her Majesty no sooner heard
of the good understanding between them, than she rushed forward, and
with one foot sent the Sôn rolling back to the east whence he came,
and with the other kicked little Johilâ sprawling after him; for,
said the high priest, who told us the story, 'You see what a towering
passion she was likely to have been in under such indignities from
the furious manner in which she cuts her way through the marble rocks
beneath us, and casts huge masses right and left as she goes along,
as if they were really so many coco-nuts'. 'And was she', asked I,
'to have flown eastward with him, or was he to have flown westward
with her?' 'She was to have accompanied him eastward', said the high
priest, 'but her Majesty, after this indignity, declared that she
would not go a single pace in the same direction with such wretches,
and would flow west, though all the other rivers in India might flow
east; and west she flows accordingly, a virgin queen.' I asked some
of the Hindoos about us why they called her 'Mother Nerbudda', if she
was really never married. 'Her Majesty', said they with great
respect, 'would really never consent to be married after the
indignity she suffered from her affianced bridegroom the Sôn; and we
call her Mother because she blesses us all, and we are anxious to
accost her by the name which we consider to be at once the most
respectful and endearing.'
Any Englishman can easily conceive a poet in his highest 'calenture
of the brain' addressing the ocean as 'a steed that knows his rider',
and patting the crested billow as his flowing mane; but he must come
to India to understand how every individual of a whole community of
many millions can address a fine river as a living being, a sovereign
princess, who hears and understands all they say, and exercises a
kind of local superintendence over their affairs, without a single
temple in which her image is worshipped, or a single priest to profit
by the delusion. As in the case of the Ganges, it is the river itself
to whom they address themselves, and not to any deity residing in it,
or presiding over it: the stream itself is the deity which fills
their imaginations, and receives their homage.
Among the Romans and ancient Persians rivers were propitiated by
sacrifices. When Vitellius crossed the Euphrates with the Roman
legions to put Tiridates on the throne of Armenia, they propitiated
the river according to the rites of their country by the
_suovetaurilia_, the sacrifice of the hog, the ram, and the bull.
Tiridates did the same by the sacrifice of a horse. Tacitus does not
mention the river _god_, but the river _itself_, as propitiated (see
[_Annals_,] book vi, chap. 37).[3] Plato makes Socrates condemn Homer
for making Achilles behave disrespectfully towards the river Xanthus,
though acknowledged to be a divinity, in offering to fight him,[4]
and towards the river Sperchius, another acknowledged god, in
presenting to the dead body of Patroclus the locks of his hair which
he had promised to that river.[5]
The Sôn river, which rises near the source of the Nerbudda on the
tableland of Amarkantak, takes a westerly course for some miles, and
then turns off suddenly to the east, and is joined by the little
stream of the Johilâ before it descends the great cascade; and hence
the poets have created this fiction, which the mass of the population
receive as divine revelation. The statue of little Johilâ, the
barber's daughter, in stone, stands in the temple of the goddess
Nerbudda at Amarkantak, bound in chains.[6] It may here be remarked
that the first overtures in India must always be made through the
medium of the barber, whether they be from the prince or the
peasant.[7] If a sovereign prince sends proposals to a sovereign
princess, they must be conveyed through the medium of the barber, or
they will never be considered as done in due form, as likely to prove
propitious. The prince will, of course, send some relation or high
functionary with him; but in all the credentials the barber must be
named as the principal functionary. Hence it was that Her Majesty was
supposed to have sent a barber's daughter to meet her husband.
The 'Mahâtam' (greatness or holiness) of the Ganges is said, as I
have already stated, to be on the wane, and not likely to endure
sixty years longer; while that of the Nerbudda is on the increase,
and in sixty years is entirely to supersede the sanctity of her
sister. If the valley of the Nerbudda should continue for sixty years
longer under such a government as it has enjoyed since we took
possession of it in 1817,[8] it may become infinitely more rich, more
populous, and more beautiful than that of the Nile ever was; and, if
the Hindoos there continue, as I hope they will, to acquire wealth
and honour under a rule to which they are so much attached, the
prophecy may be realized in as far as the increase of honour paid to
the Nerbudda is concerned. But I know no ground to expect that the
reverence[9] paid to the Ganges will diminish, unless education and
the concentration of capital in manufactures should work an important
change in the religious feelings and opinions of the people along the
course of that river; although this, it must be admitted, is a
consummation which may be looked for more speedily on the banks of
the Ganges than on those of a stream like the Nerbudda, which is
neither navigable at present nor, in my opinion, capable of being
rendered so. Commerce and manufactures, and the concentration of
capital in the maintenance of the new communities employed in them,
will, I think, be the great media through which this change will be
chiefly effected; and they are always more likely to follow the
course of rivers that are navigable than that of rivers which are
not.[10]
Notes:
1. Amarkantak, formerly in the Sohâgpur pargana of the Bilâspur
District of the Central Provinces, is situated on a high tableland,
and is a famous place of pilgrimage. The temples are described by
Beglar in _A.S.R._, vol. vii, pp. 227-34, pl. xx, xxi. The hill has
been transferred to the Rîwâ State (_Central Provinces Gazetteer_
(1870), and _I.G._ (1908), s.v. Amarkantak).
2. The name is misspelled Sohan in the author's text. The Sôn rises
at Sôn Mundâ, about twenty miles from Amarkantak (_A.S.R._, vol. vii,
236).
3. 'Sacrificantibus, cum hic more Romano suovetaurilia daret, ille
equum placando amni adornasset.'
4. [Greek text]--_Iliad_ xx, 73.
5. _Iliad_ xxiii. 140-153.
6. Mr. Crooke observes that the binding was intended to prevent the
object of worship from deserting her shrine or possibly doing
mischief elsewhere, and refers to his article, 'The Binding of a God,
a Study of the Basis of Idolatry', in _Folklore_, vol. viii (1897),
p.134. The name is spelt Johillâ in _I.G._ (1908), s.v. Sôn River.
7. Monier Williams denies the barber's monopoly of match-making. 'In
some parts of Northern India the match-maker for some castes is the
family barber; but for the higher castes he is more generally a
Brahman, who goes about from one house to another till he discovers a
baby-girl of suitable rank' (_Religious Thought and Life in India_,
p. 377). So far as the editor knows, the barber is ordinarily
employed in Northern India.
8. During the operations against the Pindhârî freebooters. Many
treaties were negotiated with the Peshwa and other native powers in
the years 1817 and 1818.
9. The word in the text is 'revenue'.
10. Concerning the prophecy that the sanctity of the Ganges will
cease in 1895, see note to Chapter 1, _ante_, [13]. The prophecy was
much talked of some years ago, but the reverence for the Ganges
continues undiminished, while the development of commerce and
manufactures has not affected, the religious feelings and opinions of
the people. Railways, in fact, facilitate pilgrimages and increase
their popularity. The course of commerce now follows the line of
rail, not the navigable rivers. The author, when writing this book,
evidently never contemplated the possibility of railway construction
in India. Later in life, in 1852, he fully appreciated the value of
the new means of communication (_Journey_, ii, 370, &c.).
CHAPTER 4
A Suttee[1] on the Nerbudda.
We took a ride one evening to Gopâlpur, a small village situated on
the same bank of the Nerbudda, about three miles up from Bherâghât.
On our way we met a party of women and girls coming to the fair.
Their legs were uncovered half-way up the thigh; but, as we passed,
they all carefully covered up their faces. 'Good God!' exclaimed one
of the ladies, 'how can these people be so very indecent?' They
thought it, no doubt, equally extraordinary that she should have her
face uncovered, while she so carefully concealed her legs; for they
were really all modest peasantry, going from the village to bathe in
the holy stream.[2]
Here there are some very pretty temples, built for the most part to
the memory of widows who have burned themselves with the remains of
their husbands, and upon the very spot where they committed
themselves to the flames. There was one which had been recently
raised over the ashes of one of the most extraordinary old ladies
that I have ever seen, who burned herself in my presence in 1829. I
prohibited the building of any temple upon the spot, but my successor
in the civil charge of the district, Major Low, was never, I believe,
made acquainted with the prohibition nor with the progress of the
work; which therefore went on to completion in my absence. As suttees
are now prohibited in our dominions[3] and cannot be often seen or
described by Europeans, I shall here relate the circumstances of this
as they were recorded by me at the time, and the reader may rely upon
the truth of the whole tale.
On the 29th November, 1829, this old woman, then about sixty-five
years of age, here mixed her ashes with those of her husband, who had
been burned alone four days before. On receiving civil charge of the
district (Jubbulpore) in March, 1828, I issued a proclamation
prohibiting any one from aiding or assisting in suttee, and
distinctly stating that to bring one ounce of wood for the purpose
would be considered as so doing. If the woman burned herself with the
body of her husband, any one who brought wood for the purpose of
burning him would become liable to punishment; consequently, the body
of the husband must be first consumed, and the widow must bring a
fresh supply for herself. On Tuesday, 24th November, 1829, I had an
application from the heads of the most respectable and most extensive
family of Brahmans in the district to suffer this old woman to burn
herself with the remains of her husband, Ummêd Singh Upadhya, who had
that morning died upon the banks of the Nerbudda.[4] I threatened to
enforce my order, and punish severely any man who assisted; and
placed a police guard for the purpose of seeing that no one did so.
She remained sitting by the edge of the water without eating or
drinking. The next day the body of her husband was burned to ashes in
a small pit of about eight feet square, and three or four feet deep,
before several thousand spectators who had assembled to see the
suttee. All strangers dispersed before evening, as there seemed to be
no prospect of my yielding to the urgent solicitations of her family,
who dared not touch food till she had burned herself, or declared
herself willing to return to them. Her sons, grandsons, and some
other relations remained with her, while the rest surrounded my
house, the one urging me to allow her to burn, and the other urging
her to desist. She remained sitting on a bare rock in the bed of the
Nerbudda, refusing every kind of sustenance, and exposed to the
intense heat of the sun by day, and the severe cold of the night,
with only a thin sheet thrown over her shoulders. On Thursday, to cut
off all hope of her being moved from her purpose, she put on the
dhajâ, or coarse red turban, and broke her bracelets in pieces, by
which she became dead in law, and for ever excluded from caste.
Should she choose to live after this, she could never return to her
family. Her children and grandchildren were still with her, but all
their entreaties were unavailing; and I became satisfied that she
would starve herself to death, if not allowed to burn, by which the
family would be disgraced, her miseries prolonged, and I myself
rendered liable to be charged with a wanton abuse of authority, for
no prohibition of the kind I had issued had as yet received the
formal sanction of the Government.
On Saturday, the 28th, in the morning, I rode out ten miles to the
spot, and found the poor old widow sitting with the dhajâ round her
head, a brass plate before her with undressed rice and flowers, and a
coco-nut in each hand. She talked very collectedly, telling me that
'she had determined to mix her ashes with those of her departed
husband, and should patiently wait my permission to do so, assured
that God would enable her to sustain life till that was given, though
she dared not eat or drink'. Looking at the sun, then rising before
her over a long and beautiful reach of the Nerbudda river, she said
calmly, 'My soul has been for five days with my husband's near that
sun, nothing but my earthly frame is left; and this, I know, you will
in time suffer to be mixed with the ashes of his in yonder pit,
because it is not in your nature or usage wantonly to prolong the
miseries of a poor old woman'.
'Indeed, it is not,--my object and duty is to save and preserve them
[_sic_]; and I am come to dissuade you from this idle purpose, to
urge you to live, and to keep your family from the disgrace of being
thought your murderers.'
'I am not afraid of their ever being so thought: they have all, like
good children, done everything in their power to induce me to live
among them; and, if I had done so, I know they would have loved and
honoured me; but my duties to them have now ended. I commit them all
to your care, and I go to attend my husband, _Ummêd Singh Upadhya_,
with whose ashes on the funeral pile mine have been already three
times mixed.'[5]
This was the first time in her long life that she had ever pronounced
the name of her husband, for in India no woman, high or low, ever
pronounces the name of her husband,--she would consider it
disrespectful towards him to do so; and it is often amusing to see
their embarrassment when asked the question by any European
gentleman. They look right and left for some one to relieve them from
the dilemma of appearing disrespectful either to the querist or to
their absent husbands--they perceive that he is unacquainted with
their duties on this point, and are afraid he will attribute their
silence to disrespect. They know that few European gentlemen are
acquainted with them; and when women go into our courts of justice,
or other places where they are liable to be asked the names of their
husbands, they commonly take one of their children or some other
relation with them to pronounce the words in their stead. When the
old lady named her husband, as she did with strong emphasis, and in a
very deliberate manner, every one present was satisfied that she had
resolved to die. 'I have', she continued, 'tasted largely of the
bounty of Government, having been maintained by it with all my large
family in ease and comfort upon our rent-free lands; and I feel
assured that my children will not be suffered to want; but with them
I have nothing more to do, our intercourse and communion here end. My
soul (_prân_) is with _Ummêd Singh Upadhya_: and my ashes must here
mix with his.'
Again looking to the sun--'I see them together', said she, with a
tone and countenance that affected me a good deal, 'under the bridal
canopy!'--alluding to the ceremonies of marriage; and I am satisfied
that she at that moment really believed that she saw her own spirit
and that of her husband under the bridal canopy in paradise.
I tried to work upon her pride and her fears. I told her that it was
probable that the rent-free lands by which her family had been so
long supported might be resumed by the Government, as a mark of its
displeasure against the children for not dissuading her from the
sacrifice; that the temples over her ancestors upon the bank might be
levelled with the ground, in order to prevent their operating to
induce others to make similar sacrifices; and lastly, that not one
single brick or stone should ever mark the place where she died if
she persisted in her resolution. But, if she consented to live, a
splendid habitation should be built for her among these temples, a
handsome provision assigned for her support out of these rent-free
lands, her children should come daily to visit her, and I should
frequently do the same. She smiled, but held out her arm and said,
'My pulse has long ceased to beat, my spirit has departed, and I have
nothing left but a little _earth_, that I wish to mix with the ashes
of my husband. I shall suffer nothing in burning; and, if you wish
proof, order some fire, and you shall see this arm consumed without
giving me any pain'. I did not attempt to feel her pulse, but some of
my people did, and declared that it had ceased to be perceptible. At
this time every native present believed that she was incapable of
suffering pain; and her end confirmed them in their opinion.
Satisfied myself that it would be unavailing to attempt to save her
life, I sent for all the principal members of the family, and
consented that she should be suffered to burn herself if they would
enter into engagements that no other member of their family should
ever do the same. This they all agreed to, and the papers having been
drawn out in due form about midday, I sent down notice to the old
lady, who seemed extremely pleased and thankful. The ceremonies of
bathing were gone through before three [o'clock], while the wood and
other combustible materials for a strong fire were collected and put
into the pit. After bathing, she called for a 'pan' (betel leaf) and
ate it, then rose up, and with one arm on the shoulder of her eldest
son, and the other on that of her nephew, approached the fire. I had
sentries placed all round, and no other person was allowed to
approach within five paces. As she rose up fire was set to the pile,
and it was instantly in a blaze. The distance was about 150 yards.
She came on with a calm and cheerful countenance, stopped once, and,
casting her eyes upward, said, 'Why have they kept me five days from
thee, my husband?' On coming to the sentries her supporters stopped;
she walked once round the pit, paused a moment, and, while muttering
a prayer, threw some flowers into the fire. She then walked up
deliberately and steadily to the brink, stepped into the centre of
the flame, sat down, and leaning back in the midst as if reposing
upon a couch, was consumed without uttering a shriek or betraying one
sign of agony.
A few instruments of music had been provided, and they played, as
usual, as she approached the fire, not, as is commonly supposed, in
order to drown screams, but to prevent the last words of the victim
from being heard, as these are supposed to be prophetic, and might
become sources of pain or strife to the living.[6] It was not
expected that I should yield, and but few people had assembled to
witness the sacrifice, so that there was little or nothing in the
circumstances immediately around to stimulate her to any
extraordinary exertions; and I am persuaded that it was the desire of
again being united to her husband in the next world, and the entire
confidence that she would be so if she now burned herself, that alone
sustained her. From the morning he died (Tuesday) till Wednesday
evening she ate 'pans' or betel leaves, but nothing else; and from
Wednesday evening she ceased eating them. She drank no water from
Tuesday. She went into the fire with the same cloth about her that
she had worn in the bed of the river; but it was made wet from a
persuasion that even the shadow of any impure thing falling upon her
from going to the pile contaminates the woman unless counteracted by
the sheet moistened in the holy stream.
I must do the family the justice to say that they all exerted
themselves to dissuade the widow from her purpose, and had she lived
she would assuredly have been cherished and honoured as the first
female member of the whole house. There is no people in the world
among whom parents are more loved, honoured, and obeyed than among
the Hindoos; and the grandmother is always more honoured than the
mother. No queen upon her throne could ever have been approached with
more reverence by her subjects than was this old lady by all the
members of her family as she sat upon a naked rock in the bed of the
river, with only a red rag upon her head and a single-white sheet
over her shoulders.
Soon after the battle of Trafalgar I heard a young lady exclaim, 'I
could really wish to have had a brother killed in that action'. There
is no doubt that a family in which a suttee takes place feels a good
deal exalted in its own esteem and that of the community by the
sacrifice. The sister of the Râjâ of Rîwâ was one of four or five
wives who burned themselves with the remains of the Râjâ of Udaipur;
and nothing in the course of his life will ever be recollected by her
brother with so much of pride and pleasure, since the Udaipur Râjâ is
the head of the Râjpût tribes.[7]
I asked the old lady when she had first resolved upon becoming a
suttee, and she told me that about thirteen years before, while
bathing in the river Nerbudda, near the spot where she then sat, with
many other females of the family, the resolution had fixed itself in
her mind as she looked at the splendid temples on the bank of the
river erected by the different branches of the family over the ashes
of her female relations who had at different times become suttees.
Two, I think, were over her aunts, and one over the mother of her
husband. They were very beautiful buildings, and had been erected at
great cost and kept in good repair. She told me that she had never
mentioned this her resolution to any one from that time, nor breathed
a syllable on the subject till she called out 'Sat, sat, sat',[8]
when her husband breathed his last with his head in her lap on the
bank of the Nerbudda, to which he had been taken when no hopes
remained of his surviving the fever of which he died.
Charles Harding, of the Bengal Civil Service, as magistrate of
Benares, in 1806 prevented the widow of a Brahman from being burned.
Twelve months after her husband's death she had been goaded by her
family into the expression of a wish to burn with some relic of her
husband, preserved for the purpose. The pile was raised to her at
Râmnagar,[9] some two miles above Benares, on the opposite side of
the river Ganges. She was not well secured upon the pile, and as soon
as she felt the fire she jumped off and plunged into the river. The
people all ran after her along the bank, but the current drove her
towards Benares, whence a police boat put off and took her in.
She was almost dead with the fright and the water, in which she had
been kept afloat by her clothes. She was taken to Harding; but the
whole city of Benares was in an uproar, at the rescue of a Brahman's
widow from the funeral pile, for such it had been considered, though
the man had been a year dead. Thousands surrounded his house, and his
court was filled with the principal men of the city, imploring him to
surrender the woman; and among the rest was the poor woman's father,
who declared that he could not support his daughter; and that she
had, therefore, better be burned, as her husband's family would no
longer receive her. The uproar was quite alarming to a young man, who
felt all the responsibility upon himself in such a city as[10]
Benares, with a population of three hundred thousand people,[11] so
prone to popular insurrections, or risings _en masse_ very like them.
He long argued the point of the time that had elapsed, and the
unwillingness of the woman, but in vain; until at last the thought
struck him suddenly, and he said that 'The sacrifice was manifestly
unacceptable to their God--that the sacred river, as such, had
rejected her; she had, without being able to swim, floated down two
miles upon its bosom, in the face of an immense multitude; and it was
clear that she had been rejected. Had she been an acceptable
sacrifice, after the fire had touched her, the river would have
received her'. This satisfied the whole crowd. The father said that,
after this unanswerable argument, he would receive his daughter; and
the whole crowd dispersed satisfied.[12]
The following conversation took place one morning between me and a
native gentleman at Jubbulpore soon after suttees had been prohibited
by Government:--
'What are the castes among whom women are not permitted to remarry
after the death of their husbands?'
'They are, sir, Brahmans, Râjpûts, Baniyâs (shopkeepers), Kâyaths
(writers).'
'Why not permit them to marry, now that they are no longer permitted
to burn themselves with the dead bodies of their husbands?'
'The knowledge that they cannot unite themselves to a second husband
without degradation from caste, tends strongly to secure their
fidelity to the first, sir. Besides, if all widows were permitted to
marry again, what distinction would remain between us and people of
lower caste? We should all soon sink to a level with the lowest.'
'And so you are content to keep up your caste at the expense of the
poor widows?'
'No; they are themselves as proud of the distinction as their
husbands are.'
'And would they, do you think, like to hear the good old custom of
burning themselves restored?'
'Some of them would, no doubt.'
'Why?'
'Because they become reunited to their husbands in paradise, and are
there happy, free from all the troubles of this life.'
'But you should not let them have any troubles as widows.'
'If they behave well, they are the most honoured members of their
deceased husbands' families; nothing in such families is ever done
without consulting them, because all are proud to have the memory of
their lost fathers, sons, and brothers so honoured by their
widows.[13] But women feel that they are frail, and would often
rather burn themselves than be exposed all their lives to temptation
and suspicion.'
'And why do not the men burn themselves to avoid the troubles of
life?'
'Because they are not called to it from Heaven, as the women are.'
'And you think that the women were really called to be burned by the
Deity?'
'No doubt; we all believe that they were called and supported by the
Deity; and that no tender beings like women could otherwise
voluntarily undergo such tortures--they become inspired with
supernatural powers of courage and fortitude. When Dulî Sukul, the
Sihôrâ[14] banker's father, died, the wife of a Lodhî cultivator of
the town declared, all at once, that she had been a suttee with him
six times before; and that she would now go into paradise with him a
seventh time. Nothing could persuade her from burning herself. She
was between fifty and sixty years of age, and had grandchildren, and
all her family tried to persuade her that it must be a mistake, but
all in vain. She became a suttee, and was burnt the day after the
body of the banker.'
'Did not Dulî Sukul's family, who were Brahmans, try to dissuade her
from it, she being a Lodhî, a very low caste?'
'They did; but they said all things were possible with God; and it
was generally believed that this was a call from Heaven.'
'And what became of the banker's widow?'
'She said that she felt no divine call to the flames. This was thirty
years ago; and the banker was about thirty years of age when he
died.'
'Then he will have rather an old wife in paradise?'
'No, sir; after they pass through the flames upon earth, both become
young in paradise.'
'Sometimes women used to burn themselves with any relic of a husband,
who had died far from home, did they not?'
'Yes, sir, I remember a fisherman, about twenty years ago, who went
on some business to Benares from Jubbulpore, and who was to have been
back in two months. Six months passed away without any news of him;
and at last the wife dreamed that he had died on the road, and began
forthwith, in the middle of the night, to call out "Sat, sat, sat!"
Nothing could dissuade her from burning; and in the morning a pile
was raised for her, on the north bank of the large tank of
Hanumân,[15] where you have planted an avenue of trees. There I saw
her burned with her husband's turban in her arms, and in ten days
after her husband came back.'
'Now the burning has been prohibited, a man cannot get rid of a bad
wife so easily?'
'But she was a good wife, sir, and bad ones do not often become
suttees.'
'Who made the pile for her?'
'Some of her family, but I forget who. They thought it must have been
a call from Heaven, when, in reality, it was only a dream.'
'You are a Râjpût?'
'Yes.'
'Do Râjpûts in this part of India now destroy their female infants?'
'Never; that practice has ceased everywhere in these parts; and is
growing into disuse in Bundêlkhand, where the Râjâs, at the request
of the British Government, have prohibited it among their subjects.
This was a measure of real good. You see girls now at play in
villages, where the face of one was never seen before, nor the voice
of one heard.'
'But still those who have them grumble, and say that the Government
which caused them to be preserved should undertake to provide for
their marriage. Is it not so?'
'At first they grumbled a little, sir; but as the infants grew on
their affections, they thought no more about it.'[16]
Gurcharan Baboo, the Principal of the little Jubbulpore College,[17]
called upon me one forenoon, soon after this conversation. He was
educated in the Calcutta College; speaks and writes English
exceedingly well; is tolerably well read in English literature, and
is decidedly a _thinking man_. After talking over the matter which
caused his visit, I told him of the Lodhî woman's burning herself
with the Brahman banker at Sihôrâ, and asked him what he thought of
it. He said that 'In all probability this woman had really been the
wife of the Brahman in some former birth--of which transposition a
singular case had occurred in his own family.
'His great-grandfather had three wives, who all burnt themselves with
his body. While they were burning, a large serpent came up, and,
ascending the pile, was burnt with them. Soon after another came up,
and did the same. They were seen by the whole multitude, who were
satisfied that they had been the wives of his great-grandfather in a
former birth, and would become so again after this sacrifice. When
the "srâddh", or funeral obsequies, were performed after the
prescribed intervals,[18] the offerings and prayers were regularly
made for _six souls_ instead of four; and, to this day, every member
of his family, and every Hindoo who had heard the story, believed
that these two serpents had a just right to be considered among his
ancestors, and to be prayed for accordingly in all "srâddh".'
A few days after this conversation with the Principal of the
Jubbulpore College, I had a visit from Bholî Sukul, the present head
of the Sihôrâ banker's family, and youngest brother of the Brahman
with whose ashes the Lodhî woman burned herself. I requested him to
tell me all that he recollected about this singular suttee, and he
did so as follows:
'When my eldest brother, the father of the late Dulî Sukul, who was
so long a native collector under you in this district, died about
twenty years ago at Sihôrâ, a Lodhî woman, who resided two miles
distant in the village of Khitolî, which has been held by our family
for several generations, declared that she would burn herself with
him on the funeral pile; that she had been his wife in three
different births, had already burnt herself with him three times, and
had to burn with him four times more. She was then sixty years of
age, and had a husband living [of] about the same age. We were all
astounded when she came forward with this story, and told her that it
must be a mistake, as we were Brahmans, while she was a Lodhî. She
said that there was no mistake in the matter; that she, in the last
birth, resided with my brother in the sacred city of Benares, and one
day gave a holy man who came to ask charity salt, by mistake, instead
of sugar, with his food. That, in consequence, he told her she
should, in the next birth, be separated from her husband, and be of
inferior caste; but that, if she did her duty well in that state, she
should be reunited to him in the following birth. We told her that
all this must be a dream, and the widow of my brother insisted that,
if she were not allowed to burn herself, the other should not be
allowed to take her place. We prevented the widow from ascending the
pile, and she died at a good old age only two years ago at Sihôrâ. My
brother's body was burned at Sihôrâ, and the poor Lodhî woman came
and stole one handful of the ashes, which she placed in her bosom,
and took back with her to Khitolî. There she prevailed upon her
husband and her brother to assist her in her return to her former
husband and caste as a Brahman. No soul else would assist them, as we
got the then native chief to prohibit it; and these three persons
brought on their own heads the pile, on which she seated herself,
with the ashes in her bosom. The husband and his brother set fire to
the pile, and she was burned.'[19]
'And what is now your opinion, after a lapse of twenty years?'
'Why, that she had really been the wife of my brother; for at the
pile she prophesied that my nephew Dulî should be, what his
grandfather had been, high in the service of the Government, and, as
you know, he soon after became so.'
'And what did your father think?'
'He was so satisfied that she had been the wife of his eldest son in
a former birth, that he defrayed all the expenses of her funeral
ceremonies, and had them all observed with as much magnificence as
those of any member of the family. Her tomb is still to be seen at
Khitolî, and that of my brother at Sihôrâ.'
I went to look at these tombs with Bholî Sukul himself some short
time after this conversation, and found that all the people of the
town of Sihôrâ and village of Khitolî really believed that the old
Lodhî woman had been his brother's wife in a former birth, and had
now burned herself as his widow for the fourth time. Her tomb is at
Khitolî, and his at Sihôrâ.
Notes:
1. _Satî_, a virtuous woman, especially one who burns herself with
her husband. The word, in common usage, is transferred to the
sacrifice of the woman.
2. The women of Bundêlkhand wear the same costume, a full loin-cloth,
as those of the Jubbulpore district. North of the Jumna an ordinary
petticoat is generally worn.
3. Suttee was prohibited during the administration of Lord William
Bentinck by the Bengal Regulation xvii, dated 4th December, 1829,
extended in 1830 to Madras and Bombay. The advocates of the practice
unsuccessfully appealed to the Privy Council. Several European
officers defended the custom. A well-written account of the suttee
legislation is given in Mr. D. Boulger's work on Lord William
Bentinck in the 'Rulers of India' series.
4. Whenever it is practicable, Hindoos are placed on the banks of
sacred rivers to die, especially in Bengal.
5. For explanation of this phrase, see the following story of the
Lodhî woman, following note [14], in this chapter. The name is
abnormal. _Upadhya_ is a Brahman title meaning 'spiritual preceptor'.
Brahmans serving in the army sometimes take the title Singh, which is
more properly assumed by Râjpûts or Sikhs.
6. An instance of such a prophecy, of a favourable kind, will be
found at the end of this chapter; and another, disastrously
fulfilled, in Chapter 21, _post_.
7. Rîwâ (Rewah) is a considerable principality lying south of
Allahabad and Mirzapore and north of Sâgar. The chiefs are Baghêl
Râjpûts. The proper title of the Udaipur, or Mêwâr, chief is Rânâ,
not Raja. See 'Annals of Mewar', chapters 1-18, pp. 173-401, in the
Popular Edition of Tod's _Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan_
(Routledge, 1914), an excellent and cheap reprint. The original
quarto edition is almost unobtainable.
8. The masculine form of the word satî (suttee).
9. Well known to tourists as the seat of the Mahârâja of Benares.
10. 'of' in text.
11. In the author's time no regular census had been taken. His rough
estimate was excessive. The census figures, including the
cantonments, are: 1872, 175,188; 1901, 209,331; 1911, 203,804.
12. This Benares story, accidentally omitted from the author's text,
was printed as a note at the end of the second volume. It has now
been inserted in the place which seems most suitable. Interesting and
well-told narratives of several suttees will be found in Bernier,
_Travels in the Mogul Empire_, pp. 306-14, ed. Constable. See also
Dubois, _Hindu Manners_, &c., 3rd ed. (1906), chapter 19.
13. Widows are not always so well treated. Their life in Lower
Bengal, especially, is not a pleasant one,
14. Sihôrâ, on the road from Jubbulpore to Mirzâpur, twenty-seven
miles from the former, is a town with a population of more than
5,000. A smaller town with the same name exists in the Bhandâra
district of the Central Provinces.
15. The monkey-god. His shrines are very numerous in the Central
Provinces and Bundêlkhand.
16. Within the last hundred years more than one officer has believed
that infanticide had been suppressed by his efforts, and yet the
practice is by no means extinct. In the Agra Province the severely
inquisitorial measures adopted in 1870, and rigorously enforced, have
no doubt done much to break the custom, but, in the neighbouring
province of Oudh, the practice continued to be common for many years
later. A clear case in the Râi Barelî District came before me in
1889, though no one was punished, for lack of judicial proof against
any individual. The author discusses infanticide as practised in Oudh
in many passages of his _Journey through the Kingdom of Oudh_
(Bentley, 1858), It is possible that female infanticide may be still
prevalent in many Native States. Mr. Willoughby in the years
preceding A.D. 1849 made great progress in stamping it out among the
Jharejas of the Kathiâwâr States in the Bombay Presidency. There is
reason to hope that the crime will gradually disappear from all parts
of India, but it is difficult to say how far it still prevails,
though the general opinion is that it is now comparatively rare
(_Census Report, India_, 1911, p. 217).
17. A college of more pretensions now exists at Jabalpur
(Jubbulpore), and is affiliated in Arts and Law to the University of
Allahabad established in 1887. The small college alluded to in the
text was abolished in 1850.
18. For description of the tedious and complicated 'srâddh'
ceremonies see chapter 11 of Monier Williams's _Religious Thought and
Life in India_.
19. This version of the story differs in some minute particulars from
the version given _ante_, [14].
CHAPTER 5
Marriages of Trees--The Tank and the Plantain--Meteors--Rainbows.
Before quitting Jubbulpore, to which place I thought it very unlikely
that I should ever return, I went to visit the groves in the
vicinity, which, at the time I held the civil charge of the district
in 1828, had been planted by different native gentlemen upon lands
assigned to them rent-free for the purpose, on condition that the
holder should bind himself to plant trees at the rate of twenty-five
to the acre, and keep them up at that rate; and that for each grove,
however small, he should build and keep in repair a well, lined with
masonry, for watering the trees, and for the benefit of
travellers.[1]
Some of these groves had already begun to yield fruit, and all had
been _married_. Among the Hindoos, neither the man who plants a
grove, nor his wife, can taste of the fruit till he has _married_ one
of the mango-trees to some other tree (commonly the tamarind-tree)
that grows near it in the same grove. The proprietor of one of these
groves that stands between the cantonment and the town, old Barjôr
Singh, had spent so much in planting and watering the grove, and
building walls and wells of _pucka_[2] masonry, that he could not
afford to defray the expense of the marriage ceremonies till one of
the trees, which was older than the rest when planted, began to bear
fruit in 1833, and poor old Barjôr Singh and his wife were in great
distress that they dared not taste of the fruit whose flavour was so
much prized by their children. They began to think that they had
neglected a serious duty, and might, in consequence, be taken off
before another season could come round. They therefore sold all their
silver and gold ornaments, and borrowed all they could; and before
the next season the grove was married with all due pomp and ceremony,
to the great delight of the old pair, who tasted of the fruit in June
1834.
The larger the number of the Brahmans that are fed on the occasion of
the marriage, the greater the glory of the proprietor of the grove;
and when I asked old Barjôr Singh, during my visit to his grove, how
many he had feasted, he said, with a heavy sigh, that he had been
able to feast only one hundred and fifty. He showed me the mango-tree
which had acted the part of the bridegroom on the occasion, but the
bride had disappeared from his side. 'And where is the bride, the
tamarind?' 'The only tamarind I had in the grove died', said the old
man, 'before we could bring about the wedding; and I was obliged to
get a jasmine for a wife for my mango. I planted it here, so that we
might, as required, cover both bride and bridegroom under one canopy
during the ceremonies; but, after the marriage was over, the gardener
neglected her, and she pined away and died.'
'And what made you prefer the jasmine to all other trees after the
tamarind?'
'Because it is the most celebrated of all trees, save the rose.'
'And why not have chosen the rose for a wife?'
'Because no one ever heard of marriage between the rose and the
mango; while they [_sic_] take place every day between the mango and
the _chambêlî_ (jasmine).'[3]
After returning from the groves, I had a visit after breakfast from a
learned Muhammadan, now guardian to the young Râjâ of Uchahara,[4]
who resides part of his time at Jubbulpore. I mentioned my visit to
the groves and the curious notion of the Hindoos regarding the
necessity of marrying them; and he told me that, among Hindoos, the
man who went to the expense of making a tank dared not drink of its
waters till he had married his tank to some banana-tree, planted on
the bank for the purpose.[5]
'But what', said he with a smile, 'could you expect from men who
believe that Indra is the god who rules the heavens immediately over
the earth, that he sleeps during eight months in the year, and during
the other four his time is divided between his duties of sending down
rain upon the earth, and repelling with his arrows Râjâ Bali, who by
his austere devotions (_tapasya_) has received from the higher gods a
promise of the reversion of his dominions? The lightning which we
see', said the learned Maulavî, 'they believe to be nothing more than
the glittering of these arrows, as they are shot from the bow of
Indra upon his foe Râjâ Bali '.[6]
'But, my good friend Maulavî Sâhib, there are many good Muhammadans
who believe that the meteors, which we call shooting stars, are in
reality stars which the guardian angels of men snatch from the
spheres, and throw at the devil as they see him passing through the
air, or hiding himself under one or other of the constellations. Is
it not so?'
'Yes, it is; but we have the authority of the holy prophet for this,
as delivered down to us by his companions in the sacred traditions,
and we are bound to believe it. When our holy prophet came upon the
earth, he found it to be infested with a host of magicians, who, by
their abominable rites and incantations, get into their interest
certain devils, or demons, whom they used to send up to heaven to
listen to the orders which the angels received from God regarding men
and the world below. On hearing these orders, they came off and
reported them to the magicians, who were thereby enabled to foretell
the events which the angels were ordered to bring about. In this
manner they often overheard the orders which the angel Gabriel
received from God, and communicated them to the magicians as soon as
he could deliver them to our holy prophet. Exulting in the knowledge
obtained in this diabolical manner, these wretches tried to turn his
prophecies into ridicule; and, seeing the evil effects of such
practices among men, he prayed God to put a stop to them. From that
time guardian angels have been stationed in different parts of the
heavens, to keep off the devils; and as soon as one of them sees a
devil sneaking too near the heaven of heavens, he snatches the
nearest star, and flings it at him.'[7] This, he added, was what all
true Muhammadans believed regarding the shooting of stars. He had
read nothing about them in the works of Plato, Aristotle,
Hippocrates, or Galen, all of which he had carefully studied, and
should be glad to learn from me what modern philosophers in Europe
thought about them.
I explained to him the supposed distance and bulk of the fixed stars
visible to the naked eye; their being radiant with unborrowed light,
and probably every one of them, like our own sun, the great centre of
a solar system of its own; embracing the vast orbits of numerous
planets, revolving around it with their attendant satellites; the
stars visible to the naked eye being but a very small portion of the
whole which the telescope had now made distinctly visible to us; and
those distinctly visible being one cluster among many thousand with
which the genius of Galileo, Newton, the Herschells, and many other
modern philosophers had discovered the heavens to be studded. I
remarked that the notion that these mighty suns, the centres of
planetary systems, should be made merely to be thrown at devils and
demons, appeared to us just as unaccountable as those of the Hindoos
regarding Indra's arrows.
'But', said he, 'these foolish Hindoos believe still greater
absurdities. They believe that the rainbow is nothing but the fume of
a large snake, concealed under the ground; that he vomits forth this
fume from a hole in the surface of the earth, without being himself
seen; and, when you ask them why, in that case, the rainbow should be
in the west while the sun is in the east, and in the east while the
sun is in the west, they know not what to say.'[8]
'The truth is, my friend Maulavî Sahib, the Hindoos, like a very
great part of every other nation, are very much disposed to attribute
to supernatural influences effects that the wiser portion of our
species know to rise from natural causes.'
The Maulavî was right. In the _Mishkât-ul-Masâbih_,[9] the authentic
traditions of their prophet,[10] it is stated that Ayesha, the widow
of Muhammad, said, 'I heard His Majesty say, "The angels come down to
the region next the world, and mention the works that have been pre-
ordained in heaven; and the devils, who descend to the lowest region,
listen to what the angels say, and hear the orders predestined in
heaven, and carry them to fortune-tellers; therefore, they tell a
hundred lies with it from themselves "'[11]
'Ibn Abbâs said, "A man of His Majesty's friends informed me, that
whilst His Majesty's friends were sitting with him one night, a very
bright star shot; and His Highness said, "What did you say in the
days of ignorance when a star shot like this?" They said, "God and
His messenger know best; we used to say, a great man was born to-
night, and a great man died."[12] Then His Majesty said, "You
mistook, because the shootings of these stars are neither for the
life nor death of any person; but when our cherisher orders a work,
the bearers of the imperial throne sing hallelujahs; and the
inhabitants of the regions who are near the bearers repeat it, till
it reaches the lowest regions. After the angels which are near the
bearers of the imperial throne say, "What did your cherisher order?"
Then they are informed; and so it is handed from one region to
another, till the information reaches the people of the lowest
region. Then the devils steal it, and carry it to their friends,
(that is) magicians; and these stars are thrown at these devils; not
for the birth or death of any person. Then the things which the
magicians tell, having heard from the devils, are true, but these
magicians tell lies, and exaggerate in what they hear".'
Kutâdah said, 'God has created stars for three uses; one of them, as
a cause of ornament of the regions; the second, to stone the devil
with; the third, to direct people going through forests and on the
sea. Therefore, whoever shall explain them otherwise, does wrong, and
loses his time, and speaks from his own invention and
embellishes'.[13]
Ibn Abbâs. ['The prophet said,] "Whoever attains to the knowledge of
astrology for any other explanation than the three aforementioned,
then verily he has attained to a branch of magic. An astrologer is a
magician, and a magician is a necromancer, and a necromancer is an
infidel."'[14]
This work contains the precepts and sayings of Muhammad, as declared
by his companions, who themselves heard them, or by those who heard
them immediately from those companions; and they are considered to be
binding upon the faith and conduct of Musalmans, though not all
delivered from inspiration.
Everything that is written in the Korân itself is supposed to have
been brought direct from God by the angel Gabriel.[15]
Notes:
1. In planting mango groves, it is a rule that they shall be as far
from each other as not to admit of their branches ever meeting.
'Plant trees, but let them not touch' ('_Âm lagao, nis lageñ nahîñ_')
is the maxim. [W. H. S.]
2. _Pakkâ_; the word here means 'cemented with lime mortar', and not
only with mud (_kachchâ_).
3. The _chambêlî_ is known in science as the _Jasminum grandiflorum_,
and the mango-tree as _Mangifera Indica_.
4. A small principality west of Rîwâ, and 110 miles north-west of
Jubbulpore. It is also known as Nâgaudh, or Nâgod.
5. Compare the account of the marriage of the _tulasî_ shrub (_Ocymum
sanctum_) with the sâlagrâm stone, or fossil ammonite, in Chapter 19,
_post_.
6. There is a sublime passage in the Psalms of David, where the
lightning is said to be the arrows of God. Psalm lxxvii:
17, 'The clouds poured out water: the skies sent out a sound: thine
arrows also went abroad.
18. The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven; the lightnings
lightened the world: the earth trembled and shook.' [W. H. S.]
The passage is quoted from the Authorized Bible version; the Prayer
Book version is finer.
7. 'We guard them from every devil driven away with stones; except
him who listeneth by stealth, at whom a visible flame is darted.'
Korân, chapter 15, Sale's translation. See _post_, end of this
chapter.
8. Nine Hindoos out of ten, or perhaps ninety-nine in a hundred,
throughout India, believe the rainbow to arise from the breath of the
snake, thrown up from the surface of the earth, as water is thrown up
by whales from the surface of the ocean. [W. H. S,]
9. '_Mishkât_ is a hole in a wall in which a lamp is placed, and
_Masâbih_ the plural of "a lamp", because traditions are compared to
lamps, and this book is like that which containeth a lamp. Another
reason is, that _Masâbih_ is the name of a book, and this book
comprehends its contents' (Matthews's translation, vol. i, p. v,
note).
10. The full title is _Mishkât-ul-Masâbih, or a Collection of the
most Authentic Traditions regarding the Actions and Sayings of
Muhammed; exhibiting the Origin of the Manners and Customs; the
Civil, Religious, and Military Policy of the Muslemâns_. Translated
from the original Arabic by Captain A. N. Matthews, Bengal Artillery.
Two vols. 4to; Calcutta, 1809-10, This valuable work, published by
subscription, is now very scarce. A fine copy is in the India Office
Library.
11. Book xxi, chapter 3, part i; vol. ii, p. 384. The quotations as
given by the author are inexact. The editor has substituted correct
extracts from Matthews's text. Matthews spells the name of the
prophet's widow as Aáyeshah.
12. In Sparta, the Ephoroi, once every nine years, watched the sky
during a whole cloudless, moonless night, in profound silence; and,
if they saw a shooting star, it was understood to indicate that the
kings of Sparta had disobeyed the gods, and their authority was, in
consequence, suspended till they had been purified by an oracle from
Delphi or Olympia. [W. H. S.] This statement rests on the authority
of Plutarch, _Agis_, 11.
13. _Mishkât_. Part iii of same chapter; vol. ii, p. 386.
14. Ibid. p. 386.
15. But the prying character of these devils is described in the
Korân itself. According to Muhammadans, they had access to all the
seven heavens till the time of Moses, who got them excluded from
three. Christ got them excluded from three more; and Muhammad managed
to get them excluded from the seventh and last. 'We have placed the
twelve signs in the heavens, and have set them out in various figures
for the observation of spectators, and we guard them from every devil
driven away with stones; except him who listeneth by stealth, at whom
a visible flame is darted' (Chapter 15).
'We have adorned the lower heaven with the ornament of stars, and we
have placed therein a guard against every rebellious devil, that they
may not listen to the discourse of exalted princes, for they are
darted at from every side, to repel them, and a lasting torment is
prepared for them; except him who catcheth a word by stealth, and is
pursued by a shining flame' (Chapter 37). [W. H. 8.] Passages of this
kind should he remembered by persons who expect orthodox Muhammadans
to accept the results of modern science.
CHAPTER 6
Hindoo Marriages.
Certain it is that no Hindoo will have a marriage in his family
during the four months of the rainy season; for among eighty millions
of souls[1] not one doubts that the Great Preserver of the universe
is, during these four months, down on a visit to Râjâ Bali, and,
consequently, unable to bless the contract with his presence.[2]
Marriage is a sacred duty among Hindoos, a duty which every parent
must perform for his children, otherwise they owe him no reverence. A
family with a daughter unmarried after the age of puberty is
considered to labour under the displeasure of the gods; and no member
of the other sex considers himself _respectable_ after the age of
puberty till he is married. It is the duty of his parent or elder
brothers to have him suitably married; and, if they do not do so, he
reproaches them with his _degraded condition_. The same feeling, in a
degree, pervades all the Muhammadan community; and nothing appears so
strange to them as the apparent indifference of old bachelors among
us to their _sad condition_.
Marriage, with all its ceremonies, its rights, and its duties, fills
their imagination from infancy to age; and I do not believe there is
a country upon earth in which a larger portion of the wealth of the
community is spent in the ceremonies, or where the rights are better
secured, or the duties better enforced, notwithstanding all the
disadvantages of the laws of polygamy. Not one man in ten can afford
to maintain more than one wife, and not one in ten of those who can
afford it will venture upon 'a sea of troubles' in taking a second,
if he has a child by the first. One of the evils which press most
upon Indian society is the necessity which long usage has established
of squandering large sums in marriage ceremonies. Instead of giving
what they can to their children to establish them, and enable them to
provide for their families and rise in the world, parents everywhere
feel bound to squander all they can borrow in the festivities of
their marriage. Men in India could never feel secure of being
permitted freely to enjoy their property under despotic and unsettled
governments, the only kind of governments they knew or hoped for; and
much of the means that would otherwise have been laid out in forming
substantial works, with a view to a return in income of some sort or
another, for the remainder of their own lives and of those of their
children, were expended in tombs, temples, sarâis, tanks, groves, and
other works--useful and ornamental, no doubt, but from which neither
they nor their children could ever hope to derive income of any kind.
The same feeling of insecurity gave birth, no doubt, to this
preposterous usage, which tends so much to keep down the great mass
of the people of India to that grade in which they were born, and in
which they have nothing but their manual labour to depend upon for
their subsistence. Every man feels himself bound to waste all his
stock and capital, and exhaust all his credit, in feeding idlers
during the ceremonies which attend the marriage of his children,
because his ancestors squandered similar sums, and he would sink in
the estimation of society if he were to allow his children to be
married with less.
But it could not have been solely because men could not invest their
means in profitable works, with any chance of being long permitted to
enjoy the profits under such despotic and unsettled governments, that
they squandered them in feeding idle people in marriage ceremonies;
since temples, tanks, and groves secured esteem in this life, and
promised some advantage in the next, and an outlay in such works
might therefore have been preferred. But under such governments a
man's title even to the exclusive possession of his wife might not be
considered as altogether secure under the mere sanction of religion;
and the outlay in feeding the family, tribe, and neighbourhood during
the marriage ceremony seems to have been considered as a kind of
value in exchange given for her to society. There is nothing that she
and her husband recollect through life with so much pride and
pleasure as the cost of their marriage, if it happen to be large for
their condition of life; it is their _amoka_, their title of
nobility;[3] and their parents consider it their duty to make it as
large as they can. A man would hardly feel secure of the sympathy of
his family, tribe, circle of society, or rulers, for the loss of 'his
ox, or his ass, or anything that is his', if it should happen to have
cost him nothing; and, till he could feel secure of their sympathy
for the loss, he would not feel very secure in the possession. He,
therefore, or those who are interested in his welfare, strengthen his
security by an outlay which invests his wife with a tangible value in
cost, well understood by his circle and rulers. His family, tribe,
and circle have received the purchase money, and feel bound to secure
to him the commodity purchased; and, as they are in all such matters
commonly much stronger than the rulers themselves, the money spent
among them is more efficacious in securing the exclusive enjoyment of
the wife than if it had been paid in taxes or fees to them for a
marriage licence.[4] The pride of families and tribes, and the desire
of the multitude to participate in the enjoyment of such ceremonies,
tend to keep up this usage after the cause in which it originated may
have ceased to operate; but it will, it is to be hoped, gradually
decline with the increased feeling of security to person, property,
and character under our rule. Nothing is now more common than to see
an individual in the humblest rank spending all that he has, or can
borrow, in the marriage of one of many daughters, and trusting to
Providence for the means of marrying the others; nor in the higher,
to find a young man, whose estates have, during a long minority,
under the careful management of Government officers, been freed from
very heavy debts, with which an improvident father had left them
encumbered, the moment he attains his majority and enters upon the
management, borrowing three times their annual rent, at an exorbitant
interest, to marry a couple of sisters, at the same rate of outlay in
feasts and fireworks that his grandmother was married with.[5]
Notes:
1. The author's figure of 'eighty millions' was a mere guess, and
probably, even in his time, was much below the mark. The figures of
the census of 1911 are:
Total population of India, excluding
Burma . . . . 301,432,623
Hindus . . . . 217,197,213
The proportions in different provinces vary enormously.
2. See _ante_. Chapter 1, note 3.
3. The word _amoka_ is corrupt, and even Sir George Grierson cannot
suggest a plausible explanation. Can it be a misprint for _anka_, in
the sense of 'stamp'?
4. Akbar levied a tax on marriages, ranging from a single copper coin
(_dâm_ = 1/40th of rupee) for poor people to 10 gold mohurs, or about
150 rupees, for high officials. Abûl Fazl declares that 'the payment
of this tax is looked upon as auspicious', a statement open to doubt
(Blochmann, transl. _Aîn_, vol. i, p. 278). In 1772 Warren Hastings
abolished the marriage fees levied up to that time in Bengal by the
Muhammadan law-officers. But I am disposed to think that a modern
finance minister might reconsider the propriety of imposing a
moderate tax, carefully graduated.
5. Extravagance in marriage expenses is still one of the principal
curses of Indian society. Considerable efforts to secure reform have
been made by various castes during recent years, but, as yet, small
results only have been attained. The editor has seen numerous painful
examples of the wreck of fine estates by young proprietors assuming
the management after a long term of the careful stewardship of the
Court of Wards.
CHAPTER 7
The Purveyance System,
We left Jubbulpore on the morning of the 20th November, 1835, and
came on ten miles to Baghaurî. Several of our friends of the 29th
Native Infantry accompanied us this first stage, where they had a
good day's shooting. In 1830 I established here some venders in wood
to save the people from the miseries of the purveyance system; but I
now found that a native collector, soon after I had resigned the
civil charge of the district, and gone to Sâgar,[1] in order to
ingratiate himself with the officers and get from them favourable
testimonials, gave two regiments, as they marched over this road,
free permission to help themselves gratis out of the store-rooms of
these poor men, whom I had set up with a loan from the public
treasury, declaring that it must be the wish and intention of
Government to supply their public officers free of cost; and
consequently that no excuses could be attended to. From that time
shops and shopkeepers have disappeared. Wood for all public officers
and establishments passing this road has ever since, as in former
times, been collected from the surrounding villages gratis, under the
purveyance system, in which all native public officers delight, and
which, I am afraid, is encouraged by European officers, either from
their ignorance or their indolence. They do not like the trouble of
seeing the men paid either for their wood or their labour; and their
head servants of the kitchen or the wardrobe weary and worry them out
of their best resolutions on the subject. They make the poor men sit
aloof by telling them that their master is a tiger before breakfast,
and will eat them if they approach; and they tell their masters that
there is no hope of getting the poor men to come for their money till
they have bathed or taken their breakfast. The latter wait in hopes
that the gentleman will come out or send for them as soon as he has
been tamed by his breakfast; but this meal has put him in good humour
with all the world, and he is now no longer unwilling to trust the
payment of the poor men to his butler, or his _valet de chambre_.
They keep the poor wretches waiting, declaring that they have as yet
received no orders to pay them, till, hungry and weary, in the
afternoon they all walk back to their homes in utter despair of
getting anything.
If, in the meantime, the gentleman comes out, and finds the men, his
servants pacify him by declaring either that they have not yet had
time to carry his orders into effect, that they could not get copper
change for silver rupees, or that they were anxious to collect all
the people together before they paid any, lest they might pay some of
them twice over. It is seldom, however, that he comes among them at
all; he takes it for granted that the people have all been paid; and
passes the charge in the account of his servants, who all get what
these porters ought to have received. Or, perhaps the gentleman may
persuade himself that, if he pays his valet or butler, these
functionaries will never pay the poor men, and think that he had
better sit quiet and keep the money in his own pocket. The native
police or revenue officer is directed by his superior to have wood
collected for the camp of a regiment or great civil officers, and he
sends out his myrmidons to employ the people around in felling trees,
and cutting up wood enough to supply not only the camp, but his own
cook-rooms and those of his friends for the next six months. The men
so employed commonly get nothing; but the native officer receives
credit for all manner of superlatively good qualities, which are
enumerated in a certificate. Many a fine tree, dear to the affections
of families and village communities, has been cut down in spite, or
redeemed from the axe by a handsome present to this officer or his
myrmidons. Lambs, kids, fowls, milk, vegetables, all come flowing in
for the great man's table from poor people, who are too hopeless to
seek for payment, or who are represented as too proud and wealthy to
receive it. Such always have been and such always will be some of the
evils of the purveyance system. If a police officer receives an order
from the magistrate to provide a regiment, detachment, or individual
with boats, carts, bullocks, or porters, he has all that can be found
within his jurisdiction forthwith seized--releases all those whose
proprietors are able and willing to pay what he demands, and
furnishes the rest, which are generally the worst, to the persons who
require them. Police officers derive so much profit from these
applications that they are always anxious they should be made; and
will privately defeat all attempts of private individuals to provide
themselves by dissuading or intimidating the proprietors of vehicles
from voluntarily furnishing them. The gentleman's servant who is sent
to procure them returns and tells his master that there are plenty of
vehicles, but that their proprietors dare not send them without
orders from the police; and that the police tell him they dare not
give such orders without the special sanction of the magistrate. The
magistrate is written to, but declares that his police have been
prohibited from interfering in such matters without special orders,
since the proprietors ought to be permitted to send their vehicles to
whom they choose, except on occasions of great public emergency; and,
as the present cannot be considered as one of these occasions, he
does not feel authorized to issue such orders. On the Ganges, many
men have made large fortunes by pretending a general authority to
seize boats for the use of the commissariat, or for other Government
purposes, on the ground of having been once or twice employed on that
duty; and what they get is but a small portion of that which the
public lose. One of these self-constituted functionaries has a boat
seized on its way down or up the river; and the crew, who are merely
hired for the occasion, and have a month's wages in advance, seeing
no prospect of getting soon out of the hands of this pretended
Government servant, desert, and leave the boat on the sands; while
the owner, if he ever learns the real state of the case, thinks it
better to put up with his loss than to seek redress through expensive
courts, and distant local authorities. If the boat happens to be
loaded and to have a supercargo, who will not or cannot bribe high
enough, he is abandoned on the sands by his crew; in his search for
aid from the neighbourhood, his helplessness becomes known--he is
perhaps murdered, or runs away in the apprehension of being so--the
boat is plundered and made a wreck. Still the dread of the delays and
costs of our courts, and the utter hopelessness of ever recovering
the lost property, prevent the proprietors from seeking redress, and
our Government authorities know nothing of the circumstances.
We remained at Baghaurî the 21st to enable our people to prepare for
the long march they had before them, and to see a little more of our
Jubbulpore friends, who were to have another day's shooting, as black
partridges[2] and quail had been found abundant in the neighbourhood
of our camp.[3]
Notes:
1. Or Saugor, the head-quarters of the district of that name in the
Central Provinces. The town is 109 miles north-west of Jabalpur. The
author took charge of the Sâgar district in January 1831.
2. _Francolinus vulgaris_.
3. The purveyance system (Persian _rasad rasânî_) above described is
one of the necessary evils of Oriental life. It will be observed that
the author, though so keenly sensitive to the abuses attending the
system, proposes no substitute for it, and confesses that the small
attempt he made to check abuse was a failure. From time immemorial it
has been the custom for Government officials in India to be supplied
with necessaries by the people of the country through which their
camps pass. Under native Governments no officials ever dream of
paying for anything. In British territory requisitions are limited,
and in well ordered civil camps nothing is taken without payment
except wood, coarse earthen vessels, and grass. The hereditary
village potter supplies the pots, and this duty is fully recognized
as one attaching to his office. The landholders supply the wood and
grass. None of these things are ordinarily procurable by private
purchase in sufficient quantity, and in most cases could not be
bought at all. Officers commanding troops send in advance
requisitions specifying the quantities of each article needed, and
the indent is met by the civil authorities. Everything so indented
for, including wood and grass, is supposed to be paid for, but in
practice it is often impossible, with the agency available, to ensure
actual payment to the persons entitled. Troops and the people in
civil camps must live, and all that can be done is to check abuse, so
far as possible, by vigilant administration. The obligation of
landholders to supply necessaries for troops and officials on the
march is so well established that it forms one of the conditions of
the contract with Government under which proprietors in the
permanently settled province of Benares hold their lands. The extreme
abuses of which the system is capable under a lax and corrupt native
Government are abundantly illustrated in the author's _Journey
through the Kingdom of Oudh_. 'The System of Purveyance and Forced
Labour' is the subject of article xxv in the Hon. F, J, Shore's
curious book, _Notes on Indian Affairs_ (London, 1837, 2 vols. 8vo).
Many of the abuses denounced by Mr. Shore have been suppressed, but
some, unhappily, still exist, and are likely to continue for many
years.
CHAPTER 8
Religious Sects--Self-government of the Castes--Chimney-sweepers--
Washerwomen[1]--Elephant Drivers.
Mîr Salâmat Alî, the head native collector of the district, a
venerable old Musalmân and most valuable public servant, who has been
labouring in the same vineyard with me for the last fifteen years
with great zeal, ability, and integrity, came to visit me after
breakfast with two very pretty and interesting young sons. While we
were sitting together my wife's under-woman[2] said to some one who
was talking with her outside the tent-door, 'If that were really the
case, should I not be degraded?' 'You see, Mîr Sâhib',[3] said I,
'that the very lowest members of society among these Hindoos still
feel the pride of caste, and dread exclusion from their own, however
low.'[4]
'Yes', said the Mîr, 'they are a very strange kind of people, and I
question whether they ever had a real prophet among them.'
'I question, Mîr Sahib, whether they really ever had such a person.
They of course think the incarnations of their three great divinities
were beings infinitely superior to prophets, being in all their
attributes and prerogatives equal to the divinities themselves.[5]
But we are disposed to think that these incarnations were nothing
more than great men whom their flatterers and poets have exalted into
gods--this was the way in which men made their gods in ancient Greece
and Egypt. These great men were generally conquerors whose glory
consisted in the destruction of their fellow creatures; and this is
the glory which their flatterers are most prone to extol. All that
the poets have sung of the actions of men is now received as
revelation from heaven; though nothing can be more monstrous than the
actions attributed to the best incarnation, Krishna, of the best of
their gods, Vishnu.[6]
'No doubt', said Salâmat Ali; 'and had they ever had a real prophet
among them he would have revealed better things to them. Strange
people! when their women go on pilgrimages to Gayâ, they have their
heads shaved before the image of their god; and the offering of the
hair is equivalent to the offer of their heads;[7] for heads, thank
God, they dare no longer offer within the Company's territories.'
'Do you. Mîr Sahib, think that they continue to offer up human
sacrifices anywhere?'
'Certainly I do. There is a Râjâ at Ratanpur, or somewhere between
Mandlâ and Sambalpur, who has a man offered up to Dêvî every year,
and that man must be a Brahman. If he can get a Brahman traveller,
well and good; if not, he and his priests offer one of his own
subjects. Every Brahman that has to pass through this territory goes
in disguise.[8] With what energy did our emperor Aurangzêb apply
himself to put down iniquities like this in the Râjputâna states, but
all in vain. If a Râjâ died, all his numerous wives burnt themselves
with his body--even their servants, male and female, were obliged to
do the same; for, said his friends, what is he to do in the next
world without attendants? The pile was enormous. On the top sat the
queen with the body of the prince; the servants, male and female,
according to their degree, below; and a large army stood all round to
drive into the fire again or kill all who should attempt to
escape.'[9]
'This is all very true, Mîr Sâhib, but you must admit that, though
there is a great deal of absurdity in their customs and opinions,
there is, on the other hand, much that we might all take an example
from. The Hindoo believes that Christians and Musalmâns may be as
good men in all relations of life as himself, and in as fair a way to
heaven as he is; for he believes that my Bible and your Korân are as
much revelations framed by the Deity for our guidance, as the
Shâstras are for his. He doubts not that our Christ was the Son of
God, nor that Muhammad was the prophet of God; and all that he asks
from us is to allow him freely to believe in his own gods, and to
worship in his own way. Nor does one caste or sect of Hindoos ever
believe itself to be alone in the right way, or detest any other for
not following in the same path, as they have as much of toleration
for each other as they have for us.[10]
'True,' exclaimed Salâmat Alî, 'too true! we have ruined each other;
we have cut each other's throats; we have lost the empire, and we
deserve to lose it. You won it, and you preserved it by your _union_-
-ten men with one heart are equal to a hundred men with different
hearts. A Hindoo may feel himself authorized to take in a Musalmân,
and might even think it _meritorious_ to do so; but he would never
think it meritorious to take in one of his own religion. There are no
less than seventy-two sects of Muhammadans; and every one of these
sects would not only take in the followers of every other religion on
earth, but every member of every one of the other seventy-one sects;
and the nearer that sect is to its own, the greater the merit in
taking in its members.'[11]
'Something has happened of late to annoy you, I fear, Mîr Sâhib?'
'Something happens to annoy us every day, sir, where we are more than
one sect of us together; and wherever you find Musalmâns you will
find them divided into sects.'
It is not, perhaps, known to many of my countrymen in India that in
every city and town in the country the right of sweeping the houses
and streets is one of the most intolerable of monopolies, supported
entirely by the pride of caste among the scavengers, who are all of
the lowest class. The right of sweeping within a certain range is
recognized by the caste to belong to a certain member; and, if any
other member presumes to sweep within that range, he is
excommunicated--no other member will smoke out of his pipe, or drink
out of his jug; and he can get restored to caste only by a feast to
the whole body of sweepers. If any housekeeper within a particular
circle happens to offend the sweeper of that range, none of his filth
will be removed till he pacifies him, because no other sweeper will
dare to touch it; and the people of a town are often more tyrannized
over by these people than by any other.[12]
It is worthy of remark that in India the spirit of combination is
always in the inverse ratio to the rank of the class; weakest in the
highest, and strongest in the lowest class. All infringements upon
the rules of the class are punished by fines. Every fine furnishes a
feast at which every member sits and enjoys himself. Payment is
enforced by excommunication--no one of the caste will eat, drink, or
smoke with the convicted till the fine is paid; and, as every one
shares in the fine, every one does his best to enforce payment. The
fines are imposed by the elders, who know the circumstances of the
culprit, and fix the amount accordingly. Washermen will often at a
large station combine to prevent the washermen of one gentleman from
washing the clothes of the servants of any other gentleman, or the
servants of one gentleman from getting their clothes washed by any
other person than their own master's washerman. This enables them
sometimes to raise the rate of washing to double the fair or ordinary
rate; and at such places the washermen are always drunk with one
continued routine of feasts from the fines levied.[13] The cost of
these fees falls ultimately upon the poor servants or their masters.
This combination, however, is not always for bad or selfish purposes.
I was once on the staff of an officer commanding a brigade on
service, whose elephant driver exercised an influence over him that
was often mischievous and sometimes dangerous;[14] for in marching
and choosing his ground, this man was more often consulted than the
quarter-master-general. His bearing was most insolent, and became
intolerable, as well to the European gentlemen as to the people of
his caste.[15] He at last committed himself by saying that he would
spit in the face of another gentleman's elephant driver with whom he
was disputing. All the elephant drivers in our large camp were
immediately assembled, and it was determined in council to refer the
matter to the decision of the Râjâ of Darbhanga's driver, who was
acknowledged the head of the class. We were all breakfasting with the
brigadier after muster when the reply came-the distance to Darbhanga
from Nâthpur on the Kûsî river, where we then were, must have been a
hundred and fifty miles.[16] We saw men running in all directions
through the camp, without knowing why, till at last one came and
summoned the brigadier's driver. With a face of terror he came and
implored the protection of the brigadier; who got angry, and fumed a
good deal, but seeing no expression of sympathy on the faces of his
officers, he told the man to go and hear his sentence. He was
escorted to a circle formed by all the drivers in camp, who were
seated on the grass. The offender was taken into the middle of the
circle and commanded to stand on one leg[17] while the Raja's
driver's letter was read. He did so, and the letter directed him to
apologize to the offended party, pay a heavy fine for a feast, and
pledge himself to the offended drivers never to offend again. All the
officers in camp were delighted, and some, who went to hear the
sentence explained, declared that in no court in the world could the
thing have been done with more solemnity and effect. The man's
character was quite altered by it, and he became the most docile of
drivers. On the same principle here stated of enlisting the community
in the punishment of offenders, the New Zealanders, and other savage
tribes who have been fond of human flesh, have generally been found
to confine the feast to the body of those who were put to death for
offences against the state or the individual. I and all the officers
of my regiment were at one time in the habit of making every servant
who required punishment or admonition to bring immediately, and give
to the first religious mendicant we could pick up, the fine we
thought just. All the religionists in the neighbourhood declared that
justice had never been so well administered in any other regiment; no
servant got any sympathy from them--they were all told that their
masters were far too lenient.
We crossed the Hiran river[18] about ten miles from our last ground
on the 22nd,[19] and came on two miles to our tents in a mango grove
close to the town of Katangî,[20] and under the Vindhya range of
sandstone hills, which rise almost perpendicular to the height of
some eight hundred feet over the town. This range from Katangî skirts
the Nerbudda valley to the north, as the Sâtpura range skirts it to
the south; and both are of the same sandstone formation capped with
basalt upon which here and there are found masses of laterite, or
iron clay. Nothing has ever yet been found reposing upon this iron
clay.[21] The strata of this range have a gentle and almost
imperceptible dip to the north, at right angles to its face which
overlooks the valley, and this face has everywhere the appearance of
a range of gigantic round bastions projecting into what was perhaps a
lake, and is now a well-peopled, well-cultivated, and very happy
valley, about twenty miles wide. The river crosses and recrosses it
diagonally. Near Jubbulpore it flows along for some distance close
under the Sâtpura range to the south; and crossing over the valley
from Bheraghât, it reaches the Vindhya range to the north, at the
point where it reaches the Hiran river, forty miles below.
Notes:
1. This is a slip, probably due to the printer's reader. There are no
chimney-sweepers in India. The word should be 'sweepers'. The members
of this caste and a few other degraded communities, such as the Doms,
do all the sweeping, scavenging, and conservancy work in India.
'Washerwomen' is another slip: read 'Washermen'.
2. The 'under-woman', or 'second ayah', was a member of the sweeper
caste.
3. The title Mîr Sâhib implies that Salâmat Alî was a Sayyid,
claiming descent from Alî, the cousin, son-in-law, and pupil of
Muhammad, who became Khalîf in A.D. 656.
4. The sweeper castes stand outside the Hindoo pale, and often
incline to Muhammadan practices. They worship a special form of the
Deity, under the names of Lâl Beg, Lâl Guru, &c.
5. No _avatâr_ or incarnation of Brahma is known to most Hindoos, and
incarnations of Siva are rarely mentioned. The only _avatârs_
ordinarily recognized are those of Vishnu, as enumerated ante.
Chapter 2, note 4.
6. This theory is a very inadequate explanation of the doctrine of
_avatârs_.
7. 'Women . . . are most careful to preserve their hair intact. They
pride themselves on its length and weight. For a woman to have to
part with her hair is one of the greatest of degradations, and the
most terrible of all trials. It is the mark of widowhood. Yet in some
sacred places, especially at the confluence of rivers, the cutting
off and offering of a few locks of hair (_Venî-dânam_) by a virtuous
wife is considered a highly meritorious act' (Monier Williams,
_Religious Thought and Life in India_, p, 375). Gayâ in Bihâr, fifty-
five miles south of Patna, is much frequented by pilgrims devoted to
Vishnu.
8. All the places named are in the Central Provinces. Ratanpur, in
the Bilâspur District, is a place of much antiquarian interest, full
of ruins; Mandlâ, in the Mandlâ District, was the capital of the
later Gond chiefs of Garhâ Mandlâ; and Sambalpur is the capital of
the Sambalpur District. If the story is true, the selection of a
Brahman for sacrifice is remarkable, though not without precedent.
Human sacrifice has prevailed largely in India, and is not yet quite
extinct. In 1891 some Jâts in the Muzaffarnagar District of the
United Provinces sacrificed a boy in a very painful manner for some
unascertained magical purpose. It was supposed that the object was to
induce the gods to grant offspring to a childless woman. Other
similar cases have occurred in recent years. One occurred close to
Calcutta in 1892. In the hill tracts of Orissa bordering on the
Central Provinces the rite of human sacrifice was practised by the
Khonds on an awful scale, and with horrid cruelty, It was suppressed
by the special efforts of Macpherson, Campbell, MacViccar, and other
officers, between the years 1837 and 1854. Daring that period the
British officers rescued 1,506 victims intended for sacrifice
(_Narrative of Major-General John Campbell, C.B., of his Operations
in the Hill Tracts of Orissa for the Suppression of Human Sacrifices
and Female Infanticide_. Printed for private circulation. London:
Hurst and Blackett, 1861). The rite, when practised by Hindoos, may
have been borrowed from some of the aboriginal races. The practice,
however, has been so general throughout the world that few peoples
can claim the honour of freedom from the stain of adopting it at one
time or another, Much curious information on the subject, and many
modern instances of human sacrifices in India, are collected in the
article 'Sacrifice' in Balfour, _Cyclopaedia of India_, 3rd edition,
1885. Major S. C. Macpherson, _Memorials of Service in India_ (1865),
and Frazer, _Golden Bough_, 3rd edition, Part V, vol. i (1912), pp.
236 seq., may also be consulted.
9. Bernier vividly describes an 'infernal tragedy' of this kind which
he witnessed, in or about the year 1659, during Aurangzêb's reign, in
Râjputâna. On that occasion five female slaves burnt themselves with
their mistress (_Travels_, ed. Constable and V. A. Smith (1914), p.
309).
10. Hinduism is a social system, not a creed, A Hindoo may believe,
or disbelieve, what speculative doctrine he chooses, but he must not
eat, drink, or marry, save in accordance with the custom of his
caste. Compare Asoka on toleration; 'The sects of other people all
deserve reverence for one reason or another' (Rock Edict xii; V. A.
Smith, _Asoka_, 2nd edition (1909), p. 170).
11. Mîr Salâmat Alî is a stanch Sunnî, the sect of Osmân; and they
are always at daggers drawn with the Shîas, or the sect of Alî. He
alludes to the Shîas when he says that one of the seventy-two sects
is always ready to take in the whole of the other seventy-one.
Muhammad, according to the traditions, was one day heard to say, 'The
time will come when my followers will he divided into seventy-three
sects; all of them will assuredly go to hell save one.' Every one of
the seventy-three sects believes itself to be the one happily
excepted by their prophet, and predestined to paradise. I am
sometimes disposed to think Muhammad was self-deluded, however
difficult it might be to account for so much 'method in his madness'.
It is difficult to conceive a man placed in such circumstances with
more amiable dispositions or with juster views of the rights and
duties of men in all their relations with each other, than are
exhibited by him on almost all occasions, save where the question of
_faith_ in his divine mission was concerned.
A very interesting and useful book might be made out of the history
of those men, more or less mad, by whom multitudes of mankind have
been led and perhaps governed; and a philosophical analysis of the
points on which they were really mad and really sane, would show many
of them to have been fit subjects for a madhouse during the whole
career of their glory. [W. H. S.]
For an account of Muhammadan sects, see section viii of the
Preliminary Dissertation in Sale's Korân, entitled, 'Of the Principal
Sects among the Muhammadans; and of those who have pretended to
Prophecy among the Arabs, in or since the Time of Muhammad'; and T.
P. Hughes, _Dictionary of Islam_ (1885). The chief sects of the
Sunnîs, or Traditionists, are four in number. 'The principal sects of
the Shîas are five, which are subdivided into an almost innumerable
number.' The court of the kings of Oudh was Shîa. In most parts of
India the Sunnî faith prevails.
The relation between genius and insanity is well expressed by Dryden
(_Absalom and Achitopfel_):
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.
The treatise of Professor Cesare Lombroso, entitled _The Man of
Genius_ (London edition, 1891), is devoted to proof and illustration
of the proposition that genius is 'a special morbid condition'. He
deals briefly with the case of Muhammad at pages 31, 39, and 325,
maintaining that the prophet, like Saint Paul, Julius Caesar, and
many other men of genius, was subject to epileptic fits. The
Professor's book seems to be exactly what Sir W. H. Sleeman desired
to see.
12. In the author's time, when municipal conservancy and sanitation
were almost unknown in India, the tyranny of the sweepers' guild was
chiefly felt as a private inconvenience. It is now one of the
principal of the many difficulties, little understood in Europe,
which bar the progress of Indian sanitary reform. The sweepers cannot
be readily coerced because no Hindoo or Musalmân would do their work
to save his life, nor will he pollute himself even by beating the
refractory scavenger. A strike of sweepers on the occasion of a great
fair, or of a cholera epidemic, is a most dangerous calamity. The
vested rights described in the text are so fully recognized in
practice that they are frequently the subject of sale or mortgage.
13. The low-caste Hindoos are generally fond of drink, when they can
get it, but seldom commit crime under its influence.
14. An elephant driver, by reason of his position on the animal, has
opportunities for private conversation with his master.
15. Elephant drivers (_mahouts_) are Muhammadans, who should have no
caste, but Indian Musalmâns have become Hinduized, and fallen under
the dominion of caste.
16. Darbhanga is in Tirhût, seventy miles NE. of Dinapore. The Kûsî
(Kôsî or Koosee) river rises in the mountains of Nepâl, and falls
into the Ganges after a course of about 325 miles. Nâthpur, in the
Puraniya (Purneah) District, is a mart for the trade with Nepal.
17. The customary attitude of a suppliant.
18. A small river which falls into the Nerbudda on the right-hand
side, at Sânkal. Its general course is south-west.
19. November, 1835.
20. Described in the _Gazetteer_ (1870) as 'a large but decaying
village in the Jabalpur district, situated at the foot of the Bhânrer
hills, twenty-two miles to the north-west of Jabalpur, on the north
side of the Hiran, and on the road to Sâgar'.
21. The convenient restriction of the name Vindhya to the hills
north, and of Sâtpura to the hills south of the Nerbudda is of modern
origin (_Manual of the Geology of India_, 1st ed., Part I, p. iv).
The Sâtpura range, thus defined, separates the valley of the Nerbudda
from the valleys of the Taptî flowing west, and the Mahânadî flowing
east. The Vindhyan sandstones certainly are a formation of immense
antiquity, perhaps pre-Silurian. They are azoic, or devoid of
fossils; and it is consequently impossible to determine exactly their
geological age, or 'horizon' (ibid. p. xxiii). The cappings of
basalt, in some cases with laterite superimposed, suggest many
difficult problems, which will be briefly discussed in the notes to
Chapters 14 and 17.
CHAPTER 9
The Great Iconoclast--Troops routed by Hornets--The Rânî of Garhâ--
Hornets' Nests in India.
On the 23rd,[1] we came on nine miles to Sangrâmpur, and, on the
24th, nine more to the valley of Jabêrâ,[2] situated on the western
extremity of the bed of a large lake, which is now covered by twenty-
four villages. The waters were kept in by a large wall that united
two hills about four miles south of Jabêrâ. This wall was built of
great cut freestone blocks from the two hills of the Vindhiya range,
which it united. It was about half a mile long, one hundred feet
broad at the base, and about one hundred feet high. The stones,
though cut, were never, apparently, cemented; and the wall has long
given way in the centre, through which now falls a small stream that
passes from east to west of what was once the bottom of the lake, and
now is the site of so many industrious and happy little village
communities.[3] The proprietor of the village of Jabêrâ, in whose
mango grove our tents were pitched, conducted me to the ruins of the
wall; and told me that it had been broken down by the order of the
Emperor Aurangzêb.[4] History to these people is all a fairy tale;
and this emperor is the great destroyer of everything that the
Muhammadans in their fanaticism have demolished of the Hindoo
sculpture or architecture; and yet, singular as it may appear, they
never mention his name with any feelings of indignation or hatred.
With every scene of his supposed outrage against their gods or their
temples, there is always associated the recollection of some instance
of his piety, and the Hindoos' glory--of some idol, for instance, or
column, preserved from his fury by a miracle, whose divine origin he
is supposed at once to have recognized with all due reverence.
At Bherâgarh,[5] the high priest of the temple told us that
Aurangzêb and his soldiers knocked off the heads, arms, and noses of
all the idols, saying that 'if they had really any of the godhead in
them, they would assuredly now show it, and save themselves'. But
when they came to the door of Gaurî Sankar's apartments, they were
attacked by a nest of hornets, that put the whole of the emperor's
army to the rout; and his imperial majesty called out: 'Here we have
really something like a god, and we shall not suffer him to be
molested; if all your gods could give us proof like this of their
divinity, not a nose of them would ever be touched'.
The popular belief, however, is that after Aurangzêb's army had
struck off all the prominent features of the other gods, one of the
soldiers entered the temple, and struck off the ear of one of the
prostrate images underneath their vehicle, the Bull. 'My dear', said
Gaurî, 'do you see what these saucy men are about?' Her consort
turned round his head;[6] and, seeing the soldiers around him,
brought all the hornets up from the marble rocks below, where there
are still so many nests of them, and the whole army fled before them
to Teorî, five miles.[7] It is very likely that some body of troops
by whom the rest of the images had been mutilated, may have been
driven off by a nest of hornets from within the temple where this
statue stands. I have seen six companies of infantry, with a train of
artillery and a squadron of horse, all put to the rout by a single
nest of hornets, and driven off some miles with all their horses and
bullocks. The officers generally save themselves by keeping within
their tents, and creeping under their bed-clothes, or their carpets;
and servants often escape by covering themselves up in their
blankets, and lying perfectly still. Horses are often stung to a
state of madness, in which they throw themselves over precipices and
break their limbs, or kill themselves. The grooms, in trying to save
their horses, are generally the people who suffer most in a camp
attacked by such an enemy. I have seen some so stung as to recover
with difficulty; and I believe there have been instances of people
not recovering at all. In such a frightful scene I have seen a
bullock sitting and chewing the cud as calmly as if the whole thing
had been got up for his amusement. The hornets seldom touch any
animal that remains perfectly still.
On the bank of the Bînâ river at Eran, in the Sâgar district, is a
beautiful pillar of a single freestone, more than fifty feet high,
surmounted by a figure of Krishna, with the glory round his head.[8]
Some few of the rays of this glory have been struck off by lightning;
but the people declare that this was done by a shot fired at it from
a cannon by order of Aurangzêb, as his army was marching by on its
way to the Deccan. Before the scattered fragments, however, could
reach the ground, the air was filled, they say, by a swarm of
hornets, that put
the whole army to flight; and the emperor ordered his gunners to
desist, declaring that he was 'satisfied of the presence of the god'.
There is hardly any part of India in which, according to popular
belief, similar miracles were not worked to convince the emperor of
the peculiar merits or sanctity of particular idols or temples,
according to the traditions of the people, derived, of course, from
the inventions of priests. I should mention that these hornets
suspend their nests to the branches of the highest trees, under
rocks, or in old deserted temples. Native travellers, soldiers, and
camp followers, cook and eat their food under such trees; but they
always avoid one in which there is a nest of hornets, particularly on
a still day. Sometimes they do not discover the nest till it is too
late. The unlucky wight goes on feeding his fire, and delighting in
the prospect of the feast before him, as the smoke ascends in curling
eddies to the nest of the hornets. The moment it touches them they
sally forth and descend, and sting like mad creatures every living
thing they find in motion. Three companies of my regiment were
escorting treasure in boats from Allahabad to Cawnpore for the army
under the Marquis of Hastings, in 1817.[9] The soldiers all took
their dinners on shore every day; and one still afternoon a sipâhî
(sepoy), by cooking his dinner under one of those nests without
seeing it, sent the infuriated swarm among the whole of his comrades,
who were cooking in the same grove, and undressed, as they always are
on such occasions. Treasure, food, and all were immediately deserted,
and the whole of the party, save the European officers, were up to
their noses in the river Ganges. The hornets hovered over them; and
it was amusing to see them bobbing their heads under as the insects
tried to pounce upon them. The officers covered themselves up in the
carpets of their boats; and, as the day was a hot one, their
situation was still more uncomfortable than that of the men. Darkness
alone put an end to the conflict.
I should mention that the poor old Rânî, or Queen of Garhâ, Lachhmî
Kuâr, came out as far as Katangî with us to take leave of my wife, to
whom she has always been attached. She had been in the habit of
spending a day with her at my house once a week; and being the only
European lady from whom she had ever received any attention, or
indeed ever been on terms of any intimacy with, she feels the more
sensible of the little offices of kindness and courtesy she has
received from her.[10] Her husband, Narhar Sâ, was the last of the
long line of sixty-two sovereigns who reigned over these territories
from the year A.D. 358 to the Sâgar conquest, A.D. 1781.[11] He died
a prisoner in the fortress of Kûrai, in the Sâgar district, in A. D.
1789, leaving two widows.[12] One burnt herself upon the funeral
pile, and the other was prevented from doing so, merely because she
was thought too young, as she was not then fifteen years of age. She
received a small pension from the Sâgar Government, which was still
further reduced under the Nâgpur Government which succeeded it in the
Jubbulpore district in which the pension had been assigned; and it
was not thought necessary to increase the amount of this pension when
the territory came under our dominion,[13] so that she has had barely
enough to subsist upon, about one hundred rupees a month. She is now
about sixty years of age, and still a very good-looking woman. In her
youth she must have been beautiful. She does not object to appear
unveiled before gentlemen on any particular occasion; and, when Lord
W. Bentinck was at Jubbulpore in 1833, I introduced, the old queen to
him. He seemed much interested, and ordered the old lady a pair of
shawls. None but very coarse ones were found in the store-rooms of
the Governor-General's representative, and his lordship said these
were not such as a Governor-General could present, or a queen,
however poor, receive; and as his own 'toshakhâna' (wardrobe) had
gone on,[l4] he desired that a pair of the finest kind should be
purchased and presented to her in his name. The orders were given in
her presence and mine. I was obliged to return to Sâgar before they
could be carried into effect; and, when I returned in 1835,[15] I
found that the _rejected_ shawls had been presented to her, and were
such coarse things that she was ashamed to wear them, as much, I
really believe, on account of the exalted person who had given them,
as her own. She never mentioned the subject till I asked her to let
me see the shawls, which she did reluctantly, and she was too proud
to complain. How the good intentions of the Governor-General had been
frustrated in this case I have never learned. The native officer in
charge of the store was dead, and the Governor-General's
representative had left the place. Better could not, I suppose, be
got at this time, and he did not like to defer giving them.
Notes:
1. November, 1835.
2. Sangrâmpur is in the Jabalpur District, thirty miles north-west of
Jabalpur, or the road to Sâgar, The village of Jabêrâ is thirty-nine
miles from Jabalpur.
3. Similar lakes, formed by means of huge dams thrown across valleys,
are numerous in the Central Provinces and Bundêlkhand. The
embankments of some of these lakes are maintained by the Indian
Government, and the water is distributed for irrigation. Many of the
lakes are extremely beautiful, and the ruins of grand temples and
palaces are often found on their banks. Several of the embankments
are known to have been built by the Chandêl princes between A.D. 800
and 1200, and some are believed to be the work of an earlier Parihâr
dynasty.
4. A.D. 1658--1707. Aurangzêb, though possibly credited with more
destruction than he accomplished, did really destroy many hundreds of
Hindoo temples. A historian mentions the demolition of 262 at three
places in Râjputâna in a single year (A.D. 1679-80) (E. and D. vii,
188).
5. This name is used as a synonym for Bheraghât, _ante_, Chapter 1,
paragraph 1. It is written Beragur in the author's text. The author,
in _Ramaseeana_, Introduction, p. 77, note, describes the Gaurî-
Sankar sculpture as being 'at Beragur on the Nerbudda river'.
6. Gaurî is one of the many names of Pârvatî, or Dêvî, the consort of
the god Siva, Sankar, or Mahâdêo, who rides upon the bull Nandî.
7. This village seems to be the same as Tewar, the ancient Tripura,
'six miles to the west of Jabalpur; and on the south side of the
Bombay road' (_A. S. R_., vol. ix, p. 57). The adjacent ruins are
known by the name of Karanbêl.
8. The pillar bears an inscription showing that it was erected during
the reign of Budha Gupta, in the year 165 of the Gupta era,
corresponding to A.D. 484-5. This, and the other important remains of
antiquity at Eran, are fully described in _A. S. R_., vol. vii, p.
88; vol. x, pp. 76-90, pl. xxiii-xxx; and vol. xiv, p. 149, pl. xxxi;
also in Fleet, _Gupta Inscriptions_ (Calcutta, 1888). The material of
the pillar is red sandstone. According to Cunningham the total height
is 43 feet. The peculiar double-faced, two-armed image on the summit
does not seem to be intended for Krishna, but I cannot say what the
meaning is (H. F. A., p. 174, fig. 121).
9. During the wars with the Marâthâs and Pindhârîs, which ended in
1819.
10. After we left Jubbulpore, the old Rânî used to receive much kind
and considerate attention from the Hon. Mrs. Shore, a very amiable
woman, the wife of the Governor-General's representative, the Hon.
Mr. Shore, a very worthy and able member of the Bengal Civil Service.
[W. H. S.] For notice of Mr. Shore, see note at end of Chapter 13.
11. See the author's paper entitled '_History of the Gurha Mundala
Rajas_', in _J. A. S. B_., vol. vi (1837), p. 621, and the article
'Mandla' in _C. P. Gazetteer_ (1870).
12. Kûrai is on the route from Sâgar to Nasîrâbâd, thirty-one miles
WNW. of the former.
13. The 'Sâgar and Nerbudda Territories', comprising the Sâgar,
Jabalpur, Hoshangâbâd, Seonî, Damoh, Narsinghpur, and Baitûl Mandlâ
Districts, are now under the Local Administration of the Chief
Commissioner of the Central Provinces, established in 1861 by Lord
Canning, who appointed Sir Richard Temple Chief Commissioner. These
territories were at first administered by a semi-political agency,
but were afterwards, in 1852, placed under the Lieutenant-Governor of
the North-Western Provinces (now the Agra Province in the United
Provinces of Agra and Oudh), to whom they remained subject until
1861. They had been ceded by the Marâthâs to the British in 1818, and
the cession was confirmed by the treaty of 1826.
14. All official presents given by native chiefs to the Governor-
General are credited to the 'toshakhâna', from which also are taken
the official gifts bestowed in return.
15. By resolution of Government, dated January 10, 1836, the author
was appointed General Superintendent of the Operations against
Thuggee, with his head-quarters at Jubbulpore.
CHAPTER 10
The Peasantry and the Land Settlement.
The officers of the 29th had found game so plentiful, and the weather
so fine, that they came on with us as far as Jaberâ, where we had the
pleasure of their society on the evening of the 24th, and left them
on the morning of the 25th.[1] A great many of my native friends,
from among the native landholders and merchants of the country,
flocked to our camp at every stage to pay their respects, and bid me
farewell, for they never expected to see me back among them again.
They generally came out a mile or two to meet and escort us to our
tents; and much do I fear that my poor boy will never again, in any
part of the world, have the blessings of Heaven so fervently invoked
upon him by so many worthy and respectable men as met us at every
stage on our way from Jubbulpore. I am much attached to the
agricultural classes of India generally, and I have found among them
some of the best men I have ever known. The peasantry in India have
generally very good manners, and are exceedingly intelligent, from
having so much more leisure and unreserved and easy intercourse with
those above them. The constant habit of meeting and discussing
subjects connected with their own interests, in their own fields, and
'under their own fig-trees', with their landlords and Government
functionaries of all kinds and degrees, prevents their ever feeling
or appearing impudent or obtrusive; though it certainly tends to give
them stentorian voices, that often startle us when they come into our
houses to discuss the same points with us.
Nine-tenths of the immediate cultivators of the soil in India are
little farmers, who hold a lease for one or more years, as the case
may be, of their lands, which they cultivate with their own stock.
One of these cultivators, with a good plough and bullocks, and a good
character, can always get good land on moderate terms from holders of
villages.[2] Those cultivators are, I think, the best, who learn to
depend upon their stock and character for favourable terms, hold
themselves free to change their holdings when their leases expire,
and pretend not to any hereditary right in the soil. The lands are, I
think, best cultivated, and the society best constituted in India,
where the holders of estates of villages have a feeling of permanent
interest in them, an assurance of an hereditary right of property
which is liable only to the payment of a moderate Government demand,
descends undivided by the law of primogeniture, and is unaffected by
the common law, which prescribes the equal subdivision among children
of landed as well as other private property, among the Hindoos and
Muhammadans; and where the immediate cultivators hold the lands they
till by no other law than that of common specific contract.
When I speak of holders of villages, I mean the holders of lands that
belong to villages. The whole face of India is parcelled out into
estates of villages.[3] The village communities are composed of those
who hold and cultivate the land, the established village servants,
priest, blacksmith, carpenter, accountant, washerman, basket-maker
(whose wife is ex officio the midwife of the little village
community), potter, watchman, barber, shoemaker, &c., &c.[4] To these
may be added the little banker, or agricultural capitalist, the
shopkeeper, the brazier, the confectioner, the ironmonger, the
weaver, the dyer, the astronomer or astrologer, who points out to the
people the lucky day for every earthly undertaking, and the
prescribed times for all religious ceremonies and observances. In
some villages the whole of the lands are parcelled out among
cultivating proprietors, and are liable to eternal subdivisions by
the law of inheritance, which gives to each son the same share. In
others, the whole of the lands are parcelled out among cultivators,
who hold them on a specific lease for limited periods from a
proprietor who holds the whole collectively under Government, at a
rate of rent fixed either permanently or for limited periods. These
are the two extremes. There are but few villages in which all the
cultivators are considered as proprietors--at least but few in our
Nerbudda territories; and these will almost invariably be found of a
caste of Brahmans or a caste of Râjpûts, descended from a common
ancestor, to whom the estate was originally given in rent-free
tenure, or at a quit-rent, by the existing Government for his prayers
as a priest, or his services as a soldier. Subsequent Governments,
which resumed unceremoniously the estates of others, were deterred
from resuming these by a dread of the curses of the one and the
swords of the other.[5] Such communities of cultivating proprietors
are of two kinds: those among whom the lands are parcelled out, each
member holding his share as a distinct estate, and being individually
responsible for the payment of the share of the Government demand
assessed upon it; and those among whom the lands are not parcelled
out, but the profits divided as among copartners of an estate held
jointly. They, in either case, nominate one of their members to
collect and pay the Government demand; or Government appoints a man
for this duty, either as a salaried servant or a lessee, with
authority to levy from the cultivating proprietors a certain sum over
and above what is demandable from him.
The communities in which the cultivators are considered merely as
leaseholders are far more numerous; indeed, the greater part of the
village communities in this part of India are of this description;
and, where the communities are of a mixed character, the cultivating
proprietors are considered to have merely a right of occupancy, and
are liable to have their lands assessed at the same rate as those
held on a mere lease tenure. In all parts of India the cultivating
proprietors in such mixed communities are similarly situated; they
are liable to be assessed at the same rate as others holding the same
sort of lands, and often pay a higher rate, with which others are not
encumbered. But this is not general; it is as much the interest of
the proprietor to have good cultivating tenants as it is that of the
tenants to have good proprietors; and it is felt to be the interest
of both to adjust their terms amicably among themselves, without a
reference to a third and superior party, which is always costly and
commonly ruinous.[6]
It is a question of very great importance, no less morally and
politically than fiscally, which of these systems deserves most
encouragement--that in which the Government considers the immediate
cultivators to be the hereditary proprietors, and, through its own
public officers, parcels out the lands among them, and adjusts the
rates of rent demandable from every minute partition, as the lands
become more and more subdivided by the Hindoo and Muhammadan law of
inheritance; or that in which the Government considers him who holds
the area of a whole village or estate collectively as the hereditary
proprietor, and the immediate cultivators as his lease-tenants--
leaving the rates of rent to be adjusted among the parties without
the aid of public officers, or interposing only to enforce the
fulfilment of their mutual contracts. In the latter of these two
systems the land will supply more and better members to the middle
and higher classes of the society, and create and preserve a better
feeling between them and the peasantry, or immediate cultivators of
the soil; and it will occasion the re-investment upon the soil, in
works of ornament and utility, of a greater portion of the annual
returns of rent and profit, and a less expenditure in the costs of
litigation in our civil courts, and bribery to our public officers.
Those who advocate the other system, which makes the immediate
cultivators the proprietors, will, for the most part, be found to
reason upon false premisses--upon the assumption that the rates of
rent demandable from the immediate cultivators of the soil _were
everywhere limited and established by immemorial usage, in a certain
sum of money per acre, or a certain share of the crop produced from
it_; and that 'these rates were not only so limited and fixed, but
everywhere _well known to the people_', and might, consequently, have
become well known to the Government, and recorded in public
registers. Now every practical man in India, who has had
opportunities of becoming well acquainted with the matter, knows that
_the reverse is the case_; that the rate of rent demandable from
these cultivators _never was the same upon any two estates at the
same time: nor even the same upon any one estate at different limes,
or for any consecutive number of years_.[7] The rates vary every year
on every estate, according to the varying circumstances that
influence them--such as greater or less exhaustion of the soil,
greater or less facilities of irrigation, manure, transit to market,
drainage--or from fortuitous advantages on one hand, or calamities of
season on the other; or many other circumstances which affect the
value of the land, and the abilities of the cultivators to pay. It is
not so much the proprietors of the estate or the Government as the
cultivators themselves who demand every year a readjustment of the
rate demandable upon their different holdings. This readjustment must
take place; and, if there is no landlord to effect it, Government
must effect it through its own officers. Every holding becomes
subdivided when the cultivating proprietor dies and leaves more than
one child; and, as the whole face of the country is open and without
hedges, the division is easily and speedily made. Thus the field-map
which represents an estate one year will never represent it fairly
five years after; in fact, we might almost as well attempt to map the
waves of the ocean as field-map the face of any considerable area in
any part of India.[8]
If there be any truth in my conclusions, our Government has acted
unwisely in going, as it has generally done, into [one or other of]
the two extremes, in its settlement of the land revenue.
In the Zamîndârî settlement of Bengal, it conferred the hereditary
right of property over areas larger than English counties on
individuals, and left the immediate cultivators mere tenants-at-
will.[9] These individuals felt no interest in promoting the comfort
and welfare of the village communities, or conciliating the
affections of the cultivators, whom they never saw or wished to see;
and they let out the village, or other subdivision of their estates,
to second parties quite as little interested, who again let them out
to others, so that the system of rack-renting went on over the whole
area of the immense possession. This was a system 'more honoured in
the breach than in the observance'; for, as the great landholders
became involved in the ruin of their cultivators, their estates were
sold for arrears of revenue due to Government, and thus the
proprietary right of one individual has become divided among many,
who will have the feelings which the larger holders wanted, and so
remedy the evil. In the other extreme, Government has constituted the
immediate cultivators the proprietors; thereby preventing any one who
is supported upon the rent of land, or the profits of agricultural
stock, from rising above the grade of a peasant, and so depriving
society of one of its best and most essential elements. The remedy of
both is in village settlements, in which the estate shall be of
moderate size, and the hereditary property of the holder, descending
on the principle of a principality, by the right of primogeniture,
unaffected by the common law. This is the system which has been
adopted in the Nerbudda territory, and which, I trust, will be always
adhered to.
When we enter upon the government of any new territorial acquisition
in India, we do not require or pretend to change the civil laws of
the people; because their civil laws and their religion are in
reality one and the same, and are contained in one and the same code,
as certainly among the Hindoos, the Muhammadans, and the Parsees, as
they were among the Israelites. By these codes, and the established
usages everywhere well understood by the people, are their rights and
duties in marriage, inheritance, succession, caste, contract, and all
the other civil relations of life, ascertained; and when we displace
another Government we do not pretend to alter such rights and duties
in relation to each other, we merely change the machinery and mode of
procedure by which these rights are secured and these duties
enforced.[10]
Of criminal law no system was ever either regularly established or
administered in any state in India, by any Government to which we
have succeeded; and the people always consider the existing
Government free to adopt that which may seem best calculated to
effect the one great object, which criminal law has everywhere in
view--_the security of life, property, and character, and the
enjoyment of all their advantages_. The actions by which these are
affected and endangered, the evidence by which such actions require
to be proved, and the penalties with which they require to be
visited, in order to prevent their recurrence, are, or ought to be,
so much the same in every society, that the people never think us
bound to search for what Muhammad and his companions thought in the
wilds of Arabia, or the Sanskrit poets sang about them in courts and
cloisters. They would be just as well pleased everywhere to find us
searching for these things in the writings of Confucius and
Zoroaster, as in those of Muhammad and Manu: and much more so, to see
us consulting our own common-sense, and forming a penal code of our
own, suitable to the wants of such a mixed community.[11]
The fiscal laws which define the rights and duties of the landed
interests and the agricultural classes in relation to each other and
to the ruling powers were also everywhere exceedingly simple and well
understood by the people. What in England is now a mere fiction of
law is still in India an essential principle. All lands are held
directly or indirectly of the sovereign: to this rule there is no
exception.[12] The reigning sovereign is essentially the proprietor
of the whole of the lands in every part of India, where he has not
voluntarily alienated them; and he holds these lands for the payment
of those public establishments which are maintained for the public
good, and are supported by the rents of the lands either directly
under assignment, or indirectly through the sovereign proprietor.
When a Muhammadan or Hindoo sovereign assigned lands rent-free in
_perpetuity_, it was always understood, both by the donor and
receiver, to be with the _small reservation_ of a right in his
successor to resume them for the public good, if he should think
fit.[13] Hindoo sovereigns, or their priests for them, often tried to
bar this right by _invoking curses_ on the head of that successor who
should exercise it.[14] It is a proverb among the people of these
territories, and, I believe, among the people of India generally,
that the lands which pay no rent to Government have no 'barkat',
blessing from above--that the man who holds them is not blessed in
their returns like the man who pays rent to Government and thereby
contributes his aid to the protection of the community. The fact is
that every family that holds rent-free lands must, in a few
generations, become miserable from the minute subdivision of the
property, and the litigation in our civil courts which it entails
upon the holders.[15] It is certainly the general opinion of the
people of India that no land should be held without paying rent to
Government, or providing for people employed in the service of
Government, for the benefit of the people in its defensive,
religious, judicial, educational, and other establishments. Nine-
tenths of the land in these Nerbudda territories are held in lease
immediately under Government by the heads of villages, whose leases
have been renewable every five years; but they are now to have a
settlement for twenty.[l6] The other tenth is held by these heads of
villages intermediately under some chief, who holds several portions
of land immediately under Government at a quit-rent, or for service
performed, or to be performed, for Government, and lets them out to
farmers. These are, for the most part, situated in the more hilly and
less cultivated parts.
Notes:
1. November, 1835.
2. This observation does not hold good in densely populated tracts,
which are now numerous.
3. These 'estates of villages' are known by the Persian name of
'mauza'. The topographical division of the country into 'mauzas',
which may be also translated by the terms 'townlands' or 'townships',
has developed spontaneously. Some 'mauzas' are uninhabited, and are
cultivated by the residents of neighbouring villages.
4. In some parts of Central and Southern India, the 'Gârpagrî', who
charms away hail-storms from the crops, and 'Bhûmkâ', who charms away
tigers from the people and their cattle, are added to the number of
village servants, [W. H .S.] 'In many parts of Berâr and Mâlwa every
village has its "bhûmkâ", whose office it is to charm the tigers; and
its "gârpagrî", whose duty it is to keep off the hail-storms. They
are part of the village servants, and paid by the village community,
After a severe hail-storm took place in the district of Narsinghpur,
of which I had the civil charge in 1823, the office of "gârpagrî" was
restored to several villages in which it had ceased for several
generations. They are all Brahmans, and take advantage of such
calamities to impress the people with an opinion of their usefulness.
The "bhûmkâs" are all Gônds, or people of the woods, who worship
their own Lares and Penates' (_Ramaseeana_, Introduction, p. 13.
note).
5. Very often the Government of the country know nothing of these
tenures; the local authorities allowed them to continue as a
perquisite of their own. The holders were willing to pay them a good
share of the rent, assured that they would be resumed if reported by
the local authorities to the Government. These authorities consented
to take a moderate share of the rent, assured that they should get
little or nothing if the lands were resumed. [W. H. S.] 'Rent' here
means 'land-revenue'. Of course, under modern British administration
the particulars of all tenures are known and recorded in great
detail,
6. Since the author wrote these remarks the legal position of
cultivating proprietors and tenants has been largely modified by the
pressure of population and a long course of legislation. The Rent
Acts, which began with Act x of 1859, are now numerous, and have been
accompanied by a series of Land Revenue Acts, and many collateral
enactments. All the problems of the Irish land question are familiar
topics to the Anglo-Indian courts and legislatures.
7. This proposition no doubt was true for the 'Sâgar and Nerbudda
Territories' in 1835, but it cannot be predicated of the thickly
populated and settled districts in the Gangetic valley without
considerable qualification. Examples of long-established, unchanged,
well-known rent-rates are not uncommon.
8. In recent years this task of 'mapping the waves of the ocean' has
been attempted. Every periodical settlement of the land revenue in
Northern India since 1833 has been accompanied by the preparation of
detailed village maps, showing each field, even the tiniest, a few
yards square, with a separate number. In many cases these maps were
roughly constructed under non-professional supervision, but in many
districts they have been prepared by the cadastral branch of the
Survey Department. The difficulty mentioned by the author has been
severely felt, and it constantly happens that beautiful maps become
useless in four or five years. Efforts are made to insert annual
corrections in copies of the maps through the agency of the village
accountants, and the 'kânûngos', or officers who supervise them, but
the task is an enormous one, and only partial success is attained. In
addition to the maps, records of great bulk are annually prepared
which give the most minute details about every holding and each
field.
9. The Permanent Settlement of Bengal, effected under the orders of
Lord Cornwallis in 1793, was soon afterwards extended to the province
of Benares, now included in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh.
Illusory provisions were made to protect the rights of tenants, but
nothing at all effectual was done till the passing of Act x of 1859,
which has been largely modified by later legislation.
10. The general principle here stated of respect for personal
substantive law in civil matters is still the guide of the Indian
Legislature, but the accumulation of Privy Council and High Court
rulings, combined with the action of codes, has effected considerable
gradual change. Direct legislation has anglicized the law of
contract, and has modified, though not so largely, the law of
marriage, inheritance, and succession.
11. In the author's time the courts of the East India Company still
followed the Muhammadan criminal law, as modified by the Regulations.
The Indian Penal Code of 1869 placed the substantive criminal law on
a thoroughly scientific basis. This code was framed with such
masterly skill that to this day it has needed little material
amendment. The first Criminal Procedure Code, passed in 1861, has
been twice recast. The law of evidence was codified by Sir James
FitzJames Stephen in the Indian Evidence Act of 1870.
12. This proposition, in the editor's opinion, truly states the
theory of land tenures in India, and it was a generally accurate
statement of actual fact in the author's time. Since then the long
continuance of settled government, by fostering the growth of private
rights, has tended to obscure the idea of state ownership. The modern
revenue codes, instead of postulating the ownership of the state,
enact that the claims of the state--that is to say, the land-revenue-
-are the first charge on the land and its produce. The Malabar coast
offers an exception to the general Hindu role of state ownership of
land. The Nairs, Coorgs, and Tulus enjoyed full proprietary rights
(Dubois, _Hindu Manners, &c_., 3rd edition (1906), p. 57).
13. Amîr Khân, the Nawâb of Tonk, assigned to his physician, who had
cured him of an intermittent fever, lands yielding one thousand
rupees a year, in rent-free tenure, and gave him a deed signed by
himself and his heir-apparent, declaring expressly that it should
descend to him and his heir for ever. He died lately, and his son and
successor, who had signed the deed, resumed the estate without
ceremony. On being remonstrated with, he said that 'his father, while
living, was, of course, master, and could make him sign what he
pleased, and give land rent-free to whom he pleased; but his
successor must now be considered the best judge whether they could be
spared or not; that if lands were to be alienated in perpetuity by
every reigning Nawâb for every dose of medicine or dose of prayers
that he or the members of his family required, none would soon be
left for the payment of the soldiers, or other necessary public
servants of any description'. This was told me by the son of the old
physician, who was the person to whom the speech was made, his father
having died before Amîr Khân. [W. H. S.] Amîr Khân was the famous
Pindhârî leader. H. T. Prinsep translated his Memoirs from the
Persian of Busawun Lâl (Calcutta, 1832).
14. The ancient deeds of grant, engraved on copper, of which so many
have been published within the last hundred years, almost invariably
conclude with fearful curses on the head of any rash mortal who may
dare to revoke the grant. Usually the pious hope is expressed that,
if he should be guilty of such wickedness, he may rot in filth, and
be reborn a worm.
15. Revenue officers commonly observe that revenue-free grants, which
the author calls rent-free, are often ill cultivated. The simple
reason is that the stimulus of the collector's demand is wanting to
make the owner exert himself.
16. These leases now carry with them a right of ownership, involving
the power of alienation, subject to the lien of the land revenue as a
first charge. Conversely, the modern codes lay down the principle
that the revenue settlement must be made with the proprietor. The
author's rule of agricultural succession by primogeniture in the
Nerbudda territories has survived only in certain districts (see
_post_, Chapter 47). The land-revenue law and the law concerning the
relations between landlords and tenants have now been more or less
successfully codified in each province. Mr. B. H. Baden-Powell's
encyclopaedic work _The Land Systems of British India_ (3 volumes:
Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1892) gives very full information concerning
Indian tenures as now existing, and the law applicable to them at the
date of publication.
CHAPTER 11
Witchcraft.
On leaving Jabêrâ,[1] I saw an old acquaintance from the eastern part
of the Jubbulpore district, Kehrî Singh.
'I understand, Kehrî Singh', said I, 'that certain men among the
Gonds of the jungle, towards the source of the Nerbudda, eat human
flesh. Is it so?'
'No, sir; the men never eat people, but the Gond women do.'
'Where?'
'Everywhere, sir; there is not a parish, nay, a village, among the
Gonds, in which you will not find one or more such women.'
'And how do they eat people?'
'They eat their livers, sir.'
'Oh, I understand; you mean witches?'
'Of course! Who ever heard of other people eating human beings?'
'And you really still think, in spite of all that we have done and
said, that there are such things as witches?'
'Of course we do--do not we find instances of it every day? European
gentlemen are too apt to believe that things like this are not to be
found here, because they are not to be found in their own country.
Major Wardlow, when in charge of the Seonî district, denied the
existence of witchcraft for a long time, but he was at last
convinced.'
'How?'
'One of his troopers, one morning after a long march, took some milk
for his master's breakfast from an old woman without paying for it.
Before the major had got over his breakfast the poor trooper was down
upon his back, screaming from the agony of internal pains. We all
knew immediately that he had been bewitched, and recommended the
major to send for some one learned in these matters to find out the
witch. He did so, and, after hearing from the trooper the story about
the milk, this person at once declared that the woman from whom he
got it was the criminal. She was searched for, found, and brought to
the trooper, and commanded to cure him. She flatly denied that she
had herself conjured him; but admitted that her household gods might,
unknown to her, have punished him for his wickedness. This, however,
would not do. She was commanded to cure the man, and she set about
collecting materials for the "pûjâ" (worship); and before she could
get quite through the ceremonies, all his pains had left him. Had we
not been resolute with her, the man must have died before evening, so
violent were his torments.'
'Did not a similar case occur to Mr. Fraser at Jubbulpore?'
'A "chaprâsî"[2] of his, while he had charge of the Jubbulpore
district, was sent out to Mandlâ[3] with a message of some kind or
other. He took a cock from an old Gond woman without paying for it,
and, being hungry after a long journey, ate the whole of it in a
curry. He heard the woman mutter something, but being a raw,
unsuspecting young man, he thought nothing of it, ate his cock, and
went to sleep. He had not been asleep three hours before he was
seized with internal pains, and the old cock was actually heard
crowing in his belly. He made the best of his way back to Jubbulpore,
several stages, and all the most skilful men were employed to charm
away the effect of the old woman's spell, but in vain. He died, and
the cock never ceased crowing at intervals up to the hour of his
death.'
'And was Mr. Fraser convinced?'
'I never heard, but suppose he must have been.'
'Who ate the livers of the victims? The witches themselves, or the
evil spirits with whom they had dealings?'
'The evil spirits ate the livers; but they are set on to do so by the
witches, who get them into their power by such accursed sacrifices
and offerings. They will often dig up young children from their
graves, bring them to life, and allow these devils to feed upon their
livers, as falconers allow their hawks to feed on the breasts of
pigeons. You "sâhib lôg" (European gentlemen) will not believe all
this, but it is, nevertheless, all very true.'[4]
The belief in sorcery among these people owes its origin, in a great
measure, to the diseases of the liver and spleen to which the
natives, and particularly the children, are much subject in the
jungly parts of Central India. From these affections children pine
away and die, without showing any external marks of disease. Their
death is attributed to witchcraft, and any querulous old woman, who
has been in the habit of murmuring at slights and ill treatment in
the neighbourhood, is immediately set down as the cause. Men who
practise medicine among them are very commonly supposed to be at the
same time wizards. Seeking to inspire confidence in their
prescriptions by repeating prayers and incantations over the patient,
or over the medicine they give him, they make him believe that they
derive aid from supernatural power; and the patient concludes that
those who can command these powers to cure can, if they will, command
them to destroy. He and his friends believe that the man who can
command these powers to cure one individual can command them to cure
any other; and, if he does not do so, they believe that it arises
from a desire to destroy the patient. I have, in these territories,
known a great many instances of medical practitioners having been put
to death for not curing young people for whom they were required to
prescribe. Several cases have come before me as a magistrate in which
the father has stood over the doctor with a drawn sword by the side
of the bed of his child, and cut him down and killed him the moment
the child died, as he had sworn to do when he found the patient
sinking under his prescriptions.[5]
The town of Jubbulpore contains a population of twenty thousand
souls,[6] and they all believed in this story of the cock. I one day
asked a most respectable merchant in the town, Nâdû Chaudhrî, how the
people could believe in such things, when he replied that he had no
doubt witches were to be found in every part of India, though they
abounded most, no doubt, in the central parts of it, and that we
ought to consider ourselves very fortunate in having no such things
in England. 'But', added he, 'of all countries that between Mandlâ
and Katâk (Cuttack)[7] is the worst for witches. I had once occasion
to go to the city of Ratanpur[8] on business, and was one day, about
noon, walking in the market-place and eating a very fine piece of
sugar-cane. In the crowd I happened, by accident, to jostle an old
woman as she passed me. I looked back, intending to apologize for the
accident, and heard her muttering indistinctly as she passed on.
Knowing the propensities of these old ladies, I became somewhat
uneasy, and on turning round to my cane I found, to my great terror,
that the juice had been all _turned to blood_. Not a minute had
elapsed, such were the fearful powers of this old woman. I collected
my followers, and, leaving my agents there to settle my accounts, was
beyond the boundaries of the old wretch's influence before dark; had
I remained, nothing could have saved me. I should certainly have been
a dead man before morning. It is well known', said the old gentleman,
'that their spells and curses can only reach a certain distance, ten
or twelve miles; and, if you offend one of them, the sooner you place
that distance between you the better.'
Jangbâr Khân, the representative of the Shâhgarh Râjâ,[9] as grave
and reverend an old gentleman as ever sat in the senate of Venice,
told me one day that he was himself an eye-witness of the powers of
the women of Khilautî. He was with a great concourse of people at a
fair held at the town of Râipur,[10] and, while sauntering with many
other strangers in the fair, one of them began bargaining with two
women of middle age for some very fine sugar-canes. They asked double
the fair price for their canes. The man got angry, and took up one of
them, when the women seized the other end, and a struggle ensued. The
purchaser offered a fair price, seller demanded double. The crowd
looked on, and a good deal of abuse of the female relations on both
sides took place. At last a sepoy of the governor came up, armed to
the teeth, and called out to the man, in a very imperious tone, to
let go his hold of the cane. He refused, saying that 'when people
came to the fair to sell, they should be made to sell at reasonable
prices, or be turned out'. 'I', said Jangbâr Khân, 'thought the man
right, and told the sepoy that, if he took the part of this woman, we
should take that of the other, and see fair play. Without further
ceremony the functionary drew his sword, and cut the cane in two in
the middle; and, pointing to both pieces, 'There', said he, 'you see
the cause of my interference'. We looked down, and actually saw blood
running from both pieces, and forming a little pool on the ground.
The fact was that the woman was a sorceress of the very worst kind,
and was actually drawing the blood from the man through the cane, to
feed the abominable devil from whom she derived her detestable
powers. But for the timely interference of the sepoy he would have
been dead in another minute; for he no sooner saw the real state of
the case than he fainted. He had hardly any blood left in him, and I
was afterwards told that he was not able to walk for ten days. We all
went to the governor to demand justice, declaring that, unless the
women were made an example of at once, the fair would be deserted,
for no stranger's life would be safe. He consented, and they were
both sewn up in sacks and thrown into the river; but they had
conjured the water and would not sink. They ought to have been put to
death, but the governor was himself afraid of this kind of people,
and let them off. There is not', continued Jangbâr, 'a village, or a
single family, without its witch in that part of the country; indeed,
no man will give his daughter in marriage to a family without one,
saying, "If my daughter has children, what will become of them
without a witch to protect them from the witches of other families in
the neighbourhood?" It is a fearful country, though the cheapest and
most fertile in India.'
We can easily understand how a man, impressed with the idea that his
blood had all been drawn from him by a sorceress, should become
faint, and remain many days in a languid state; but how the people
around should believe that they saw the blood flowing from both parts
of the cane at the place cut through, it is not so easy to conceive.
I am satisfied that old Jangbâr believed the whole story to be true,
and that at the time he thought the juice of the cane red; but the
little pool of blood grew, no doubt, by degrees, as years rolled on
and he related this tale of the fearful powers of the Khilautî
witches.
Notes:
1. _Ante_, Chapter 9.
2. An orderly, or official messenger, who wears a 'chaprâs', or badge
of office.
3. On the Nerbudda, fifty miles south-east of Jubbulpore.
4. Of the supposed powers and dispositions of witches among the
Romans we have horrible pictures in the 5th Ode of the 6th Book of
Horace, and in the 6th Book of Lucan's _Pharsalia_. [W. H. S.] The
reference to Horace should be to the 5th Epode. The passage in the
_Pharsalia_, Book VI, lines 420-830, describes the proceedings of
Thessalian witches.
5. Such awkward incidents of medical practice are not heard of
nowadays.
6. The population of Jabalpur (including cantonments) has increased
steadily, and in 1911 was 100,651, as compared with 84,556 in 1891,
and 76,023 in 1881.
7. Katâk, or Cuttack, a district, with town of same name, in Orissa.
8. In the Bilâspur district of the Central Provinces. The distance in
a direct line between Mandlâ and Katâk is about 400 miles.
9. Shâhgarh was formerly a petty native state, with town of same
name. The chief joined the rebels in 1857, with the result that his
dominions were confiscated, and distributed between the districts of
Sâgar and Damoh in the Central Provinces, and Jhânsî (formerly
Lalitpur) in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. The town of
Shâhgarh is in the Sâgar district.
10. Râipur is the chief town of the district of the same name in the
Central Provinces, which was not finally annexed to the British
dominions until 1854, when the Nâgpur State lapsed.
CHAPTER 12
The Silver Tree, or 'Kalpa Briksha'--The Singhâra or _Trapa
bispinosa_, and the Guinea-Worm.
Poor old Salâmat Alî wept bitterly at the last meeting in my tent,
and his two nice boys, without exactly knowing why, began to do the
same; and my little son Henry[1] caught the infection, and wept
louder than any of them. I was obliged to hurry over the interview
lest I should feel disposed to do the same. The poor old Rânî,[2]
too, suffered a good deal in parting from my wife, whom, she says,
she can never hope to see again. Her fine large eyes shed many a tear
as she was getting into her palankeen to return.
Between Jaberâ and Harduâ, the next stage, we find a great many of
those large forest trees called 'kalap', or 'Kalpa Briksha' (the same
which in the paradise of Indra grants what is desired), with a soft,
silvery bark, and scarcely any leaves. We are told that the name of
the god Râm (Râma) and his consort Sîtâ will be found written by the
hand of God upon all.[3]
I had the curiosity to examine a good many in the forest on both
sides of the road, and found the name of this incarnation of Vishnu
written on everyone in Sanskrit characters, apparently by some
supernatural hand; that is, there was a softness in the impression,
as if the finger of some supernatural being had traced the
characters. Nathû, one of our belted attendants[4] told me that we
might search as deeply as we would in the forest, but we should
certainly find the name of God upon every one; 'for', said he, 'it is
God himself who writes it'. I tried to argue him out of this notion;
but, unfortunately, could find no tree without these characters--some
high up, and some lower down in the trunk--some large and others
small--but still to be found on every tree. I was almost in despair
when we came to a part of the wood where we found one of these trees
down in a hollow, under the road, and another upon the precipice
above. I was ready to stake my credit upon the probability that no
traveller would take the trouble to go up to the tree above, or down
to the tree below, merely to write the name of the god upon them; and
at once pledged myself to Nathû that he should find neither the god's
name nor that of his wife. I sent one man up, and another man down,
and they found no letters on the trees; but this did not alter their
opinion on the point. 'God', said one, 'had no doubt put his name on
these trees, but they had somehow or other got rubbed off. He would
in good time renew them, that men's eyes might be blessed with the
sight of His holy name, even in the deepest forest, and on the most
leafless tree.'[5] 'But', said Nathû, 'he might not have thought it
worth while to write his name upon those trees which no travellers go
to see.' 'Cannot you see', said I, 'that these letters have been
engraved by man? Are they not all to be found on the trunk within
reach of a man's hand?' 'Of course they are', replied he, 'because
people would not be able conveniently to distinguish them if God were
to write them higher up.'
Shaikh Sâdî has a very pretty couplet, 'Every leaf of the foliage of
a green tree is, in the eye of a wise man, a library to teach him the
wisdom of his Creator.'[6] I may remark that, where an Englishman
would write his own name, a Hindoo would write that of his god, his
parent, or his benefactor. This difference is traceable, of course,
to the difference in their governments and institutions. If a Hindoo
built a town, he called it after his local governor; if a local
governor built it, he called it after the favourite son of the
Emperor. In well regulated Hindoo families, one cannot ask a younger
brother after his children in presence of the elder brother who
happens to be the head of the family; it would be disrespectful for
him even to speak of his children as his own in such presence--the
elder brother relieves his embarrassment by answering for him.
On the 27th[7] we reached Damoh,[8] where our friends, the Browns,
were to leave us on their return to Jubbulpore. Damoh is a pretty
place. The town contains some five or six thousand people, and has
some very handsome Hindoo temples. On a hill immediately above it is
the shrine of a Muhammadan saint, which has a very picturesque
appearance.
There are no manufactures at Damoh, except such as supply the wants
of the immediate neighbourhood; and the town is supported by the
residence of a few merchants, a few landholders, and agricultural
capitalists, and the establishment of a native collector. The people
here suffer much from the guinea-worm, and consider it to arise from
drinking the water of the old tank, which is now very dirty and full
of weeds. I have no doubt that it is occasioned either by drinking
the water of this tank, or by wading in it: for I have known European
gentlemen get the worm in their legs from wading in similar lakes or
swamps after snipes, and the servants who followed them with their
ammunition experience the same effect.[9] Here, as in most other
parts of India, the tanks get spoiled by the water-chestnut,
'singhâra' (_Trapa bispinosa_), which is everywhere as regularly
planted and cultivated _in fields_ under a large surface of water, as
wheat or barley is on the dry plains. It is cultivated by a class of
men called Dhîmars, who are everywhere fishermen and palankeen
bearers; and they keep boats for the planting, weeding, and gathering
the 'singhâra'.[10] The holdings or tenements of each cultivator are
marked out carefully on the surface of the water by long bamboos
stuck up in it; and they pay so much the acre for the portion they
till. The long straws of the plants reach up to the surface of the
waters, upon which float their green leaves; and their pure white
flowers expand beautifully among them in the latter part of the
afternoon. The nut grows under the water after the flowers decay, and
is of a triangular shape, and covered with a tough brown integument
adhering strongly to the kernel, which is white, esculent, and of a
fine cartilaginous texture. The people are very fond of these nuts,
and they are carried often upon bullocks' backs two or three hundred
miles to market. They ripen in the latter end of the rains, or in
September, and are eatable till the end of November. The rent paid
for an ordinary tank by the cultivator is about one hundred rupees a
year. I have known two hundred rupees to be paid for a very large
one, and even three hundred, or thirty pounds a year.[11] But the mud
increases so rapidly from this cultivation that it soon destroys all
reservoirs in which it is permitted; and, where it is thought
desirable to keep up the tank for the sake of the water, it should be
carefully prohibited. This is done by stipulating with the renter of
the village, at the renewal of the lease, that no 'singhâra' shall be
planted in the tank; otherwise, he will never forgo the advantage to
himself of the rent for the sake of the convenience, and that only
prospective, of the village community in general.
Notes:
1. Afterwards Captain H. A. Sleeman, He died in 1905.
2. Of Garhâ, see _ante_, Chapter 9, prior to note 10.
3. The real 'kalpa', which now stands in the garden of the god Indra
in the first heaven, was one of the fourteen varieties found at the
churning of the ocean by the gods and demons. It fell to the share of
Indra. [W. H. S.] The tree referred to in the text perhaps may be the
_Erythrina arborescens_, or coral-tree, which sheds its leaves after
the hot weather.
4. That is to say, orderlies, or 'chaprâsîs'.
5. Every Hindoo is thoroughly convinced that the names of Râm and his
consort Sîtâ are written on this tree by the hand of God, and nine-
tenths of the Musalmâns believe the same.
Happy the man who sees a God employed
In all the good and ill that chequer life,
Resolving all events, with their effects
And manifold results, into the will
And arbitration wise of the Supreme.
COWPER. [W. H. S.]
The quotation is from _The Task_, Book II, line 161.
6. Sâdî (Sa'dî) is the poetic name, or _nom de plume_, of the
celebrated Persian poet, whose proper name is said to have been
Shaikh Maslah-ud-dîn, or, according to other authorities, Sharf-ud-
dîn Mislah. He was born about A.D. 1194, and is supposed to have
lived for more than a hundred years. Some writers say that he died in
A.D. 1292. His best known works are the _Gulistân_ and _Bûstân_. The
editor has failed to trace in either of these works the couplet
quoted. Sâdî says in the _Gulistân_, ii. 26, 'That heart which has an
ear is full of the divine mystery. It is not the nightingale that
alone serenades his rose; for every thorn on the rose-bush is a
tongue in his or God's praise' (Ross's translation).
7. November, 1835.
8. Spelled Dhamow in the author's text. The town, the head-quarters
of the district of the same name, is forty-five miles east of Sâgar,
and fifty-five miles north-west of Jabalpur. The _C. P. Gazetteer_
(1870) states the population to be 8,563. In 1901 it had grown to
13,335; and the town is still increasing in importance (_I. G._,
1908). Inscriptions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries at
Damoh are noticed in _A. S. R._, vol. xxi, p. 168.
9. The guinea-worm (_Filaria medinensis_) is a very troublesome
parasite, which sometimes grows to a length of three feet. It occurs
in Africa, Arabia, Persia, and Turkistan, as well as in India.
10. The Dhîmars (Sanskrit _dhîvara_, 'fisherman') are the same caste
as the Kahârs, or 'bearers'. The boats used by them are commonly
'dugout' canoes, exactly like those used in prehistoric Europe, and
now treasured in museums.
11. In the author's time the rupee was worth two shillings, or more,
that is to say, the ninth or tenth part of a sovereign. After 1873
the gold value of the rupee fell, so that at times it was worth
little more than a shilling. Since 1899 special legislation has
succeeded in keeping the rupee practically steady at 1s. 4d. In other
words, fifteen rupees are the legal equivalent of a sovereign, and a
hundred rupees are worth 6 pounds 13s. 4d.
CHAPTER 13
Thugs and Poisoners.
Lieutenant Brown had come on to Damoh chiefly with a view to
investigate a case of murder, which had taken place at the village of
Sujaina, about ten miles from Damoh, on the road to Hattâ.[1] A gang
of two hundred Thugs were encamped in the grove at Hindoria in the
cold season of 1814, when, early in the morning, seven men well armed
with swords and matchlocks passed them, bearing treasure from the
bank of Motî Kochia at Jubbulpore to their correspondents at
Bânda,[2] to the value of four thousand five hundred rupees.[3] The
value of their burden was immediately perceived by these _keen-eyed_
sportsmen, and Kosarî, Drigpâl, and Faringia, three of the leaders,
with forty of their fleetest and stoutest followers, were immediately
selected for the pursuit. They followed seven miles unperceived; and,
coming up with the treasure-bearers in a watercourse half a mile from
the village of Sujaina, they rushed in upon them and put them all to
death with their swords.[4] While they were doing so a tanner from
Sujaina approached with his buffalo, and to prevent him giving the
alarm they put him to death also, and made off with the treasure,
leaving the bodies unburied. A heavy shower of rain fell, and none of
the village people came to the place till the next morning early;
when some females, passing it on their way to Hattâ, saw the bodies,
and returning to Sujaina, reported the circumstance to their friends.
The whole village thereupon flocked to the spot, and the body of the
tanner was burned by his relations with the usual ceremonies, while
all the rest were left to be eaten by jackals, dogs and vultures, who
make short work of such things in India.[5]
We had occasion to examine a very respectable old gentleman at Damoh
upon the case, Gobind Dâs, a revenue officer under the former
Government,[6] and now about seventy years of age. He told us that he
had no knowledge whatever of the murder of the eight men at Sujaina;
but he well remembered another which took place seven years before
the time we mentioned at Abhâna, a stage or two back, on the road to
Jubbulpore. Seventeen treasure-bearers lodged in the grove near that
town on their way from Jubbulpore to Sâgar. At night they were set
upon by a large gang of Thugs, and sixteen of them strangled; but the
seventeenth laid hold of the noose before it could be brought to bear
upon his throat, pulled down the villain who held it, and made his
way good to the town. The Râjâ, Dharak Singh, went to the spot with
all the followers he could collect; but he found there nothing but
the sixteen naked bodies lying in the grove, with their eyes
apparently starting out of their sockets. The Thugs had all gone off
with the treasure and their clothes, and the Râjâ searched for them
in vain.
A native commissioned officer of a regiment of native infantry one
day told me that, while he was on duty over some Thugs at Lucknow,
one of them related with great seeming pleasure the following case,
which seemed to him one of the most remarkable that he had heard them
speak of during the time they were under his charge.
'A stout Mogul[7] officer of noble bearing and singularly handsome
countenance, on his way from the Punjab to Oudh, crossed the Ganges
at Garhmuktesar Ghât, near Meerut, to pass through Murâdâbâd and
Bareilly.[8] He was mounted on a fine Tûrkî horse, and attended by
his "khidmatgâr" (butler) and groom. Soon after crossing the river,
he fell in with a small party of well-dressed and modest-looking men
going the same road. They accosted him in a respectful manner, and
attempted to enter into conversation with him. He had heard of Thugs,
and told them to be off. They smiled at his idle suspicions, and
tried to remove them, but in vain. The Mogul was determined; they saw
his nostrils swelling with indignation, took their leave, and
followed slowly. The next morning he overtook the same number of men,
but of a different appearance, all Musalmâns. They accosted him in
the same respectful manner; talked of the danger of the road, and the
necessity of their keeping together, and taking advantage of the
protection of any mounted gentleman that happened to be going the
same way. The Mogul officer said not a word in reply, resolved to
have no companions on the road. They persisted--his nostrils began
again to swell, and putting his hand to his sword, he bid them all be
off, or he would have their heads from their shoulders. He had a bow
and quiver full of arrows over his shoulders,[9] a brace of loaded
pistols in his waist-belt, and a sword by his side, and was
altogether a very formidable-looking cavalier. In the evening another
party that lodged in the same "sarâi"[10] became very intimate with
the butler and groom. They were going the same road; and, as the
Mogul overtook them in the morning, they made their bows
respectfully, and began to enter into conversation with their two
friends, the groom and butler, who were coming up behind. The Mogul's
nostrils began again to swell, and he bid the strangers be off. The
groom and butler interceded, for their master was a grave, sedate
man, and they wanted companions. All would not do, and the strangers
fell in the rear. The next day, when they had got to the middle of an
extensive and uninhabited plain, the Mogul in advance, and his two
servants a few hundred yards behind, he came up to a party of six
poor Musalmâns, sitting weeping by the side of a dead companion. They
were soldiers from Lahore,[11] on their way to Lucknow, worn down by
fatigue in their anxiety to see their wives and children once more,
after a long and painful service. Their companion, the hope and prop
of his family, had sunk under the fatigue, and they had made a grave
for him; but they were poor unlettered men, and unable to repeat the
funeral service from the holy Koran-would his Highness but perform
this last office for them, he would, no doubt, find his reward in
this world and the next. The Mogul dismounted--the body had been
placed in its proper position, with its head towards Mecca. A carpet
was spread--the Mogul took off his bow and quiver, then his pistols
and sword, and placed them on the ground near the body--called for
water, and washed his feet, hands, and face, that he might not
pronounce the holy words in an unclean state. He then knelt down and
began to repeat the funeral service, in a clear, loud voice. Two of
the poor soldiers knelt by him, one on each side in silence. The
other four went off a few paces to beg that the butler and groom
would not come so near as to interrupt the good Samaritan at his
devotions.
'All being ready, one of the four, in a low undertone, gave the
"jhirnî" (signal),[12] the handkerchiefs were thrown over their
necks, and in a few minutes all three--the Mogul and his servants--
were dead, and lying in the grave in the usual manner, the head of
one at the feet of the one below him. All the parties they had met on
the road belonged to a gang of Jamâldehî Thugs, of the kingdom of
Oudh.[13] In despair of being able to win the Mogul's confidence in
the usual way, and determined to have the money and jewels, which
they knew he carried with him, they had adopted this plan of
disarming him; dug the grave by the side of the road, in the open
plain, and made a handsome young Musalmân of the party the dead
soldier. The Mogul, being a very stout man, died almost without a
struggle, as is usually the case with such; and his two servants made
no resistance.'
People of great sensibility, with hearts overcharged with sorrow,
often appear cold and callous to those who seem to them to feel no
interest in their afflictions. An instance of this kind I will here
mention; it is one of thousands that I have met with in my Indian
rambles. It was mentioned to me one day that an old 'fakîr',[14] who
lived in a small hut close by a little shrine on the side of the road
near the town of Morâdâbâd, had lately lost his son, poisoned by a
party of 'daturiâs', or professional poisoners,[15] that now infest
every road throughout India. I sent for him, and requested him to
tell me his story, as I might perhaps be able to trace the murderers.
He did so, and a Persian writer took it down while I listened with
all the coldness of a magistrate who wanted merely to learn facts and
have nothing whatever to do with feelings. This is his story
literally:
'I reside in my hut by the side of the road a mile and [a] half from
the town, and live upon the bounty of travellers, and the people of
the surrounding villages. About six weeks ago, I was sitting by the
side of my shrine after saying prayers, with my only son, about ten
years of age, when a man came up with his wife, his son, and his
daughter, the one a little older, and the other a little younger than
my boy. They baked and ate their bread near my shrine, and gave me
flour enough to make two cakes. This I prepared and baked. My boy was
hungry, and ate one cake and a half. I ate only half a one, for I was
not hungry. I had a few days before purchased a new blanket for my
boy, and it was hanging in a branch of the tree that shaded the
shrine, when these people came. My son and I soon became stupefied. I
saw him fall asleep, and I soon followed. I awoke again in the
evening, and found myself in a pool of water. I had sense enough to
crawl towards my boy. I found him still breathing, and I sat by him
with his head in my lap, where he soon died. It was now evening, and
I got up, and wandered about all night picking straws--I know not
why. I was not yet quite sensible. During the night the wolves ate my
poor boy. I heard this from travellers, and went and gathered up his
bones and buried them in the shrine. I did not quite recover till the
third day, when I found that some washerwomen had put me into the
pool, and left me there with my head out, in hopes that this would
revive me; but they had no hope of my son. I was then taken to the
police of the town; but the landholders had begged me to say nothing
about the poisoners, lest it might get them and their village
community into trouble. The man was tall and fair, and about thirty-
five; the woman short, stout, and fair, and about thirty; two of her
teeth projected a good deal; the boy's eyelids were much diseased.'
All this he told me without the slightest appearance of emotion, for
he had not seen any appearance of it in me, or my Persian writer; and
a casual European observer would perhaps have exclaimed, 'What brutes
these natives are! This fellow feels no more for the loss of his only
son than he would for that of a goat'. But I knew the feeling was
there. The Persian writer put up his paper, and closed his inkstand,
and the following dialogue, word for word, took place between me and
the old man:
_Question_.--What made you conceal the real cause of your boy's
death, and tell the police that he had been killed, as well as eaten,
by wolves?
_Answer_.--The landholders told me that they could never bring back
my boy to life, and the whole village would be worried to death by
them if I made any mention of the poison.
_Question_.--And if they were to be punished for this they would
annoy you?
_Answer_.--Certainly. But I believed they advised me for my own good
as well as their own.
_Question_.--And if they should turn you away from that place, could
you not make another?
_Answer_.-Are not the bones of my poor boy there, and the trees that
he and I planted and watched together for ten years?
_Question_.-Have you no other relations? What became of your boy's
mother?
_Answer_.-She died at that place when my boy was only three months
old. I have brought him up myself from that age; he was my only
child, and he has been poisoned for the sake of the blanket! (Here
the poor old man sobbed as if his heartstrings would break; and I was
obliged to make him sit down on the floor while I walked up and down
the room.)
_Question_.--Had you any children before?
_Answer_.--Yes, sir, we had several, but they all died before their
mother. We had been reduced to beggary by misfortunes, and I had
become too weak and ill to work. I buried my poor wife's bones by the
side of the road where she died; raised the little shrine over them,
planted the trees, and there have I sat ever since by her side, with
our poor boy in my bosom. It is a sad place for wolves, and we used
often to hear them howling outside; but my poor boy was never afraid
of them when he knew I was near him. God preserved him to me, till
the sight of the new blanket, for I had nothing else in the world,
made these people poison us. I bought it for him only a few days
before, when the rains were coming on, out of my savings-it was all I
had. (The poor old man sobbed again, and sat down while I paced the
room, lest I should sob also; my heart was becoming a little too
large for its apartment.) 'I will never', continued he, 'quit the
bones of my wife and child, and the tree that he and I watered for so
many years. I have not many years to live; there I will spend them,
whatever the landholders may do--they advised me for my own good, and
will never turn me out.'
I found all the poor man stated to be true; the man and his wife had
mixed poison with the flour to destroy the poor old man and his son
for the sake of the new blanket which they saw hanging in the branch
of the tree, and carried away with them. The poison used on such
occasions is commonly the datura, and it is sometimes given in the
hookah to be smoked, and at others in food. When they require to
poison children as well as grown-up people, or women who do not
smoke, they mix up the poison in food. The intention is almost always
to destroy life, as 'dead men tell no tales'; but the poisoned people
sometimes recover, as in the present case, and lead to the detection
of the poisoners. The cases in which they recover are, however, rare,
and of those who recover few are ever able to trace the poisoners;
and, of those who recover and trace them, very few will ever
undertake to prosecute them through the several courts of the
magistrate, the sessions, and that of last instance in a distant
district, to which the proceedings must be sent for final orders.
The impunity with which this crime is everywhere perpetrated, and its
consequent increase in every part of India, are among the greatest
evils with which the country is at this time affected. These
poisoners are spread all over India, and are as numerous over the
Bombay and Madras Presidencies as over that of Bengal. There is no
road free from them, and throughout India there must be many hundreds
who gain their subsistence by this trade alone. They put on all
manner of disguises to suit their purpose; and, as they prey chiefly
upon the poorer sort of travellers, they require to destroy the
greater number of lives to make up their incomes. A party of two or
three poisoners have very often succeeded in destroying another of
eight or ten travellers with whom they have journeyed for some days,
by pretending to give them a feast on the celebration of the
anniversary of some family event. Sometimes an old woman or man will
manage the thing alone, by gaining the confidence of travellers, and
getting near the cooking-pots while they go aside; or when employed
to bring the flour for the meal from the bazaar. The poison is put
into the flour or the pot, as opportunity offers.
People of all castes and callings take to this trade, some casually,
others for life, and others derive it from their parents or teachers.
They assume all manner of disguises to suit their purposes; and the
habits of cooking, eating, and sleeping on the side of the road, and
smoking with strangers of seemingly the same caste, greatly
facilitate their designs upon travellers. The small parties are
unconnected with each other, and two parties never unite in the same
cruise. The members of one party may be sometimes convicted and
punished, but their conviction is accidental, for the system which
has enabled us to put down the Thug associations cannot be applied,
with any fair prospect of success, to the suppression of these pests
to society.[16]
The Thugs went on their adventures in large gangs, and two or more
were commonly united in the course of an expedition in the
perpetration of many murders. Every man shared in the booty according
to the rank he held in the gang, or the part he took in the murders;
and the rank of every man and the part he took generally, or in any
particular murder, were generally well known to all. From among these
gangs, when arrested, we found the evidence we required for their
conviction--or the means of tracing it--among the families and
friends of their victims, or with persons to whom the property taken
had been disposed of, and in the graves to which the victims had been
consigned.
To give an idea of the system by which the Government of India has
been enabled to effect so great a good for the people as the
suppression of these associations, I will suppose that two sporting
gentlemen, A at Delhi, and B in Calcutta, had both described the
killing of a tiger in an island in the Ganges, near Hardwâr[17] and
mentioned the names of the persons engaged with them. Among the
persons thus named were C, who had since returned to America, D, who
had retired to New South Wales, E to England, and F to Scotland.
There were four other persons named who were still in India, but they
are deeply interested in A and B's story not being believed. A says
that B got the skin of the tiger, and B states that he gave it to C,
who cut out two of the claws. Application is made to C, D, E, and F,
and without the possibility of any collusion, or even communication
between them, their statements correspond precisely with those of A
and B, as to the time, place, circumstances, and persons engaged.
Their statements are sworn to before magistrates in presence of
witnesses, and duly attested. C states that he got the skin from B,
and gave it to the Nawâb of Râmpur[18] for a hookah carpet, but that
he took from the left forefoot two of the claws, and gave them to the
minister of the King of Oudh for a charm for his sick child.
The Nawâb of Râmpur, being applied to, states that he received the
skin from C, at the time and place mentioned, and that he still
smokes his hookah upon it; and that it had lost the two claws upon
the left forefoot. The minister of the King of Oudh states that he
received the two claws nicely set in gold; that they had cured his
boy, who still wore them round his neck to guard him from the evil
eye. The goldsmith states that he set the two claws in gold for C,
who paid him handsomely for his work. The peasantry, whose cattle
graze on the island, declare that certain gentlemen did kill a tiger
there about the time mentioned, and that they saw the body after the
skin had been taken off, and the vultures had begun to descend upon
it.
To prove that what A and B had stated could not possibly be true, the
other party appeal to some of their townsmen, who are said to be well
acquainted with their characters. They state that they really know
nothing about the matter in dispute; that their friends, who are
opposed to A and B, are much liked by their townspeople and
neighbours, as they have plenty of money, which they spend freely,
but that they are certainly very much addicted to field-sports, and
generally absent in pursuit of wild beasts for three or four months
every year; but whether they were or were not present at the killing
of the great Garhmuktesar tiger, they could not say.
Most persons would, after examining this evidence, be tolerably well
satisfied that the said tiger had really been killed at the time and
place, and by the persons mentioned by A and B; but, to establish the
fact judicially, it would be necessary to bring A, B, C, D, E, and F,
the Nawâb of Râmpur, the minister of the King of Oudh, and the
goldsmith to the criminal court at Meerut, to be confronted with the
person whose interest it was that A and B should not be believed.
They would all, perhaps, come to the said court from the different
quarters of the world in which they had thought themselves snugly
settled; but the thing would annoy them so much, and be so much
talked of, that sporting gentlemen, nawâbs, ministers, and goldsmiths
would in future take good care to have 'forgotten' everything
connected with the matter in dispute, should another similar
reference be made to them, and so A and B would never again have any
chance.
Thug approvers, whose evidence we required, were employed in all
parts of India, under the officers appointed to put down these
associations; and it was difficult to bring all whose evidence was
necessary at the trials to the court of the district in which the
particular murder was perpetrated. The victims were, for the most
part, money-carriers, whose masters and families resided hundreds of
miles from the place where they were murdered, or people on their way
to their distant homes from foreign service. There was no chance of
recovering any of the property taken from the victims, as Thugs were
known to spend what they got freely, and never to have money by them;
and the friends of the victims, and the bankers whose money they
carried, were everywhere found exceedingly averse to take share in
the prosecution.
To obviate all these difficulties separate courts were formed, with
permission to receive whatever evidence they might think likely to
prove valuable, attaching to each portion, whether documentary or
oral, whatever weight it might seem to deserve. Such courts were
formed at Hyderabad, Mysore, Indore, Lucknow, Gwâlior, and were
presided over by our highest diplomatic functionaries, in concurrence
with the princes at whose courts they were accredited; and who at
Jubbulpore, were under the direction of the representative of the
Governor-General of India.[l9] By this means we had a most valuable
species of unpaid agency; and I believe there is no part of their
public life on which these high functionaries look back with more
pride than that spent in presiding over such courts, and assisting
the supreme Government in relieving the people of India from this
fearful evil.[20]
Notes:
1. A town on the Allahabad and Sâgar road, sixty-one miles north-east
of Sâgar. It was the head-quarters of the Damoh district from 1818 to
1835.
2. The chief town of the district of the same name in Bundêlkhand,
situated on the Kên river, ninety-five miles south-west from
Allahabad.
3. Worth at that time 450 pounds sterling, or a little more.
4. An unusual mode of procedure for professed Thugs to adopt, who
usually strangled their victims with a cloth. Faringia (Feringheea)
Brahman was one of the most noted Thug leaders. He is frequently
mentioned in the author's _Report on the Depredations committed by
the Thug Gangs_ (1840), and the story of the Sujaina crime is fully
told in the Introduction to that volume. Faringia became a valuable
approver.
5. Lieutenant Brown was suddenly called back to Jubbulpore, and could
not himself go to Sujaina. He sent, however, an intelligent native
officer to the place, but no man could be induced to acknowledge that
he had ever seen the bodies or heard of the affair, though Faringia
pointed out to them exactly where they all lay. They said it must be
quite a mistake--that such a thing could not have taken place and
they know nothing of it. Lieutenant Brown was aware that all this
affected ignorance arose entirely from the dread these people have of
being summoned to give evidence to any of our district courts of
justice; and wrote to the officer in the civil charge of the district
to request that he would assure them that their presence would not be
required. Mr. Doolan, the assistant magistrate, happened to be going
through Sujaina from Sâgar on deputation at the time; and, sending
for all the respectable old men of the place, he requested that they
would be under no apprehension, but tell him the real truth, as he
would pledge himself that not one of them should ever be summoned to
any district court to give evidence. They then took him to the spot
and pointed out to him where the bodies had been found, and mentioned
that the body of the tanner had been burned by his friends. The
banker, whose treasure they had been carrying, had an equal dislike
to be summoned to court to give evidence, now that he could no longer
hope to recover any portion of his lost money; and it was not till
after Lieutenant Brown had given him a similar assurance, that he
would consent to have his books examined. The loss of the four
thousand five hundred rupees was then found entered, with the names
of the men who had been killed at Sujaina in carrying it. These are
specimens of some of the minor difficulties we had to contend with in
our efforts to put down the most dreadful of all crimes. All the
prisoners accused of these murders had just been tried for others, or
Lieutenant Brown would not have been able to give the pledge he did.
[W. H. S.] Difficulties of the same kind beset the administration of
criminal justice in India to this day.
6. Of the Marâthâs. The district was ceded in 1818.
7. More correctly written Mughal. The term is properly applied to
Muhammadans of Turk (Mongol) descent. Such persons commonly affix the
title Beg to their names, and often prefix the Persian title Mîrzâ.
8. Meerut, the well-known cantonment, in the district of the same
name. The name is written Meeruth by the author, and may be also
written Mîrath. Ghât (ghaut) means a ferry, or crossing-place.
Murâdâbâd and Bareilly (Barelî) are in Rohilkhand. The latter has a
considerable garrison. Both places are large cities, and the head-
quarter of districts.
9. The bow and quiver are now rarely seen, except, possibly, in
remote parts of Râjputâna. A body of archers helped to hold the Shâh
Najaf building at Lucknow against Sir Colin Campbell in 1858. Even in
1903-4 some of the Tibetans who resisted the British advance were
armed with bows and arrows.
10. An inn of the Oriental pattern, often called caravanserai in
books of travel.
11. Then the capital of Ranjit Singh, the great Sikh chief.
12. 'This is commonly given either by the leader of the gang or the
_belhâ_, who has chosen the place for the murder.' It was usually
some commonplace order, such as 'Bring the tobacco' (_Ramaseeana_,
p.99, &c.). See also Meadows Taylor, _Confessions of a Thug_.
13. The Jamâldehî Thugs resided 'in Oude and some other parts east of
the Ganges. They are considered very clever and expert, and more
stanch to their oath of secrecy than most other classes' (ibid. p.
97). At the time referred to Oudh was a separate kingdom, which
lasted as such until 1856. A map included in the printed Thuggee
papers reveals the appalling fact that the Thugs had 274 fixed
burying-places for their victims in the area of the small kingdom,
about half the size of Ireland.
14. Fakîr (fakeer), a religious mendicant. The word properly applies
to Muhammadans only, but is often laxly used to include Hindoo
ascetics.
15. So called because the poison they use is made of the seeds of the
'datura' plant (_Datura alba_), and other species of the same genus.
It is a powerful narcotic.
16. The crime of poisoning travellers is still prevalent, and its
detection is still attended by the difficulties described in the
text. In some cases the criminals have been proved to belong to
families of Thug stranglers. The poisoning of cattle by arsenic, for
the sake of their hides, was very prevalent forty years ago,
especially in the districts near Benares, but is now believed to be
less practised. It was checked under the ordinary law by numerous
convictions and severe sentences.
17. In the Sahâranpur district, where the Ganges issues from the
hills.
18. A small principality in Rohilkhand, between Murâdâbâd and
Bareilly (Barêlî).
19. The special laws on the subject, namely: Acts xxx of 1836, xviii
of 1837, xix of 1837, xviii of 1839, xviii of 1843, xxiv of 1843, xiv
of 1844, v of 1847, x of 1847, iii of 1848, and xi of 1848, are
printed in pp. 353-7 of the author's _Report on Budhuk alias Bagree
Decoits, &c._ (1849). See Bibliography, _ante._ No. 12.
20. I may here mention the names of a few diplomatic officers of
distinction who have aided in the good cause. _Of the Civil Service_-
-Mr. F. C. Smith, Mr. Martin, Mr. George Stockwell, Mr. Charles
Fraser, the Hon. Mr. Wellesley, the Hon. Mr. Shore, the Hon. Mr.
Cavendish, Mr. George Clerk, Mr. L. Wilkinson, Mr, Bax; _Majors-
General_--Cubbon and Fraser; _Colonels_--Low, Stewart, Alves, Spiers,
Caulfield, Sutherland, and Wade; Major Wilkinson; and, among the
foremost, Major Borthwick and Captain Paton. [W. H. S.]
The author's characteristic modesty has prevented him from dwelling
upon his own services, which were greater than those of any other
officer. Some idea of them may be gathered from the collection of
papers entitled _Ramaseeana_, the contents of which are enumerated in
the Bibliography, _ante._ No. 2. Colonel Meadows Taylor has given a
more popular account of the measures taken for the suppression of
Thuggee (thagî) in his _Confessions of a Thug_, written in 1837 (1st
ed. 1839). The Thug organization dated from ancient times, but
attracted little notice from the East India Company's Government
until the author, then Captain Sleeman, submitted his reports on the
subject while employed in the Sâgar and Nerbudda Territories, where
he had been posted in 1820. He proved that the Thug crimes were
committed by a numerous and highly organized fraternity operating in
all parts of India. In consequence of his reports, Mr. F. C. Smith,
Agent to the Governor-General in the Sâgar and Nerbudda Territories,
was invested, in the year 1829, with special powers, and the author,
then Major Sleeman, was employed, in addition to his district duties,
as Mr, Smith's coadjutor and assistant. In 1835 the author was
relieved from district work, and appointed General Superintendent of
the operations for the suppression of the Thug gangs. He went on
leave to the hills in 1836, and on resuming duty in February, 1839,
was appointed Commissioner for the suppression of Thuggee and
Dacoity, which office he continued to hold in addition to his other
appointments.
Between 1826 and 1835, 1,562 prisoners were tried for the crime of
Thuggee, of whom 1,404 were either hanged or transported for life.
Some individuals are said to have confessed to over 200 murders, and
one confessed to 719. The Thug approvers, whose lives were spared,
were detained in a special prison at Jubbulpore, where the remnant of
them, with their families, were kept under surveillance. They were
employed in a tent and carpet factory, known as the School of
Industry, founded in 1838 by the author and Captain Charles Brown. If
released, they would certainly have resumed their hereditary
occupation, which exercised an awful fascination over its votaries.
Most of the Thug gangs had been broken up by 1860, but cases of
Thuggee have occurred occasionally since that date. A gang of Kahârs
(palanquin bearers) committed a series of Thug murders in, I think,
1877, at Etâwa, in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. The office
of Superintendent of Thuggee and Dacoity was kept up until 1904, but
the officer in charge was more concerned with Dacoity (that is to
say, organized gang-robbery with violence) in the Native States than
with the secret crime of Thuggee. Secret crime is now watched by the
Central Criminal Intelligence Department under the direct control of
the Government of India, and has to deal with novel forms of evil-
doing. In India it is never safe to assume that any ancient practice
has been suppressed, and I have little doubt that, if administrative
pressure were relaxed, the old form of Thuggee would again be heard
of. The occasional discovery of murdered beggars, who could not have
been killed for the sake of their property, leads me to suppose that
the Megpunnia variety of Thuggee, that is to say, murder of poor
persons in order to kidnap and sell their children, is still
sometimes practised.
Among the officers named by the author the best known is Sir Mark
Cubbon, who came to India in 1800, and died at Suez in 1861. During
the interval he had never quitted India. He ruled over Mysore for
nearly thirty years with almost despotic power, and reorganized the
administration of that country with conspicuous success (Buckland,
_Dict. of Indian Biography_, Sonnenschein, 1906).
The Hon. Frederick John Shore, of the Bengal Civil Service,
officiated in 1836 as Civil Commissioner and Political Agent of the
Sâgar and Nerbudda Territories. In 1837 he published his _Notes on
Indian Affairs_ (London, 2 vols. 8vo), a series of articles dealing
in the most outspoken way with the abuses and weaknesses of Anglo-
Indian administration at that time.
Mr. F. C. Smith was Agent to the Governor-General at Jubbulpore in
1830 and subsequent years. The author was then immediately
subordinate to him. Messrs. Martin and Wellesley were Residents at
Holkar's court at Indore. Mr. Stockwell tried some of the Thug
prisoners at Cawnpore and Allahabad as Special Commissioner, in
addition to his ordinary duties: correspondence between him and the
author is printed in _Ramaseeana_. Mr. Charles Fraser preceded the
author in charge of the Sâgar district, and in January, 1832, resumed
charge of the revenue and civil duties of that district, leaving the
criminal work to the author. The Hon. Mr. Cavendish was Resident at
Sindhia's court at Gwâlior. Mr. George Clerk became Sir George Clerk
and Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces, Governor of
Bombay, and Permanent Under-Secretary of State for India; he died at
a great age in 1889. Mr. Lancelot Wilkinson, Political Agent in
Bhopal, was considered by the author to be 'one of the most able and
estimable members of the India Civil Service' (_Journey_, ii. 403).
Mr. Bax was Resident at Indore; Colonel (afterwards Sir John) Low,
was Resident at Lucknow, and had served at Jubbulpore; Colonel
Stewart and Major-General Fraser were Residents at Hyderabad; Major
(Colonel) Alves was Political Agent in Bhopal and Agent in Râjputâna;
Colonel Spiers was Agent at Nîmach, and officiated as Agent in
Râjputâna; Colonel Caulfield had been Political Agent at Harautî;
Colonel Sutherland was Resident at Gwâlior, and afterwards Agent in
Râjputâna; Colonel (Sir C. M.) Wade had been Political Agent at
Lûdiâna; Major Borthwick was employed at Indore; Captain Paton was
Assistant Resident at Lucknow (see _Journey through Kingdom of Oudh_,
vol. ii, pp. 152-69).
Besides the officers above named, others are specified in
_Ramaseeana_ as having done good service.
_Note._--Mr. Crooke suggests, and, I think, correctly, that the words
_Megpunnia_ and _Megpunnaism_ (_ante_, note 20, and Bibliography No.
7) are corruptions of the Hindî _Mêkh-phandiyâ_, from _mêkh_, 'a
peg', and _phandâ_, 'a noose', equivalent to the Persian _tasmabâz_,
meaning 'playing tricks with a strap'. Creagh, a private in a British
regiment at Cawnpore about 1803, is said to have initiated three men
into the peg and strap trick, as practised by English rogues. These
men became the leaders of three Tasmabâz Thug gangs, whose
proceedings are described by Mr. R. Montgomery in _Selections of the
Records of Government_, N.W.P., vol. i, p. 312. A strap is doubled
and folded up in different shapes. The art consists in putting in a
stick or peg in such a way that the strap when unfolded shall come
out double. The Tasmabâz Thugs seem to be identical with the
'Megpunnia' (_N.I.N.& Qu._, vol. i, p. 108, note 721, September
1891).
General Hervey records seven modern instances of strangulation by
Megpunnia Thugs in Râjputâna (_Some Records of Crime_ (1867), vol. i,
pp. 126-31).
CHAPTER 14
Basaltic Cappings of the Sandstone Hills of Central India--Suspension
Bridge--Prospects of the Nerbudda Valley--Deification of a Mortal.
On the 29th[1] we came on to Pathariâ, a considerable little town
thirty miles from Sâgar, supported almost entirely by a few farmers,
small agricultural capitalists, and the establishment of a native
collector,[2] On leaving Pathariâ, we ascend gradually along the side
of the basaltic hills on our left to the south for three miles to a
point whence we see before us this plane of basaltic cappings
extending as far as the eye can reach to the west, south, and north,
with frequent breaks, but still preserving one uniform level. On the
top of these tables are here and there little conical elevations of
laterite, or indurated iron clay.[3] The cappings everywhere repose
immediately upon the sandstone of the Vindhya range; but they have
occasional beds of limestone, formed apparently by springs rising
from their sides, and strongly impregnated with carbonic acid gas.
For the most part this is mere travertine, but in some places they
get good lime from the beds for building.
On the 1st of December we came to the pretty village of Sanodâ, near
the suspension bridge built over the river Biâs by Colonel Presgrave,
while he was assay master of the Sâgar mint.[4] I was present at
laying the foundation-stone of this bridge in December 1827. Mr.
Maddock was the Governor-General's representative in these
territories, and the work was undertaken more with a view to show
what could be done out of their own resources, under minds capable of
developing them, than to supply any pressing or urgent want.
The work was completed in June, 1830; and I have several times seen
upon the bridge as many as it could hold of a regiment of infantry
while it moved over; and, at other times, as many of a corps of
cavalry, and often several elephants at once. The bridge is between
the points of suspension two hundred feet, and the clear portion of
the platform measures one hundred and ninety feet by eleven and a
half. The whole cost of the work amounted to about fifty thousand
rupees; and, under a less able and careful person than Colonel
Presgrave, would have cost, perhaps, double the amount. This work has
been declared by a very competent judge to be equal to any structure
of the same kind in Europe, and is eminently calculated to show what
genius and perseverance can produce out of the resources of a country
even in the rudest state of industry and the arts.
The river Nerbudda neither is nor ever can, I fear, be made
navigable, and the produce of its valley would require to find its
way to distant markets over the Vindhya range of hills to the north,
or the Sâtpura to the south. If the produce of the soil, mines, and
industry of the valley cannot be transported to distant markets, the
Government cannot possibly find in it any available net surplus
revenue in money; for it has no mines of the precious metals, and the
precious metals can flow in only in exchange for the produce of the
land, and the industry of the valley that flows out. If the
Government wishes to draw a net surplus revenue from the valley or
from the districts that border upon it, that is, a revenue beyond its
expenditure in support of the local public establishments, it must
either draw it in produce, or for what can be got for that produce in
distant markets.[5] Hitherto little beyond the rude produce of the
soil has been able to find its way into distant markets from the
valley of the Nerbudda; yet this valley abounds in iron mines,[6] and
its soil, where unexhausted by cropping, is of the richest
quality.[7] It is not then too much to hope that in time the iron of
the mines will be worked with machinery for manufactures; and that
multitudes, aided by this machinery, and subsisted on the rude
agricultural produce, which now flows out, will invest the value of
their labour in manufactured commodities adapted to the demand of
foreign markets and better able from their superior value, compared
with their bulk, to pay the cost of transport by land. Then, and not
till then, can we expect to see these territories pay a considerable
net surplus revenue to Government, and abound in a middle class of
merchants, manufacturers, and agricultural capitalists.[8]
At Sanodâ there is a very beautiful little fortress or castle now
unoccupied, though still entire. It was built by an officer of the
Râjâ Chhatar Sâl of Bundêlkhand, about one hundred and twenty years
ago.[9] He had a grant, on the tenure of military service, of twelve
villages situated round this place; and a man who could build such a
castle to defend the surrounding country from the inroads of
freebooters, and to secure himself and his troops from any sudden
impulse of the people's resentment, was as likely to acquire an
increase of territorial possession in these parts as he would have
been in Europe during the Middle Ages. The son of this chief, by name
Râi Singh, was, soon after the castle had been completed, killed in
an attack upon a town near Chitrakôt;[10] and having, in the
estimation of the people, _become a god_, he had a temple and a tomb
raised to him close to our encampment. I asked the people how he had
become a _god_; and was told that some one who had been long
suffering from a quartan ague went to the tomb one night, and
promised Râi Singh, whose ashes lay under it, that if he could
contrive to cure his ague for him, he would, during the rest of his
life, make offerings to his shrine. After that he had never another
attack, and was very punctual in his offerings. Others followed his
example, and with like success, till Râi Singh was recognized among
them universally as a god, and a temple raised to his name. This is
the way that gods were made all over the world at one time, and are
still made all over India. Happy had it been for mankind if those
only who were supposed to do good had been deified.[11]
On the 2nd we came on to the village of Khojanpur (leaving the town
and cantonments of Sâgar to our left), a distance of some fourteen
miles. The road for a great part of the way was over the bare back of
the sandstone strata, the covering of basalt having been washed off.
The hills, however, are, at this distance from the city and
cantonments of Sâgar, nicely wooded; and, being constantly
intersected by pretty little valleys, the country we came over was
picturesque and beautiful. The soil of all these valleys is rich from
the detritus of the basalt that forms or caps the hills; but it is
now in a bad state of cultivation, partly from several successive
seasons of great calamity, under which the people have been
suffering, and partly from over-assessment; and this posture of
affairs is continued by that loss of energy, industry, and character,
among the farmers and cultivators, which must everywhere result from
these two evils. In India, where the people have learnt so well to
govern themselves, from the want of settled government, good or bad
government really depends almost altogether upon _good or bad
settlements of the land revenue_. Where the Government demand is
imposed with moderation, and enforced with justice, there will the
people be generally found happy and contented, and disposed to
perform their duties to each other and to the state; except when they
have the misfortune to suffer from drought, blight, and other
calamities of season.[l2]
I have mentioned that the basalt in the Sâgar district reposes for
the most part immediately upon the sandstone of the Vindhya range;
and it must have been deposited on the sand, while the latter was yet
at the bottom of the ocean, though this range is now, I believe,
nowhere less than from fifteen hundred to two thousand feet above the
level of the sea. The marks of the ripple of the sea may be observed
in some places where the basalt has been recently washed off,
beautifully defined, as if formed only yesterday, and there is no
other substance to be seen between the two rocks.
The texture of the sandstone at the surface, where it comes in
contact with the basalt, has in some places been altered by it, but
in others it seems to have been as little changed as the habitations
of the people who were suffocated by the ashes of Vesuvius in the
city of Pompeii. I am satisfied, from long and careful examination,
that the greater part of this basalt, which covers the tableland of
Central and Southern India, must have been held for some time in
suspension in the ocean or lake into which it was first thrown in the
shape of ashes, and then gradually deposited. This alone can account
for its frequent appearance of stratification, for the gentle
blending of its particles with those of the sand near the surface of
the latter; and, above all, for those level steps, or tables, lying
one above another horizontally in parallel bars on one range,
corresponding exactly with the same parallel lines one above another
on a range twenty or thirty miles across the valley. Mr. Scrope's
theory is, I believe, that these are all mere flowing _coulées_ of
lava, which, in their liquid state, filled hollows, but afterwards
became of a harder texture, as they dried and crystallized, than the
higher rocks around them; the consequence of which is that the latter
has been decomposed and washed away, while the basalt has been left
to form the highest elevations. My opinion is that these steps, or
stairs, at one time formed the beds of the ocean, or of great lakes,
and that the substance of which they are composed was, for the most
part, projected into the water, and there held in suspension till
gradually deposited. There are, however, amidst these steps, and
beneath them, masses of more compact and crystalline basalt, that
bear evident signs of having been flows of lava.[l3]
Reasoning from analogy at Jubbulpore, where some of the basaltic
cappings of the hills had evidently been thrown out of craters long
after this surface had been raised above the waters, and become the
habitation both of vegetable and animal life, I made the first
discovery of fossil remains in the Nerbudda valley. I went first to a
hill within sight of my house in 1828,[14] and searched exactly
between the plateau of basalt that covered it and the stratum
immediately below, and there I found several small trees with roots,
trunks, and branches, all entire, and beautifully petrified. They had
been only recently uncovered by the washing away of a part of the
basaltic plateau. I soon after found some fossil bones of
animals.[15] Going over to Sâgar, in the end of 1830, and reasoning
there upon the same analogy, I searched for fossil remains along the
line of contact between the basalt and the surface upon which it had
been deposited, and I found a grove of silicified palm-trees within a
mile of the cantonments. These palm-trees had grown upon a calcareous
deposit formed from springs rising out of the basaltic range of hills
to the south. The commissariat officer had cut a road through this
grove, and all the European officers of a large military station had
been every day riding through it without observing the geological
treasure; and it was some time before I could convince them that the
stones which they had every day seen were really petrified palm-
trees. The roots and trunks were beautifully perfect.[l6]
Notes:
1. November, 1835.
2. In the Damoh District, twenty-four miles west of Damoh. The name
appears to be derived from the 'great quantity of hewn stone (Hind.
_patthar_ or _pâthar_) lying about in all directions'. The _C. P.
Gazetteer_ (1870) calls the place 'a considerable village'.
3. A peculiar formation, of 'widespread occurrence in the tropical
and subtropical regions of the world'. It is ordinarily of a reddish
ferruginous or brick-dust colour, sometimes deepened into dark red.
Apparently the special character which distinguishes laterite from
other forms of red-coloured weathering is the presence of hydrous
oxide of alumina in varying proportions. . . . 'Though there is still
a great deal of uncertainty about the way in which laterite was
formed, the facts which are known of its distribution seem to show
that it is a distinct form of weathering, which is confined to low
latitudes and humid climates; its formation seems to have been a slow
process, only possible on flat or nearly flat surfaces, where surface
rain-wash could not act' (Oldham, in _The Oxford Survey of the
British Empire_, vol. ii, Asia, p. 10: Oxford, 1914). It hardens and
darkens by exposure to air, and is occasionally used as a building
stone.
4. The Sâgar mint was erected in 1820 by Captain Presgrave, the assay
master, and used to employ four hundred men, but, after about ten or
twelve years, the business was transferred to Calcutta, and the
buildings converted to other uses (_C. P. Gazetteer_, 1870). Mints
are now kept up at Calcutta and Bombay only. The Biâs is a small
stream flowing into the Sunâr river, and belonging to the Jumna river
system. The name is printed Beeose in the original edition.
5. Since the author's time the conditions have been completely
changed by the introduction of railways. The East Indian, Great
Indian Peninsular, and other railways now enter the Nerbudda Valley,
so that the produce of most districts can be readily transported to
distant markets. A large enhancement of the land revenue has been
obtained by revisions of the settlement.
6. Details will be found in the _Central Provinces Gazetteer_ (1870).
The references are collected under the head 'Iron' in the index to
that work. Chapter VIII of _Ball's Economic Geology of India_ gives
full information concerning the iron mines of the Central Provinces
and all parts of India. That work forms Part III of the _Manual of
the Geology of India_.
7. The soil of the valley of the Nerbudda, and that of the Nerbudda
and Sâgar territories generally, is formed for the most part of the
detritus of trap-rocks that everywhere covered the sandstone of the
Vindhya and Sâtpura ranges which run through these territories. This
basaltic detritus forms what is called the black cotton soil by the
English, for what reason I know not. [W. H. S.] The reason is that
cotton is very largely grown in the Nerbudda Valley, both on the
black soil and other soils. In Bundêlkhand the black, friable soil,
often with a high proportion of organic matter, is called 'mâr', and
is chiefly devoted to raising crops of wheat, gram, or chick-pea
(_Cicer arietinum_), linseed, and joâr (_Holcus sorghum_). Cotton is
also sown in it, but not very generally. This black soil requires
little rain, and is fertile without manure. It absorbs water too
freely to be suitable for irrigation, and in most seasons does not
need it. The 'black cotton soil' is often known as _regur_, a
corruption of a Tamil word. 'The origin of _regur_ is a doubtful
question. . . . The dark coloration was attributed by earlier writers
to vegetable matter, and taken to indicate a large amount of humus in
the soil; more recent investigations make this doubtful, and in all
probability the colour is due to mineral constitution rather than to
the very scanty organic constituents of the soil,' It may possibly be
formed of 'wind-borne dust', like the loess plains of China (Oldham,
in _The Oxford Survey of the British Empire_, vol. ii, Asia, p. 9:
Oxford, 1914).
8. The land revenue has been largely increased, and the resources and
communications of the country have been greatly developed during the
last half-century. The formation of the Central Provinces as a
separate administration in 1861 secured for the Sâgar and Nerbudda
territories the attention which they failed to obtain from the
distant Government of the North-Western Provinces. Sir Richard
Temple, the first Chief Commissioner, administered the Central
Provinces with extraordinary energy and success.
9. Râjâ Chhatarsâl Bundela was Râjâ of Pannâ. The history of
Chhatarsâl is related in _I.G._ (1908), vol. xix, p. 400, s.v. Panna
State. In 1729 he called in the Marâthâs to help him against Muhammad
Khan Bangash, and when he died in 1731 rewarded them by bequeathing
one-third of his dominions to the Peshwa. The correct date of his
death is Pûs Badi 3, Samvat 1788 (_Hamîrpur Settlement Report_
(1880), note at end of chapter 2). The date is often given
inaccurately.
10. Chitrakôt, in the Bânda district of Bundêlkhand, under the
government of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, and seventy-one
miles distant from Allahabad, is a famous place of pilgrimage, much
frequented by the votaries of Râma. Large fairs are held there.
11. The performance of miraculous cures at the tomb is not necessary
for the deification of a person who has been specially feared in his
lifetime, or has died a violent death. Either of these conditions is
enough to render his ghost formidable, and worthy of propitiation.
Shrines to such persons are very numerous both in Bundêlkhand and
other parts of India, Miracles, of course, occur at nearly every
shrine, and are too common and well attested to attract much
attention.
12. These observations are as true to-day as they were in the
author's time. Disastrous cases of over-assessment were common in the
early years of British rule, and the mischief so wrought has been
sometimes traceable for generations afterwards. Since 1833 the error,
though less common, has not been unknown.
13. Since writing the above, I have seen Colonel Sykes's notes on the
formations of Southern India in the _Indian Review_. The facts there
described seem all to support my conclusion, and his map would answer
just as well for Central as for Southern India; for the banks of the
Nerbudda and Chambal, Sôn, and Mahânadî, as well as for those of the
Bâm and the Bîmâ. Colonel Sykes does not, I believe, attempt to
account for the stratification of the basalt; he merely describes it.
[W. H. S.]
The author's theory of the subaqueous origin of the greater part of
the basalt of Central and Southern India, otherwise known as the
'Deccan Trap Series', had been supported by numerous excellent
geologists, but W. T. Blanford proved the theory to be untenable,
there being 'clear and unmistakable evidence that the traps were in
great part of sub-aerial formation', The intercalation of sedimentary
beds with fresh-water fossils is conclusive proof that the lava-flows
associated with such beds cannot be submarine. The hypothesis that
the lower beds of traps were poured out in a vast, but shallow,
freshwater lake extending throughout the area over which the inter-
trappean limestone formation extends appears to be extremely
improbable. The lava seems to have been poured, during a long
succession of ages, over a land surface, uneven and broken in parts,
'with intervals of rest sufficient for lakes, stocked with fresh-
water mollusca, to form on the cold surfaces of several of the lava-
flows' (Holland, in _I.G._ (1907), i. 88). A great tract of the
volcanic region appears to have remained almost undisturbed to the
present day, affected by sub-aerial erosion alone. The geological
horizon of the Deccan trap cannot be precisely defined, but is now
vaguely stated as 'the close of the cretaceous period'. The 'steps',
or conspicuous terraces, traceable on the hill-sides for great
distances, are explained as being 'due to the outcrop of the harder
basaltic strata, or of those beds which resist best the
disintegrating influences of exposure'.
The general horizontality of the Deccan trap over an area of not less
than 200,000 square miles, and the absence of volcanic hills of the
usual conical form, are difficulties which have caused much
discussion. Some of the 'old volcanic vents' appear to have existed
near Poona and Mahâblêshwar. The entire area has been subjected to
sub-aerial denudation on a gigantic scale, which explains the
occurrence of the basalt as the caps of isolated hills. Much further
investigation is required to clear up details (_Manual of the Geology
of India_, ed. 1, Part I, chap. 13)
14. The author took charge of the Jubbulpore District in March 1828.
15. The fossiliferous beds near Jubbulpore, described in the text,
seem to belong to the group now classed as the Lamêtâ beds. The bones
of a large dinosaurian reptile (_Titanosaurus indicus_) have been
identified (_I.G._, 1907, vol. i, p. 88).
16. 'Many years ago Dr. Spry (_Note on the Fossil Palms and Shells
lately discovered on the Table-Land of Sâgar in Central India_, in
_J.A.S.B._ for 1833, vol. ii, p. 639) and, subsequently to him,
Captain Nicholls (_Journal of Asiatic Soc. of Bombay_, vol. v, p.
614), studied and described certain trunks of palm-trees, whose
silicified remains are found imbedded in the soft intertrappean mud-
beds near Sâgar. . . . The trees are imbedded in a layer of
calcareous black earth, which formed the surface soil in which they
grew; this soil rests on, and was made up of the disintegration of, a
layer of basalt. It is covered over by another and similar layer of
the same rock near where the trees occur. . . . The palm-trees, now
found fossilized, grew in the soil, which, in the condition of a
black calcareous earthy bed, we now find lying round their prostrate
stems. They fell (from whatever cause), and lay until their
silicification was complete. A slight depression of the surface, or
some local or accidental check of some drainage-course, or any other
similar and trivial cause, may have laid them under water. The
process of silicification proceeded gradually but steadily, and after
they had there, in lapse of ages, become lapidified, the next
outburst of volcanic matter overwhelmed them, broke them, partially
enveloped, and bruised them, until long subsequent denudation once
more brought them to light' (J. G. Medlicott, in _Memoirs of the
Geological Survey of India_, vol. ii. Part II, pp. 200, 203, 204,
205, 216, as quoted in _C. P. Gazetteer_ (1870), p. 435). The
intertrappean fossils are all those of organisms which would occur in
shallow fresh-water lakes or marshy ground.
Besides the author's friend and relative, Dr. H. H. Spry, Dr.
Spilsbury contributed papers on the Nerbudda fossils to vols. iii,
vi, viii, ix, x, and xiii of the _J.A.S.B._ Other writers also have
treated of the subject, but it appears to be by no means fully worked
out. James Prinsep, to whom no topic came amiss, discussed the
Jubbulpore fossil bones in the volume in which Dr. Spry's paper
appeared. Dr. Spry was the author of a work entitled _Modern India:
with Illustrations of the Resources and Capabilities of Hindustan_ (2
vols. 8vo, 1838). He became F.R.S.
CHAPTER 15
Legend of the Sâgar Lake--Paralysis from eating the Grain of the
_Lathyrus sativus_.
The cantonments of Sâgar are about two miles from the city and
occupied by three regiments of native infantry, one of local horse,
and a company of European artillery.[1] The city occupies two sides
of one of the most beautiful lakes of India, formed by a wall which
unites two sandstone hills on the north side. The fort and part of
the town stands upon this wall, which, according to tradition, was
built by a wealthy merchant of the Banjâra caste.[2] After he had
finished it, the bed of the lake still remained dry; and he was told
in a dream, or by a priest, that it would continue so till he should
consent to sacrifice his own daughter, then a girl, and the young lad
to whom she was affianced, to the tutelary god of the place. He
accordingly built a little shrine in the centre of the valley, which
was to become the bed of the lake, put the two children in, and built
up the doorway. He had no sooner done so than the whole of the valley
became filled with water, and the old merchant, the priest, the
masons, and spectators, made their escape with much difficulty. From
that time the lake has been inexhaustible; but no living soul of the
Banjâra caste has ever since been known to drink of its waters.
Certainly all of that caste at present religiously avoid drinking the
water of the lake; and the old people of the city say that they have
always done so since they can remember, and that they used to hear
from their parents that they had always done so. In nothing does the
Founder of the Christian religion appear more amiable than in His
injunction, 'Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them
not'. In nothing do the Hindoo deities appear more horrible than in
the delight they are supposed to take in their sacrifice--it is
everywhere the helpless, the female, and the infant that they seek to
devour--and so it was among the Phoenicians and their Carthaginian
colonies. Human sacrifices were certainly offered in the cities of
Sâgar during the whole of the Marâtha government up to the year 1800,
when they were put a stop to by the local governor, Âsâ Sâhib, a very
humane man; and I once heard a very learned Brahman priest say that
he thought the decline of his family and government arose from this
_innovation_. 'There is', said he, 'no sin in _not_ offering human
sacrifices to the gods where none have been offered; but, where the
gods have been accustomed to them, they are naturally annoyed when
the rite is abolished, and visit the place and people with all kinds
of calamities.' He did not seem to think that there was anything
singular in this mode of reasoning, and perhaps three Brahman priests
out of four would have reasoned in the same manner.[3]
On descending into the valley of the Nerbudda over the Vindhya range
of hills from Bhopal, one may see by the side of the road, upon a
spur of the hill, a singular pillar of sandstone rising in two
spires, one turning above and rising over the other, to the height of
from twenty to thirty feet. On a spur of a hill half a mile distant
is another sandstone pillar not quite so high. The tradition is that
the smaller pillar was the affianced bride of the taller one, who was
a youth of a family of great eminence in these parts. Coming with his
uncle to pay his first visit to his bride in the procession they call
the 'barât', he grew more and more impatient as he approached nearer
and nearer, and she shared the feeling. At last, unable to restrain
himself, he jumped upon his uncle's shoulder, and looked with all his
might towards the spot where his bride was said to be seated.
Unhappily she felt no less impatient than he did, and raised 'the
fringed curtains of her eye', as he raised his, [and] they saw each
other at the same moment. In that moment the bride, bridegroom, and
uncle were all converted into stone pillars; and there they stand to
this day a monument, in the estimation of the people, to warn men and
womankind against too strong an inclination to indulge curiosity. It
is a singular fact that in one of the most extensive tribes of the
Gond population of Central India, to which this couple is said to
have belonged, the bride always goes to the bridegroom in the
procession of the 'barât', to prevent a recurrence of this calamity.
It is the bridegroom who goes to the bride among every other class of
the people of India, as well Muhammadans as Hindoos. Whether the
usage grew out of the tradition, or the tradition out of the usage,
is a question that will admit of much being said on both sides. I can
only vouch for the existence of both. I have seen the pillars, heard
the tradition from the people, and ascertained the usage; as in the
case of that of the Sâgar lake.
The Mahâdêo sandstone hills, which in the Sâtpura range overlook the
Nerbudda to the south, rise to between four and five thousand feet
above the level of the sea;[4] and in one of the highest parts a fair
was formerly, and is, perhaps, still held[5] for the enjoyment of
those who assemble to witness the self devotion of a few young men,
who offer themselves as a sacrifice to fulfil the vows of their
mothers. When a woman is without children she makes votive offerings
to all the gods, who can, she thinks, assist her, and promises of
still greater in case they should grant what she wants. Smaller
promises being found of no avail, she at last promises her first-
born, if a male, to the god of destruction, Mahâdêo. If she gets a
son, she conceals from him her vows till he has attained the age of
puberty; she then communicates it [_sic_] to him, and enjoins him to
fulfil it. He believes it to be his paramount duty to obey his
mother's call; and from that moment he considers himself as devoted
to the god. Without breathing to any living soul a syllable of what
she has told him, he puts on the habit of a pilgrim or religious
mendicant, visits all the celebrated temples dedicated to this god in
different parts of India;[6] and, at the annual fair on the Mahâdêo
hills, throws himself from a perpendicular height of four or five
hundred feet, and is dashed to pieces upon the rocks below.[7] If the
youth does not feel himself quite prepared for the sacrifice on the
first visit, he spends another year in pilgrimages, and returns to
fulfil his mother's vow at the next fair. Some have, I believe, been
known to postpone the sacrifice to a third fair; but the interval is
always spent in painful pilgrimages to the celebrated temples of the
god. When Sir R. Jenkins was the Governor-General's representative at
the court of Nâgpur,[8] great efforts were made by him and all the
European officers under him to put a stop to these horrors by doing
away with the fair; and their efforts were assisted by the _cholera
morbus_, which broke out among the multitude one season while they
were so employed, and carried off the greater part of them. This
seasonable visitation was, I believe, considered as an intimation on
the part of the god that the people ought to have been more attentive
to the wishes of the white men, for it so happens that Mahâdêo is the
only one of the Hindoo gods who is represented with a white face.[9]
He figures among the _dramatis personae_ of the great pantomime of
the Râmlîlâ[10] or fight for the recovery of Sitâ from the demon king
of Ceylon; and is the only one with a white face. I know not whether
the fair has ever been revived, but [I] think not.
In 1829 the wheat and other spring crops in this and the surrounding
villages were destroyed by a severe hail-storm; in 1830 they were
deficient from the want of seasonable rains; and in 1831 they were
destroyed by blight. During these three years the 'teorî', or what in
other parts of India is called 'kesârî' (the _Lathyrus sativus_ of
botanists), a kind of wild vetch, which, though not sown itself, is
left carelessly to grow among the wheat and other grain, and given in
the green and dry state to cattle, remained uninjured, and thrived
with great luxuriance.[11] In 1831 they reaped a rich crop of it from
the blighted wheat-fields, and subsisted upon its grain during that
and the following years, giving the stalks and leaves only to their
cattle. In 1833 the sad effects of this food began to manifest
themselves. The younger part of the population of this and the
surrounding villages, from the age of thirty downwards, began to be
deprived of the use of their limbs below the waist by paralytic
strokes, in all cases sudden, but in some cases more severe than in
others. About half the youth of this village of both sexes became
affected during the years 1833 and 1834, and many of them have lost
the use of their lower limbs entirely, and are unable to move. The
youth of the surrounding villages, in which the 'teorî' from the same
causes formed the chief article of food during the years 1831 and
1832, have suffered to an equal degree. Since the year 1834 no new
case has occurred; but no person once attacked had been found to
recover the use of the limbs affected; and my tent was surrounded by
great numbers of the youth in different stages of the disease,
imploring my advice and assistance under this dreadful visitation.
Some of them were very fine-looking young men of good caste and
respectable families; and all stated that their pains and infirmities
were confined entirely to the parts below the waist. They described
the attack as coming on suddenly, often while the person was asleep,
and without any warning symptoms whatever; and stated that a greater
portion of the young men were attacked than of the young women. It is
the prevailing opinion of the natives throughout the country that
both horses and bullocks, which have been much fed upon 'teorî', are
liable to lose the use of their limbs; but, if the poisonous
qualities abound more in the grain than in the stalk or leaves, man,
who eats nothing but the grain, must be more liable to suffer from
the use of this food than beasts, which eat it merely as they eat
grass or hay.
I sent the son of the head man of the village and another, who were
among the young people least affected, into Sâgar with a letter to my
friend Dr. Foley, with a request that he would try what he could do
for them; and if he had any fair prospect of being able to restore
these people to the use of their limbs, that measures might be
adopted through the civil authorities to provide them with
accommodation and the means of subsistence, either by private
subscription, or by application to Government. The civil authorities,
however, could find neither accommodation nor funds to maintain these
people while under Dr. Foley's care; and several seasons of calamity
had deprived them of the means of maintaining themselves at a
distance from their families. Nor is a medical man in India provided
with the means found most effectual in removing such affections, such
as baths, galvanic batteries, &c. It is lamentable to think how very
little we have as yet done for the country in the healing art, that
art which, above all others, a benevolent and enlightened Government
should encourage among the people of India.
All we have as yet done has been to provide medical attendants for
our European officers; regiments, and jails. It must not, however, be
supposed that the people of India are without medical advice, for
there is not a town or considerable village in India without its
practitioners, the Hindoos following the Egyptian (Misrânî), and the
Musalmâns the Grecian (Yunânî) practice. The first prescribe little
physic and much fasting; and the second follow the good old rules of
Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna, with which they are all tolerably
well acquainted. As far as the office of physician goes, the natives
of India of all classes, high and low, have much more confidence in
their own practitioners than in ours, whom they consider too reckless
and better adapted to treat diseases in a cold than a hot climate.
They cannot afford to give the only fees which European physicians
would accept; and they see them, in their hospital practice, trust
much to their native assistants, who are very few of them able to
read any book, much less to study the profound doctrines of the great
masters of the science of medicine.[12] No native ventures to offer
an opinion upon this abstruse subject in any circle where he is not
known to be profoundly read in either Arabic or Sanskrit lore; nor
would he venture to give a prescription without first consulting,
'spectacles on nose', a book as large as a church Bible. The educated
class, as indeed all classes, say that they do not want our
physicians, but stand much in need of our surgeons. Here they feel
that they are helpless, and we are strong; and they seek our aid
whenever they see any chance of obtaining it, as in the present
case.[13] Considering that every European gentleman they meet is more
or less a surgeon, or hoping to find him so, people who are
afflicted, or have children afflicted, with any kind of malformation,
or malorganization, flock round them [_sic_] wherever they go, and
implore their aid; but implore in vain, for, when they do happen to
fall in with a surgeon, he is a mere passer-by, without the means or
the time to afford relief. In travelling over India there is nothing
which distresses a benevolent man so much as the necessity he is
daily under of telling poor parents, who, with aching hearts and
tearful eyes, approach him with their suffering children in their
arms, that to relieve them requires time and means which are not at a
traveller's command, or a species of knowledge which he does not
possess; it is bitter thus to dash to the ground the cup of hope
which our approach has raised to the lip of mother, father, and
child; but he consoles himself with the prospect, that at no distant
period a benevolent and enlightened Government will distribute over
the land those from whom the afflicted will not seek relief in
vain.[14]
Notes:
1. The garrison is stated in the _Gazetteer_ (1870) to consist of a
European regiment of infantry, two batteries of European artillery,
one native cavalry and one native infantry regiment. In 1893 it
consisted of one battery of Royal Artillery, a detachment of British
Infantry, a regiment of Bengal Cavalry, and a detachment of Bengal
Infantry. According to the census of 1911, the population of Sâgar
was 45,908.
2. The Banjâras, or Brinjâras, are a wandering tribe, principally
employed as carriers of grain and salt on bullocks and cows. They
used to form the transport service of the Moghal armies, and of the
Company's forces at least as late as 1819. Their organization and
customs are in many ways peculiar. The development of roads and
railways has much diminished the importance of the tribe. A good
account of it will be found in Balfour, _Cyclopaedia of India_, 3rd
ed., 1885, s. v. 'Banjâra'. Dubois (_Hindu Manners, &c._, 3rd ed.
(1906), p. 70) states that 'of all the castes of the Hindus, this
particular one is acknowledged to be the most brutal'.
3. See note on human sacrifice, _ante_, Chapter 8, note 8.
4. In the Hoshangâbâd district of the Central Provinces. The
sandstone formation here attains its highest development, and is
known to geologists as the 'Mahâdêo sandstones'. The new sanitarium
of Pachmarhî is situated in these hills.
5. It has been long since suppressed.
6. Benares is the principal seat of the worship of Mahâdêo (Siva),
but his shrines are found everywhere throughout India. One hundred
and eight of these are reckoned as important. In Southern India the
most notable, perhaps, is the great temple at Tanjore (see chap. 17
of Monier Williams's _Religious Thought and Life in India_).
7. 'This mode of suicide is called Bhrigu-pâtâ, "throwing one's self
from a precipice". It was once equally common at the rock of Girnâr
[in Kâthiâwâr], and has only recently been prohibited' (ibid. p.
349).
8. Nagpore (Nâgpur) was governed by Marâthâ rulers, with the title of
Bhônslâ, also known as the Râjâs of Berâr. The last Râjâ, Raghojî,
died without heirs in 1853. His dominions were then annexed as lapsed
territory by Lord Dalhousie. Sir Richard Jenkins was Resident at
Nâgpur from 1810 to 1827. Nâgpur is now the head-quarters of the
Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces.
9. 'There is a legend that Siva appeared in the Kali age, for the
good of the Brahmans, as "Sveta", "the white one", and that he had
four disciples, to all of whom the epithet "Sveta" is applied'
(Monier Williams, _Religious Thought and Life in India_, p. 80, note
2). Various explanations of the legend have been offered. Professor
A. Weber is inclined to think that the various references to white
teachers in Indian legends allude to Christian missionaries. The
Mahâbhârata mentions the travels of Nârada and others across the sea
to 'Sveta-dwîpa', the 'Island of the White Men', in order to learn
the doctrine of the unity of God. This tradition appears to be
intelligible only if understood to commemorate the journeys of pious
Indians to Alexandria, and their study of Christianity there (_Die
Griechen in Indien_, 1890, p. 34).
10. The Râmlîlâ, a performance corresponding to the mediaeval
European 'miracle-play', is celebrated in Northern India in the month
of Kuâr (or Asvin, September-October), at the same time as the Durgâ
Pûjâ is solemnized in Bengal. Râma and his brother Lachhman are
impersonated by boys, who are seated on thrones in state. The
performance concludes by the burning of a wicker image of Râvana, the
demon king of Lankâ (Ceylon), who had carried off Râma's queen, Sitâ.
The story is the leading subject of the great epic called the
Râmâyana.
11. The _Lathyrus sativus_ is cultivated in the Punjab and in Tibet.
Its poisonous qualities are attributed to its excessive proportion of
nitrogenous matter, which requires dilution. Another species of the
genus, _L. cicer_, grown in Spain, has similar properties. The
distressing effects described in the text have been witnessed by
other observers (Balfour, _Cyclopaedia_, 3rd ed., 1885, s.v.
'Lathyrus').
12. One of the tent-pitchers one morning, after pitching our tent,
asked the loan of a small extra one for the use of his wife, who was
about to be confined. The basket-maker's wife of the village near
which we were encamped was called; and the poor woman, before we had
finished our breakfast, gave birth to a daughter. The charge is half
a rupee, or one shilling for a boy, and a quarter, or sixpence, for a
girl. The tent-pitcher gave her ninepence, which the poor midwife
thought very handsome, The mother had come fourteen miles upon a
loaded cart over rough roads the night before; and went the same
distance with her child the night after, upon the same cart. The
first midwife in Europe could not have done her duty better than this
poor basket-maker's wife did hers. [W. H. S.]
13. The 'present case' was of a medical, not a surgical, nature.
14. The Hindoo practitioners are called 'baid' (Sanskrit 'vaidya',
followers of the Veda, that is to say, the Ayur Veda). The Musalmân
practitioners are generally called 'hakîm'. The Egyptian school
(Misrânî, Misrî, or Suryânî, that is, Syrian) never practise
bleeding, and are partial to the use of metallic oxides. The Yunânî
physicians approve of bleeding, and prefer vegetable drugs. The older
writers on India fancied that the Hindoo system of medicine was of
enormous antiquity, and that the principles of Galenical medical
science were ultimately derived from India. Modern investigation has
proved that Hindoo medicine, like Hindoo astronomy, is largely of
Greek origin. This conclusion has been expressed in an exaggerated
form by some writers, but its general truth appears to be
established. The Hindoo books treating of medicine are certainly
older than Wilson supposed, for the Bower manuscript, written in the
second half of the fourth century of our era, contains three Sanskrit
medical treatises. The writers had, however, plenty of time to borrow
from Galen, who lived in the second century. The Indian aversion to
European medicine, as distinguished from surgery, still exists,
though in a degree somewhat less than in the author's time. Many
municipal boards have insisted on employing 'baids' and 'hakîms' in
addition to the practitioners trained in European methods. Well-to-do
patients often delay resort to the English physician until they have
exhausted all resources of the 'hakîm' and have been nearly killed by
his drastic treatment. One medical innovation, the use of quinine as
a febrifuge, has secured universal approbation. I never heard of an
Indian who disbelieved in quinine. Chlorodyne also is fully
appreciated, but most of the European medicines are regarded with
little faith.
Since the author wrote, great progress has been made in providing
hospital and dispensary accommodation. Each 'district', or unit of
civil administration, has a fairly well equipped combined hospital
and dispensary at head-quarters, and branch dispensaries exist in
almost every district. An Inspector-General of Dispensaries
supervises the medical administration of each province, and medical
schools have been organized at Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Lahore, and
Agra. During Lord Dufferin's Viceroyalty and afterwards, energetic
steps were taken to improve the system of medical relief for females.
Pandit Madhusadan Gupta, on January 10, 1836, was the first Hindoo
who ventured to dissect a human body and teach anatomy. India can now
boast of a considerable number of Hindoo and Musalmân practitioners,
trained in European methods, and skilful in their profession. Much
has been done, infinitely more remains to be done. Details will be
found in _I.G._ (1907), vol. iv, chap. 14, 'Medical Administration',
The article 'Medicine' in Balfour, _Cyclopaedia_, 3rd ed., 1885, on
which I have drawn for some of the facts above stated, gives a good
summary of the earlier history of medicine in India, but greatly
exaggerates the antiquity of the Hindoo books. On this question
Weber's paper, 'Die Griechen in Indien' (Berlin, 1890, p. 28), and
Dr. Hoernle's remarks on the Bower manuscript (in _J.A.S.B._, vol. lx
(1891), Part I, p. 145) may be consulted. Dr. Hoernle's annotated
edition and translation of the Bower MS. were completed in 1912. Part
of the work is reprinted with additions in the _Ind. Ant._ for 1913
and 1914.
CHAPTER 16
Suttee Tombs--Insalubrity of deserted Fortresses.
On the 3rd we came to Bahrol,[1] where I had encamped with Lord
William Bentinck on the last day of December, 1832, when the
quicksilver in the thermometer at sunrise, outside our tents, was
down to twenty-six degrees of Fahrenheit's thermometer. The village
stands upon a gentle swelling hill of decomposed basalt, and is
surrounded by hills of the same formation. The Dasân river flows
close under the village, and has two beautiful reaches, one above,
the other below, separated by the dyke of basalt, over which lies the
ford of the river.[2]
There are beautiful reaches of the kind in all the rivers in this
part of India, and they are almost everywhere formed in the same
manner. At Bahrol there is a very unusual number of tombs built over
the ashes of women who have burnt themselves with the remains of
their husbands. Upon each tomb stands erect a tablet of freestone,
with the sun, the new moon, and a rose engraved upon it in bas-relief
in one field;[3] and the man and woman, hand in hand, in the other.
On one stone of this kind I saw a third field below these two, with
the figure of a horse in bas-relief, and I asked one of the gentlemen
farmers, who was riding with me, what it meant. He told me that he
thought it indicated that the woman rode on horseback to bathe before
she ascended the pile.[4] I asked him whether he thought the measure
prohibiting the practice of burning good or bad.
'It is', said he, 'in some respects good, and in others bad. Widows
cannot marry among us, and those who had no prospect of a comfortable
provision among their husband's relations, or who dreaded the
possibility of going astray, and thereby sinking into contempt and
misery, were enabled in this way to relieve their minds, and follow
their husbands, under the full assurance of being happily united to
them in the next world.'
When I passed this place on horseback with Lord William Bentinck, he
asked me what these tombs were, for he had never seen any of the kind
before. When I told him what they were, he said not a word; but he
must have felt a proud consciousness of the debt of gratitude which
India owes to the statesman who had the courage to put a stop to this
great evil, in spite of all the fearful obstacles which bigotry and
prejudice opposed to the measure. The seven European functionaries in
charge of the seven districts of the newly-acquired territories were
requested, during the administration of Lord Amherst in 1826, to
state whether the burning of widows could or should be prohibited;
and I believe every one of them declared that it should not. And yet,
when it was put a stop to only a few years after by Lord William, not
a complaint or murmur was heard. The replies to the Governor-
General's inquiries were, I believe, throughout India, for the most
part, opposed to the measure.[5]
On the 4th we came to Dhamonî, ten miles. The only thing remarkable
here is the magnificent fortress, which is built upon a small
projection of the Vindhya range, looking down on each side into two
enormously deep glens, through which the two branches of the Dasân
river descend over the tableland into the plains of Bundêlkhand.[6]
The rays of the sun seldom penetrate to the bottom of these glens,
and things are, in consequence, grown there that could not be grown
in parts more exposed.
Every inch of the level ground in the bed of the streams below seems
to be cultivated with care. This fortress is said to have cost more
than a million of money, and to have been only one of fifty-two great
works, of which a former Râjâ of Bundêlkhand, Bîrsingh Deo, laid the
foundation in the same _happy hour_ which had been pointed out to him
by his astrologers.[7] The works form an acute triangle, with the
base towards the tableland, and the two sides hanging perpendicularly
over the glens, while the apex points to the course of the streams as
they again unite, and pass out through a deep chasm into the plains
of Bundêlkhand.
The fortress is now entirely deserted, and the town, which the
garrison supported, is occupied by only a small police-guard,
stationed here to see that robbers do not take up their abode among
the ruins. There is no fear of this. All old deserted fortresses in
India become filled by a dense stream of carbonic acid gas, which is
found so inimical to animal life that those who attempt to occupy
them become ill, and, sooner or later, almost all die of the
consequences. This gas, being specifically much heavier than common
air, descends into the bottom of such unoccupied fortresses, and
remains stagnant like water in old reservoirs. The current of pure
air continually passes over, without being able to carry off the mass
of stagnant air below; and the only way to render such places
habitable is to make large openings in the walls on all sides, from
the top to the bottom, so that the foul air may be driven out by the
current of pure atmospheric air, which will then be continually
rushing in. When these fortresses are thickly peopled, the continual
motion within tends, I think, to mix up this gas with the air above;
while the numerous fires lighted within, by rarefying that below,
tend to draw down a regular supply of the atmospheric air from above
for the benefit of the inhabitants. When natives enter upon the
occupation of an old fortress of this kind, that has remained long
unoccupied, they always make a solemn religions ceremony of it; and,
having fed the priests, the troops, and a crowd of followers, all
rush in at once with beat of drums, and as much noise as they can
make. By this rush, and the fires that follow, the bad air is,
perhaps, driven off, and never suffered to collect again while the
fortress remains fully occupied. Whatever may be the cause, the fact
is certain that these fortresses become deadly places of abode for
small detachments of troops, or small parties of any kind. They all
get ill, and few recover from the diseases they contract in them.
From the year 1817, when we first took possession of the Sâgar and
Nerbudda Territories, almost all the detachments of troops we
required to keep at a distance from the headquarters of their
regiments were posted in these old deserted fortifications. Our
collections of revenue were deposited in them; and, in some cases,
they were converted into jails for the accommodation of our
prisoners. Of the soldiers so lodged, I do not believe that one in
four ever came out well; and, of those who came out ill, I do not
believe that one in four survived five years. They were all abandoned
one after the other; but it is painful to think how many hundreds, I
may say thousands, of our brave soldiers were sacrificed before this
resolution was taken. I have known the whole of the survivors of
strong detachments that went in, in robust health, three months
before, brought away mere skeletons, and in a hopeless and dying
state. All were sent to their homes on medical certificate, but they
almost all died there, or in the course of their journey.
Notes:
1. December, 1835. The name of the village is spelled Behrole by the
author.
2. The Dasân river rises in the Bhopâl State, flows through the Sâgar
district of the Central Provinces, and along the southern boundary of
the Lalitpur subdivision of the Jhânsî District, United Provinces of
Agra and Oudh. It also forms the boundary between the Jhânsî and
Hamîrpur Districts, and falls into the Betwa after a course of about
220 miles. The name is often, but erroneously, written Dhasân. It is
the Sanskrit Dasârna.
3. This emblem is a lotus, not a rose flower. The latter is never
used in Hindoo symbolism. The lotus is a solar emblem, and intimately
associated with the worship of Vishnu.
4. It rather indicates that the husband was on horseback when killed.
The sculptures on satî pillars often commemorate the mode of death of
the husband. Sometimes these pillars are inscribed. They usually face
the east. An open hand is often carved in the upper compartment as
well as the sun and moon. A drawing of such a pillar will be found in
_J.A.S.B._, vol. xlvi. Part I, 1877, pl. xiv. _A.S.R._, vol. iii, p.
10; vol. vii, p. 137; vol. x, p. 75; and vol. xxi, p. 101, may be
consulted.
5. The 'newly-acquired territories' referred to are the Sâgar and
Nerbudda Territories, comprising the seven districts, Sâgar,
Jubbulpore, Hoshangâbâd, Seonî, Damoh, Narsinghpur, and Baitûl, ceded
in 1818, and now included in the Central Provinces. The tenor of the
replies given to Lord Amherst's queries shows how far the process of
Hindooizing had advanced among the European officials of the Company.
Lord Amherst left India in March, 1828. See _ante._ Chapter 4 and
Chapter 8, for cases of satî (suttees). For a good account of the
suttee discussions and legislation, see D. Boulger, _Lord William
Bentinck_ (1897), chap. v, in 'Rulers of India' Series. No other
biography of Lord William Bentinck exists.
6. Dhamonî is in the Sâgar district of the Central Provinces, about
twenty-nine miles north of Sâgar. The fort was taken by General
Marshall in 1818. It had been rebuilt by Râjâ Bîrsingh Deo of Orchhâ
on an enormous scale about the end of the sixteenth century. In the
original edition, the author's march is said to have taken place 'on
the 24th'. This must be a mistake for 'on the 4th'; as the last date,
that of the march to Bahrol, was the 3rd December. The author reached
Agra on January 1, 1836,
7. The number fifty-two is one of the Hindoo favourite numbers, like
seven, twelve, and eighty-four, held sacred for astronomical or
astrological reasons. Bîrsingh Deo was the younger brother of
Râmchand, head of the Bundêla clan. To oblige Prince Salîm,
afterwards the Emperor Jahângîr, he murdered Abûl Fazl, the
celebrated minister and historian of Akbar, on August 12, 1602,
Jahângîr, after his accession, rewarded the murderer by allowing him
to supersede his brother in the headship of his clan, and by
appointing him to the rank of 'commander of three thousand'. The
capital of Bîrsingh was Orchhâ. His successors are often spoken of as
Râjâs of Tehrî. The murder is fully described in _The Emperor Akbar_
by Count von Noer, translated by A. S. Beveridge, Calcutta, 1890,
vol. ii, pp. 384-404. Orchhâ is described _post_, Chapters 22,23.
CHAPTER 17
Basaltic Cappings--Interview with a Native Chief--A Singular
Character.
On the 5th[1] we came to the village of Seorî. Soon after leaving
Dhamonî, we descended the northern face of the Vindhya range into the
plains of Bundêlkhand. The face of this range overlooking the valley
of the Nerbudda to the south is, as I have before stated, a series of
mural precipices, like so many rounded bastions, the slight dip of
the strata being to the north. The northern face towards Bundêlkhand,
on the contrary, here descends gradually, as the strata dip slightly
towards the north, and we pass down gently over their back. The
strata have, however, been a good deal broken, and the road was so
rugged that two of our carts broke down in descending. From the
descent over the northern face of the tableland into Bundêlkhand to
the descent over the southern face into the valley of the Nerbudda
must be a distance of one hundred miles directly north and south.
The descent over the northern face is not everywhere so gradual; on
the contrary, there are but few places where it is at all feasible;
and some of the rivers of the tableland between Jubbulpore and
Mirzapore have a perpendicular fall of more than four hundred feet
over these mural precipices of the northern face of the Vindhya
range.[2] A man, if he have good nerve, may hang over the summits,
and suspend in his hand a plummet that shall reach the bottom.
I should mention that this tableland is not only intersected by
ranges, but everywhere studded with isolated hills rising suddenly
out of basins or valleys. These ranges and isolated hills are all of
the same sandstone formation, and capped with basalt, more or less
amygdaloidal. The valleys and cappings have often a substratum of
very compact basalt, which must evidently have flowed into them after
these islands were formed. The question is, how were these valleys
and basins scooped out? 'Time, time, time!' says Mr. Scrope; 'grant
me only time, and I can account for everything.' I think, however,
that I am right in considering the basaltic cappings of these ranges
and isolated hills to have once formed part of continued flat beds of
great lakes. The flat parallel planes of these cappings,
corresponding with each other, however distantly separated the hills
they cover may be, would seem to indicate that they could not all
have been subject to the convulsions of nature by which the whole
substrata were upheaved above the ocean. I am disposed to think that
such islands and ranges of the sandstone were formed before the
deposit of the basalt, and that the form of the surface is now
returning to what it then was, by the gradual decomposition and
wearing away of the latter rock. Much, however, may be said on both
sides of this, as of every other question. After descending from the
sandstone of the Vindhya[3] range into Bundêlkhand, we pass over
basalt and basaltic soil, reposing immediately on syenitic granite,
with here and there beds and veins of pure feldspar, hornblende, and
quartz.
Takht Singh, the younger brother of Arjun Singh, the Râjâ of
Shâhgarh,[4] came out several miles to meet me on his elephant.
Finding me on horseback, he got off from his elephant, and mounted
his horse, and we rode on till we met the Râjâ himself, about a mile
from our tents. He was on horseback, with a large and splendidly
dressed train of followers, all mounted on fine sleek horses, bred in
the Râjâ's own stables. He was mounted on a snow-white steed of his
own breeding (and I have rarely seen a finer animal), and dressed in
a light suit of silver brocade made to represent the scales of steel
armour, surmounted by a gold turban. Takht Singh was more plainly
dressed, but is a much finer and more intelligent-looking man. Having
escorted us to our tents, they took their leave, and returned to
their own, which were pitched on a rising ground on the other side of
a small stream, half a mile distant. Takht Singh resides here in a
very pretty fortified castle on an eminence. It is a square building,
with a round bastion at each corner, and one on each face, rising
into towers above the walls.
A little after midday the Râjâ and his brother came to pay us a
visit; and about four o'clock I went to return it, accompanied by
Lieutenant Thomas. As usual, he had a nautch (dance) upon carpets,
spread upon the sward under awnings in front of the pavilion in which
we were received. While the women were dancing and singing, a very
fine panther was brought in to be shown to us. He had been caught,
full-grown, two years before, and, in the hands of a skilful man, was
fit for the chase in six months. It was a very beautiful animal, but,
for the sake of the sport, kept wretchedly thin.[5] He seemed
especially indifferent to the crowd and the music, but could not bear
to see the woman whirling about in the dance with her red mantle
floating in the breeze; and, whenever his head was turned towards
her, he cropped his ears. She at last, in play, swept close by him,
and with open mouth he attempted to spring upon her, but was pulled
back by the keeper. She gave a shriek, and nearly fell upon her back
in fright.
The Râjâ is a man of no parts or character, and, his expenditure
being beyond his income, he is killing his goose for the sake of her
eggs--that is, he is ruining all the farmers and cultivators of his
large estate by exactions, and thereby throwing immense tracts of
fine land out of tillage. He was the heir to the fortress and
territory of Garhâ Kotâ, near Sâgar, which was taken by Sindhia's
army, under the command of Jean Baptiste Filose,[6] just before our
conquest in 1817. I was then with my regiment, which was commanded by
Colonel, afterwards Major-General, G------,[7] a very singular
character. When our surgeon. Dr. E------, received the newspaper
announcing the capture of Garhâ Kotâ in Central India by _Jean-
Baptiste_, an officer of the corps was with him, who called on the
colonel on his way home, and mentioned this as a bit of news. As soon
as this officer had left him, the colonel wrote off a note to the
doctor: 'My dear Doctor,--I understand that that fellow, _John the
Baptist_, has got into Sindhia's service, and now commands an army--
do send me the newspapers.' These were certainly the words of his
note, and, at the only time I heard him speak on the subject of
religion he discomfited his adversary in an argument at the mess by
'Why, sir, you do not suppose that I believe in those fellows,
Luther, Calvin, and John the Baptist, do you?'
Nothing could stand this argument. All the party burst into a laugh,
which the old gentleman took for an unequivocal recognition of his
victory, and his adversary was silenced. He was an old man when I
first became acquainted with him. I put into his hands, when in camp,
Miss Edgeworth's novels, in the hope of being able to induce him to
read by degrees; and I have frequently seen the tears stealing down
over his furrowed cheeks, as he sat pondering over her pages in the
corner of his tent. A braver soldier never lived than old G------;
and he distinguished himself greatly in the command of his regiment,
under Lord Lake, at the battle of Laswâri[8] and siege of
Bharatpur.[9] It was impossible ever to persuade him that the
characters and incidents of these novels were the mere creations of
fancy--he felt them to be true--he wished them to be true, and he
would have them to be true. We were not very anxious to undeceive
him, as the illusion gave him pleasure and did him good. Bolingbroke
says, after an ancient author, 'History is philosophy teaching by
example.'[10] With equal truth may we say that fiction, like that of
Maria Edgeworth, is philosophy teaching by emotion. It certainly
taught old G------ to be a better man, to leave much of the little
evil he had been in the habit of doing, and to do much of the good he
had been accustomed to leave undone.
Notes:
1. December 5, 1835, The date is misprinted '3rd' in the original
edition. See note 2 to last preceding chapter, p. 110.
2. A good view of the precipices of the Kaimûr range, the eastern
continuation of the Vindhyan chain, is given facing page 41 of vol. i
of Hooker's _Himalayan Journals_ (ed. 1855).
3. The author's theory is untenable. He failed, to realize the vast
effects of sub-aerial denudation. All the evidence shows that the
successive lava outflows which make up the Deccan trap series
ultimately converted the surface of the land over which they welled
out into an enormous, nearly uniform, plain of basalt, resting on the
Vindhyan sandstone and other rocks. This great sheet of lava,
extending, east and west, from Nâgpur to Bombay, a distance of about
five hundred miles, was then, in succeeding millenniums, subjected to
the denuding forces of air and water, until gradually huge tracts of
it were worn away, forming beds of conglomerate, gravel, and clay.
The flat-topped hills have been carved out of the basaltic surface by
the agencies which wore away the massive sheet of lava. The basaltic
cappings of the hills certainly cannot have 'formed part of continued
flat beds of great lakes'. See the notes to Chapter 14, _ante_. Mr.
Scrope was quite right. Vast periods of time must be allowed for
geological history, and millions of years must have elapsed since the
flow of the Deccan lava.
4. In the Sâgar district. The last Raja joined the rebels in 1857,
and so forfeited his rank and territory.
5. The name panther is usually applied only to the large, fulvous
variety of _Felis pardus (Linn.) (F. leopardus, Leopardus varius)_.
The animal described in the text evidently was a specimen of the
hunting leopard, _Felis jubata (F. guttata, F. venatica)_.
6. This officer was one of the many '_condottieri_' of various
nationality who served the native powers during the eighteenth
century, and the early years of the nineteenth. He commanded five
infantry regiments at Gwâlior. His 'kingdom-taking' raid in 1815 or
1816 is described _post_ in Chapter 49. The history of the family is
given by Compton in _European Military Adventures of Hindustan from
1784 to 1803_ (Unwin, 1892), App. pp, 352-6. In 1911 Michael Filose
of Gwâlior was appointed K.C.I.E.
7.'G------' appears to have been Robert Gregory C.B.
8. The fiercely contested battle of Laswâri was fought on November 1,
1803, between the British force under Lord Lake and the flower of
Sindhia's army, known as the 'Deccan Invincibles'. Sindhia's troops
lost about seven thousand killed and two thousand prisoners. The
British loss in killed and wounded amounted to more than eight
hundred. A medal to commemorate the victory was struck in London in
1851, and presented to the survivors. Laswâri is a village in the
Alwar State, 128 miles south of Delhi.
9. Bharatpur (Bhurtpore), in the Jât State of the same name, is
thirty-four miles west of Agra. In January and February, 1805, Lord
Lake four times attempted to take it by assault, and each time was
repulsed with heavy loss. On January 18, 1826, Lord Combermere
stormed the fortress. The fortifications were then dismantled. A
large portion of the walls is now standing, and presents an imposing
appearance. They seem to have been repaired. See _post_, Chapter 62.
10. 'I will answer you by quoting what I have read somewhere or
other--in _Dionysius Halicarn_., I think--that history is philosophy
teaching by example' (Bolingbroke, _Letters on the Study and Use of
History_, Letter II, p. 14 of vol. viii of edition printed by T.
Cadell, London, 1770). The Greek words are. . . . . . . .
CHAPTER 18
Birds' Nests--Sports of Boyhood.
On the 6th[1] we came to Sayyidpur, ten miles, over an undulating
country, with a fine soil of decomposed basalt, reposing upon
syenite, with veins of feldspar and quartz. Cultivation partial, and
very bad; and population extremely scanty. We passed close to a
village, in which the children were all at play; while upon the
bushes over their heads were suspended an immense number of the
beautiful nests of the sagacious 'bayâ' bird, or Indian yellow-
hammer,[2] all within reach of a grown-up boy, and one so near the
road that a grown-up man might actually look into it as he passed
along, and could hardly help shaking it. It cannot fail to strike a
European as singular to see so many birds' nests, situated close to a
village, remain unmolested within reach of so many boisterous
children, with their little proprietors and families fluttering and
chirping among them with as great a feeling of security and gaiety of
heart as the children themselves enjoy.
In any part of Europe not a nest of such a colony could have lived an
hour within reach of such a population; for the bayâ bird has no
peculiar respect paid to it by the people here, like the wren and
robin-redbreast in England. No boy in India has the slightest wish to
molest birds in their nests; it enters not into their pastimes, and
they have no feeling of pride or pleasure in it. With us it is
different--to discover birds' nests is one of the first modes in
which a boy exercises his powers, and displays his love of art. Upon
his skill in finding them he is willing to rest his first claim to
superior sagacity and enterprise. His trophies are his string of
eggs; and the eggs most prized among them are those of the nests that
are discovered with most difficulty, and attained with most danger.
The same feeling of desire to display their skill and enterprise in
search after birds' nests in early life renders the youth of England
the enemy almost of the whole animal creation throughout their after
career. The boy prides himself on his dexterity in throwing a stone
or a stick; and he practises on almost every animal that comes in his
way, till he never sees one without the desire to knock it down, or
at least to hit it; and, if it is lawful to do so, he feels it to be
a most serious misfortune not to have a stone within his reach at the
time. As he grows up, he prides himself upon his dexterity in
shooting, and he never sees a member of the feathered tribe within
shot, without a desire to shoot it, or without regretting that he has
not a gun in his hand to shoot it. That he is not entirely destitute
of sympathy, however, with the animals he maims for his amusement is
sufficiently manifest from his anxiety to put them out of pain the
moment he gets them.
A friend of mine, now no more, Captain Medwin, was once looking with
me at a beautiful landscape painting through a glass. At last he put
aside the glass, saying: 'You may say what you like, S--, but the
best landscape I know is a fine black partridge[3] falling before my
Joe Manton.'
The following lines of Walter Scott, in his _Rokeby_, have always
struck me as very beautiful:-
As yet the conscious pride of art
Had steel'd him in his treacherous part;
A powerful spring of force unguessed
That hath each gentler mood suppressed,
And reigned in many a human breast;
From his that plans the rude campaign,
To his that wastes the woodland reign, &c.[4]
Among the people of India it is very different. Children do not learn
to exercise their powers either in discovering and robbing the nests
of birds, or in knocking them down with stones and staves; and, as
they grow up, they hardly ever think of hunting or shooting for mere
amusement. It is with them a matter of business; the animal they
cannot eat they seldom think of molesting.
Some officers were one day pursuing a jackal, with a pack of dogs,
through my grounds. The animal passed close to one of my guard, who
cut him in two with his sword, and held up the reeking blade in
triumph to the indignant cavalcade; who, when they came up, were
ready to eat him alive. 'What have I done', said the poor man, 'to
offend you?' 'Have you not killed the jackal?' shouted the whipper-
in, in a fury.
'Of course I have; but were you not all trying to kill him?' replied
the poor man. He thought their only object had been to kill the
jackal, as they would have killed a serpent, merely because he was a
mischievous and noisy beast.
The European traveller in India is often in doubt whether the
peacocks, partridges, and ducks, which he finds round populous
villages, are tame or wild, till he asks some of the villagers
themselves, so assured of safety do these creatures become, and so
willing to take advantage of it for the food they find in the
suburbs. They very soon find the difference, however, between the
white-faced visitor and the dark-faced inhabitants. There is a fine
date-tree overhanging a kind of school at the end of one of the
streets in the town of Jubbulpore, quite covered with the nests of
the bayâ birds; and they are seen, every day and all day, fluttering
and chirping about there in scores, while the noisy children at their
play fill the street below, almost within arm's length of them. I
have often thought that such a tree so peopled at the door of a
school in England might work a great revolution in the early habits
and propensities of the youth educated in it. The European traveller
is often amused to see the pariah dog[5] squatted close in front of
the traveller during the whole time he is occupied in cooking and
eating his dinner, under a tree by the roadside, assured that he
shall have at least a part of the last cake thrown to him by the
stranger, instead of a stick or a stone. The stranger regards him
with complacency, as one that reposes a quiet confidence in his
charitable disposition, and flings towards him the whole or part of
his last cake, as if his meal had put him in the best possible humour
with him and all the world.
Notes:
1. December, 1835. The name of the village is given in the author's
text as Seindpore. It seems to be the place which is called Siedpore
in the next chapter.
2. The common weaver bird, _Phoceus baya, Blyth. 'Ploceinae_, the
weaver birds. . . . They build nests like a crucible, with the
opening downwards, and usually attach them to the tender branches of
a tree hanging over a well or tank. _P. baya_ is found throughout
India; its nest is made of grasses and strips of the plantain or
date-palm stripped while green. It is easily tamed and taught some
tricks, such as to load and fire a toy cannon, to pick up a ring,
&c,' (Balfour, _Cyclopaedia_, 3rd ed., 1885, s.v. 'Ploceinae').
3. _Francolinus vulgaris_; a capital game bird.
4. Canto V, stanza 22, line 3.
5. The author spells the word Pareear. The editor has used the form
now customary. The word is the Tamil appellation of a large body of
the population of Southern India, which stands outside the orthodox
Hindoo castes, but has a caste organization of its own. Europeans
apply the term to the low-caste mongrel dogs which infest villages
and towns throughout India. See Yule and Burnell, _Glossary of Anglo-
Indian Words (Hobson-Jobson)_, in either edition, s.v.; and Dubois,
_Hindu Manners, &c._, 3rd ed. (1906, index, s.v.).
CHAPTER 19
Feeding Pilgrims--Marriage of a Stone with a Shrub.
At Sayyidpur[1] we encamped in a pretty little mango grove, and here
I had a visit from my old friend Jânkî Sewak, the high priest of the
great temple that projects into the Sâgar lake, and is called
Bindrâban.[2] He has two villages rent free, worth a thousand rupees
a year; collects something more through his numerous disciples, who
wander over the country; and spends the whole in feeding all the
members of his fraternity (Bairâgîs), devotees of Vishnu, as they
pass his temple in their pilgrimages. Every one who comes is
considered entitled to a good meal and a night's lodging; and he has
to feed and lodge about a hundred a day. He is a man of very pleasing
manners and gentle disposition, and everybody likes him. He was on
his return from the town of Ludhaura,[3] where he had been, at the
invitation of the Râjâ of Orchhâ, to assist at the celebration of the
marriage of Sâlagrâm with the Tulasî,[4] which there takes place
every year under the auspices and at the expense of the Râjâ, who
must be present. 'Sâlagrâms'[5] are rounded pebbles which contain the
impressions of ammonites, and are washed down into the plains of
India by the rivers from the limestone rocks in which these shells
are imbedded in the mountains of the Himalaya.[6] The Spiti valley[7]
contains an immense deposit of fossil ammonites and belemnites[8] in
limestone rocks, now elevated above sixteen thousand feet above the
level of the sea; and from such beds as these are brought down the
fragments, which, when rounded in their course, the poor Hindoo takes
for representatives of Vishnu, the preserving god of the Hindoo
triad. The Sâlagrâm is the only stone idol among the Hindoos that is
_essentially sacred_, and entitled to divine honours without the
ceremonies of consecration.[9] It is everywhere held most sacred.
During the war against Nepâl,[10] Captain B------, who commanded a
reconnoitring party from the division in which I served, one day
brought back to camp some four or five Sâlagrâms, which he had found
at the hut of some priest within the enemy's frontier. He called for
a large stone and hammer, and proceeded to examine them. The Hindoos
were all in a dreadful state of consternation, and expected to see
the earth open and swallow up the whole camp, while he sat calmly
cracking _their gods_ with his hammer, as he would have cracked so
many walnuts. The Tulasî is a small sacred shrub (_Ocymum sanctum_),
which is a metamorphosis of Sîtâ, the wife of Râma, the seventh
incarnation of Vishnu.
This little _pebble_ is every year married to this little _shrub_;
and the high priest told me that on the present occasion the
procession consisted of eight elephants, twelve hundred camels, four
thousand horses, all mounted and elegantly caparisoned. On the
leading elephant of this _cortège_, and the most sumptuously
decorated, was carried the _pebble god_, who was taken to pay his
bridal visit (barât) to the little _shrub goddess_. All the
ceremonies of a regular marriage are gone through; and, when
completed, the bride and bridegroom are left to repose together in
the temple of Ludhaura[11] till the next season. 'Above a hundred
thousand people', the priest said, 'were present at the ceremony this
year at the Râjâ's invitation, and feasted upon his bounty.'[12]
The old man and I got into a conversation upon the characters of
different governments, and their effects upon the people; and he said
that bad governments would sooner or later be always put down by the
deity; and quoted this verse, which I took down with my pencil:
Tulasî, gharîb na sâtâe,
Burî gharîb kî hai;
Marî khâl ke phûnk se
Lohâ bhasm ho jâe.
'Oh, Râjâ Tulasî! oppress not the poor; for the groans of the
wretched bring retribution from heaven. The contemptible skin (in the
smith's bellows) in time melts away the hardest iron.'[13]
On leaving our tents in the morning, we found the ground all round
white with hoar frost, as we had found it for several mornings
before;[14] and a little canary bird, one of the two which travelled
in my wife's palankeen, having, by the carelessness of the servants
been put upon the top without any covering to the cage, was killed by
the cold, to her great affliction. All attempts to restore it to life
by the warmth of her bosom were fruitless.
On the 7th[15] we came nine miles to Bamhaurî over a soil still
basaltic, though less rich, reposing upon syenite, which frequently
rises and protrudes its head above the surface, which is partially
and badly cultivated, and scantily peopled. The silent signs of bad
government could not be more manifest. All the extensive plains,
covered with fine long grass, which is rotting in the ground from
want of domestic cattle or distant markets. Here, as in every other
part of Central India, the people have a great variety of good
spontaneous, but few cultivated, grasses. They understand the
character and qualities of these grasses extremely well. They find
some thrive best in dry, and some in wet seasons; and that of
inferior quality is often prized most because it thrives best when
other kinds cannot thrive at all, from an excess or a deficiency of
rain. When cut green they all make good hay, and have the common
denomination of 'sahîa'. The finest of these grasses are two which
are generally found growing spontaneously together, and are often
cultivated together-'kêl' and 'musêl'; the third 'parwana'; fourth
'bhawâr', or 'gûniâr'; fifth 'sainâ'.[16]
Notes:
1. Spelled Siedpore in the author's text.
2. More correctly Brindâban (Vrindâvana). The name originally belongs
to one of the most sacred spots in India, situated near Mathurâ
(Muttra) on the Jumna, and the reputed scene of the dalliance between
Krishna and the milkmaids (Gopîs); also associated with the legend
Râma.
3. Twenty-seven miles north-west of Tehrî in the Orchhâ State.
4. The Tulasî plant, or basil, _Ocymum sanctum_, is 'not merely
sacred to Vishnu or to his wife Lakshmî; it is pervaded by the
essence of these deities, and itself worshipped as a deity and prayed
to accordingly. . . . The Tulasî is the object of more adoration than
any other plant at present worshipped in India. . . .It is to be
found in almost every respectable household throughout India. It is a
small shrub, not too big to be cultivated in a good-sized flower-pot,
and often placed in rooms. Generally, however, it is planted in the
courtyard of a well-to-do man's house, with a space round it for
reverential circumambulation. In real fact the Tulasî is _par
excellence_ a domestic divinity, or rather, perhaps, a woman's
divinity' (M. Williams, _Religious Thought and Life in India_, p.
333).
5. The fossil ammonites found in India include at least fifteen
species. They occur between Trichinopoly and Pondicherry as well as
in the Himalayan rocks. They are particularly abundant in the river
Gandak, which rises near Dhaulagiri in Nepâl, and falls into the
Ganges near Patna. The upper course of this river is consequently
called Sâlagrâmî. Various forms of the fossils are supposed to
represent various _avatârs_ of Vishnu (Balfour, _Cyclopaedia_, 3rd
ed., s.v. 'Ammonite', 'Gandak', 'Salagrama'; M. Williams, _Religious
Thought and Life in India_, pp. 69, 349). A good account of the
reverence paid to both _sâlagrâms_ and the _tulasî_ plant will be
found in Dubois, _Hindu Manners_, &c., 3rd ed. (1906), pp. 648-51.
6. The author writes 'Himmalah'. The current spelling Himalaya is
correct, but the word should be pronounced Himâlaya. It means 'abode
of snow'.
7. The north-eastern corner of the Punjâb, an elevated valley along
the course of the Spiti or the Li river, a tributary of the Satlaj.
8. Fossils of the genus Belemnites and related genera are common,
like the ammonites, near Trichinopoly, as well as in the Himalaya.
9. This statement is not quite correct. The pebbles representing the
Linga of Siva, called Bâna-linga, or Vâna-linga, and apparently of
white quartz, which are found in the Nerbudda river, enjoy the same
distinction. 'Both are held to be of their own nature pervaded by the
special presence of the deity, and need no consecration. Offerings
made to these pebbles--such, for instance, as Bilwa leaves laid on
the white stone of Vishnu--are believed to confer extraordinary
merit' (M. Williams, _Religious Thought and Life in India_, p. 69).
10. In 1814-16.
11. 'Sadora' in author's text, which seems to be a misprint for
Ludora or Ludhaura.
12. The Tulasî shrub is sometimes married to an image of Krishna,
instead of to the sâlagrâma, in Western India (M. Williams,
_Religious Thought and Life in India_, p. 334). Compare the account
of the marriage between the mango-tree and the jasmine, _ante_,
Chapter 5, Note [3].
13. These Hindî verses are incorrectly printed, and loosely rendered
by the author. The translation of the text, after necessary
emendation, is: 'Tulasî, oppress not the poor; evil is the lot of the
poor. From the blast of the dead hide iron becomes ashes.' Mr. W.
Crooke informs me that the verses are found in the Kabîrkî Sakhî, and
are attributable to Kabîr Dâs, rather than to Tulasî Dâs. But the
authorship of such verses is very uncertain. Mr. Crooke further
observes that the lines as given in the text do not scan, and that
the better version is:
Durbal ko na satâiye,
Jâki mâti hai;
Mûê khâl ke sâns se
Sâr bhasm ho jâe.
_Sâr_ means iron. The author was, of course, mistaken in supposing
the poet Tulasî Dâs to be a Râjâ. As usual in Hindî verse, the poet
addresses himself by name.
14. Such slight frosts are common in Bundêlkhand, especially near the
rivers, in January, but only last for a few mornings. They often
cause great damage to the more delicate crops. The weather becomes
hot in February.
15. December, 1835.
16. 'Musêl' is a very sweet-scented grass, highly esteemed as fodder.
It belongs to the genus _Anthistiria_; the species is either
_cimicina_ or _prostrata_. 'Bhawâr' is probably the 'bhaunr' of
Edgeworth's list, _Anthistiria scandens_. I cannot identify the other
grasses named in the text. The haycocks in Bundêlkhand are a pleasant
sight to English eyes. Edgeworth's list of plants found in the Bândâ
district, as revised by Messrs. Waterfield and Atkinson, is given in
_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, 1st ed., vol. i, pp. 78-86.
CHAPTER 20
The Men-Tigers.
Râm Chand Râo, commonly called the Sarîmant, chief of Deorî,[1] here
overtook me. He came out from Sâgar to visit me at Dhamonî[2] and,
not reaching that place in time, came on after me. He held Deorî
under the Peshwâ, as the Sâgar chief held Sâgar, for the payment of
the public establishments kept up by the local administration. It
yielded him about ten thousand a year, and, when we took possession
of the country, he got an estate in the Sâgar district, in rent-free
tenure, estimated at fifteen hundred a year. This is equal to about
six thousand pounds a year in England. The tastes of native gentlemen
lead them always to expend the greater part of their incomes in the
wages of trains of followers of all descriptions, and in horses,
elephants, &c.; and labour and the subsistence of labour are about
four times cheaper in India than in England. By the breaking up of
public establishments, and consequent diminution of the local demand
for agricultural produce, the value of land throughout all Central
India, after the termination of the Mahrâtha War in 1817, fell by
degrees thirty per cent.; and, among the rest, that of my poor friend
the Sarîmant. While I had the civil charge of the Sâgar district in
1831 I represented this case of hardship; and Government, in the
spirit of liberality which has generally characterized their measures
in this part of India, made up to him the difference between what he
actually received and what they had intended to give him; and he has
ever since felt grateful to me.[3] He is a very small man, not more
than five feet high, but he has the handsomest face I have almost
ever seen, and his manners are those of the most perfect native
gentleman. He came to call upon me after breakfast, and the
conversation turned upon the number of people that had of late been
killed by tigers between Sâgar and Deorî, his ancient capital, which
lies about midway between Sâgar and the Nerbudda river.
One of his followers, who stood beside his chair, said[4] that 'when
a tiger had killed one man he was safe, for the spirit of the man
rode upon his head, and guided him from all danger. The spirit knew
very well that the tiger would be watched for many days at the place
where he had committed the homicide, and always guided him off to
some other more secure place, when he killed other men without any
risk to himself. He did not exactly know why the spirit of the man
should thus befriend the beast that had killed him; but', added he,
'there is a mischief inherent in spirits; and the better the man the
more mischievous is his ghost, if means are not taken to put him to
rest.' This is the popular and general belief throughout India; and
it is supposed that the only sure mode of destroying a tiger who has
killed many people is to begin by making offerings to the spirits of
his victims, and thereby depriving him of their valuable services.[5]
The belief that men are turned into tigers by eating of a root is no
less general throughout India.
The Sarîmant, on being asked by me what he thought of the matter,
observed 'there was no doubt much truth in what the man said: but he
was himself of opinion that the tigers which now infest the wood from
Sâgar to Deorî were of a different kind--in fact, that they were
neither more nor less than men turned into tigers--a thing which took
place in the woods of Central India much more often than people were
aware of. The only visible difference between the two', added the
Sarîmant, 'is that the metamorphosed tiger has _no tail_, while the
_bora_, or ordinary tiger, has a very long one. In the jungle about
Deorî', continued he, 'there is a root, which, if a man eat of, he is
converted into a tiger on the spot; and if, in this state, he can eat
of another, he becomes a man again--a melancholy instance of the
former of which', said he, 'occurred, I am told, in my own father's
family when I was an infant. His washerman, Raghu, was, like all
washermen, a great drunkard; and, being seized with a violent desire
to ascertain what a man felt in the state of a tiger, he went one day
to the jungle and brought home two of these roots, and desired his
wife to stand by with one of them, and the instant she saw him assume
the tiger shape, to thrust it into his mouth. She consented, the
washerman ate his root, and became instantly a tiger; but his wife
was so terrified at the sight of her husband in this shape that she
ran off with the antidote in her hand. Poor old Raghu took to the
woods, and there ate a good many of his old friends from neighbouring
villages; but he was at last shot, and recognized from the
circumstance of his _having no tail_. You may be quite sure,'
concluded Sarîmant, 'when you hear of a tiger without a tail, that it
is some unfortunate man who has eaten of that root, and of all the
tigers he will be found the most mischievous.'
How my friend had satisfied himself of the truth of this story I know
not, but he religiously believes it, and so do all his attendants and
mine; and, out of a population of thirty thousand people in the town
of Sâgar, not one would doubt the story of the washerman if he heard
it.
I was one day talking with my friend the Râjâ of Maihar.[6] on the
road between Jubbulpore and Mirzapore, on the subject of the number
of men who had been lately killed by tigers at the Katrâ Pass on that
road,[7] and the best means of removing the danger. 'Nothing', said
the Râjâ, 'could be more easy or more cheap than the destruction of
these tigers, if they were of the ordinary sort; but the tigers that
kill men by wholesale, as these do, are, you may be sure, men
themselves converted into tigers by the force of their science, and
such animals are of all the most unmanageable.'
'And how is it. Râjâ Sâhib, that these men convert themselves into
tigers?'
'Nothing', said he, 'is more easy than this to persons who have once
acquired the science; but how they learn it, or what it is, we
unlettered men know not.'
'There was once a high priest of a large temple, in this very valley
of Maihar, who was in the habit of getting himself converted into a
tiger by the force of this science, which he had thoroughly acquired.
He had a necklace, which one of his disciples used to throw over his
neck the moment the tiger's form became fully developed. He had,
however, long given up the practice, and all his old disciples had
gone off on their pilgrimages to distant shrines, when he was one day
seized with a violent desire to take his old form of the tiger. He
expressed the wish to one of his new disciples, and demanded whether
he thought he might rely on his courage to stand by and put on the
necklace. 'Assuredly you may', said the disciple; 'such is my faith
in you, and in the God we serve, that I fear nothing.' The high
priest upon this put the necklace into his hand with the requisite
instructions, and forthwith began to change his form. The disciple
stood trembling in every limb, till he heard him give a roar that
shook the whole edifice, when he fell flat upon his face, and dropped
the necklace on the floor. The tiger bounded over him, and out of the
door, and infested all the roads leading to the temple for many years
afterwards.'
'Do you think, Râjâ Sahib, that the old high priest is one of the
tigers at the Katrâ Pass?'
'No, I do not; but I think they may be all men who have become imbued
with a little too much of the high priest's _science_--when men once
acquire this science they can't help exercising it, though it be to
their own ruin, and that of others.'
'But, supposing them to be ordinary tigers, what is the simple plan
you propose to put a stop to their depredations, Râjâ Sahib?'
'I propose', said he, 'to have the spirits that guide them
propitiated by proper prayers and offerings; for the spirit of every
man or woman who has been killed by a tiger rides upon his head, or
runs before him, and tells him where to go to get prey, and to avoid
danger. Get some of the Gonds, or wild people from the jungles, who
are well skilled in these matters--give them ten or twenty rupees,
and bid them go and raise a small shrine, and there sacrifice to
these spirits. The Gonds will tell them that they shall on this
shrine have regular worship, and good sacrifices of fowls, goats, and
pigs, every year at least, if they will but relinquish their offices
with the tigers and be quiet. If this is done, I pledge myself', said
the Raja, 'that the tigers will soon get killed themselves, or cease
from killing men. If they do not, you may be quite sure that they are
not ordinary tigers, but men turned into tigers, or that the Gonds
have appropriated all you gave them to their own use, instead of
applying it to conciliate the spirits of the unfortunate people.'[8]
Notes:
1. Deorî, in the Sâgar district, about forty miles south-east of
Sâgar. In 1767, the town and attached tract called the Panj Mahâl
were bestowed by the Peshwâ, rent-free, on Dhôndo Dattâtraya, a
Marâtha pundit, ancestor of the author's friend. The Panj Mahal was
finally made part of British territory by the treaty with Sindhia in
1860, and constitutes the District called Pânch Mâhals in the
Northern Division of the Bombay Presidency. The vernacular word
_pânch_ like the Persian _panj_, means 'five'. The title Sarîmant
appears to be a popular pronunciation of the Sanskrit _srîmant_ or
_srîmân_, 'fortunate', and is still used by Marâthâ nobles.
2. _Ante_, Chapter 16, note 6. The name is here erroneously printed
'Dhamoree' in the author's text.
3. He had good reason for his gratitude, inasmuch as the depression
in rents was merely temporary.
4. An Indian chief is generally accompanied into the room by a
confidential follower, who frequently relieves his master of the
trouble of talking, and answers on his behalf all questions.
5. When Agrippina, in her rage with her son Nero, threatens to take
her stepson, Britannicus, to the camp of the Legion, and there assert
his right to the throne, she invokes the spirit of his father, whom
she had poisoned, and the manes of the Silani, whom she had murdered.
'Simul attendere manus, aggerere probra; consecratum Claudium,
infernos Silanorum manes invocare, et tot invita fari nova.'-
(Tacitus, lib, xviii, sec. 14.) [W. H. S.] The quotation is from the
_Annals_. Another reading of the concluding words is 'et tot irrita
facinora', which gives much better sense. In the author's text
'aggerere' is printed 'aggere'.
6. A small principality, detached from the Pannâ State. Its chief
town is about one hundred miles north-east of Jubbulpore, on the
route from Allahabad to Jubbulpore. The state is now traversed by the
East Indian Railway. It is under the superintendence of the Political
Agent of Baghêlkhand, resident at Rîwâ.
7. This pass is sixty-three miles south-east of Allahabad, on the
road from that city to Rîwâ.
8. These myths are based on the well-known facts that man-eating
tigers are few, and exceptionally wary and cunning. The conditions
which predispose a tiger to man-eating have been much discussed. It
seems to be established that the animals which seek human prey are
generally, though not invariably, those which, owing to old wounds or
other physical defects, are unable to attack with confidence the
stronger animals. The conversations given in the text are excellent
illustrations of the mode of formation of modern myths, and of the
kind of reasoning which satisfies the mind of the unconscious myth-
maker.
The text may be compared with the following passage from the _Journey
through the Kingdom of Oudh_ (vol. i, p. 124): 'I asked him (the Râjâ
of Balrâmpur), whether the people in the Tarâi forest were still
afraid to point out tigers to sportsmen. "I was lately out with a
party after a tiger", he said, "which had killed a cowherd, but his
companions refused to point out any trace of him, saying that their
relative's spirit must be now riding upon his head, to guide him from
all danger, and we should have no chance of shooting him. We did
shoot him, however", said the Râjâ exultingly, "and they were all
afterwards very glad of it. The tigers in the Tarâi do not often kill
men, sir, for they find plenty of deer and cattle to eat,"'
CHAPTER 21
Burning of Deorî by a Freebooter--A Suttee.
Sarîmant had been one of the few who escaped from the flames which
consumed his capital of Deorî in the month of April 1813, and were
supposed to have destroyed thirty thousand souls. I asked him to tell
me how this happened, and he referred me to his attendant, a learned
old pundit, Râm Chand, who stood by his side, as he was himself, he
said, then only five years of age, and could recollect nothing of it.
'Mardân Singh,' said the pundit, 'the father of Râjâ Arpan Singh,
whom you saw at Seorî, was then our neighbour, reigning over Garhâ
Kotâ;[1] and he had a worthless nephew, Zâlim Singh, who had
collected together an army of five thousand men, in the hope of
getting a little principality for himself in the general scramble for
dominion incident on the rise of the Pindhârîs and Amîr Khan,[2] and
the destruction of all balance of power among the great sovereigns of
Central India. He came to attack our capital, which was an emporium
of considerable trade and the seat of many useful manufactures, in
the expectation of being able to squeeze out of us a good sum to aid
him in his enterprise. While his troops blocked up every gate, fire
was, by accident, set to the fence of some man's garden within. There
had been no rain for six months; and everything was so much dried up
that the flames spread rapidly; and, though there was no wind when
they began, it soon blew a gale. The Sarîmant was then a little boy
with his mother in the fortress, where she lived with his father[3]
and nine other relations. The flames soon extended to the fortress,
and the powder-magazine blew up. The house in which they lived was
burned down, and every soul, except the lieutenant [_sic_] himself,
perished in it. His mother tried to bear him off in her arms, but
fell down in her struggle to get out with him and died. His nurse,
Tulsî Kurmin,[4] snatched him up, and ran with him outside of the
fortress to the bank of the river, where she made him over unhurt to
Harirâm, the Mârwârî merchant.[5] He was mounted on a good horse,
and, making off across the river, he carried him safely to his
friends at Gaurjhâmar; but poor Tulsî the Kurmin fell down exhausted
when she saw her charge safe, and died.
'The wind appeared to blow in upon the poor devoted city from every
side; and the troops of Zâlim Singh, who at first prevented the
people from rushing out at the gates, made off in a panic at the
horrors before them. All our establishments had been driven into the
city at the approach of Zâlim Singh's troops; and scores of
elephants, hundreds of camels, and thousands of horses and ponies
perished in the flames, besides twenty-five thousand souls. Only
about five thousand persons escaped out of thirty thousand, and these
were reduced to beggary and wretchedness by the loss of their dearest
relations and their property. At the time the flames first began to
spread, an immense crowd of people had assembled under the fortress
on the bank of the Sonâr river to see the widow of a soldier burn
herself. Her husband had been shot by one of Zâlim Singh's soldiers
in the morning; and before midday she was by the side of his body on
the funeral pile. People, as usual, begged her to tell them what
would happen, and she replied, "The city will know in less than four
hours"; in less than four hours the whole city had been reduced to
ashes; and we all concluded that, since the event was so clearly
foretold, it must have been decreed by God.'[6]
'No doubt it was,' said Sarîmant; 'how could it otherwise happen? Do
not all events depend upon His will? Had it not been His will to save
me, how could poor Tulsî the Kurmin have carried me upon her
shoulders through such a scene as this, when every other member of
our family perished?'
'No doubt', said Râm Chand, 'all these things are brought about by
the will of God, and it is not for us to ask why.'[7]
I have heard this event described by many other people, and I believe
the account of the old pundit to be a very fair one.
One day, in October 1833, the horse of the district surgeon, Doctor
Spry, as he was mounting him, reared, fell back with his head upon a
stone, and died upon the spot. The doctor was not much hurt, and the
little Sarîmant called a few days after, and offered his
congratulations upon his narrow escape. The cause of so quiet a horse
rearing at this time, when he had never been known to do so before,
was discussed; and he said that there could be no doubt that the
horse, or the doctor himself, must have seen some unlucky face before
he mounted that morning--that he had been in many places in his life,
but in none where a man was liable to see so many ugly or unfortunate
faces; and, for his part, he never left his house till an hour after
sunrise, lest he should encounter them.[8]
Many natives were present, and every one seemed to consider the
Sarîmant's explanation of the cause quite satisfactory and
philosophical. Some days after, Spry was going down to sleep in the
bungalow where the accident happened. His native assistant and all
his servants came and prayed that he would not attempt to sleep in
the bungalow, as they were sure the horse must have been frightened
by a ghost, and quoted several instances of ghosts appearing to
people there. He, however, slept in the bungalow, and, to their great
astonishment, saw no ghost and suffered no evil.[9]
Notes:
1. A fortress, twenty-five miles cast of Sâgar, captured by a
British force under General Watson in October 1818, For Seorî and
Râjâ Arjun Singh see _ante_, Chapter 17, text by notes 1 and 4.
2. Amîr Khân, a leader of predatory horse, has been justly described
as 'one of the most atrocious villains that India ever produced'. He
first came into notice in 1804, as an officer in Holkar's service,
and in the following year opposed Lord Lake at Bharatpur. A treaty
made with him in 1817 put an end to his activity. The Pindhârîs were
organized bands of mounted robbers, who desolated Northern and
Central India during the period of anarchy which followed the
dissolution of the Moghal empire. They were associated with the
Marâthâs in the war which terminated with the capture of Asîrgarh in
April 1819. In the same year the Pindhârî forces ceased to exist as a
distinct and recognized, body.
My father was an Afghân, and came from Kandahar:
He rode with Nawâb Amir Khan in the old Marâthâ war:
From the Dekhan to the Himalay, five hundred of one clan,
They asked no leave of prince or chief as they swept thro'
Hindusthan.
(Sir A. Lyall, 'The Old Pindaree'; in _Verses written in India_,
London, 1889).
3. Named Govind Râo. The proper name of the Sarîmant was Râmchand Râo
(_C.P. Gazetteer_, 1870).
4. Kurmin is the feminine of Kurmî, the name of a widely spread and
most industrious agricultural caste, closely connected, at least in
Bundêlkhand, with the similar Lodhî caste.
5. Mârwâr, or Jodhpur, is one of the leading states in Râjputâna. It
supplies the rest of India with many of the keenest merchants and
bankers.
6. See _ante_, Chapter 4, note 6, for remarks on the supposed
prophetic gifts of satî women.
7. Such feelings of resignation to the Divine will, or fate, are
common alike to Hindoos and Musalmâns.
8. 'One of a wife's duties should be to keep all bad omens out of her
husband's way, or manage to make him look at something lucky in the
early morning. . . . Different lists of inauspicious objects are
given, which, if looked upon in the early morning, might cause
disaster' (M. Williams, _Religious Thought and Life in India_, p.
397).
9. Dr. Spry died in 1842, and his estate was administered by the
author. The doctor's works are described _ante_, Chapter 14, note 16.
CHAPTER 22
Interview with the Râjâ who marries the Stone to the Shrub--Order of
the Moon and the Fish.
On the 8th,[1] after a march of twelve miles, we readied Tehrî, the
present capital of the Râjâ of Orchhâ.[2] Our road lay over an
undulating surface of soil composed of the detritus of the syenitic
rock, and poor, both from its quality and want of depth. About three
miles from our last territory we entered the boundary of the Orchhâ
Râjâ's territory, at the village of Aslôn, which has a very pretty
little fortified castle, built upon ground slightly elevated in the
midst of an open grass plain.
This, and all the villages we have lately passed, are built upon the
bare back of the syenitic rock, which seems to rise to the surface in
large but gentle swells, like the broad waves of the ocean in a calm
after a storm. A great difference appeared to me to be observable
between the minds and manners of the people among whom we were now
travelling, and those of the people of the Sâgar and Nerbudda
territories. They seemed here to want the urbanity and intelligence
we find among our subjects in the latter quarters.
The apparent stupidity of the people when questioned upon points the
most interesting to them, regarding their history, their agriculture,
their tanks, and temples, was most provoking; and their manners
seemed to me more rude and clownish than those of people in any other
part of India I had travelled over. I asked my little friend the
Sarîmant, who rode with me, what he thought of this.
'I think', said he, 'that it arises from the harsh character of the
government under which they live; it makes every man wish to appear a
fool, in order that he may be thought a beggar and not worth the
plundering.'
'It strikes me, my friend Sarîmant, that their government has made
them in reality the beggars and the fools that they appear to be.'
'God only knows', said Sarîmant; 'certain it is that they are neither
in mind nor in manners what the people of our districts are.'
The Râjâ had no notice of our approach till intimation of it reached
him at Ludhaura, the day before we came in. He was there resting, and
dismissing the people after the ceremonies of the marriage between
the Salagrâm and the Tulasî. Ludhaura is twenty-seven miles north-
west of Tehrî, on the opposite side from that on which I was
approaching. He sent off two men on camels with a 'kharîtâ'
(letter),[3] requesting that I would let him know my movements, and
arrange a meeting in a manner that might prevent his appearing
wanting in respect and hospitality; that is, in plain terms, which he
was too polite to use, that I would consent to remain one stage from
his capital, till he could return and meet me half-way, with all due
pomp and ceremony. These men reached me at Bamhaurî,[4] a distance of
thirty-nine miles, in the evening, and I sent back a kharîtâ, which
reached him by relays of camels before midnight. He set out for his
capital to receive me, and, as I would not wait to be met half-way in
due form, he reached his palace, and we reached our tents at the same
time, under a salute from his two brass field-pieces.
We halted at Tehrî on the 9th, and about eleven o'clock the Râjâ came
to pay his visit of congratulation, with a magnificent _cortège_ of
elephants, camels, and horses, all mounted and splendidly
caparisoned, and the noise of his band was deafening. I had had both
my tents pitched, and one of them handsomely fitted up, as it always
is, for occasions of ceremony like the present. He came to within
twenty paces of the door on his elephant, and from its back, as it
sat down, he entered his splendid litter, without alighting on the
ground.[5] In this vehicle he was brought to my tent door, where I
received him, and, after the usual embraces, conducted him up through
two rows of chairs, placed for his followers of distinction and my
own, who are always anxious to assist in ceremonies like these.
At the head of this lane we sat upon chairs placed across, and
facing down the middle of the two rows; and we conversed upon all the
subjects usually introduced on such occasions, but more especially
upon the august ceremonies of the marriage of the Salagrâm with the
Tulasî, in which his highness had been so _piously_ engaged at
Ludhaura.[6] After he had sat with me an hour and a half he took his
leave, and I conducted him to the door, whence he was carried to his
elephant in his litter, from which he mounted without touching the
ground.
This litter is called a 'nâlkî'. It is one of the three great
insignia which the Mogul Emperors of Delhi conferred upon independent
princes of the first class, and could never be used by any person
upon whom, or upon whose ancestors, they had not been so conferred.
These were the nâlkî, the order of the Fish, and the fan of the
peacock's feathers. These insignia could be used only by the prince
who inherited the sovereignty of the one on whom they had been
originally conferred. The order of the Fish, or Mahî Marâtib, was
first instituted by Khusrû Parvîz, King of Persia, and grandson of
the celebrated Naushîrvân the Just. Having been deposed by his
general, Bahrâm, Khusrû fled for protection to the Greek emperor,
Maurice, whose daughter, Shîrîn, he married, and he was sent back to
Persia, with an army under the command of Narses, who placed him on
the throne of his ancestors in the year A.D. 591.[7] He ascertained
from his astrologer, Araz Khushasp, that when he ascended the throne
the moon was in the constellation of the Fish, and he gave orders to
have two balls made of polished steel, which were to be called
Kaukabas (planets),[8] and mounted on long poles. These two planets,
with large fish made of gold, upon a third pole in the centre, were
ordered to be carried in all regal processions immediately after the
king, and before the prime minister, whose _cortège_ always followed
immediately after that of the king. The two kaûkabas are now
generally made of copper, and plated, and in the shape of a jar,
instead of quite round as at first; but the fish is still made of
gold. Two planets are always considered necessary to one fish, and
they are still carried in all processions between the prince and his
prime minister.
The court of this prince Khusrû Pârvîz was celebrated throughout the
East for its splendour and magnificence; and the chaste love of the
poet Farhad for his beautiful queen Shîrîn is the theme of almost as
many poems in the East as that of Petrarch's for Laura is in the
West. Nûh Samânî, who ascended the throne of Persia after the
Sassanians,[9] ascertained that the moon was in the sign Leo at the
time of his accession, and ordered that the gold head of a lion
should thenceforward accompany the fishes, and the two balls, in all
royal processions. The Persian order of knighthood is, therefore,
that of the Fish, the Moon, and the Lion, and not the Lion and Sun,
as generally supposed. The emperors of the house of Taimûr in
Hindustan assumed the right of conferring the order upon all whom
they pleased, and they conferred it upon the great territorial
sovereigns of the country without distinction as to religion. He only
who inherits the sovereignty can wear the order, and I believe no
prince would venture to wear or carry the order who was not generally
reputed to have received the investiture from one of the emperors of
Delhi.[10]
As I could not wait another day, it was determined that I should
return his visit in the afternoon; and about four o'clock we set out
upon our elephant--Lieutenant Thomas, Sarîmant, and myself, attended
by all my troopers and those of Sarîmant. We had our silver-stick men
with us; but still all made a sorry figure compared with the splendid
_cortège_ of the Râjâ. We dismounted at the foot of the stairs
leading to the Râjâ's hall of audience, and were there met by his two
chief officers of state, who conducted us to the entrance of the
hall, when we were received by the Râjâ himself, who led us up
through two rows of chairs laid out exactly as mine had been in the
morning. In front were assembled a party of native comedians, who
exhibited a few scenes of the insolence of office in the attendants
of great men, and the obtrusive importunity of place-seekers, in a
manner that pleased us much more than a dance would have done.
Conversation was kept up very well, and the visit passed off without
any feeling of ennui, or anything whatever to recollect with regret.
The ladies looked at us from their apartments through gratings, and
without our being able to see them very distinctly. We were anxious
to see the tombs of the late Râjâ, the elder brother of the present,
who lately died, and that of his son, which are in progress in a very
fine garden outside the city walls, and, in consequence, we did not
sit above half an hour. The Râjâ conducted us to the head of the
stairs, and the same two officers attended us to the bottom, and
mounted their horses, and attended us to the tombs.
After the dust of the town raised by the immense crowd that attended
us, and the ceremonies of the day, a walk in this beautiful garden
was very agreeable, and I prolonged it till dark. The Râjâ had given
orders to have all the cisterns filled during our stay, under the
impression that we should wish to see the garden; and, as soon as we
entered, the _jets d'eau_ poured into the air their little floods
from a hundred mouths. Our old cicerone told us that, if we would
take the old capital of Orchhâ in our way, we might there see the
thing in perfection, and amidst the deluges of the rains of Sâwân and
Bhâdon (July and August) see the lightning and hear the thunder. The
Râjâs of this, the oldest principality in Bundêlkhand, were all
formerly buried or burned at the old capital of Orchhâ, even after
they had changed their residence to Tehrî. These tombs over the ashes
of the Râjâ, his wife, and son, are the first that have been built at
Tehrî, where their posterity are all to repose in future.
Notes:
1. December, 1835.
2. The State of Orchhâ, also known as Tehrî or Tîkamgarh, situated to
the south of the Jhânsî district, is the oldest and the highest in
rank of the Bundela principalities. The town of Tehrî is seventy-two
miles north-west of Sâgar. The town of Orchhâ, founded in A.D. 1531,
is 131 miles north of Sâgar, and about forty miles from Tehrî.
Tîkamgarh is the fort of Tehrî.
3. A _kharîtâ_ is a letter enclosed in a bag of rich brocade,
contained in another of fine muslin. The mouth is tied with a string
of silk, to which hangs suspended the great seal, which is a flat
round mass of sealing-wax, with the seal impressed on each side of
it. This is the kind of letter which passes between natives of great
rank in India, and between them and the public functionaries of
Government. [W. H. S.]
4. _Ante_, Chapter 19, after note [15].
5. The Râjâ's unwillingness to touch the ground is an example of a
very widespread and primitive belief. 'Two of those rules or taboos
by which . . . the life of divine kings or priests is regulated. The
first is . . . that the divine personage may not touch the ground
with his foot.' This prohibition applies to the Mikado of Japan and
many other sacred personages. 'The second rule is that the sun may
not shine upon the sacred person.' This second rule explains the use
of the umbrella as a royal appendage in India and Burma. (Frazer,
_The Golden Bough_, 1st ed., vol. ii, pp. 224, 225.)
6 _Ante_, Chapter 19, note 3.
7. During the time he remained the guest of the emperor he resided at
Hierapolis, and did not visit Constantinople. The Greeks do not admit
that Shîrîn was the daughter of Maurice, though a Roman by birth and
a Christian by religion. The Persians and Turks speak of her as the
emperor's daughter. [W. H. S.] Khusrû Pârvîz (Eberwiz), or Khusrû II,
reigned as King of Persia from A.D. 591 to 628. In the course of his
wars he took Jerusalem, and reduced Egypt, and a large part of
northern Africa, extending for a time the bounds of the Persian
empire to the Aegean and the Nile. Khusrû I, surnamed Naushîrvân, or
(more correctly) Anushîrvân, reigned from A.D. 531 to 579. His
successful wars with the Romans and his vigorous internal
administration captivated the Oriental imagination, and he is
generally spoken of as Âdil, or The Just. His name has become
proverbial, and to describe a superior as rivalling Naushîrvân in
justice is a commonplace of flattery. The prophet Muhammad was born
during his reign, and was proud of the fact. The alleged expedition
of Naushîrvân into India is discredited by the best modern writers.
Gibbon tells the story of the wars between the two Khusrûs and the
Romans in his forty-sixth chapter, and a critical history of the
reigns of both Khusrû (Khosrau) I and Khusrû II will be found in
Professor Rawlinson's _Seventh Great Oriental Monarchy_ (London,
1876). European authors have, until recently, generally written the
name Khusrû in its Greek form as Chosroes. The name of Shîrîn is also
written Sira.
'With the name of Shirin and the rock of Bahistun the Persians have
associated one of those poetic romances so dear to the national
genius. Ferhad, the most famous sculptor of his time, who was very
likely employed by Chosroes II to execute these bas-reliefs, is said
in the legend to have fallen madly in love with Shîrîn, and to have
received a promise of her from the king, if he would cut through the
rock of Behistun, and divert a stream to the Kermanshah plain. The
lover set to work, and had all but completed his gigantic enterprise
(of which the remains, however interpreted, are still to be seen),
when he was falsely informed by an emissary from the king of his
lady's death. In despair he leaped from the rock, and was dashed to
pieces. The legend of the unhappy lover is familiar throughout the
East, and is used to explain many traces of rock-cutting or
excavation as far east as Beluchistan' (_Persia and the Persian
Question_, by the Hon. George N. Curzon, M.P. (London, 1892), vol. i,
p. 562, note. See also Malcolm, _History of Persia_, vol. i, p. 129).
8. _Kaukab_ in Arabic means 'a star'. Steingass (_Persian
Dictionary_) defines _Kaukaba_ as 'a polished steel ball suspended to
a long pole, and carried as an ensign before the king; a star of
gold, silver, or tinsel, worn as ornament or sign of rank; a
concourse of people; a royal train, retinue, cavalcade; splendour'.
9. Yezdegird III (Isdigerd), the last of the Sassanians, was defeated
in A.D. 641 at the battle of Nahavend by the Arab Nomân, general of
the Khalîf Omar, and driven from his throne. The supremacy of the
Khalîfs over Persia lasted till A.D. 1258. The subordinate Samâni
dynasty ruled over Khurâsân, Seistân, Balkh, and the countries of
Trans-Oxiana in the tenth century. Two of the princes of this line
were named Nûh, or Noah. The author probably refers to the better
known of the two, Amir Nûh II (Malcolm, _History of Persia_, ed.
1829, vol. i, pp. 158-66).
10. The poor old blind emperor. Shâh Alam, when delivered from the
Marâthâs in 1803 by Lord Lake, did all he could to show his gratitude
by conferring on his deliverer honours and titles, and among them the
'Mahî Maratîb'. The editor has been unable to discover the source of
the author's story of the origin of the Persian order of knighthood.
Malcolm, an excellent authority, gives the following very different
account: 'Their sovereigns have, for many centuries, preserved as the
peculiar arms of the country,[e] the sign or figure of Sol in the
constellation of Leo; and this device, a lion couchant and the sun
rising at his back, has not only been sculptured upon their
palaces[f] and embroidered upon their banners.[g] but has been
converted into an Order,[h] which in the form of gold and silver
medals, has been given to such as have distinguished themselves
against the enemies of their country.[i]
_Note e_. The causes which led to the sign of Sol in Leo becoming the
arms of Persia cannot be distinctly traced, but there is reason to
believe that the use of this symbol is not of very great antiquity.
We meet with it upon the coins of one of the Seljukian princes of
Iconium; and, when this family had been destroyed by Hulâkû [A.D.
1258], the grandson of Chengiz, that prince, or his successors,
perhaps adopted this emblem as a trophy of their conquest, whence it
has remained ever since among the most remarkable of the royal
insignia. A learned friend, who has a valuable collection of Oriental
coins, and whose information and opinion have enabled me to make this
conjecture, believes that the emblematical representation of Sol in
Leo was first adopted by Ghiâs-ud-din Kai Khusrû bin Kaikobâd, who
began to reign A.H. 634, A.D. 1236, and died A.H. 642, A.D. 1244; and
this emblem, he adds, is supposed to have reference either to his own
horoscope or to that of his queen, who was a princess of Georgia.
_Note f_. Hanway states, vol. i, p. 199, that over the gate which
forms the entrance of the palace built by Shah Abbâs the Great [A.D.
1586 to 1628] at Ashrâf, in Mazenderan, are 'the arms of Persia,
being a lion, and the sun rising behind it'.
_Note g_. The emblem of the Lion and Sun is upon all the banners
given to the regular corps of infantry lately formed. They are
presented to the regiments with great ceremony. A mûllâ, or priest,
attends, and implores the divine blessing on them.
_Note h_. This order, with additional decorations, has been lately
conferred upon several ministers and representatives of European
Governments in alliance with Persia.
_Note i_. The medals which have been struck with this symbol upon
them have been chiefly given to the Persian officers and men of the
regular corps who have distinguished themselves in the war with the
Russians. An English officer, who served with these troops, informs
me that those on whom these medals have been conferred are very proud
of this distinction, and that all are extremely anxious to obtain
them (_History of Persia_, ed. 1829, vol. ii, p. 406).
In Curzon's figure the lion is standing, not 'couchant', as stated by
Malcolm, and grasps a scimitar in his off forepaw.
CHAPTER 23
The Râjâ of Orchhâ--Murder of his many Ministers.
The present Râjâ, Mathurâ Dâs, succeeded his brother Bikramâjît, who
died in 1834. He had made over the government to his only son, Râjâ
Bahâdur, whom he almost adored; but, the young man dying some years
before him, the father resumed the reins of government, and held them
till his death. He was a man of considerable capacity, but of a harsh
and unscrupulous character. His son resembled him; but the present
Râjâ is a man of mild temper and disposition, though of weak
intellect. The fate of the last three prime ministers will show the
character of the Râjâ and his son, and the nature of their rule.
The minister at the time the old man made over the reins of
government to his son was Khânjû Purôhit.[1] Wishing to get rid of
him a few years after, this son, Râjâ Bahâdur, employed Muhram Singh,
one of his feudal Râjpût barons, to assassinate him. As a reward for
this service he received the seals of office; and the Râjâ
confiscated all the property of the deceased, amounting to four lakhs
of rupees[2] and resumed the whole of the estates held by the family.
The young Râjâ died soon after; and his father, when he resumed the
reins of government, wishing to remove the new minister, got him
assassinated by Gambhîr Singh, another feudal Râjpût baron, who, as
his reward, received in his turn the seals of office. This man was a
most atrocious villain, and employed the public establishments of his
chief to plunder travellers on the high road. In 1833 his followers
robbed four men, who were carrying treasure to the amount of ten
thousand rupees from Sâgar to Jhânsî through Tehrî, and intended to
murder them; but, by the sagacity of one of the party, and a lucky
accident, they escaped, made their way back to Sâgar, and complained
to the magistrate.[3] The[4] minister discovered the nature of their
burdens as they lodged at Tehrî on their way, and sent after them a
party of soldiers, with orders to put them in the bed of a rivulet
that separated the territory of Orchhâ from that of the Jhânsî Râjâ.
One of the treasure party discovered their object; and, on reaching
the bank of the rivulet in a deep grass jungle, he threw down his
bundle, dashed unperceived through the grass, and reached a party of
travellers whom he saw ascending a hill about half a mile in advance.
The myrmidons of the minister, when they found that one had escaped,
were afraid to murder the others, but took their treasure. In spite
of great obstacles, and with much danger to the families of three of
those men, who resided in the capital of Tehrî, the magistrate of
Sâgar brought the crime home to the minister, and the Râjâ, anxious
to avail himself of the occasion to fill his coffers, got him
assassinated. The Râjâ was then about eighty years of age, and his
minister was a strong, athletic, and brave man. One morning while he
was sitting with him in private conversation, the former pretended a
wish to drink some of the water in which his household god had been
washed (the 'chandan mirt'),[5] and begged the minister to go and
fetch it from the place where it stood by the side of the idol in the
court of the palace. As a man cannot take his sword before the idol,
the minister put it down, as the Râjâ knew he would, and going to the
idol, prostrated himself before it preparatory to taking away the
water. In that state he was cut down by Bihârî,[6] another feudal
Râjpût baron, who aspired to the seals, and some of his friends, who
had been placed there on purpose by the Râjâ. He obtained the seals
by his service, and, as he was allowed to place one brother in
command of the forces, and to make another chamberlain, he hoped to
retain them longer than any of his predecessors had done. Gambhîr
Singh's brother, Jhujhâr Singh, and the husband of his sister,
hearing of his murder, made off, but were soon pursued and put to
death. The widows were all three put into prison, and all the
property and estates were confiscated. The movable property amounted
to three lakhs of rupees.[7] The Râjâ boasted to the Governor-
General's representative in Bundêlkhand of this act of retributive
justice, and pretended that it was executed merely as a punishment
for the robbery; but it was with infinite difficulty the merchants
could recover from him any share of the plundered property out of
that confiscated. The Râjâ alleged that, according to our _rules_,
the chief within whose boundary the robbery might have been
committed, was obliged to make good the property. On inspection, it
was found that the robbery was perpetrated upon the very boundary
line, and 'in spite of pride, in erring reason's spite', the Jhânsî
Râjâ was made to pay one-half of the plundered treasure.
The old Râjâ, Bikramâjît, died in June, 1834; and, though his death
had been some time expected, he no sooner breathed his last than
charges of 'dînaî', slow poison, were got up, as usual, in the zenana
(seraglio).
Here the widow of Râjâ Bahâdur, a violent and sanguinary woman, was
supreme; and she persuaded the present Râjâ, a weak old man, to take
advantage of the funeral ceremonies to avenge the death of his
brother. He did so; and Bihârî, and his three brothers, with above
fifty of his relations, were murdered. The widows of the four
brothers were the only members of all the families left alive. One of
them had a son four months old; another one of two years; the four
brothers had no other children. Immediately after the death of their
husbands, the two children were snatched from their mothers' breasts,
and threatened with instant death unless their mothers pointed out
all their ornaments and other property. They did so; and the spoilers
having got from them property to the amount of one hundred and fifty
thousand rupees, and been assured that there was no more, threw the
children over the high wall, by which they were dashed to pieces. The
poor widows were tendered as wives to four sweepers, the lowest of
all low castes; but the tribe of sweepers would not suffer any of its
members to take the widows of men of such high caste and station as
wives, notwithstanding the tempting offer of five hundred rupees as a
present, and a village in rent-free tenure.[8] I secured a promise
while at Tehrî that these poor widows should be provided for, as they
had, up to that time, been preserved by the good feeling of a little
community of the lowest of castes, on whom they had been bestowed as
a punishment worse than death, inasmuch as it would disgrace the
whole class to which they belonged, the Parihâr Râjpûts.[9]
Tehrî is a wretched town, without one respectable dwelling-house
tenanted beyond the palace, or one merchant, or even shopkeeper of
capital and credit. There are some tolerable houses unoccupied and in
ruins; and there are a few neat temples built as tombs, or cenotaphs,
in or around the city, if city it can be called. The stables and
accommodations for all public establishments seem to be all in the
same ruinous state as the dwelling-houses. The revenues of the state
are spent in feeding Brahmans and religious mendicants of all kinds;
and in such idle ceremonies as those at which the Râjâ and all his
court have just been assisting--ceremonies which concentrate for a
few days the most useless of the people of India, the devotee
followers (Bairâgîs) of the god Vishnu, and tend to no purpose,
either useful or ornamental, to the state or to the people.
This marriage of a stone to a shrub, which takes place every year, is
supposed to cost the Râjâ, at the most moderate estimate, three lakhs
of rupees a year, or one-fourth of his annual revenue.[10] The
highest officers of which his government is composed receive small
beggarly salaries, hardly more than sufficient for their subsistence;
and the money they make by indirect means they dare not spend like
gentlemen, lest the Râjâ might be tempted to take their lives in
order to get hold of it. All his feudal barons are of the same tribe
as himself, that is, Râjpûts; but they are divided into three clans--
Bundêlas, Pawârs, and Chandêls. A Bundêla cannot marry a woman of his
own clan, he must take a wife from the Pawârs or Chandêls; and so of
the other two clans--no member of one can take a wife from his own
clan, but must go to one of the other two for her. They are very much
disposed to fight with each other, but not less are they disposed to
unite against any third party, not of the same tribe. Braver men do
not, I believe, exist than the Râjpûts of Bundêlkhand, who all carry
their swords from their infancy.[11]
It may be said of the Râjpûts of Mâlwa and Central India generally,
that the Mogul Emperors of Delhi made the same use of them that the
Emperors of Germany and the Popes made of the military chiefs and
classes of Europe during the Middle Ages. Industry and the peaceful
arts being reduced to agriculture alone under bad government or no
government at all, the land remained the only thing worth
appropriating; and it accordingly became appropriated by those alone
who had the power to do so--by the Hindoo military classes collected
around the heads of their clans, and powerful in their union. These
held it under the paramount power on the feudal tenure of military
service, as militia; or it was appropriated by the paramount power
itself, who let it out on allodial tenure to peaceful peasantry. The
one was the Zamîndârî, and the other the Mâlguzârî tenure of
India.[12]
The military chiefs, essentially either soldiers or robbers, were
continually fighting, either against each other, or against the
peasantry, or public officers of the paramount power, like the barons
of Europe; and that paramount power, or its delegates, often found
that the easiest way to crush one of these refractory vassals was to
put him, as such men had been put in Germany, to _the ban of the
empire_, and offer his lands, his castles, and his wealth to the
victor. This victor brought his own clansmen to occupy the lands and
castles of the vanquished; and, as these were the only things thought
worth living for, the change commonly involved the utter destruction
of the former occupants. The new possessors gave the name of their
leader, their clan, or their former place of abode, to their new
possession, and the tract of country over which they spread. Thus
were founded the Bundêlas, Pawârs, and Chandêls [_sic_] upon the ruin
of the Chandêls of Bundêlkhand, the Baghêlas in Baghêlkhand, or Rîwâ,
the Kachhwâhâs, the Sakarwârs, and others along the Chambal river,
and throughout all parts of India.[13]
These classes have never learnt anything, or considered anything
worth learning, but the use of the sword; and a Râjpût chief, next to
leading a gang of his own on great enterprises, delights in nothing
so much as having a gang or two under his patronage for little ones.
There is hardly a single chief of the Hindoo military class in the
Bundêlkhand or Gwâlior territories, who does not keep a gang of
robbers of some kind or other, and consider it as a very valuable and
legitimate source of revenue; or who would not embrace with
cordiality the leader of a gang of assassins by profession who should
bring him home from every expedition a good horse, a good sword, or a
valuable pair of shawls, taken from their victims. It is much the
same in the kingdom of Oudh, where the lands are for the most part
held by the same Hindoo military classes, who are in a continual
state of war with each other, or with the Government authorities.
Three-fourths of the recruits for native infantry regiments are from
this class of military agriculturists of Oudh, who have been trained
up in this school of contest; and many of the lads, when they enter
our ranks, are found to have marks of the cold steel upon their
persons. A braver set of men is hardly anywhere to be found; or one
trained up with finer feelings of devotion towards the power whose
salt they eat.[14] A good many of the other fourth of the recruits
for our native infantry are drawn from among the Ujainî Râjpûts, or
Râjpûts from Ujain,[15] who were established many generations ago in
the same manner at Bhôjpur on the bank of the Ganges.[16]
Notes:
1. A purôhit is a Brahman family priest.
2. Four hundred thousand rupees, worth at that time more than forty
thousand pounds sterling.
3. The magistrate was the author.
4. 'That' in author's text.
5. The water of the Ganges, with which the image of the god Vishnu
has been washed, is considered a very holy draught, fit for princes.
That with which the image of the god Siva, alias Mahâdêo, is washed
must not be drunk. The popular belief is that in a dispute between
him and his wife, Pârvatî, alias Kâlî, she cursed the person that
should thenceforward dare to drink of the water that flowed over his
images on earth. The river Ganges is supposed to flow from the top-
knot of Siva's head, and no one would drink of it after this curse,
were it not that the sacred stream is supposed to come first from the
_heel_ of Vishnu, the Preserver. All the little images of Siva, that
are made out of stones taken from the bed of the Nerbudda river, are
supposed to be absolved from this curse, and water thrown upon _them_
can be drunk with impunity. [W. H. S.] The natural emblems of Siva,
the Bâna-linga quartz pebbles found in the Nerbudda, have already
been referred to in the note to Chapter 19, _ante_, note 9. In the
Marâthâ country the 'household gods' generally comprise five sacred
symbols, namely, the _sâlagrâma_ stone of Vishnu, the _bâna-linga_ of
Siva, a metallic stone representing the female principle in nature
(Sakti), a crystal representing the sun, and a red stone representing
Ganesh, the remover of obstacles. The details of the tiresome ritual
observed in the worship of these objects occupy pp. 412 to 416 of
Monier Williams's _Religious Thought and Life in India_.
6. 'Beearee' in author's text.
7. Then worth more than thirty thousand pounds sterling.
8. On the customs of the sweeper caste, see _ante_, Chapter 8,
following note [11].
9. The Parihârs were the rulers of Bundêlkhand before the Chandêls.
The chief of Uchhahara belongs to this clan.
10. Wealthy Hindoos, throughout India, spend money in the same
ceremonies of marrying the stone to the shrub. [W. H. S.] Three lakhs
of rupees were then worth thirty thousand pounds sterling or more.
11. The numerous clans, more or less devoted to war, grouped together
under the name of Râjpûts (literally 'king's sons'), are in reality
of multifarious origin, and include representatives of many races.
They are the Kshatriyas of the law-books, and are still often called
Chhattrî (_E.H.I._, 3rd ed., pp. 407-15). In some parts of the
country the word Thâkur is more familiar as their general title.
Thirty-six clans are considered as specially pure-blooded and are
called, at any rate in books, the 'royal races'. All the clans follow
the custom of exogamy. The Chandêls (Chandella) ruled Bundêlkhand
from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries. Their capital was Mahoba,
now a station on the Midland Railway. The Bundêlas became prominent
at a later date, and attained their greatest power under Chhatarsâl
(_circa_ A.D. 1671-1731). Their territory is now known as
Bundêlkhand. The country so designated is not an administrative
division. It is partly in the United Provinces, partly in the Central
Provinces, and partly in Native States. It is bounded on the north by
the Jumna; on the north and west by the Chambal river; on the south
by the Central Provinces, and on the south and east by Rîwâ and the
Kaimûr hills. The traditions of both the Bundêlas and Chandellas show
that there is a strain of the blood of the earlier, so--called
aboriginal, races in both clans. The Pawâr (Pramara) clan ranks high,
but is now of little political importance (See _N.W.P. Gazetteer_,
1st ed., vol. vii, p. 68).
12. The paramount power often assigned a portion of its reserved
lands in 'Jâgîr' to public officers for the establishments they
required for the performance of the duties, military or civil, which
were expected from them. Other portions were assigned in rent-free
tenure for services already performed, or to favourites; but, in both
cases, the rights of the village or land owner, or allodial
proprietors, were supposed to be unaffected, as the Government was
presumed to assign only its own claim to a certain portion as
revenue. [W. H. S.] The term 'ryotwar' (raiyatwâr) is commonly used
to designate the system under which the cultivators hold their lands
direct from the State. The subject of tenures is further discussed by
the author in Chapters 70, 71.
13. For elaborate comparisons between the Râjpût policy and the
feudal system of Europe, Tod's _Rajasthân_ may be consulted. The
parallel is not really so close as it appears to be at first sight.
In some respects the organization of the Highland clans is more
similar to that of the Râjpûts than the feudal system is. The Chambal
river rises in Mâlwâ, and, after a course of some five hundred and
seventy miles, falls into the Jumna forty miles below Etâwa. The
statement in the text concerning the succession of clans is confused.
The ruling family of Rîwâ still belongs to the Baghêl clan. The
Maharâjâ of Jaipur (Jeypore) is a Kachhwâha.
14. The barbarous habit of alliance and connivance with robber gangs
is by no means confined to Râjpût nobles and landholders. Men of all
creeds and castes yield to the temptation and magistrates are
sometimes startled to find that Honorary Magistrates, Members of
District Boards, and others of apparently the highest respectability,
are the abettors and secret organizers of robber bands. A modern
example of this fact was discovered in the Meerut and Muzaffarnagar
Districts of the United Provinces in 1890 and 1891. In this case the
wealthy supporters of the banditti were Jâts and Muhammadans.
The unfortunate condition of Oudh previous to the annexation in 1856
is vividly described in the author's _Journey through the Kingdom of
Oude_, published in 1858. The tour took place in 1849-50. Some
districts of the kingdom, especially Hardoî, are still tainted by the
old lawlessness.
The remarks on the fine feelings of devotion shown by the sepoys must
now be read in the light of the events of the Mutiny. Since that time
the army has been reorganized, and depends on Oudh for its recruits
much less than it did in the author's day.
15. Ujain (Ujjain, Oojeyn) is a very ancient city, on the river
Sipra, in Mâlwa, in the dominions of Sindhia, the chief of Gwâlior.
16. Bhajpore in the author's text. The town referred to is Bhôjpur in
the Shâhâbâd district of South Bihâr.
CHAPTER 24
Corn Dealers--Scarcities--Famines in India.
Near Tehrî we saw the people irrigating a field of wheat from a tank
by means of a canoe, in a mode quite new to me. The surface of the
water was about three feet below that of the field to be watered. The
inner end of the canoe was open, and placed to the mouth of a gutter
leading into the wheat-field. The outer end was closed, and suspended
by a rope to the outer end of a pole, which was again suspended to
cross-bars. On the inner end of this pole was fixed a weight of
stones sufficient to raise the canoe when filled with water; and at
the outer end stood five men, who pulled down and sank the canoe into
the water as often as it was raised by the stones, and emptied into
the gutter. The canoe was more curved at the outer end than ordinary
canoes are, and seemed to have been made for the purpose. The lands
round the town generally were watered by the Persian wheel; but,
where it [_scil._ the water] is near the surface, this [_scil._ the
canoe arrangement] I should think a better method.[1]
On the 10th[2] we came on to the village of Bilgaî, twelve miles over
a bad soil, badly cultivated; the hard syenitic rock rising either
above or near to the surface all the way--in some places abruptly, in
small hills, decomposing into large rounded boulders--in others
slightly and gently, like the backs of whales in the ocean-in others,
the whole surface of the country resembled very much the face of the
sea, not after, but really in, a storm, full of waves of all sizes,
contending with each other 'in most admired disorder'. After the dust
of Tehrî, and the fatiguing ceremonies of its court, the quiet
morning I spent in this secluded spot under the shade of some
beautiful trees, with the surviving canary singing, my boy playing,
and my wife sleeping off the fatigues of her journey, was to me most
delightful. Henry was extremely ill when we left Jubbulpore; but the
change of air, and all the other changes incident to a march, have
restored him to health.
During the scarcity of 1833 two hundred people died of starvation in
this village alone;[3] and were all thrown into one large well, which
has, of course, ever since remained closed. Autumn crops chiefly are
cultivated; and they depend entirely on the sky for water, while the
poor people of the village depend upon the returns of a single season
for subsistence during the whole year. They lingered on in the hope
of aid from above till the greater part had become too weak from want
of food to emigrate. The Râjâ gave half a crown to every family;[4]
but this served merely to kindle their hopes of more, and to prolong
their misery. Till the people have a better government they can never
be secure from frequent returns of similar calamities. Such security
must depend upon a greater variety of crops, and better means of
irrigation; better roads to bring supplies over from distant parts
which have not suffered from the same calamities; and greater means
in reserve of paying for such supplies when brought--things that can
never be hoped for under a government like this, which allows no man
the free enjoyment of property.
Close to the village a large wall has been made to unite two small
hills, and form a small lake; but the wall is formed of the rounded
boulders of the syenitic rock without cement, and does not retain the
water. The land which was to have formed the bed of the lake is all
in tillage; and I had some conversation with the man who cultivated
it. He told me that the wall had been built with the money of _sin_,
and not the money of _piety_ (_pâp kê paisâ sê, na pun kê paisâ sê
banâ_), that the man who built it must have laid out his money with a
_worldly_, and not a _religious_ mind (_nîyat_); that on such
occasions men generally assembled Brahmans and other deserving
people, and fed and clothed them, and thereby _consecrated_ a great
work, and made it acceptable to God, and he had heard from his
ancestors that the man who had built this wall had failed to do this;
that the construction could never, of course, answer the purpose for
which it was intended--and that the builder's name had actually been
forgotten, and the work did him no good either in this world or the
next. This village, which a year or two ago was large and populous,
is now reduced to two wretched huts inhabited by two very miserable
families.
Bundêlkhand suffers more often and more severely from the want of
seasonable showers of rain than any other part of India; while the
province of Mâlwa, which adjoins it on the west and south, hardly
ever suffers at all.[5] There is a couplet, which, like all other
good couplets on rural subjects, is attributed to Sahdêo [Sahadeva],
one of the five demigod brothers of the Mahâbhârata, to this effect:
'If you hear not the thunder on such a night, you, father, go to
Mâlwa, I to Gujarât;'--that is, there will be no rain, and we must
seek subsistence where rains never fail, and the harvests are secure.
The province of Mâlwa is well studded with hills and groves of fine
trees, which intercept the clouds as they are wafted by the
prevailing westerly winds, from the Gulf of Cambay to the valley of
the Ganges, and make them drop their contents upon a soil of great
natural powers, formed chiefly from the detritus of the decomposing
basaltic rocks, which cap and intersect these hills.[6]
During the famine of 1833, as on all similar occasions, grain of
every kind, attracted by high prices, flowed up in large streams from
this favoured province towards Bundêlkhand; and the population of
Bundêlkhand, as usual in such times of dearth and scarcity, flowed
off towards Mâlwa against the stream of supply, under the assurance
that the nearer they got to the source, the greater would be their
chance of employment and subsistence. Every village had its numbers
of the dead and the dying; and the roads were all strewed with them;
but they were mostly concentrated upon the great towns and civil and
military stations, where subscriptions were open[ed] for their
support, by both the European and native communities. The funds
arising from these subscriptions lasted till the rains had set fairly
in, when all able-bodied persons could easily find employment in
tillage among the agricultural communities of villages around. After
the rains have fairly set in, the _sick_ and _helpless_ only should
be kept concentrated upon large towns and stations, where little or
no employment is to be found; for the oldest and youngest of those
who are able to work can then easily find employment in weeding the
cotton, rice, sugar-cane, and other fields under autumn crops, and in
preparing the lands for the reception of the wheat, gram,[7] and
other spring seeds; and get advances from the farmers, agricultural
capitalists[8] and other members of the village communities, who are
all glad to share their superfluities with the distressed, and to pay
liberally for the little service they are able to give in return.
It is very unwise to give from such funds what may be considered a
full rate of subsistence to able-bodied persons, as it tends to keep
concentrated upon such points vast numbers who would otherwise be
scattered over the surface of the country among the village
communities, who would be glad to advance them stock and the means of
subsistence upon the pledge of their future services when the season
of tillage commences. The rate of subsistence should always be
something less than what the able-bodied person usually consumes, and
can get for his labour in the field. For the sick and feeble this
rate will be enough, and the healthy and able-bodied, with unimpaired
appetites, will seek a greater rate by the offer of their services
among the farmers and cultivators of the surrounding country. By this
precaution, the mass of suffering will be gradually diffused over the
country, so as best to receive what the country can afford to give
for its relief. As soon as the rains set in, all the able-bodied men,
women, and children should be sent off with each a good blanket, and
a rupee or two, as the funds can afford, to last them till they can
engage themselves with the farmers. Not a farthing after that day
should be given out, except to the feeble and sick, who may be
considered as hospital patients.[9]
At large places, where the greater numbers are concentrated, the
scene becomes exceedingly distressing, for, in spite of the best
dispositions and greatest efforts on the part of Government and its
officers, and the European and native communities, thousands commonly
die of starvation. At Sâgar, mothers, as they lay in the streets
unable to walk, were seen holding up their infants, and imploring the
passing stranger to take them in slavery, that they might at least
live--hundreds were seen creeping into gardens, courtyards, and old
ruins, concealing themselves under shrubs, grass, mats, or straw,
where they might die quietly, without having their bodies torn by
birds and beasts before the breath had left them. Respectable
families, who left home in search of the favoured land of Mâlwa,
while yet a little property remained, finding all exhausted, took
opium rather than beg, and husband, wife, and children died in each
other's arms. Still more of such families lingered on in hope till
all had been expended; then shut their doors, took poison and died
all together, rather than expose their misery, and submit to the
degradation of begging. All these things I have myself known and
seen; and, in the midst of these and a hundred other harrowing scenes
which present themselves on such occasions, the European cannot fail
to remark the patient resignation with which the poor people submit
to their fate; and the absence of almost all those revolting acts
which have characterized the famines of which he has read in other
countries--such as the living feeding on the dead, and mothers
devouring their own children. No such things are witnessed in Indian
famines;[10] here all who suffer attribute the disaster to its real
cause, the want of rain in due season; and indulge in no feelings of
hatred against their rulers, superiors, or more fortunate equals in
society who happen to live beyond the range of such calamities. They
gratefully receive the superfluities which the more favoured are
always found ready to share with the afflicted in India; and, though
their sufferings often subdue the strongest of all pride, the pride
of caste, they rarely ever drive the people to acts of violence. The
stream of emigration, guided as it always is by that of the
agricultural produce flowing in from the more favoured countries,
must necessarily concentrate upon the communities along the line it
takes a greater number of people than they have the means of
relieving, however benevolent their dispositions; and I must say that
I have never either seen or read of a nobler spirit than seems to
animate all classes of these communities in India on such distressing
occasions.
In such seasons of distress, we often, in India, hear of very
injudicious interference with grain dealers on the part of civil and
military authorities, who contrive to persuade themselves that the
interest of these corn-dealers, instead of being in accordance with
the interests of the people, are entirely opposed to them; and
conclude that, whenever grain becomes dear, they have a right to make
them open their granaries, and sell their grain at such price as
they, in their wisdom, may deem reasonable. If they cannot make them
do this by persuasion, fine, or imprisonment, they cause their pits
to be opened by their own soldiers or native officers, and the grain
to be sold at an arbitrary price. If, in a hundred pits thus opened,
they find one in which the corn happens to be damaged by damp, they
come to the sage conclusion that the proprietors must be what they
have all along supposed them to be, and treated as such--_the common
enemies of mankind_--who, blind alike to their own interests and
those of the people, purchase up the superabundance of seasons of
plenty, not to sell it again in seasons of scarcity, but _to destroy
it_; and that the whole of the grain in the other ninety-nine pits,
but for their _timely interference_, must have inevitably shared the
same fate.[11]
During the season here mentioned, grain had become very dear at
Sâgar, from the unusual demand in Bundêlkhand and other districts to
the north. As usual, supplies of land produce flowed up from the
Nerbudda districts along the great roads to the east and west of the
city; but the military authorities in the cantonments would not be
persuaded out of their dread of a famine. There were three regiments
of infantry, a corps of cavalry, and two companies of artillery
cantoned at that time at Sâgar. They were a mile from the city, and
the grain for their supply was exempted from town duties to which
that for the city was liable. The people in cantonments got their
supply, in consequence, a good deal cheaper than the people in the
city got theirs; and none but persons belonging bona fide to the
cantonments were ever allowed to purchase grain within them. When the
dread of famine began, the commissariat officer, Major Gregory,
apprehended that he might not be permitted to have recourse to the
markets of the city in times of scarcity, since the people of the
city had not been suffered to have recourse to those of the
cantonments in times of plenty; but he was told by the magistrate to
purchase as much as he liked, since he considered every man as free
to sell his grain as his cloth, or pots and pans, to whom he
chose.[12] He added that he did not share in the fears of the
military authorities--that he had no apprehension whatever of a
famine, or when prices rose high enough they would be sure to divert
away into the city, from the streams then flowing up from the valley
of the Nerbudda and the districts of Mâlwa towards Bundêlkhand, a
supply of grain sufficient for all.
This new demand upon the city increased rapidly the price of grain,
and augmented the alarm of the people, who began to urge the
magistrate to listen to their prayers, and coerce the sordid corn-
dealers, who had, no doubt, numerous pits yet unopened. The alarm
became still greater in the cantonments, where the commanding officer
attributed all the evil to the inefficiency of the commissariat and
the villany of the corn-dealers; and Major Gregory was in dread of
being torn to pieces by the soldiery. Only one day's supply was left
in the cantonment bazaars--the troops had become clamorous almost to
a state of mutiny--the people of the town began to rush in upon every
supply that was offered for sale; and those who had grain to dispose
of could no longer venture to expose it. The magistrate was hard
pressed on all sides to have recourse to the old salutary method of
searching for and forcibly opening the grain pits, and selling the
contents at such price as might appear reasonable. The kotwâl[13] of
the town declared that the lives of his police would be no longer
safe unless this great and never-failing remedy, which had now
unhappily been too long deferred, were immediately adopted.
The magistrate, who had already taken every other means of declaring
his resolution never to suffer any man's granary to be forcibly
opened, now issued a formal proclamation, pledging himself to see
that such granaries should be as much respected as any other property
in the city--that every man might keep his grain and expose it for
sale, wherever and whenever he pleased; and expressing a hope that,
as the people knew him too well not to feel assured that his word
thus solemnly pledged would never be broken, he trusted they would
sell what stores they had, and apply themselves without apprehension
to the collecting of more.
This proclamation he showed to Major Gregory, assuring him that no
degree of distress or clamour among the people of the city or the
cantonments should ever make him violate the pledge therein given to
the corn-dealers; and that he was prepared to risk his situation and
reputation as a public officer upon the result. After issuing this
proclamation about noon, he had his police establishments augmented,
and so placed and employed as to give to the people entire confidence
in the assurances conveyed in it. The grain-dealers, no longer
apprehensive of danger, opened their pits of grain, and sent off all
their available means to bring in more. In the morning the bazaars
were all supplied, and every man who had money could buy as much as
he pleased. The troops got as much as they required from the city.
Major Gregory was astonished and delighted. The colonel, a fine old
soldier from the banks of the Indus, who had commanded a corps of
horse under the former government, came to the magistrate in
amazement; every shop had become full of grain as if by supernatural
agency.
_'Kâle âdmî kî akl kahân talak chalêgî_?' said he. 'How little could
a black man's wisdom serve him in such an emergency?'
There was little wisdom in all this; but there was a firm reliance
upon the truth of the general principle which should guide all public
officers on such occasions. The magistrate judged that there were a
great many pits of grain in the town known only to their own
proprietors, who were afraid to open them, or get more grain, while
there was a chance of the civil authorities yielding to the clamours
of the people and the anxiety of the officers commanding the troops;
and that he had only to remove these fears, by offering a solemn
pledge, and manifesting the means and the will to abide by it, in
order to induce the proprietors, not only to sell what they had, but
to apply all their means to the collecting of more. But it is a
singular fact that almost all the officers of the cantonments thought
the conduct of the magistrate in refusing to have the grain pits
opened under such pressing circumstances extremely reprehensible.
Had he done so, he might have given the people of the city and the
cantonments the supply at hand; but the injury done to the corn-
dealers by so very unwise a measure would have recoiled upon the
public, since every one would have been discouraged from exerting
himself to renew the supply, and from laying up stores to meet
similar necessities in future. By acting as he did, he not only
secured for the public the best exertions of all the existing corn-
dealers of the place, but actually converted for the time a great
many to that trade from other employments, or from idleness. A great
many families, who had never traded before, employed their means in
bringing a supply of grain, and converted their dwellings into corn
shops, induced by the high profits and assurance of protection.
During the time when he was most pressed the magistrate received a
letter from Captain Robinson, who was in charge of the bazaars at
Elichpur in the Hyderabad territory,[14] where the dearth had become
even more felt than at Sâgar, requesting to know what measures had
been adopted to regulate the price, and secure the supply of grain
for the city and cantonments at Sâgar, since no good seemed to result
from those hitherto pursued at Elichpur. He told him in reply that
these things had hitherto been regulated at Sâgar as he thought 'they
ought to be regulated everywhere else, by being left entirely to the
discretion of the corn-dealers themselves, whose self-interest will
always prompt them to have a sufficient supply, as long as they may
feel secure of being permitted to do what they please with what they
collect. The commanding officer, in his anxiety to secure food for
the people, had hitherto been continually interfering to coerce sales
and regulate prices, and continually aggravating the evils of the
dearth by so doing'. On the receipt of the Sâgar magistrate's letter
a different course was adopted; the same assurances were given to the
corn-dealers, the same ability and inclination to enforce them
manifested, and the same result followed. The people and the troops
were steadily supplied; and all were astonished that so very simple a
remedy had not before been thought of.
The ignorance of the first principles of political economy among
European gentlemen of otherwise first-rate education and abilities in
India is quite lamentable, for there are really few public officers,
even in the army, who are not occasionally liable to be placed in the
situations where they may, by false measures, arising out of such
ignorance, aggravate the evils of dearth among great bodies of their
fellow men. A soldier may, however, find some excuse for such
ignorance, because a knowledge of these principles is not generally
considered to form any indispensable part of a soldier's education;
but no excuse can be admitted for a civil functionary who is so
ignorant, since a thorough acquaintance with the principles of
political economy must be, and, indeed, always is considered as an
essential branch of that knowledge which is to fit him for public
employment in India.[15]
In India unfavourable seasons produce much more disastrous
consequences than in Europe. In England not more than one-fourth of
the population derive their incomes from the cultivation of the lands
around them. Three-fourths of the people have incomes independent of
the annual returns from those lands; and with these incomes they can
purchase agricultural produce from other lands when the crops upon
them fail. The farmers, who form so large a portion of the fourth
class, have stock equal in value to _four times the amount of the
annual rent of their lands_. They have also a great variety of crops;
and it is very rare that more than one or two of them fail, or are
considerably affected, the same season. If they fail in one district
or province, the deficiency is very easily supplied to a people who
have equivalents to give for the produce of another. The sea,
navigable rivers, fine roads, all are open and ready at all times for
the transport of the superabundance of one quarter to supply the
deficiencies of another. In India, the reverse of all this is
unhappily to be found; more than three-fourths of the whole
population are engaged in the cultivation of the land, and depend
upon its annual returns for subsistence.[16] The farmers and
cultivators have none of their stock equal in value to more than
_half the amount of the annual rent of their lands_.[17] They have a
great variety of crops; but all are exposed to the same accidents,
and commonly fail at the same time. The autumn crops are sown in June
and July, and ripen in October and November; and, if seasonable
showers do not fall during July, August, and September, all fail. The
spring crops are sown in October and November, and ripen in March;
and, if seasonable showers do not happen to fall during December or
January, all, save what are artificially irrigated, fail.[18] If they
fail in one district or province, the people have few equivalents to
offer for a supply of land produce from any other. Their roads are
scarcely anywhere passable for wheeled carriages at _any season_, and
nowhere _at all seasons_--they have nowhere a navigable canal, and
only in one line a navigable river.
Their land produce is conveyed upon the backs of bullocks, that move
at the rate of six or eight miles a day, and add one hundred per
cent. to the cost of every hundred miles they carry it in the best
seasons, and more than two hundred in the worst.[19] What in Europe
is felt merely as a _dearth_, becomes in India, under all these
disadvantages, a scarcity, and what is there a _scarcity_ becomes
here a _famine_. Tens of thousands die here of starvation, under
calamities of season, which in Europe would involve little of
suffering to any class. Here man does everything, and he must have
his daily food or starve. In England machinery does more than three-
fourths of the collective work of society in the production,
preparation, and distribution of man's physical enjoyments, and it
stands in no need of this daily food to sustain its powers; they are
independent of the seasons; the water, fire, air, and other elemental
powers which they require to render them subservient to our use are
always available in abundance.
This machinery is the great assistant of the present generation,
provided for us by the wisdom and industry of the past; wanting no
food itself, it can always provide its proprietors with the means of
purchasing what they require from other countries, when the harvests
of their own fail. When calamities of season deprive men of
employment for a time in tillage, they can, in England, commonly find
it in other branches of industry, because agricultural industry forms
so small a portion of the collective industry of the nation; and
because every man can, without prejudice to his status in society,
take to what branch of industry he pleases. But, when these
calamities of season throw men out of employment in tillage for a
time in India, they cannot find it in any other branch, because
agricultural industry forms so very large a portion of the collective
industry of every part of the country; and because men are often
prevented by the prejudices of caste from taking to that which they
can find.[20]
In societies constituted like that of India the trade of the corn-
dealer is more essentially necessary for the welfare of the community
than in any other, for it is among them that the superabundance of
seasons of plenty requires most to be stored up for seasons of
scarcity; and if public functionaries will take upon themselves to
seize such stores, and sell them at their own arbitrary prices,
whenever prices happen to rise beyond the rate which they in their
short-sighted wisdom think just, no corn-dealer will ever collect
such stores. Hitherto, whenever grain has become dear at any military
or civil station, we have seen the civil functionaries urged to
prohibit its egress--to search for the hidden stores, and to coerce
the proprietors to the sale in all manner of ways; and, if they do
not yield to the ignorant clamour, they are set down as indifferent
to the sufferings of their fellow creatures around them, and as
blindly supporting the worst enemies of mankind in the worst species
of iniquity.
If those who urge them to such measures are asked whether
silversmiths or linendrapers, who should be treated in the same
manner as they wish the corn-dealers to be treated, would ever
collect and keep stores of plate and cloth for their use, they
readily answer--No; they see at once the evil effects of interfering
with the free disposal of the property of the one, but are totally
blind to that which must as surely follow any interference with that
of the other, whose entire freedom is of so much more vital
importance to the public. There was a time, and that not very remote,
when grave historians, like Smollett, could, even in England, fan the
flame of this vulgar prejudice against one of the most useful classes
of society. That day is, thank God, past; and no man can now venture
to write such trash in his history, or even utter it in any well-
informed circle of English society; and, if any man were to broach
such a subject in an English House of Commons, he would be considered
as a fit subject for a madhouse.
But some, who retain their prejudices against corn-dealers, and are
yet ashamed to acknowledge their ignorance of the first principles of
political economy, try to persuade themselves and their friends that,
however applicable these may be to the state of society in European
or Christian countries, they are not so to countries occupied by
Hindoos and Muhammadans. This is a sad delusion, and may be a very
mischievous one, when indulged by public officers in India.[21]
Notes:
1. Irrigation by means of a 'dug-out' canoe used as a lever is
commonly practised in many parts of the country. The author gives a
rough sketch, not worth reproduction. The Persian wheel is suitable
for use in wide-mouthed wells. It may be described as a mill-wheel
with buckets on the circumference, which are filled and emptied as
the wheel revolves. It is worked by bullock-power acting on a rude
cog-wheel.
2. December, 1835.
3. A.D. 1833 corresponds to the year 1890 of the _Vikrama Samvat_, or
era, current in Bundêlkhand. About 1880 the editor found this great
famine still remembered as that of the year '90.
4. Half a crown seems to be used in this passage as a synonym for the
rupee, now (1914) worth a shilling and four pence.
5. Bundêlkhand seems to be the meeting-place of the east and west
monsoons, and the moist current is, in consequence, often feeble and
variable. The country suffered again from famine in 1861 and 1877,
although not so severely as in 1833. In northern Bundêlkhand a canal
from the Betwa river has been constructed, but is of only very
limited use. The peculiarities of the soil and climate forbid the
wide extension of irrigation. For the prevention of acute famine in
this region the chief reliance must be on improved communications.
The country has been opened up by the Indian Midland and other
railways. In 1899-1900, notwithstanding improved communications,
Mâlwa suffered severely from famine. Aurangzêb considered Gujarât to
be 'the ornament and jewel of India' (Bilimoria, _Letters of
Aurungzebie_, 1908, no. lxiv).
6. The influence of trees on climate is undoubted, but the author in
this passage probably ascribes too much power to the groves of Mâlwa.
On the formation of the black soil see note 7 to Chapter 14, _ante_.
7. The word in the author's text is 'grain', a misprint for 'gram'
(_Cicer arietinum_), a pulse, also known as chick-pea, and very
largely grown in Bundêlkhand. 'Gram' is a corruption of the
Portuguese word for grain, and, like many other Portuguese words, has
passed into the speech of Anglo-Indians. See Yule and Burnell,
_Glossary of Anglo-Indian Words_, s.v.
8. 'Agricultural capitalist' is a rather large phrase for the humble
village money-lender, whose transactions are usually on a very small
scale.
9. The author's advice on the subject of famine relief is weighty and
perfectly sound. It is in accordance with the policy formulated by
the Government of India in the Famine Relief Code, based on the
Report of the Famine Commission which followed the terrible Madras
famine of 1877.
10. This statement is too general. Examples of the horror alluded to
are recorded in several Indian famines. Cases of cannibalism occurred
during the Madras famine of 1877. But it is true that horrors of the
kind are rare in India, and the author's praise of the patient
resignation of the people is fully justified. An admirable summary of
the history of Indian famines will be found in the articles 'Famines'
and 'Food' in Balfour, _Cyclopaedia_, 3rd ed. (1885). For further and
more recent information see _I.G._ (1907), vol. iii, chap. 10.
11. No European officer, military or civil, could now venture to
adopt such arbitrary measures. In a Native State they might very
probably be enforced.
12. 'The magistrate' was the author himself.
13. The chief police officer of a town. In the modern reorganized
system he always holds the rank of either Inspector or Sub-Inspector.
Under native governments he was a more important official.
14. Elichpur (Îlichpur) is in Berâr, otherwise known as the Assigned
Districts, a territory made over in Lord Dalhousie's time to British
administration in order to defray the cost of the armed force called
the Hyderabad Contingent. Since 1903 Berâr has ceased to be a
separate province. It is now merely a Division attached to the
Central Provinces. From the same date the Hyderabad Contingent lost
its separate existence, being redistributed and merged in the Indian
Army.
15. Political Economy was for many years a compulsory subject for the
selected candidates for the Civil Service of India; but since 1892
its study has been optional.
16. The census of 1911 shows that about 71 per cent. of the
301,000,000 inhabiting India, excluding Burma, are supported by the
cultivation of the soil and the care of cattle. The proportion varies
widely in different provinces.
17. This proposition does not apply fully to Northern India at the
present day. The amount of capital invested is small, although not
quite so small as is stated in the text.
18. The times of harvest vary slightly with the latitude, being later
towards the north. The cold-weather rains of December and January are
variable and uncertain, and rarely last more than a few days. The
spring crops depend largely on the heavy dews which occur daring the
cold season.
19. Daring the years which have elapsed since the famine of 1833,
great changes have taken place in India, and many of the author's
remarks are only partially applicable to the present time. The great
canals, above all, the wonderful Ganges Canal, have protected immense
areas of Northern India from the possibility of absolute famine, and
Southern India has also been to a considerable, though less, extent,
protected by similar works. A few new staples, of which potatoes are
the most important, have been introduced. The whole system of
distribution has been revolutionized by the development of railways,
metalled roads, wheeled vehicles, motors, telegraphs, and navigable
canals. Carriage on the backs of animals, whether bullocks, camels,
or donkeys, now plays a very subordinate part in the distribution of
agricultural produce. Prices are, in great measure, dependent on the
rates prevailing in Liverpool, Odessa, and Chicago. Food grains now
stand ordinarily at prices which, in the author's time, would have
been reckoned famine rates. The changes which have taken place in
England are too familiar to need comment.
20. Since the author's time certain industries, the most important
being cotton-pressing, cotton-spinning, and jute-spinning, have
sprung up and assumed in Bombay, Calcutta, Cawnpore, and a few other
places, proportions which, absolutely, are large. But India is so
vast that these local developments of manufactures, large though they
are, seem to be as nothing when regarded in comparison with the
country as a whole. India is still, and, to all appearance, always
must be, essentially an agricultural country.
21. The author's teaching concerning freedom of trade in times of
famine and the function of dealers in corn is as sound as his
doctrine of famine relief. The 'vulgar prejudice', which he
denounces, still flourishes, and the 'sad delusion', which he
deplores, still obscures the truth. As each period of scarcity or
famine comes round, the old cries are again heard, and the executive
authorities are implored and adjured to forbid export, to fix fair
prices, and to clip the profits of the corn merchant. During the
Bengal famine of 1873-4, the demand for the prohibition of the export
of rice was urged by men who should have known better, and Lord
Northbrook is entitled to no small credit for having firmly withstood
the clamour. The more recent experiences of the Russian Government
should be remembered when the clamour is again raised, as it will be.
The principles on which the author acted in the crisis at Sâgar in
1833 should guide every magistrate who finds himself in a similar
position, and should be applied with unhesitating firmness and
decision.
CHAPTER 25
Epidemic Diseases--Scape-goat.
In the evening, after my conversation with the cultivator upon the
wall that united the two hills,[1] I received a visit from my little
friend the Sarîmant. His fine rose-coloured turban is always put on
very gracefully; every hair of his jet-black eyebrows and mustachios
seems to be kept always most religiously in the same place; and he
has always the same charming smile upon his little face, which was
never, I believe, distorted into an absolute laugh or frown. No man
was ever more perfectly master of what the natives call 'the art of
rising or sitting' (_nishisht wa barkhâst_), namely, good manners. I
should as soon expect to see him set the Nerbudda on fire as commit
any infringement of the _convenances_ on this head established in
good Indian society, or be guilty of anything vulgar in speech,
sentiment, or manners. I asked him by what means it was that the old
queen of Sâgar[2] drove out the influenza that afflicted the people
so much in 1832, while he was there on a visit to me. He told me that
he took no part in the ceremonies, nor was he aware of them till
awoke one night by 'the noise, when his attendants informed him that
the queen and the greater part of the city were making offerings to
the new god, Hardaul Lâla. He found next morning that a goat had been
offered up with as much noise as possible, and with good effect, for
the disease was found to give way from that moment. About six years
before, when great numbers were dying in his own little capital of
Pithoria[3] from a similar epidemic, he had, he said, tried the same
thing with still greater effect; but, on that occasion, he had the
aid of a man very learned in such matters. This man caused a small
carriage to be made up after a plan of his own, for _a pair of scape-
goats_, which were harnessed to it, and driven during the ceremonies
to a wood some distance from the town, where they were let loose.
From that hour the disease entirely ceased in the town. The goats
never returned. 'Had they come back,' said Sarîmant, 'the disease
must have come back with them; so he took them a long way into the
wood--indeed (he believed), the man, to make sure of them, had
afterwards caused them to be offered up as a sacrifice to the shrine
of Hardaul Lâla, in that very wood. He had himself never seen a
_pûjâ_ (religious ceremony) so entirely and immediately efficacious
as this, and much of its success was, no doubt, attributable to the
_science_ of the man who planned the carriage, and himself drove the
pair of goats to the wood. No one had ever before heard of the plan
of a pair of _scape-goats_ being driven in a carriage; but it was
likely (he thought) to be extensively adopted in future.'[4]
Sarîmant's man of affairs mentioned that when Lord Hastings took the
field against the Pindhârîs, in 1817,[5] and the division of the
grand army under his command was encamped near the grove in
Bundêlkhand, where repose the ashes of Hardaul Lâla, under a small
shrine, a cow was taken into this grove to be converted into beef for
the use of the Europeans. The priest in attendance remonstrated, but
in vain--the cow was killed and eaten. The priest complained, and
from that day the cholera morbus broke out in the camp; and from this
central point it was, he said, generally understood to have spread
all over India.[6] The story of the cow travelled at the same time,
and the spirit of Hardaul Lâla was everywhere supposed to be riding
in the whirlwind, and _directing the storm_. Temples were everywhere
erected, and offerings made to appease him; and in six years after,
he had himself seen them as far as Lahore, and in almost every
village throughout the whole course of his journey to that distant
capital and back. He is one of the most sensible and freely spoken
men that I have met with. 'Up to within the last few years', added
he, 'the spirit of Hardaul Lâla had been propitiated only in cases of
cholera morbus; but now he is supposed to preside over all kinds of
epidemic diseases, and offerings have everywhere been made to his
shrine during late influenzas.'[7]
'This of course arises', I observed, 'from the industry of his
priests, who are now spread all over the country; and you know that
there is hardly a village or hamlet in which there are not some of
them to be found subsisting upon the fears of the people.'
'I have no doubt', replied he, 'that the cures which the people
attribute to the spirit of Hardaul Lâla often arise merely from the
firmness of their faith (_itikâd_) in the efficacy of their
offerings; and that any other ceremonies, that should give to their
minds the same assurance of recovery, would be of great advantage in
cases of epidemic diseases. I remember a singular instance of this,'
said he. 'When Jeswant Râo Holkar was flying before Lord Lake to the
banks of the Hyphasis,[8] a poor trooper of one of his lordship's
irregular corps, when he tied the grain-bag to his horse's mouth,
said 'Take this in the name of Jeswant Râo Holkar, for to him you and
I owe all that we have.' The poor man had been suffering from an
attack of ague and fever; but from that moment he felt himself
relieved, and the fever never returned. At that time this fever
prevailed more generally among the people of Hindustan than any I
have ever known, though I am now an old man. The speech of the
trooper and the supposed result soon spread; and others tried the
experiment with similar success, and it acted everywhere like a
charm. I had the fever myself, and, though by no means a
superstitious man, and certainly no lover of Jeswant Râo Holkar, I
tried the experiment, and the fever left me from that day. From that
time, till the epidemic disappeared, no man, from the Nerbudda to the
Indus, fed his horse without invoking the spirit of Jeswant Râo,
though the chief was then alive and well. Some one had said he found
great relief from plunging into the stream during the paroxysms of
the fever; others followed the example, and some remained for half an
hour at a time, and the sufferers generally found relief. The streams
and tanks throughout the districts between the Ganges and Jumna
became crowded, till the propitiatory offering to the spirit of the
living Jeswant Râo Holkar were [sic] found equally good, and far less
troublesome to those who had horses that must have got their grain,
whether in Holkar's name or not.'
There is no doubt that the great mass of those who had nothing but
their horses and their _good blades_ to depend upon for their
subsistence did most fervently pray throughout India for the safety
of this Marâthâ chief, when he fled before Lord Lake's army; for they
considered that, with his fall, the Company's dominion would become
everywhere securely established, and that good soldiers would be at a
discount. '_Company kê amal men kuchh rozgâr nahin hai_,'--'There is
no employment in the Company's dominion,' is a common maxim, not only
among the men of the sword and the spear, but among those merchants
who lived by supporting native civil and military establishments with
the luxuries and elegancies which, under the new order of things,
they have no longer the means to enjoy.
The noisy _pûjâ_ (worship), about which our conversation began, took
place at Sâgar in April, 1832, while I was at that station. More than
four-fifths of the people of the city and cantonments had been
affected by a violent influenza, which commenced with a distressing
cough, was followed by fever, and, in some cases, terminated in
death. I had an application from the old Queen Dowager of Sâgar, who
received a pension of ten thousand pounds a year from the British
Government,[9] and resided in the city, to allow of a _noisy_
religious procession to implore deliverance from this great calamity.
Men, women, and children in this procession were to do their utmost
to add to the noise by 'raising their voices in _psalmody_', beating
upon their brass pots and pans with all their might, and discharging
fire-arms where they could get them; and before the noisy crowd was
to be driven a buffalo, which had been purchased by a general
subscription, in order that every family might participate in the
merit. They were to follow it out for eight miles, where it was to be
turned loose for any man who would take it. If the animal returned,
the disease, it was said, must return with it, and the ceremony be
performed over again. I was requested to intimate the circumstance to
the officer commanding the troops in cantonments, in order that the
hideous noise they intended to make might not excite any alarm, and
bring down upon them the visit of the soldiery. It was, however,
subsequently determined that the animal should be a goat, and he was
driven before the crowd accordingly. I have on several occasions been
requested to allow of such noisy _pûjâs_ in cases of epidemics; and
the confidence they feel in their efficiency has, no doubt, a good
effect.
While in civil charge of the district of Narsinghpur, in the valley
of the Nerbudda, in April 1823, the cholera morbus raged in almost
every house of Narsinghpur and Kandelî, situated near each other,[l0]
and one of them close to my dwelling-house and court. The European
physicians lost all confidence in their prescriptions, and the people
declared that the hand of God was upon them, and by appeasing Him
could they alone hope to be saved.[11] A religious procession was
determined upon; but the population of both towns was divided upon
the point whether a silent or a noisy one would be most acceptable to
God. Hundreds were dying around me when I was applied to to settle
this knotty point between the parties. I found that both in point of
numbers and respectability the majority was in favour of the silent
procession, and I recommended that this should be adopted. The
procession took place about nine the same night, with all due
ceremony; but the advocates for noise would none of them assist in
it. Strange as it may appear, the disease abated from that moment;
and the great majority of the population of both towns believed that
their prayers had been heard; and I went to bed with a mind somewhat
relieved by the hope that this feeling of confidence might be useful.
About one o'clock I was awoke from a sound sleep by the most hideous
noise that I had ever heard; and, not at that moment recollecting the
proposal for the noisy procession, ran out of my house, in
expectation of seeing both towns in flames. I found that the
advocates for noise, resolving to have their procession, had
assembled together about midnight; and, apprehensive that they might
be borne down by the advocates for silence and my police
establishment, had determined to make the most of their time, and put
in requisition all the pots, pans, shells, trumpets, pistols, and
muskets that they could muster. All opened at once about one o'clock;
and, had there been any virtue in discord, the cholera must soon have
deserted the place, for such another hideous compound of noises I
never heard. The disease, which seemed to have subsided with the
silent procession before I went to bed, now returned with double
violence, as I was assured by numbers who flocked to my house in
terror; and the whole population became exasperated with the leaders
of the noisy faction, who had, they believed, been the means of
bringing back among them all the horrors of this dreadful scourge.
I asked the Hindoo Sadar Amîn, or head native judicial officer at
Sâgar, a very profound Sanskrit scholar, what he thought of the
efficacy of these processions in checking epidemic diseases. He said
that 'there could be nothing more clear than the total inefficiency
of medicine in such cases; and, when medicine failed, a man's only
resource was in prayers; that the diseases of mankind were to be
classed under three general heads: first, those suffered for sins
committed in some former births; second, those suffered for sins
committed in the present birth; third, those merely accidental. Now,'
said the old gentleman, 'it must be clear to every unprejudiced mind
that the third only can be cured or checked by the physician.'
Epidemics, he thought, must all be classed under the second head, and
as inflicted by the Deity for some very general sin; consequently, to
be removed only by prayers; and, whether silent or noisy, was, he
thought, matter of little importance, provided they were offered in
the same spirit. I believe that, among the great mass of the people
of India, three-fourths of the diseases of individuals are attributed
to evil spirits and evil eyes; and for every physician among them
there are certainly ten _exorcisers_. The faith in them is very great
and very general; and, as the gift is supposed to be supernatural, it
is commonly exercised without fee or reward. The gifted person
subsists upon some other employment, and _exorcises_ gratis.
A child of one of our servants was one day in convulsions from its
sufferings in cutting its teeth. The Civil Surgeon happened to call
that morning, and he offered to lance the child's gums. The poor
mother thanked him, but stated that there could be no possible doubt
as to the source of her child's sufferings--that the devil had got
into it during the night, and would certainly not be frightened out
by his little lancet; but she expected every moment my old tent-
pitcher, whose exorcisms no devil of this description had ever yet
been able to withstand.
The small-pox had been raging in the town of Jubbulpore for some time
during one hot season that I was there, and a great many children had
died from it. The severity of the disease was considered to have been
a good deal augmented by a very untoward circumstance that had taken
place in the family of the principal banker of the town, Khushhâl
Chand. Sêwâ Râm Sêth, the old man, had lately died, leaving two sons.
Ram Kishan, the eldest, and Khushhâl Chand, the second. The eldest
gave up all the management of the sublunary concerns of the family,
and devoted his mind entirely to religious duties. They had a very
fine family temple of their own, in which they placed an image of
their god Vishnu, cut out of the choicest stone of the Nerbudda, and
consecrated after the most approved form, and with very expensive
ceremonies. This idol Râm Kishan used every day to wash with his own
hands with rosewater, and anoint with precious ointments. One day,
while he had the image in his arms, and was busily employed in
anointing it, it fell to the ground upon the stone pavement, and one
of the arms was broken. To live after such an untoward accident was
quite out of the question, and poor Râm Kishan proceeded at once
quietly to hang himself. He got a rope from the stable, and having
tied it over the beam in the room where he had let the god fall upon
the stone pavement, he was putting his head calmly into the noose,
when his brother came in, laid hold of him, called for assistance,
and put him under restraint. A conclave of the priests of that sect
was immediately held in the town, and Râm Kishan was told that
hanging himself was not absolutely necessary; that it might do if he
would take the stone image, broken arm and all, upon his own back,
and carry it two hundred and sixty miles to Benares, where resided
the high priest of the sect, who would, no doubt, be able to suggest
the proper measures for pacifying the god.
At this time, the only son of his brother, Khushhâl Chand, an
interesting little boy of about four years of age, was extremely ill
of the small-pox; and it is a rule with Hindoos never to undertake
any journey, even one of pilgrimage to a holy shrine, while any
member of the family is afflicted with this disease; they must all
sit at home clothed in sackcloth and ashes. He was told that he had
better defer his journey to Benares till the child should recover;
but he could neither sleep nor eat, so great was his terror, lest
some dreadful calamity should befall the whole family before he could
expiate his crime, or take the advice of his high priest as to the
best means of doing it: and he resolved to leave the decision of the
question to God Himself. He took two pieces of paper, and having
caused Benares to be written upon one, and Jubbulpore upon the other,
he put them both into a brass vessel. After shaking the vessel well,
he drew forth that on which Benares had been written. 'It is the will
of God,' said Râm Kishan. All the family, who were interested in the
preservation of the poor boy, implored him not to set out, lest Dêvî,
who presides over small-pox, should become angry. It was all in vain.
He would set out with his household god; and, unable to carry it
himself, he put it into a small litter upon a pole, and hired a
bearer to carry it at one end, while he supported it at the other.
His brother, Khushhâl Chand, sent his second wife at the same time
with offerings for Dêvî, to ward off the effects of his brother's
rashness from his child. By the time the brother had got with his god
to Adhartâl, three miles from Jubbulpore, on the road to Benares, he
heard of the death of his nephew; but he seemed not to feel this
slight blow in his terror of the dreadful but undefined calamity
which he felt to be impending over him and the whole family, and he
trotted on his road. Soon after, an infant son of their uncle died of
the same disease; and the whole town became at once divided into two
parties--those who held that the children had been killed by Dêvî as
a punishment for Râm Kishan's presuming to leave Jubbulpore before
they recovered; and those who held that they were killed by the god
Vishnu himself, for having been so rudely deprived of one of his
arms. Khushhâl Chand's wife sickened on the road, and died on
reaching Mirzapore, of fever; and, as Dêvî was supposed to have
nothing to do with fevers, this event greatly augmented the advocates
of Vishnu. It is a rule with the Hindoos to bury, and not to burn,
the bodies of those who die of the small-pox; 'for', say they, 'the
small-pox is not only caused by the goddess Dêvî, but is, in fact,
_Dêvî herself_', and to burn the body of the person affected with
this disease is, in reality, neither more nor less than _to burn the
goddess_'.
Khushhâl Chand was strongly urged to bury, and not burn, his child,
particularly as it was usual with Hindoos to bury infants and
children of that age, of whatever disease they might die; but he
insisted upon having his boy burned with all due pomp and ceremony,
and burned he was accordingly. From that moment, it is said, the
disease began to rage with increased violence throughout the town of
Jubbulpore. At least one-half of the children affected had before
survived; but, from that hour, at least three out of four died; and,
instead of the condolence which he expected from his fellow citizens,
poor Khushhâl Chand, a very amiable and worthy man, received nothing
but their execrations for bringing down so many calamities upon their
heads; first, by maltreating his own god, and then by setting fire to
theirs.
I had, a few days after, a visit from Gangâdhar Râo, the Sadar Amîn,
or head native judicial officer of this district, whose father had
been for a short time the ruler of the district, under the former
government; and I asked him whether the small-pox had diminished in
the town since the rains had now set in. He told me that he thought
it had, but that a great many children had been taken off by the
disease.[12]
'I understand, Râo Sahib, that Khushhâl Chand, the banker, is
supposed to have augmented the virulence of the disease by burning
his boy; was it so?'
'Certainly,' said my friend, with a grave, long face; 'the disease
was much increased by this man's folly.' I looked very grave in my
turn, and he continued:- 'Not a child escaped after he had burned his
boy. Such incredible folly! To set fire to the _goddess_ in the midst
of a population of twenty thousand souls; it might have brought
destruction on us all!'
'What makes you think that the disease is itself the goddess?'
'Because we always say, when any member of a family becomes attacked
by the small-pox, "_Dêvî nikalî_", that is, Dêvî has shown herself in
that family, or in that individual. And the person affected can wear
nothing but plain white clothing, not a silken or coloured garment,
nor an ornament of any kind; nor can he or any of his family
undertake a journey, or participate in any kind of rejoicings, lest
he give offence to her. They broke the arm of their god, and he drove
them all mad.[l3] The elder brother set out on a journey with it, and
his nephew, cousin, and sister-in-law fell victims to his temerity;
and then Khushhâl Chand brings down the goddess upon the whole
community by burning his boy![14] No doubt he was very fond of his
child--so we all are--and wished to do him all honour; but some
regard is surely due to the people around us, and I told him so when
he was making preparations for the funeral; but he would not listen
to reason.'
A complicated religious code, like that of the Hindoos, is to the
priest what a complicated civil code, like that of the English, is to
the lawyers. A Hindoo can do nothing without consulting his priest,
and an Englishman can do nothing without consulting his lawyer.
Notes:
1. _Ante_, Chapter 24, following note [4].
2. Sâgar was ceded by the Peshwa in 1818, and a yearly sum of two and
a half lakhs of rupees was allotted by Government for pensions to
Rukmâ Bâî, Vinâyak Râo, and the other officers of the Marâthâ
Government. A descendant of Rukmâ Bâî continued for many years to
enjoy a pension of R.10,000 per annum (_C.P. Gazetteer_ (1870), p,
442). The lady referred to in the text seems to be Rukmâ Bâî.
3. A village about twenty miles north-west of Sâgar. The estate
consists of twenty-six revenue-free villages.
4. The Jewish ceremonial is described in Leviticus xvi. 20-26. After
completing the atonement for the impurities of the holy place, the
tabernacle, and the altar, Aaron was directed to lay 'his hands upon
the head of the live goat', so putting all the sins of the people
upon the animal, and then to 'send him away by the hand of a fit man
into the wilderness; and the goat shall bear upon him all their
iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in
the wilderness'. The subject of scape-goats is discussed at length
and copiously illustrated by Mr. Frazer in _The Golden Bough_, 1st
ed., vol. ii, section 15, pp. 182-217; 3rd ed. (1913) Part VI. The
author's stories in the text are quoted by Mr. Frazer.
5. During the season of 1816-17 the ravages of the Pindhârîs were
exceptionally daring and extensive. The Governor-General, the Marquis
of Hastings, organized an army in several divisions to crush the
marauders, and himself joined the central division in October 1817.
The operations were ended by the capture of Asîrgarh in March 1819.
6. The people in the Sâgar territories used to show several decayed
mango-trees in groves where European troops had encamped during the
campaigns of 1816 and 1817, and declared that they had been seen to
wither from the day that beef for the use of these troops had been
tied to their branches. The only coincidence was in the decay of the
trees, and the encamping of the troops in the groves; that the
withering trees were those to which the beef had been tied was of
course taken for granted. [W. H. S.] The Hindoo veneration for the
cow amounts to a passion, and its intensity is very inadequately
explained by the current utilitarian explanations. The best analysis
of the motives underlying the passionate Hindoo feeling on the
subject is to be found in Mr. William Crooke's article 'The
Veneration of the Cow in India' (_Folklore_, Sept. 1912, pp. 275-
306). In modern times an active, though absolutely hopeless,
agitation has been kept up, directed against the reasonable liberty
of those communities in India who are not members of the Hindoo
system. This agitation for the prohibition of cow-killing has caused
some riots, and has evoked much ill-feeling. The editor had to deal
with it in the Muzaffarnagar district in 1890, and had much trouble
to keep the peace. The local leaders of the movement went so far as
to send telegrams direct to the Government of India. Many other
magistrates have had similar experiences. The authorities take every
precaution to protect Hindoo susceptibilities from needless wounds,
but they are equally bound to defend the lawful liberty of subjects
who are not Hindoos. The Government of the United Provinces on one
occasion yielded to the Hindoo demands so far as to prohibit cow-
killing in at least one town where the practice was not fully
established, but the legality and expediency of such an order are
both open to criticism. The administrative difficulty is much
enhanced by the fact that the Indian Muhammadans profess to be under
a religious obligation to sacrifice cows at the Îdul Bakr festival.
Cholera has been known to exist in India at least since the
seventeenth century (Balfour, _Cyclopaedia of India_, 3rd ed. (1885),
s.v.).
7. The cultus of Hardaul is further discussed _post_ in Chapter 31.
In 1875, the editor, who was then employed in the Hamîrpur district
of Bundêlkhand, published some popular Hindi songs in praise of the
hero, with the following abstract of the _Legend of Hardaul_:
'Hardaul, a son of the famous Bîr Singh Deo Bundêla of Orchhâ, was
born at Datiyâ. His brother, Jhajhâr Singh, suspected him of undue
intimacy with his wife, and at a feast poisoned him with all his
followers. After this tragedy, it happened that the daughter of
Kunjâvatî, the sister of Jhajhâr and Hardaul, was about to be
married. Kunjâvatî accordingly sent an invitation to Jhajhâr Singh,
requesting him to attend the wedding. He refused, and mockingly
replied that she had better invite her favourite brother Hardaul.
Thereupon she went in despair to his tomb and lamented aloud. Hardaul
from below answered her cries, and said that he would come to the
wedding and make all arrangements. The ghost kept his promise, and
arranged the nuptials as befitted the honour of his house.
Subsequently, he visited at night the bedside of Akbar, and besought
the emperor to command _chabûtras_ to be erected and honour paid to
him in every village throughout the empire, promising that, if he
were duly honoured, a wedding should never be marred by storm or
rain, and that no one who first presented a share of his meal to
Hardaul should ever want for food. Akbar complied with these
requests, and since that time Hardaul's ghost has been worshipped in
every village. He is chiefly honoured at weddings and in Baisâkh
(April-May), during which month the women, especially those of the
lower castes, visit his _chabûtra_ and eat there. His chabûtra is
always built outside the village. On the day but one before the
arrival of a wedding procession, the women of the family worship the
gods and Hardaul, and invite them to the wedding. If any signs of a
storm appears, Hardaul is propitiated with songs '(_J.A.S.B._, vol.
xliv (1875), Part I, p. 389). The belief that Hardaul worship and
cholera had been introduced at the same time prevailed in Hamîrpur,
as elsewhere. The _chabûtra_ referred to in the above extract is a
small platform built of mud or masonry.
8. The Hyphasis is the Greek name for the river Biâs in the Panjâb.
Holkar's flight into the Panjâb occurred in 1805, and in the same
year the long war with him was terminated by a treaty, much too
favourable to the marauding chief. He became insane a few years
later, and died in 1811.
9. See note 2,_ante_.
10. Narsinghpur and Kandelî are practically one town. The Government
offices and houses of the European residents are in Kandelî, which is
a mile east of Narsinghpur. The original name of Narsinghpur was
Gadariâ Khêrâ. The modern name is due to the erection of a large
temple to Narsingha, one of the forms of Vishnu. The district of
Narsinghpur lies in the Nerbudda valley, west and south-west of
Jubbulpore.
11. All classes of Indians still frequently refuse to employ any
medicines in cases of either cholera or small-pox, supposing that the
attempt to use ordinary human means is an insult to, and a defiance
of, the Deity.
12. Vaccination was not practised in India in those days. The
practice of it, although still unpopular in most places, has extended
sufficiently to check greatly the ravages of small-pox. In many
municipal towns vaccination is compulsory.
13._Quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat_.
14. The judge cleverly combines the opinions of the adherents of both
sects.
CHAPTER 26
Artificial Lakes in Bundêlkhand--Hindoo, Greek, and Roman Faith.
On the 11th[1] we came on twelve miles to the town of Bamhaurî,
whence extends to the south-west a ridge of high and bare quartz
hills, towering above all others, curling and foaming at the top,
like a wave ready to burst, when suddenly arrested by the hand of
Omnipotence, and turned into white stone. The soil all the way is
wretchedly poor in quality, being formed of the detritus of syenitic
and quartz rocks, and very thin. Bamhaurî is a nice little town,[2]
beautifully situated on the bank of a fine lake, the waters of which
preserved during the late famine the population of this and six other
small towns, which are situated near its borders, and have their
lands irrigated from it. Besides water for their fields, this lake
yielded the people abundance of water-chestnuts[3] and fish. In the
driest season the water has been found sufficient to supply the wants
of all the people of those towns and villages, and those of all the
country around, as far as the people can avail themselves of it.
This large lake is formed by an artificial bank or wall at the south-
east end, which rests one arm upon the high range of quartz rocks,
which run along its south-west side for several miles, looking down
into the clear deep water, and forming a beautiful landscape.
From this pretty town, Ludhaura, where the great marriage had lately
taken place, was in sight, and only four miles distant.[4] It was, I
learnt, the residence of the present Râjâ of Orchhâ, before the death
of his brother called him to the throne. Many people were returning
from the ceremonies of the marriage of 'sâlagrâm' with 'Tulasî'; who
told me that the concourse had been immense--at least one hundred and
fifty thousand; and that the Râjâ had feasted them all for four days
during the progress of the ceremonies, but that they were obliged to
defray their expenses going and coming, except when they came by
special invitation to do honour to the occasion, as in the case of my
little friend the Sâgar high priest, Jânkî Sewak. They told me that
they called this festival the 'Dhanuk jag';[5] and that Janakrâj, the
father of Sîtâ, had in his possession the 'dhanuk', or immortal bow
of Parasrâm, the sixth incarnation of Vishnu, with which he
exterminated all the Kshatriyas, or original military class of India,
and which required no less than four thousand men to raise it on one
end.[6] The prince offered his daughter in marriage to any man who
should bend this bow. Hundreds of heroes and demigods aspired to the
hand of the fair Sîtâ, and essayed to bend the bow; but all in vain,
till young Râm, the seventh incarnation of Vishnu,[7] then a lad of
only ten years of age, came; and at the touch of his great toe the
bow flew into a thousand pieces, which are supposed to have been all
taken up into heaven. Sîtâ became the wife of Râm; and the popular
poem of the Râmâyana describes the abduction of the heroine by the
monster king of Ceylon, Râvana, and her recovery by means of the
monkey general Hanumân. Every word of this poem, the people assured
me, was written, if not by the hand of the Deity himself, at least by
his inspiration, which was the same thing, and it must, consequently,
be true.[8] Ninety-nine out of a hundred among the Hindoos implicitly
believe, not only every word of this poem, but every word of every
poem that has ever been written in Sanskrit. If you ask a man whether
he really believes any very egregious absurdity quoted from these
books, he replies with the greatest _naïveté_ in the world, 'Is it
not written in the book; and how should it be there written if not
true?' The Hindoo religion reposes upon an entire prostration of
mind, that continual and habitual surrender of the reasoning
faculties, which we are accustomed to make occasionally. While
engaged at the theatre, or in the perusal of works of fiction, we
allow the scenes, characters, and incidents to pass before 'our
mind's eye', and move our feelings, without asking, or stopping a
moment to ask, whether they are real or true. There is only this
difference that, with people of education among us, even in such
short intervals of illusion or abandon, any extravagance in acting,
or flagrant improbability in the fiction, destroys the charm, breaks
the spell by which we have been so mysteriously bound, stops the
smooth current of sympathetic emotion, and restores us to reason and
to the realities of ordinary life. With the Hindoos, on the contrary,
the greater the improbability, the more monstrous and preposterous
the fiction, the greater is the charm it has over their minds;[9] and
the greater their learning in the Sanskrit the more are they under
the influence of this charm. Believing all to be written by the
Deity, or by his inspiration, and the men and things of former days
to have been very different from the men and things of the present
day, and the heroes of these fables to have been demigods, or people
endowed with powers far superior to those of the ordinary men of
their own day, the analogies of nature are never for a moment
considered; nor do questions of probability, or possibility,
according to those analogies, ever obtrude to dispel the charm with
which they are so pleasingly bound. They go on through life reading
and talking of these monstrous fictions, which shock the taste and
understanding of other nations, without once questioning the truth of
one single incident, or hearing it questioned. There was a time, and
that not very distant, when it was the same in England, and in every
other European nation; and there are, I am afraid, some parts of
Europe where it is so still. But the Hindoo faith, so far as
religious questions are concerned, is not more capacious or absurd
than that of the Greeks and Romans in the days of Socrates and
Cicero--the only difference is, that among the Hindoos a greater
number of the questions which interest mankind are brought under the
head of religion.
There is nothing in the Hindoos more absurd than the _piety_ of
Tiberius in offering up sacrifices in the temple, and before the
image of Augustus; while he was solicited by all the great cities of
the empire to suffer temples to be built and sacrifices to be made to
himself while still living; or than Alexander's attempt to make a
goddess of his mother while yet alive, that he might feel the more
secure of being made a god himself after his death.[10] In all
religions there are points at which the professors declare that
reason must stop, and cease to be a guide to faith. The pious man
thinks that all which he cannot comprehend or reconcile to reason in
his own religion must be above it. The superstitions of the people of
India will diminish before the spread of science, art, and
literature; and good works of history and fiction would, I think,
make far greater havoc among these superstitions even than good works
in any of the sciences, save the physical, such as astronomy,
chemistry, &c.[11]
In the evening we went out with the intention of making an excursion
of the lake, in boats that had been prepared for our reception by
tying three or four fishing canoes together;[12] but, on reaching the
ridge of quartz hills which runs along the south-east side, we
preferred moving along its summit to entering the boats. The prospect
on either side of this ridge was truly beautiful. A noble sheet of
clear water, about four miles long by two broad, on our right; and on
our left a no less noble sheet of rich wheat cultivation, irrigated
from the lake by drains passing between small breaks in the ridges of
the hills. The Persian wheel is used to raise the water.[13] This
sheet of rich cultivation is beautifully studded with mango groves
and fields of sugar-cane. The lake is almost double the size of that
of Sâgar, and the idea of its great utility for purposes of
irrigation made it appear to me far more beautiful; but my little
friend the Sarîmant, who accompanied us in our walk, said that 'it
could not be so handsome, since it had not a fine city and castle on
two sides, and a fine Government house on the third'.
'But', said I, 'no man's field is watered from that lake.'
'No', replied he, 'but for every man that drinks of the waters of
this, fifty drink of the waters of that; from that lake thirty
thousand people get _ârâm_ (comfort) every day.'
This lake is called Kêwlas after Kêwal Varmma, the Chandêl prince by
whom it was formed.[14] His palace, now in ruins, stood on the top of
the ridge of rocks in a very beautiful situation. From the summit,
about eight miles to the west, we could see a still larger lake,
called the Nandanvârâ Lake, extending under a similar range of quartz
hills running parallel with that on which we stood.[15] That lake, we
were told, answered upon a much larger scale the same admirable
purpose of supplying water for the fields, and securing the people
from the dreadful effects of droughts. The extensive level plains
through which the rivers of Central India[16] generally cut their way
have, for the most part, been the beds of immense natural lakes;[17]
and there rivers sink so deep into their beds, and leave such ghastly
chasms and ravines on either side, that their waters are hardly ever
available in due season for irrigation. It is this characteristic of
the rivers of Central India that makes such lakes so valuable to the
people, particularly in seasons of drought.[l8] The river Nerbudda
has been known to rise seventy feet in the course of a couple of days
in the rains; and, during the season when its waters are wanted for
irrigation, they can nowhere be found within that [distance] of the
surface; while a level piece of ground fit for irrigation is rarely
to be met with within a mile of the stream.[19]
The people appeared to improve as we advanced farther into
Bundêlkhand in appearance, manners, and intelligence. There is a bold
bearing about the Bundêlas, which at first one is apt to take for
rudeness or impudence, but which in time he finds not to be so.
The employés of the Râjâ were everywhere attentive, frank, and
polite; and the peasantry seemed no longer inferior to those of our
Sâgar and Nerbudda territories. The females of almost all the
villages through which we passed came out with their _Kalas_ in
procession to meet us--one of the most affecting marks of respect
from the peasantry for their superiors that I know. One woman carries
on her head a brass jug, brightly polished, full of water; while all
the other families of the village crowd around her, and sing in
chorus some rural song, that lasts from the time the respected
visitor comes in sight till he disappears. He usually puts into the
Kalas a rupee to purchase 'gur' (coarse sugar), of which all the
females partake, as a sacred offering to the sex. No member of the
other sex presumes to partake of it, and during the chorus all the
men stand aloof in respectful silence. This custom prevails all over
India, or over all parts of it that I have seen; and yet I have
witnessed a Governor-General of India, with all his suite, passing by
this interesting group, without knowing or asking what it was. I
lingered behind, and quietly put my silver into the jug, as if from
the Governor-General.[20]
The man who administers the government over these seven villages in
all its branches, civil, criminal, and fiscal, receives a salary of
only two hundred rupees a year. He collects the revenues on the part
of Government; and, with the assistance of the heads and the elders
of the villages, adjusts all petty matters of dispute among the
people, both civil and criminal. Disputes of a more serious character
are sent to be adjusted at the capital by the Râjâ and his ministers.
The person who reigns over the seven villages of the lake is about
thirty years of age, of the Râjpût caste, and, I think, one of the
finest young men I have ever seen. His ancestors have served the
Orchhâ State in the same station for seven generations; and he tells
me that he hopes his posterity will serve them [_sic_] for as many
more, provided they do not forfeit their claims to do so by their
infidelity or incapacity. This young man seemed to have the respect
and affection of every member of the little communities of the
villages through which we passed, and it was evident that he deserved
their attachment. I have rarely seen any similar signs of attachment
to one of our own native officers. This arises chiefly from the
circumstance of their being less frequently placed in authority among
those upon whose good feelings and opinions their welfare and
comfort, as those of their children, are likely permanently to
depend. In India, under native rule, office became hereditary,
because officers expended the whole of their incomes in religious
ceremonies, or works of ornament and utility, and left their families
in hopeless dependence upon the chief in whose service they had
laboured all their lives, while they had been educating their sons
exclusively with the view of serving that chief in the same capacity
that their fathers had served him before them. It is in this case,
and this alone, that the law of primogeniture is in force in
India.[21] Among Muhammadans, as well as Hindoos, all property, real
and personal, is divided equally among the children;[22] but the
duties of an office will not admit of the same subdivision; and this,
therefore, when hereditary, as it often is, descends to the eldest
son with the obligation of providing for the rest of the family. The
family consists of all the members who remain united to the parent
stock, including the widows and orphans of the sons or brothers who
were so up to the time of their death.[23]
The old 'chobdâr', or silver-stick bearer, who came with us from the
Râjâ, gets fifteen rupees a month, and his ancestors have served the
Râjâ for several generations. The Dîwân, who has charge of the
treasury, receives only one thousand rupees a year, and the Bakshî,
or paymaster of the army, who seems at present to rule the state as
the prime favourite, the same. These latter are at present the only
two great officers of state; and, though they are, no doubt,
realizing handsome incomes by indirect means, they dare not make any
display, lest signs of wealth might induce the Râjâ or his successors
to treat them as their predecessors in office were treated for some
time past.[24] The Jâgîrdârs, or feudal chiefs, as I have before
stated, are almost all of the same family or class as the Râjâ, and
they spend all the revenues of their estates in the maintenance of
military retainers, upon whose courage and fidelity they can
generally rely. These Jâgîrdârs are bound to attend the prince on all
great occasions, and at certain intervals; and are made to contribute
something to his exchequer in tribute. Almost all live beyond their
legitimate means, and make up the deficiency by maintaining upon
their estates gangs of thieves, robbers, and murderers, who extend
their depredations into the country around, and share the prey with
these chiefs, and their officers and under-tenants. They keep them as
_poachers_ keep their _dogs_; and the paramount power, whose subjects
they plunder, might as well ask them for the best horse in the stable
as for the best thief that lives under their protection.[25]
I should mention an incident that occurred during the Râjâ's visit to
me at Tehrî. Lieutenant Thomas was sitting next to the little
Sarîmant, and during the interview he asked him to allow him to look
at his beautiful little gold-hilted sword. The Sarîmant held it fast,
and told him that he should do himself the honour of waiting upon him
in his tent in the course of the day, when he would show him the
sword and tell him its history. After the Râjâ, left me, Thomas
mentioned this, and said he felt very much hurt at the incivility of
my little friend; but I told him that he was in everything he did and
said so perfectly the gentleman, that I felt quite sure he would
explain all to his satisfaction when he called upon him. During his
visit to Thomas he apologized for not having given over his sword to
him, and said, 'You European gentlemen have such perfect confidence
in each other, that you can, at all times, and in all situations,
venture to gratify your curiosity in these matters, and draw your
swords in a crowd just as well as when alone; but, had you drawn mine
from the scabbard in such a situation, with the tent full of the
Râjâ's personal attendants, and surrounded by a devoted and not very
orderly soldiery, it might have been attended by very serious
consequences. Any man outside might have seen the blade gloaming,
and, not observing distinctly why it had been drawn, might have
suspected treachery, and called out "_To the rescue_", when we should
all have been cut down--the lady, child, and all.' Thomas was not
only satisfied with the Sarîmant's apology, but was so much delighted
with him, that he has ever since been longing to get his portrait;
for he says it was really his intention to draw the sword had the
Sarîmant given it to him. As I have said, his face is extremely
beautiful, quite a model for a painter or a statuary, and his figure,
though small, is handsome. He dresses with great elegance, mostly in
azure-coloured satin, surmounted by a rose-coloured turban and a
waistband of the same colour. All his motions are graceful, and his
manners have an exquisite polish. A greater master of all the
_convenances_ I have never seen, though he is of slender capacity,
and, as I have said, in stature less than five feet high.
A poor, half-naked man, reduced to beggary by the late famine, ran
along by my horse to show me the road, and, to the great amusement of
my attendants, exclaimed that he felt exactly as if he were always
falling down a well, meaning as if he were immersed in cold water. He
said that the cold season was suited only to gentlemen who could
afford to be well clothed; but, to a poor man like himself, and the
great mass of people, in Bundêlkhand at least, the hot season was
much better. He told me that 'the late Râjâ, though a harsh, was
thought to be a just man;[26] and that his good sense, and, above
all, his _good fortune_ (ikbâl) had preserved the principality
entire; but that God only, and the forbearance of the Honourable
Company, could now serve it under such an imbecile as the present
chief'. He seemed quite melancholy at the thought of living to see
this principality, the oldest in Bundêlkhand, lose its independence.
Even this poor, unclothed, and starving wretch had a feeling of
patriotism, a pride of country, though that country had been so
wretchedly governed, and was now desolated by a famine.
Just such a feeling had the impressed seamen who fought our battles
in the great struggle. No nation has ever had a more disgraceful
institution than that of the press-gang of England. This institution,
if so it can be called, must be an eternal stain upon her glory--
posterity will never be able to read the history of her naval
victories without a blush--without reproaching her lawgivers who
could allow them to be purchased with the blood of such men as those
who fought for us the battles of the Nile and Trafalgar. '_England
expected every man to do his duty_' on that day, but had England done
her duty to every man who was on that day to fight for her? Was not
every English gentleman of the Lords and Commons a David sending his
Uriah to battle?[27]
The intellectual stock which we require in good seamen for our navy,
and which is acquired in scenes of peril 'upon the high and giddy
mast', is as much their property as that which other men acquire in
schools and colleges; and we had no more right to seize and employ
these seamen in our battles upon the wages of common, uninstructed
labour, than we should have had to seize and employ as many
clergymen, barristers, and physicians. When I have stood on the
quarter-deck of a ship in a storm, and seen the seamen covering the
yards in taking in sail, with the thunder rolling, and the lightning
flashing fearfully around them--the sea covered with foam, and each
succeeding billow, as it rushed by, seeming ready to sweep them all
from their frail footing into the fathomless abyss below--I have
asked myself, 'Are men like these to be seized like common felons,
torn from their wives and children as soon as they reach their native
land, subject every day to the lash, and put in front of those
battles on which the wealth, the honour, and the independence of the
nation depend, merely because British legislators know that when
there, a regard for their own personal character among their
companions in danger will make them fight like Englishmen?'
This feeling of nationality which exists in the little states of
Bundêlkhand, arises from the circumstance that the mass of the
landholders are of the same class as the chief Bundêlas; and that the
public establishments of the state are recruited almost exclusively
from that mass. The states of Jhânsî[28] and Jâlaun[29] are the only
exceptions. There the rulers are Brahmans and not Râjpûts, and they
recruit their public establishments from all classes and all
countries. The landed aristocracy, however, there, as elsewhere, are
Râjpûts-either Pawârs, Chandêls, or Bundêlas.
The Râjpût landholders of Bundêlkhand are linked to the soil in all
their grades, from the prince to the peasant, as the Highlanders of
Scotland were not long ago; and the holder of a hundred acres is as
proud as the holder of a million.[30] He boasts the same descent, and
the same exclusive possession of arms and agriculture, to which
unhappily the industry of their little territories is almost
exclusively confined, for no other branch can grow up among so
turbulent a set, whose quarrels with their chiefs, or among each
other, are constantly involving them in civil wars, which render life
and property exceedingly insecure. Besides, as I have stated, their
propensity to keep bands of thieves, robbers, and murderers in their
baronial castles, as poachers keep their dogs, has scared away the
wealthy and respectable capitalist and peaceful and industrious
manufacturer.
All the landholders are uneducated, and unfit to serve in any of our
civil establishments, or in those of any very civilized Governments;
and they are just as unfitted to serve in our military
establishments, where strict discipline is required. The lands they
occupy are cultivated because they depend almost entirely upon the
rents they get from them for subsistence; and because every petty
chief and his family hold their lands rent-free, or at a trifling
quit-rent, on the tenure of military service, and their residue forms
all the market for land produce which the cultivators require. They
dread the transfer of the rule to our Government, because they now
form almost exclusively all the establishments of their domestic
chief, civil as well as military; and know that, were our rule to be
substituted, they would be almost entirely excluded from these, at
least for a generation or two. In our regiments, horse or foot, there
is hardly a man from Bundêlkhand, for the reasons above stated; nor
are there any in the Gwâlior regiments and contingents which are
stationed in the neighbourhood; though the land among them is become
minutely subdivided, and they are obliged to seek service or starve.
They are all too proud for manual labour, even at the plough. No
Bundêlkhand Râjpût will, I believe, condescend to put his hand to
one.
Among the Marâthâ states, Sikhs, and Muhammadans, there is no bond of
union of this kind. The establishments, military as well as civil,
are everywhere among them composed for the most part of foreigners;
and the landed interests under such Governments would dread nothing
from the prospect of a transfer to our rule; on the contrary, they
and the mass of the people would almost everywhere hail it as a
blessing.
There are two reasons why we should leave these small native states
under their own chiefs, even when the claim to the succession is
feeble or defective; first, because it tends to relieve the minds of
other native chiefs from the apprehension, already too prevalent
among them, that we desire by degrees to absorb them all, because we
think our government would do better for the people; and secondly,
because, by leaving them as a contrast, we afford to the people of
India the opportunity of observing the superior advantages of our
rule.
'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,' in governments as well
as in landscapes; and if the people of India, instead of the living
proofs of what perilous things native governments, whether Hindoo or
Muhammadan, are in reality, were acquainted with nothing but such
pictures of them as are to be found in their histories and in the
imaginations of their priests and learned men (who lose much of their
influence and importance under our rule), they would certainly, with
proneness like theirs to delight in the marvellous, be far from
satisfied, as they now are, that they never had a government so good
as ours, and that they never could hope for another so good, were
ours removed.[31]
For the advantages which we derive from leaving them independent, we
are, no doubt, obliged to pay a heavy penalty in the plunder of our
wealthy native subjects by the gangs of robbers of all descriptions
whom they foster; but this evil may be greatly diminished by a
judicious interposition of our authority to put down such bands.[32]
In Bundêlkhand, at present, the government and the lands of the
native chiefs are in the hands of three of the Hindoo military
classes, Bundêlas, Dhandêlas, and Pawârs. The principal chiefs are of
the first, and their feudatories are chiefly of the other two. A
Bundêla cannot marry the daughter of a Bundêla; he must take his wife
from one or other of the other two tribes; nor can a member of either
of the other two take his wife from his own tribe; he must take her
from the Bundêlas, or the other tribe. The wives of the greatest
chiefs are commonly from the poorest families of their vassals; nor
does the proud family from which she has been taken feel itself
exalted by the alliance; neither does the poorest vassal among the
Pawârs and Dhandêls feel that the daughter of his prince has
condescended in becoming his wife. All they expect is a service for a
few more yeomen of the family among the retainers of the sovereign.
The people are in this manner, from the prince to the peasant,
indissolubly linked to each other, and to the soil they occupy; for,
where industry is confined almost exclusively to agriculture, the
proprietors of the soil and the officers of Government, who are
maintained out of its rents, constitute nearly the whole of the
middle and higher classes. About one-half of the lands of every state
are held on service tenure by vassals of the same family or clan as
the chief; and there is hardly one of them who is not connected with
that chief by marriage. The revenue derived from the other half is
spent in the maintenance of establishments formed almost exclusively
of the members of these families.
They are none of them educated for civil offices under any other
rule, nor could they, for a generation or two, be induced to submit
to wear military uniform, or learn the drill of regular soldiers.
They are mere militia, brave as men can be, but unsusceptible of
discipline. They have, therefore, a natural horror at the thought of
their states coming under any other than a domestic rule, for they
could have no chance of employment in the civil or military
establishments of a foreign power; and their lands would, they fear,
be resumed, since the service for which they had been given would be
no longer available to the rulers. It is said that, in the long
interval from the commencement of the reign of Alexander the third to
the end of that of David the second,[33] not a single baron could be
found in Scotland able to sign his own name. The Bundêlkhand barons
have never, I believe, been quite so bad as this, though they have
never yet learned enough to fit them for civil offices under us. Many
of them can write and read their own language, which is that common
to the other countries around them.[34]
Bundêlkhand was formerly possessed by another tribe of Râjpûts, the
proud Chandêls, who have now disappeared altogether from this
province. If one of that tribe can still be found, it is in the
humblest rank of the peasant or the soldier; but its former strength
is indicated by the magnificent artificial lakes and ruined castles
which are traced to them; and by the reverence which is still felt by
the present dominant classes of [_sic_] their old capital of Mahoba.
Within a certain distance around that ruined city no one now dares to
beat the 'nakkâra', or great drum used in festivals or processions,
lest the spirits of the old Chandêl chiefs who there repose should be
roused to vengeance;[35] and a kingdom could not tempt one of the
Bundêlas, Pawârs, or Chandêls to accept the government of the parish
['mauza'] in which it is situated. They will take subordinate offices
there under others with fear and trembling, but nothing could induce
one of them to meet the governor. When the deadly struggle between
these two tribes took place cannot now be discovered.[36]
In the time of Akbar, the Chandêls were powerful in Mahoba, as the
celebrated Durgâvatî, the queen of Garhâ Mandlâ, whose reign extended
over the Sâgar and Nerbudda territories and the greater part of
Berâr, was a daughter of the reigning Chandêl prince of Mahoba. He
condescended to give his daughter only on condition that the Gond
prince who demanded her should, to save his character, come with an
army of fifty thousand men to take her. He did so, and 'nothing
loth', Durgâvatî departed to reign over a country where her name is
now more revered than that of any other sovereign it has ever had.
She was killed above two hundred and fifty years ago, about twelve
miles from Jubbulpore, while gallantly leading on her troops in their
third and last attempt to stem the torrent of Muhammadan invasion.
Her tomb is still to be seen where she fell, in a narrow defile
between two hills; and a pair of large rounded stones which stand
near are, according to popular belief, her royal drums turned into
stone, which, in the dead of night, are still heard resounding
through the woods, and calling the spirits of her warriors from their
thousand graves around her. The travellers who pass this solitary
spot respectfully place upon the tomb the prettiest specimen they can
find of the crystals which abound in the neighbourhood; and, with so
much of kindly feeling had the history of Durgâvatî inspired me, that
I could not resist the temptation of adding one to the number when I
visited her tomb some sixteen years ago.[37]
I should mention that the Râjâ of Samthar in Bundêlkhand.[38] is by
caste a Gûjar;[39] and he has not yet any landed aristocracy like
that of the Bundêlas about him. One of his ancestors, not long ago,
seized upon a fine open plain, and built a fort upon it, and the
family has ever since, by means of this fort, kept possession of the
country around, and drawn part of their revenues from depredations
upon their neighbours and travellers. The Jhânsî and Jâlaun chiefs
are Brahmans of the same family as the Peshwâ.
In the states governed by chiefs of the military classes, nearly the
whole produce of the land goes to maintain soldiers, or military
retainers, who are always ready to fight or rob for their chief. In
those governed by the Brahmanical class, nearly the whole produce
goes to maintain priests; and the other chiefs would soon devour
them, as the black ants devour the white, were not the paramount
power to interpose and save them. While the Peshwâ lived, he
interposed; but all his dominions were _running into priesthood_,
like those in Sâgar and Bundêlkhand, and must soon have been
swallowed up by the military chiefs around him, had we not taken his
place. Jâlaun and Jhânsî are preserved only by us, for, with all
their religious, it is impossible for them to maintain efficient
military establishments; and the Bundêla chiefs have always a strong
desire to eat them up, since these states were all sliced out of
their principalities when the Peshwâ was all-powerful in Hindustan.
The Chhatarpur Râjâ is a Pawâr. His father had been in the service of
the Bundêla Râjâ; but, when we entered upon our duties as the
paramount power in Bundêlkhand, the son had succeeded to the little
principality seized upon by his father; and, on the principle of
respecting actual possession, he was recognized by us as the
sovereign.[40] The Bundela Râjâs, east of the Dasân river, are
descended from Râjâ Chhatarsâl, and are looked down upon by the
Bundêla Râjâs of Orchhâ, Chandêrî, and Datiyâ, west of the Dasân, as
Chhatarsâl was in the service of one of their ancestors, from whom he
wrested the estates which his descendants now enjoy. Chhatarsâl, in
his will, gave one-third of the dominion he had thus acquired to the
strongest power then in India, the Peshwâ, in order to secure the
other two-thirds to his two sons Hardî Sâ and Jagatrâj, in the same
manner as princes of the Roman empire used to bequeath a portion of
theirs to the emperor.[41] Of the Peshwâ's share we have now got all,
except Jâlaun. Jhânsî was subsequently acquired by the Peshwâ, or
rather by his subordinates, with his sanction and assistance.[42]
Notes:
1. December, 1835.
2. In the Orchhâ State. This seems to be the same town which the
author had already visited on his way to Tehrî on the 7th December.
_Ante_, Chapter 19 note [15].
3. _Ante_, Chapter 12 following note [9].
4. Sodora in the author's text; see _ante_, Chapter 19, note 11.
5. 'Bow-sacrifice.'
6. The tradition is that a prince of this military class was sporting
in a river with his thousand wives, when Renukâ, the wife of
Jamadagni, went to bring water. He offended her, and her husband
cursed the prince, but was put to death by him. His son Parasrâm was
no less a person than the sixth incarnation of Vishnu, who had
assumed the human shape merely to destroy these tyrants. He vowed,
now that his mother had been insulted, and his father killed, not to
leave one on the face of the earth. He destroyed them all twenty-one
times, the women with child producing a new race each time. [W. H.
S.] The legend is not narrated quite correctly.
7. Râma Chandra, son of Dasaratha.
8. When Râm set out with his army for Ceylon, he is supposed to have
worshipped the little tree called 'cheonkul', which stood near his
capital of Ajodhya. It is a wretched little thing, between a shrub
and a tree; but I have seen a procession of more than seventy
thousand persons attend their prince to the worship of it on the
festival of the Dasahara, which is held in celebration of this
expedition to Ceylon. [W. H. S.] 'As Arjuna and his brothers
worshipped the shumee-tree, the _Acacia suma_, and hung up their arms
upon it, so the Hindus go forth to worship that tree on the festival
of the Dasahara. They address the tree under the name of Aparajita,
the invincible goddess, sprinkle it with five ambrosial liquids, the
'panchamrit', a mixture of milk, curds, sugar, clarified butter, and
honey, wash it with water, and hang garments upon it. They light
lamps and burn incense before the symbol of Aparajita, make
'chandlos' upon the tree, sprinkle it with rose-coloured water, and
set offerings of food before it' (Balfour, _Cyclopaedia_, 3rd ed.,
s.v. 'Dasahara'). The 'cheonkul' is the _chhonkar_ or _chhaunkar
(Prosopis spicigera_, Linn.), described by Growse as follows:--
'Very common throughout the district; occasionally grows to quite a
large tree, as in the Dohani Kund at Chaksauli. It is used for
religious worship at the festival of the Dasahara, and considered
sacred to Siva. The pods (called _sangri_) are much used for fodder.
Probably _chhonkar_ and _sangri_, which latter is in some parts of
India the name of the tree as well as of the pod, are both
dialectical corruptions of the Sanskrit _sankara_, a name of Siva;
for the palatal and sibilant are frequently interchangeable' ('List
of Indigenous Trees' in _Mathurâ, A. District Memoir_, 3rd ed.,
Allahabad, 1883, p. 422). Sundry leguminous trees are used in
Dasahara ceremonies in the different parts of India, under varying
local names.
9. _Credo quia impossibile_.
10. This comparison is not a happy one. The elements in some of the
Hindoo myths specially repulsive to European taste are their
monstrosity, their inartistic and hideous exaggeration, their
accumulation of sanguinary horrors, and their childish triviality.
Few of the classical myths exhibit these characteristics. The vanity
or policy of Tiberius and Alexander in believing themselves to be, or
wishing to be believed, divine, has nothing in common with the
grotesque imagination of Puranic Hinduism.
11. The roots of Hinduism are so deeply fixed in a thick soil of
custom and inherited sentiment, the growth of thousands of years,
that English education has less effect than might be expected in
loosening the bonds of beliefs which seem to every one but a Hindoo
the merest superstition. Hindoos who can read English with fluency,
and write it with accuracy, are often extremely devout, and Hindoo
devoutness must ever appear to an outsider, even to a European as
sympathetic as the author, to be no better than superstition. A
Hindoo able to read English with ease has at his command all the rich
stores of the knowledge of the West, but very often does not care to
taste them. Enmeshed in a web of ritual and belief inseparable from
himself, he remains as much as ever a Hindoo, and uses his skill in
English merely as an article of professional equipment. 'Good works
of history and fiction' do not interest him, and he usually fails to
digest and assimilate the physical or biological science administered
to him at school or college. In fact, he does not believe it. The
monstrous legends of the Purânas continue to be for his mind the
realities; while the truths of science are to him phantoms, shadowy
and unsubstantial, the outlandish notions of alien and casteless
unbelievers. These observations, of course, are not universally true,
and a few Hindoos, growing in number, are able to heartily accept and
thoroughly assimilate the facts of history and the results of
inductive science. But such Hindoos are few, and it may well be
doubted if it is possible for a man really to believe the amount of
history and science known to an ordinary English schoolboy, and still
be a devout Hindoo. The old bottles cannot contain the new wine. The
Hindoo scriptures do not treat of history and science in a merely
incidental way; they teach, after their fashion, both history and
science formally and systematically; grammar, logic, medicine,
astronomy, the history of gods and men, are all taught in books which
form part of the sacred canon. Inductive science and matter-of-fact
history are absolutely destructive of, and irreconcilable with,
veneration for the Hindoo scriptures as authoritative and infallible
guides. It is impossible, within the narrow limits of a note, to
discuss the problems suggested by the author's remarks. Enough,
perhaps, has been said to show that the many-rooted banyan tree of
Hinduism is in little danger of overthrow from the attacks either of
history or of science, not to speak of 'good works of fiction'.
12. A 'dug-out' canoe is rather a shaky craft. When two or three are
lashed together, and a native cot (_chârpâi_) is stretched across,
the passenger can make himself very comfortable. The boats are poled
by men standing in the stern.
13. _Ante_, Chapter 24, note 1.
14. This prince is not included in the authentic dynastic lists given
in the Chandêl inscriptions. He was probably a younger son, who never
reigned. The principal authorities for the history of the Chandêl
dynasty are _A.S.R._, vol. ii, pp. 439-51; vol. xxi, pp. 77-90, and
V. A. Smith, 'Contributions to the History of Bundêlkhand', in
_J.A.S.B._ vol. 1 (1881), Part I, p. 1; and 'The History and Coinage
of the Chandêl (Chandella) Dynasty' in _Ind. Ant._, 1908, pp. 114-48.
A brief summary will be found in _Early History of India_, 3rd ed.
(1914), pp. 390-4. Most of the great works of the dynasty date from
the period A.D. 950-1200.
15. The long ridges of quartz traversing the gneiss are marked
features in the scenery of Bundêlkhand.
16. The author always uses the phrase Central India as a vague
geographical expression. The phrase is now generally used to mean an
administrative division, namely, the group of Native States under the
Central India Agency at Indore, which deals with about 148 chiefs and
rulers of various rank. Central India in this official sense must not
be confounded with the Central Provinces, of which the capital is
Nâgpur.
17. On this lake theory, see _ante_, Chapter 14, note 13.
18. During a residence of six years in Bundêlkhand the editor came to
the conclusion that most of the ancient artificial lakes were not
constructed for purposes of irrigation. The embankments seem
generally to have been built as adjuncts to palaces or temples. Many
of the lakes command no considerable area of irrigable ground, and
there are no traces of ancient irrigation channels. In modern times
small canals have been drawn from some of the lakes.
19. The desolation of the ravines of the rivers of Central India and
Bundêlkhand offers a very striking spectacle, presenting to the
geologist a signal example of the effects of sub-aerial denudation.
20. This pretty custom is also described, in Tod's _Râjasthân_; and
is still common in Alwar, and perhaps in other parts of Râjputâna
(_N.I. Notes and Queries_, vol. ii (Dec. 1892), p. 152), It does not
seem to be now known in the Gangetic valley.
21. Principalities, and the estates of the talukdârs of Oudh also
descend to the eldest son. The author states (_ante_, Chapter 10, see
text before note [10].) that the same rule applied in his time to the
small agricultural holdings in the Sâgar and Nerbudda territories.
22. This statement is inexact; Hindoo daughters, as a rule, inherit
nothing from their fathers; a Muhammadan daughter takes half the
share of a son.
23. But it is only the smaller local ministerial officers who are
secure in their tenure of office under native Governments; those on
whose efficiency the well-being of village communities depends. The
greatest evil of Governments of the kind is the feeling of insecurity
which pervades all the higher officers of Government, and the
instability of all engagements made by the Government with them, and
by them with the people. [W. H. S.]
24. _Ante_, Chapter 23, text at note [8].
25. In the Gwâlior territory, the Marâthâ 'âmils' or governors of
districts, do the same, and keep gangs of robbers on purpose to
plunder their neighbours; and, if you ask them for their thieves,
they will actually tell you that to part with them would be ruin, as
they are their only defence against the thieves of their neighbours.
[W. H. S.] These notions and habits are by no means extinct. In
October, 1892, a force of about two hundred men, cavalry and
infantry, was sent into Bundêlkhand to suppress robber gangs. Such
gangs are constantly breaking out in that region, in most native
states, and in many British districts. See _ante_, chapter 23, text
following note [13].
26. My poor guide had as little sympathy with the prime ministers,
whom the Tehrî Râjâ put to death, as the peasantry of England had
with the great men and women whom Harry the Eighth sacrificed. [W. H.
S.] _Ante_, Chapter 23, beginning to note [9].
27. The cruel practice of impressment for the royal navy is
authorized by a series of statutes extending from the reign of Philip
and Mary to that of George III. Seamen of the merchant navy, and,
with few exceptions, all seafaring men between the ages of eighteen
and thirty-five, are liable, under the provisions of these harsh
statutes, to be forcibly seized by the press-gang, and compelled to
serve on board a man-of-war. The acts legalizing impressment were
freely made use of during the Napoleonic wars, but since then have
been little acted on, and no Government at the present day could
venture to use them, though they have never been repealed. The fleet
sent against the Russians in 1855 was the first English fleet ever
manned without recourse to forcible impressment: see the article
'Impressment' by David Hannay, in _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, 11th
ed., 1910. The work by J. B. Hutchinson entitled _The Press-gang
Afloat and Ashore_ (London: Nash, 1913) gives copious details of the
infamous proceedings.
28. The Brahman chief of Jhânsî was originally a governor under the
Peshwâ. The treaty of November 18, 1817, recognized the then chief
Râmchand Râo, his heirs and successors, as hereditary rulers of
Jhânsî. Râmchand Râo was granted the title of Râjâ by the British
Government in 1832, and died without issue on August 20, 1835
(_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, 1st ed., vol. i, p. 296). See _post_, Chapter
29.
29. The chiefs of Jâlaun also were officers under the Marâtha
Government of the Peshwâ up to 1817. In consequence of gross
misgovernment, an English superintendent was appointed in 1838, and
the state lapsed to the British Government, owing to failure of
heirs, in 1840 (ibid. p. 229).
30. _Ante_ Chapter 23, note 13.
31. Lapse of years has increased the distance and the enchantment, so
that modern agitators and sentimentalists discover marvellous
excellences in the native Governments of the now remote past. The
methods of government in the existing native states have been so
profoundly modified by the influence of the Imperial Government that
these states are no longer as instructive in the way of contrast as
they were in the author's day.
32. The author consistently held the views above enunciated, and
defended the policy of maintaining the native states. He was of
opinion that the system of annexation favoured by Lord Dalhousie and
his Council 'had a downward tendency, and tended to crush all the
higher and middle classes connected with the land'. He considered
that the Government of India should have undertaken the management of
Oudh, but that it had no right to annex the province, and appropriate
its revenues (_Journey through the Kingdom of Oude_, p. 22, &c.).
Since 1858 the policy of annexation has been repudiated. See Sir W.
Lee-Warner, _The Protected Princes of India_ (Macmillan, 1894), and
_The Native States of India_ (1910).
33. A.D. 1249 to A.D. 1371.
34. The Hindi spoken in different parts of Bundêlkhand comprises
several distinct dialects: see Kellogg, _A Grammar of the Hindî
Language_, 2nd ed., 1893; and Grierson, _Linguistic Survey_, vol. vi
(1904), pp. 18-23, where the dialects of Eastern Bundêlkhand are
discussed. Bundêlî, the speech of Bundêlkhand proper, will be treated
as a dialect of Western Hindi in a volume of the _Survey_ not yet
published. Sir G. Grierson has favoured me with perusal of the
proofs, and has used materials collected by me in the Hamîrpur
District nearly forty years ago. Bundêlî has a considerable
literature.
35. The editor was told of a case in which two chiefs suffered for
beating their drums in Mahoba.
36. See _ante_, Chapter 23 note 11, and Chapter 26 note 14, and the
authorities there cited. The Chandêl history occupies an important
place in the mediaeval annals of India. Several important
inscriptions of the dynasty have been correctly edited in the
_Epigraphia Indica_. Mahoba is not now a 'ruined city'; it is a
moderately prosperous country town, with a tolerable bazaar, and
about eleven thousand inhabitants. It is the head-quarters of a
'tahsîldâr', or sub-collector, and a station on the Midland Railway.
The ruined temples and places in and near the town are of much
interest. For many miles round the country is full of remarkable
remains, some of which are in fairly good preservation. The published
descriptions of these works are far from being exhaustive. The author
was mistaken in supposing that the power of the Chandêls was broken
by the Bundêlas. The last Chandêl king, who ruled over an extensive
dominion, was Paramardi Deva, or Parmâl. This prince was defeated in
a pitched battle, or rather a series of battles, near the Betwa
river, by Prithîrâj Chauhân, king of Kanauj, in the year 1182. A few
years later, the victor was himself vanquished and slain by the
advancing Muhammadans. Mahoba and the surrounding territories then
passed through many vicissitudes, imperfectly recorded in the pages
of history, and were ruled from time to time by Musalmâns, Bhars,
Khangârs, and others. The Bundêlas, an offshoot of the Gaharwâr clan,
did not come into notice before the middle of the fourteenth century,
and first became a power in India under the leadership of Champat
Râi, the contemporary of Jahângîr and Shah Jâhan, in the first half
of the seventeenth century. The line of Chandêl kings was continued
in the persons of obscure local chiefs, whose very names are, for the
most part, forgotten. The story of Durgâvatî, briefly told in the
text, casts a momentary flash of light on their obscurity. The
principal nobleman of the Chandêl race now occupying a dignified
position is the Râjâ of Gidhaur in the Mungir (Monghyr) district of
Bengal, whose ancestor emigrated from Mahoba.
The war between the Chandêls and Chauhâns is the subject of a long
section or canto of the Hindi epic, the _Chand-Râisâ_, written by
Chand Bardâi, the court poet of Prithîrâj, of which the original MS.
in 5,000 verses still exists. It was subsequently expanded to 125,000
verses (_E.H.I._, 3rd ed., 1914, p. 387 note). The war is also the
theme of the songs of many popular rhapsodists. The story is, of
course, encrusted with a thick deposit of miraculous legend, and none
of the details can be relied on. But the fact and the date of the war
are fully proved by incontestable evidence.
37. The marriage of Durgâvatî is no proof that her father, the
Chandêl Râjâ, was powerful in Mahoba in the time of Akbar. It is
rather an indication that he was poor and weak. If he had been rich
and strong, he would probably have refused his daughter to a Gond,
even though complaisant bards might invent a Râjpût genealogy for the
bridegroom. The story about the army of fifty thousand men cannot be
readily accepted as sober fact. It looks like a courtly invention to
explain a mésalliance. The inducement really offered to the proud but
poor Chandêl was, in all likelihood, a large sum of money, according
to the usual practice in such cases. Several indications exist of
close relations between the Gonds and Chandêls in earlier times.
Early in Akbar's reign, in the year 1564, Âsaf Khân, the imperial
viceroy of Karrâ Mânikpur, obtained permission to invade the Gond
territory. The young Râjâ of Garhâ Mandlâ, Bîr Narâyan, was then a
minor, and the defence of the kingdom devolved on Durgâvatî, the
dowager queen. She first took up her position at the great fortress
of Singaurgarh, north-west of Jabalpur, and, being there defeated,
retired through Garhâ, to the south-east, towards Mandlâ. After an
obstinately contested fight the invaders were again successful, and
broke the queen's stout resistance. 'Mounted on an elephant, she
refused to retire, though she was severely wounded, until her troops
had time to recover the shock of the first discharge of artillery,
and, notwithstanding that she had received an arrow-wound in her eye,
bravely defended the pass in person. But, by an extraordinary
coincidence, the river in the rear of her position, which had been
nearly dry a few hours before the action commenced, began suddenly to
rise, and soon became unfordable. Finding her plan of retreat thus
frustrated, and seeing her troops give way, she snatched a dagger
from her elephant-driver, and plunged it into her bosom. . . . Of all
the sovereigns of this dynasty she lives most in the recollection of
the people; she carried out many highly useful works in different
parts of her kingdom, and one of the large reservoirs near Jabalpur
is still called the Rânî Talâo in memory of her. During the fifteen
years of her regency she did much for the country, and won the hearts
of the people, while her end was as noble and devoted as her life had
been useful' (_C.P. Gazetteer_ (1870), p. 283; with references to
Sleeman's article on the Râjâs of Garhâ Mandlâ, and 'Briggs'
Farishta', ed. 1829, vol. ii, pp. 217, 218). A memoir of Âsaf Khan
Abdul Majîd, the general who overcame Durgâvatî, will be found in
Blochmann's translation of the _Aîn-i-Akbarî_, vol. i, p. 366.
38. Samthar is a small state, lying between the Betwa and Pahûj
rivers, to the south-west of the Jâlaun district. It was separated
from the Datiyâ State only one generation previous to the British
occupation of Bundêlkhand. A treaty was concluded with the Râjâ in
1812 (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_ (1st ed.), vol. i, p. 578).
39. Gûjars occupy more than a hundred villages in the Jâlaun
district, chiefly among the ravines of the Pahûj river. The Gûjar
caste is most numerous in the Panjâb and the upper districts of the
United Provinces. It is not very highly esteemed, being of about
equal rank with the Âhîr caste and rather below the Jât. Gûjar
colonies are settled in the Hoshangâbâd and Nîmâr districts of the
Central Provinces. The Gûjars are inveterate cattle-lifters, and
always ready to take advantage of any relaxation of the bonds of
order to prey upon their neighbours. Many sections of the caste have
adopted the Muhammadan faith.
40. The small state of Chhatarpur lies to the south of the Hamîrpur
district, between the Dasân and Ken rivers. The town of Chhatarpur,
on the military road from Bânda to Sâgar, is remarkable for the
mausoleum and ruined palace of Râjâ Chhatarsâl, after whom the town
is named. Khajurâho, the ancient religious capital of the Chandêl
monarchy, with its magnificent group of mediaeval Hindoo and Jain
temples, is within the limits of the state, about eighteen miles
south-east of Chhatarpur, and thirty-four miles south of Mahoba. The
Pawâr adventurer, who succeeded in separating Chhatarpur from the
Panna state, was originally a common soldier.
41. Concerning Chhatarsâl (A.D. 1671 to 1731), see notes _ante_,
Chapter 14 note 9, and chapter 23 note 11. He was one of the sons of
Champat Râi. The correct date of the death of Chhatarsâl is Pûs Badi
3, Sanwat, 1788 = A.D. 1731. Hardî (Hirdai) Sâ succeeded to the Râj,
or kingdom, of Pannâ, and Jagatrâj to that of Jaitpur. These kingdoms
quickly broke up, and the fragments are now in part native states and
in part British territory. The Orchhâ State was formed about the
beginning of the sixteenth century, and the Chandêrî and Datiyâ
States are offshoots from it, which separated during the seventeenth
century.
42. As already observed (_ante_, Chapter 26, note 29), the Jâlaun
State became British territory in 1840, four years after the tour
described in the text, and four years before the, publication of the
book. The Jhânsî State similarly lapsed on the death of Râjâ
Gangâdhar Râo in November, 1853. The Rânî Lachhmî Bâî joined the
mutineers, and was killed in battle in June, 1858.
CHAPTER 27
Blights.
I had a visit from my little friend the Sarîmant, and the
conversation turned upon the causes and effects of the dreadful
blight to which the wheat crops in the Nerbudda districts had of late
years been subject. He said that 'the people at first attributed this
great calamity to an increase in the crime of adultery which had
followed the introduction of our rule, and which', he said, 'was
understood to follow it everywhere; that afterwards it was by most
people attributed to our frequent measurement of the land, and
inspection of fields, with a view to estimate their capabilities to
pay; which the people considered a kind of _incest_, and which he
himself, the Deity, can never tolerate. The land is', said he,
'considered as the _mother_ of the prince or chief who holds it--the
great parent from whom he derives all that maintains him--his family
and his establishments. If well treated, she yields this in abundance
to her son; but, if he presumes to look upon her with the eye of
desire, she ceases to be fruitful; or the Deity sends down hail or
blight to destroy all that she yields. The measuring the surface of
the fields, and the frequent inspecting the crops by the chief
himself, or by his immediate agents were considered by the people in
this light; and, in consequence, he never ventured upon these things.
They were', he thought, 'fully satisfied that we did it more with a
view to distribute the burthen of taxation equally upon the people
than to increase it collectively; still', he thought that, 'either we
should not do it at all, or delegate the duty to inferior agents,
whose close inspection of the great _parent_ could not be so
displeasing to the Deity.'[1]
Râm Chand Pundit said that 'there was no doubt much truth in what
Sarîmant Sâhib had stated; that the crops of late had unquestionably
suffered from the constant measuring going on upon the lands; but
that the people (as he knew) had now become unanimous in attributing
the calamities of season, under which these districts had been
suffering so much, to the _eating of beef_-this was', he thought,
'the great source of all their sufferings.'
Sarîmant declared that he thought 'his Pundit was right, and that it
would, no doubt, be of great advantage to them and to their rulers if
Government could be prevailed upon to prohibit the eating of beef;
that so great and general were the sufferings of the people from
these calamities of seasons, and so firm, and now so general, the
opinion that they arose chiefly from the practice of killing and
eating cows that, in spite of all the other superior blessings of our
rule, the people were almost beginning to wish their old Marâthâ
rulers in power again.'
I reminded him of the still greater calamities the people of
Bundêlkhand had been suffering under.
'True,' said he, 'but among them there are crimes enough of everyday
occurrence to account for these things; but, under your rule, the
Deity has only one or other of these three things to be offended
with; and, of these three, it must be admitted that the eating of
beef so near the sacred stream of the Nerbudda is the worst.'
The blight of which we were speaking had, for several seasons from
the year 1829, destroyed the greater part of the wheat crops over
extensive districts along the line of the Nerbudda, and through Mâlwâ
generally; and old people stated that they recollected two returns of
this calamity at intervals from twenty to twenty-four years. The
pores, with which the stalks are abundantly supplied to admit of
their readily taking up the aqueous particles that float in the air,
seem to be more open in an easterly wind than in any other; and, when
this wind prevails at the same time that the air is filled with the
farina of the small parasitic fungus, whose depredations on the corn
constitute what they call the rust, mildew, or blight, the particles
penetrate into these pores, speedily sprout and spread their small
roots into the cellular texture, where they intercept, and feed on,
the sap in its ascent; and the grain in the ear, deprived of its
nourishment, becomes shrivelled, and the whole crop is often not
worth the reaping.[2] It is at first of a light, beautiful orange-
colour, and found chiefly upon the 'alsî' (linseed)[3] which it does
not seem much to injure; but, about the end of February, the fungi
ripen, and shed their seeds rapidly, and they are taken up by the
wind, and carried over the corn-fields. I have sometimes seen the air
tinted of an orange colour for many days by the quantity of these
seeds which it has contained; and that without the wheat crops
suffering at all, when any but an easterly wind has prevailed; but,
when the air is so charged with this farina, let but an easterly wind
blow for twenty-four hours, and all the wheat crops under its
influence are destroyed--nothing can save them. The stalks and leaves
become first of an orange colour from the light colour of the farina
which adheres to them, but this changes to deep brown. All that part
of the stalk that is exposed seems as if it had been pricked with
needles, and had exuded blood from every puncture; and the grain in
the ear withers in proportion to the number of fungi that intercept
and feed upon its sap; but the parts of the stalks that are covered
by the leaves remain entirely uninjured; and, when the leaves are
drawn off from them, they form a beautiful contrast to the others,
which have been exposed to the depredations of these parasitic
plants.
Every pore, it is said, may contain from twenty to forty of these
plants, and each plant may shed a hundred seeds,[4] so that a single
shrub, infected with the disease, may disseminate it over the face of
a whole district; for, in the warm month of March, when the wheat is
attaining maturity, these plants ripen and shed their seeds in a
week, and consequently increase with enormous rapidity, when they
find plants with their pores open ready to receive and nourish them.
I went over a rich sheet of wheat cultivation in the district of
Jubbulpore in January, 1836, which appeared to me devoted to
inevitable destruction. It was intersected by slips and fields of
'alsî', which the cultivators often sow along the borders of their
wheat-fields, which are exposed to the road, to prevent trespass.[5]
All this 'alsî' had become of a beautiful light orange colour from
these fungi; and the cultivators, who had had every field destroyed
the year before by the same plant, surrounded my tent in despair,
imploring me to tell them of some remedy. I knew of none; but, as the
'alsî' is not a very valuable plant, I recommended them, as their
only chance, to pull it all up by the roots, and fling it into large
tanks that were everywhere to be found. They did so, and no 'alsî'
was _intentionally_ left in the district, for, like drowning men
catching at a straw, they caught everywhere at the little gleam of
hope that my suggestion seemed to offer. Not a field of wheat was
that season injured in the district of Jubbulpore; but I was soon
satisfied that my suggestion had had nothing whatever to do with
their escape, for not a single stalk of the wheat was, I believe,
affected; while _some_ stalks of the affected 'alsî' must have been
left by accident. Besides, in several of the adjoining districts,
where the 'alsî' remained in the ground, the wheat escaped. I found
that, about the time when the blight usually attacks the wheat,
westerly winds prevailed, and that it never blew from the east for
many hours together. The common belief among the natives was that the
prevalence of an east wind was necessary to give full effect to the
attack of this disease, though they none of them pretended to know
anything of its _modus operandi_--indeed they considered the blight
to be a demon, which was to be driven off only by prayers and
sacrifices.
It is worthy of remark that hardly anything suffered from the attacks
of these fungi but the wheat. The 'alsî', upon which it always first
made its appearance, suffered something certainly, but not much,
though the stems and leaves were covered with them. The gram (_Cicer
arietinum_) suffered still less--indeed the grain in this plant often
remained uninjured, while the stems and leaves were covered with the
fungi, in the midst of fields of wheat that were entirely destroyed
by ravages of the same kind. None of the other pulses were injured,
though situated in the same manner in the midst of the fields of
wheat that were destroyed. I have seen rich fields of uninterrupted
wheat cultivation for twenty miles by ten, in the valley of the
Nerbudda, so entirely destroyed by this disease that the people would
not go to the trouble of gathering one field in four, for the stalks
and the leaves were so much injured that they were considered as
unfit or unsafe for fodder; and during the same season its ravages
were equally felt in the districts along the tablelands of the
Vindhya range, north of the valley and, I believe, those upon the
Sâtpura range, south. The last time I saw this blight was in March,
1832, in the Sâgar district, where its ravages were very great, but
partial; and I kept bundles of the blighted wheat hanging up in my
house, for the inspection of the curious, till the beginning of
1835.[6]
When I assumed charge of the district of Sâgar in 1831 the opinion
among the farmers and landholders generally was that the calamities
of season under which we had been suffering were attributable to the
increase of _adultery_, arising, as they thought, from our
indifference, as we seemed to treat it as a matter of little
importance; whereas it had always been considered under former
Governments as a case of _life and death_. The husband or his friends
waited till they caught the offending parties together in criminal
correspondence, and then put them both to death; and the death of one
pair generally acted, they thought, as a sedative upon the evil
passions of a whole district for a year or two. Nothing can be more
unsatisfactory than our laws for the punishment of adultery in India,
where the Muhammadan criminal code has been followed, though the
people subjected to it are not one-tenth Muhammadans. This law was
enacted by Muhammad on the occasion of his favourite wife Ayesha
being found under very suspicious circumstances with another man. A
special direction from heaven required that four witnesses should
swear positively to the _fact_.
Ayesha and her paramour were, of course, acquitted, and the
witnesses, being less than four, received the same punishment which
would have been inflicted upon the criminals had the fact been proved
by the direct testimony of the prescribed number--that is, eighty
stripes of the 'korâ', almost equal to a sentence of death. (See
Korân, chap. 24, and chap. 4.)[7] This became the law among all
Muhammadans. Ayesha's father succeeded Muhammad, and Omar succeeded
Abû Bakr.[8] Soon after his accession to the throne, Omar had to sit
in judgement upon Mughîra, a companion of the prophet, the governor
of Basrah,[9] who had been accidentally seen in an awkward position
with a lady of rank by four men while they sat in an adjoining
apartment. The door or window which concealed the criminal parties
was flung open by the wind, at the time when they wished it most to
remain closed. Three of the four men swore directly to the point.
Mughîra was Omar's favourite, and had been appointed to the
government by him, Zâid, the brother of one of the three who had
sworn to the fact, hesitated to swear to the entire fact.
'I think', said Omar, 'that I see before me a man whom God would not
make the means of disgracing one of the companions of the holy
prophet.'
Zâid then described circumstantially the most unequivocal position
that was, perhaps, ever described in a public court of justice; but,
still hesitating to swear to the entire completion of the crime, the
criminals were acquitted, and his brother and the two others received
the punishment described. This decision of the _Brutus of his age_
and country settled the law of evidence in these matters; and no
Muhammadan judge would now give a verdict against any person charged
with adultery, without the four witnesses to the _entire fact_. No
man hopes for a conviction for this crime in our courts; and, as he
would have to drag his wife or paramour through no less than three--
that of the police officer, the magistrate, and the judge--to seek
it, he has recourse to poison, either secretly or with his wife's
consent. She will commonly rather die than be turned out into the
streets a degraded outcast. The seducer escapes with impunity, while
his victim suffers all that human nature is capable of enduring.
Where husbands are in the habit of poisoning their guilty wives from
the want of _legal_ means of redress, they will sometimes poison
those who are suspected upon insufficient grounds. No magistrate ever
hopes to get a conviction in the judge's court, if he commits a
criminal for trial on this charge (under Regulation 17 of 1817), and,
therefore, he never does commit. Regulation 7 of 1819 authorizes a
magistrate to punish any person convicted of enticing away a wife or
unmarried daughter for another's use; and an indignant functionary
may sometimes feel disposed to stretch a point that the guilty man
may not altogether escape.[10]
Redress for these wrongs is never sought in our courts, because they
can never hope to get it. But it is a great mistake to suppose that
the people of India want a heavier punishment for the crime than we
are disposed to inflict--all they want is a fair chance of conviction
upon such reasonable proof as cases of this nature admit of, and such
a measure of punishment as shall make it appear that their rulers
think the crime a serious one, and that they are disposed to protect
them from it. Sometimes the poorest man would refuse pecuniary
compensation; but generally husbands of the poorer classes would be
glad to get what the heads of their caste or circle of society might
consider the expenses of a second marriage. They do not dare to live
in adultery, they would be outcasts if they did; they must be married
according to the forms of their caste, and it is reasonable that the
seducer of the wife should be obliged to defray the coats of the
injured husband's second marriage. The rich will, of course, always
refuse such a compensation, but a law declaring the man convicted of
this crime liable to imprisonment in irons at hard labour for two
years, but entitled to his discharge within that time on an
application from the injured husband or father, would be extremely
popular throughout India. The poor man would make the application
when assured of the sum which the elders of his caste consider
sufficient; and they would take into consideration the means of the
offender to pay. The woman is sufficiently punished by her degraded
condition. The _fatwa_ of a Muhammadan law officer should be
dispensed with in such cases.[11]
In 1832 the people began to search for other causes [_scilicet_, of
bad seasons]. The frequent measurements of the land, with a view to
equalize the assessments, were thought of; even the operations of the
Trigonometrical Survey,[12] which were then making a great noise in
Central India, where their fires were seen every night burning upon
the peaks of the highest ranges, were supposed to have had some share
in exasperating the Deity; and the services of the most holy Brahmans
were put in requisition to exorcise the peaks from which the
engineers had taken their angles, the moment their instruments were
removed. In many places, to the great annoyance and consternation of
the engineers, the landmarks which they had left to enable them to
correct their work as they advanced, were found to have been removed
during their short intervals of absence, and they were obliged to do
their work over again. The priests encouraged the disposition on the
part of the peasantry to believe that men who required to do their
work by the aid of fires lighted in the dead of the night upon _high
places_, and work which no one but themselves seemed able to
comprehend, must hold communion with supernatural beings, a communion
which they thought might be displeasing to the Deity.
At last, in the year 1833, a very holy Brahman, who lived in his
cloister near the iron suspension bridge over the Biâs river, ten
miles from Sâgar, sat down with a determination to _wrestle with the
Deity_ till he should be compelled to reveal to him the real cause of
all these calamities of season under which the people were
groaning.[l3] After three days and nights of fasting and prayer, he
saw a vision which stood before him in a white mantle, and told him
that all these calamities arose from the slaughter of cows; and that
under former Governments this practice had been strictly prohibited,
and the returns of the harvest had, in consequence, been always
abundant, and subsistence cheap, in spite of invasion from without,
insurrection within, and a good deal of misrule and oppression on the
part of the local government. The holy man was enjoined by the vision
to make this revelation known to the constituted authorities, and to
persuade the people generally throughout the district to join in the
petition for the prohibition of _beef-eating_ throughout our Nerbudda
territories. He got a good many of the most respectable of the
landholders around him, and explained the wishes of the vision of the
preceding night. A petition was soon drawn up and signed by many
hundreds of the most respectable people in the district, and
presented to the Governor-General's representative in these parts,
Mr. F. C. Smith. Others were presented to the civil authorities of
the district, and all stating in the most respectful terms how
sensible the people were of the inestimable benefits of our rule, and
how grateful they all felt for the protection to life and property,
and to the free employment of all their advantages, which they had
under it; and for the frequent and large reduction in the
assessments, and remission in the demand, on account of calamities of
seasons. These, they stated, were all that Government could do to
relieve a suffering people, but they had all proved unavailing; and
yet, under this truly paternal rule, the people were suffering more
than under any former Government in its worst period of misrule--the
hand of an _incensed God_ was upon them; and, as they had now, at
last after many fruitless attempts, discovered the real cause of this
anger of the Deity, they trusted that we would listen to their
prayers, and restore plenty and all its blessings to the country by
prohibiting the _eating of beef_. All these dreadful evils had, they
said, unquestionably originated in the (Sadr Bâzâr) great market of
the cantonments, where, for the first time, within one hundred miles
of the sacred stream of the Nerbudda, men had purchased and eaten
cows' flesh.
These people were all much attached to us and to our rule, and were
many of them on the most intimate terms of social intercourse with
us; and, at the time they signed this petition, were entirely
satisfied that they had discovered the real cause of all their
sufferings, and impressed with the idea that we should be convinced,
and grant their prayers.[l4] The day is past. Beef continued to be
eaten with undiminished appetite, the blight, nevertheless,
disappeared, and every other sign of vengeance from above; and the
people are now, I believe, satisfied that they were mistaken. They
still think that the lands do not yield so many returns of the seed
under us as under former rulers; that they have lost some of the
_barkat_ (blessings) which they enjoyed under them--they know not
why. The fact is that under us the lands do not enjoy the salutary
fallows which frequent invasions and civil wars used to cause under
former Governments. Those who survived such civil wars and invasions
got better returns for their seed.
During the discussion of the question with the people, I had one day
a conversation with the Sadr Amîn, or head native judicial officer,
whom I have already mentioned. He told me that 'there could be no
doubt of the truth of the conclusion to which the people had at
length come. 'There are', he said, 'some countries in which
punishments follow crimes after long intervals, and, indeed, do not
take place till some future birth; in others, they follow crimes
immediately; and such is the country bordering the stream of _Mother
Nerbudda_. This', said he, 'is a stream more holy than that of the
great Ganges herself, since no man is supposed to derive any benefit
from that stream unless he either bathe in it or drink from it; but
the sight of the Nerbudda from a distant hill could bless him, and
purify him. In other countries, the slaughter of cows and bullocks
might not be punished for ages; and the harvest, in such countries,
might continue good through many successive generations under such
enormities; indeed, he was not quite sure that there might not be
countries in which no punishment at all would inevitably follow; but,
so near the Nerbudda, this could not be the case.[l5] Providence
could never suffer beef to be eaten so near her sacred majesty
without visiting the crops with blight, hail, or some other calamity,
and the people with cholera morbus, small-pox, and other great
pestilences. As for himself, he should never be persuaded that all
these afflictions did not arise wholly and solely from this dreadful
habit of eating beef. I declare', concluded he, 'that if the
Government would but consent to prohibit the eating of beef, it might
levy from the lands three times the revenue that they now pay.'
The great festival of the Holî, the Saturnalia of India, terminates
on the last day of Phâlgun, or 16th of March.[16] On that day the
Holî is burned; and on that day the ravages of the monster (for
monster they will have it to be) are supposed to cease. Any field
that has remained untouched up to that time is considered to be quite
secure from the moment the Holî has been committed to the flames.
What gave rise to the notion I have never been able to discover, but
such is the general belief. I suppose the siliceous epidermis must
then have become too hard, and the pores in the stem too much closed
up to admit of the further depredation of the fungi.
In the latter end of 1831, while I was at Sâgar, a cowherd in driving
his cattle to water at a reach of the Biâs river, called the
Nardhardhâr, near the little village of Jasrathî, was reported to
have seen a vision that told him the waters of that reach, taken up
and conveyed to the fields in pitchers, would effectually keep off
the blight from the wheat, provided the pitchers were not suffered to
touch the ground on the way. On reaching the field, a small hole was
to be made in the bottom of the pitcher, so as to keep up a small but
steady stream, as the bearer carried it round the borders of the
field, that the water might fall in a complete ring, except at a
small opening--which was to be kept dry, in order that the _monster_
or _demon blight_ might make his escape through it, not being able to
cross over any part watered by the holy stream. The waters Of the
Bias river generally are not supposed to have any peculiar virtues.
The report of this vision spread rapidly over the country; and the
people who had been suffering under so many seasons of great calamity
were anxious to try anything that promised the slightest chance of
relief. Every cultivator of the district prepared pots for the
conveyance of the water, with tripods to support them while they
rested on the road, that they might not touch the ground. The spot
pointed out for taking the water was immediately under a fine large
pîpal-tree[l7] which had fallen into the river, and on each bank was
seated a Bairâgî, or priest of Vishnu. The blight began to manifest
itself in the alsî (linseed) in January, 1832, but the wheat is never
considered to be in danger till late in February, when it is nearly
ripe; and during that month and the following the banks of the river
were crowded with people in search of the water. Some of the people
came more than one hundred miles to fetch it, and all seemed quite
sure that the holy water would save them. Each person gave the
Bairâgî priest of his own side of the river two half-pence (copper
pice), two pice weight of ghî (clarified butter), and two pounds of
flour, before he filled his pitcher, to secure his blessings from it.
These priests were strangers, and the offerings were entirely
voluntary. The roads from this reach of the Bias river, up to the
capital of the Orchhâ Râjâ, more than a hundred miles, were literally
lined with these water-carriers; and I estimated the number of
persons who passed with the water every day for six weeks at ten
thousand a day.[18] After they had ceased to take the water, the
banks were long crowded with people who flocked to see the place
where priests and waters had worked such miracles, and to try and
discover the source whence the water derived its virtues. It was
remarked by some that the pîpal-tree, which had fallen from the bank
above many years before, had still continued to throw out the richest
foliage from the branches above the surface of the water. Others
declared that they saw a _monkey_ on the bank near the spot, which no
sooner perceived it was observed than it plunged into the stream and
disappeared. Others again saw some flights of steps under the water,
indicating that it had in days of yore been the site of a temple,
whose god, no doubt, gave to the waters the wonderful virtues it had
been found to possess. The priests would say nothing but that 'it was
the work of God, and, like all his works, beyond the reach of man's
understanding.' They made their fortunes, and got up the vision and
miracle, no doubt, for that especial purpose.[l9] As to the effect, I
was told by hundreds of farmers who had tried the waters that, though
it had not anywhere kept the blight entirely off from the wheat, it
was found that the fields which had not the advantages of water were
entirely destroyed; and, where the pot had been taken all round the
field without leaving any dry opening for the demon to escape
through, it was almost as bad; but, when a small opening had been
left, and the water carefully dropped around the field elsewhere, the
crops had been very little injured; which showed clearly the efficacy
of the water, when all the ceremonies and observances prescribed by
the vision had been attended to.
I could never find the cowherd who was said to have seen this vision,
and, in speaking to my old friend, the Sadr Amîn, learned in the
shâstras,[20] on the subject, I told him that we had a short saying
that would explain all this: 'A drowning man catches at a straw.'
'Yes,' said he, without any hesitation, 'and we have another just as
good for the occasion: "Sheep will follow each other, though it
should be into a well".'
Notes:
1. We are told in 2 Samuel, chap. xxiv, that the Deity was displeased
at a census of the people, taken by Joab by the order of David, and
destroyed of the people of Israel seventy thousand, besides women and
children. [W. H. S.] The editor, in the course of seven years'
experience in the Settlement department, six of which were agent in
Bundêlkhand, never heard of the doctrine as to the incestuous
character of surveys. Probably it had died out. Even a census no
longer gives rise to alarm in most parts of the country. The wild
rumours and theories common in 1872 and 1881 did not prevail when the
census of 1891 was taken, or during subsequent operations.
2. This theory is, of course, erroneous.
3. The flax plant (_Linum usitatissimum_) is grown in India solely
for the sake of the linseed. Linen is never made, and the stalk of
the plant, as ordinarily grown, is too short for the manufacture of
fibre. The attempts to introduce flax manufacture into India, though
not ultimately successful, have proved that good flax can be made in
the country, from Riga seed. Indian linseed is very largely exported.
(Article 'Flax' in Balfour, _Cyclopaedia_, 3rd ed.)
4. Spores is the more accurate word.
5. That is to say, cattle-trespass. Cattle do not care to eat the
green flax plant. The fields are not fenced.
6. The rust, or blight, described in the text probably was a species
of _Unedo_. The gram, or chick-pea, and various kinds of pea and
vetch are grown intermixed with the wheat. They ripen earlier, and
are plucked up by the roots before the wheat is cut.
7. Chap. 4 of the Korân is entitled 'Women', and chap. 24 is entitled
'Light'. The story of Ayesha's misadventure is given in Sale's notes
to chap. 24.
8. Muhammad died A.D. 632. Abû Bakr succeeded him, and after a
khalîfate of only two years, was succeeded by Omar, who was
assassinated in the twelfth year of his reign.
9. Basrah (Bassorah, Bussorah) in the province of Baghdad, on the
Shatt-ul-Arab, or combined stream of the Tigris and Euphrates, was
founded by the Khalîf Omar.
10. In the author's time the Muhammadan criminal law was applied to
the whole population by Anglo-Indian judges, assisted by Muhammadan
legal assessors, who gave rulings called _fatwas_ on legal points.
The Penal Code enacted in 1859 swept away the whole jungle of
Regulations and _fatwas_, and established a scientific System of
criminal jurisprudence, which bas remained substantially unchanged to
this day. Adultery is punishable under the Code by the Court of
Session, but prosecutions for this offence are very rare. Enticing
away a married woman is also defined as an offence, and is punishable
by a magistrate. Complaints under this head are extremely numerous,
and mostly false. Secret and unpunished murders of women undoubtedly
are common, and often reported as deaths from snake-bite or cholera.
An aggrieved husband frequently tries to save his honour, and at the
same time satisfy his vengeance, by tromping up a false charge of
burglary against the suspected paramour, who generally replies by an
equally false _alibi_.
11. A prosecution under the Penal Code for adultery can be instituted
only by the husband, or the guardian representing him, and the woman
is not punishable. Although the Muhammadan law of evidence has been
got rid of, the Anglo-Indian courts are still unsuitable for the
prosecution of adultery cases, especially where Indians are
concerned. The English courts, though they do not require any
specified number of witnesses, demand strict proof given in open
court, and no Indian, whose honour has really been touched, cares to
expose his domestic troubles to be wrangled over by lawyers. Many
officers, including the editor, would be glad to see the section
which renders adultery penal struck out of the Code. The matrimonial
delinquencies of Indians are better dealt with by the caste
organizations, and those of Europeans by civil action.
12. The Trigonometrical Survey, originated by Colonel Lambton, was
begun at Cape Comôrin in 1800. It is now almost, if not quite,
complete, except in Burma. See Markham, _A Memoir of the Indian
Surveys_ (2nd ed., 1878). The stations are marked by masonry pillars,
for the partial repair of which a small sum is annually allotted.
13. Hindoos believe that holy men, by means of great austerities, can
attain power to compel the gods to do their bidding.
14. For some account of the modern agitation against cow-killing. See
note _ante_, Chapter 26, note 6.
15. On the sacredness of the Nerbudda see note _ante_, Chapter 1,
note 13.
16. The Holî festival marks approximately the time of the vernal
equinox, ten days before the full moon of the Hindoo month Phâlgun.
The day of the bonfire does not always fall on the 16th of March. It
is not considered lucky to begin harvest till the Holî has been
burnt. Mr. Crooke holds that 'on the whole, there seems to be some
reason to believe that the intention to promote the fertility of men,
animals, and crops, supplies the basis of the rites' ('The Holî, a
Vernal Festival of the Hindus', _Folklore_, vol. xxv (1914), p. 83).
I agree.
17. The pîpal-tree (_Ficus religiosa_, Linn.; _Urostigma religiosum_,
Gasp.) is sacred to Vishnu, and universally venerated throughout
India.
18. About four hundred thousand persons.
19. Two pice x 400,000 = 800,000 pice, = 200,000 annas, = 12,500
rupees. Even if the author's estimate of the numbers be much too
large, the pecuniary result must have been handsome, not to mention
the butter and flour.
20. Hindoo sacred books.
CHAPTER 28
Pestle-and-Mortar Sugar-Mills--Washing away of the Soil.
On the 13th [December, 1885] we came to Barwâ Sâgar,[1] over a road
winding among small ridges and conical hills, none of them much
elevated or very steep; the whole being a bed of brown syenite,
generally exposed to the surface in a decomposing state, intersected
by veins and beds of quartz rocks, and here and there a narrow and
shallow bed of dark basalt. One of these beds of basalt was converted
into grey syenite by a large granular mixture of white quartz and
feldspar with the black hornblende. From this rock the people form
their sugar-mills, which are made like a pestle and mortar, the
mortar being cut out of the hornblende rock, and the pestle out of
wood.[2]
We saw a great many of these mortars during the march that could not
have been in use for the last half-dozen centuries, but they are
precisely the same as those still used all over India. The driver
sits upon the end of the horizontal beam to which the bullocks are
yoked; and in cold mornings it is very common to see him with a pair
of good hot embers at his buttocks, resting upon a little projection
made behind him to the beam for the purpose of sustaining it [_sic_].
I am disposed to think that the most productive parts of the surface
of Bundêlkhand, like that of some of the districts of the Nerbudda
territories which repose upon the back of the sandstone of the
Vindhya chain, is [_sic_] fast flowing off to the sea through the
great rivers, which seem by degrees to extend the channels of their
tributary streams into every man's field, to drain away its substance
by degrees, for the benefit of those who may in some future age
occupy the islands of their delta. I have often seen a valuable
estate reduced in value to almost nothing in a few years by some new
_antennae_, if I may so call them, thrown out from the tributary
streams of great rivers into their richest and deepest soils.
Declivities are formed, the soil gets nothing from the cultivator but
the mechanical aid of the plough, and the more its surface is
ploughed and cross-ploughed, the more of its substance is washed away
towards the Bay of Bengal in the Ganges, or the Gulf of Cambay in the
Nerbudda. In the districts of the Nerbudda, we often see these black
hornblende mortars, in which sugar-canes were once pressed by a happy
peasantry, now standing upon a bare and barren surface of sandstone
rock, twenty feet above the present surface of the culturable lands
of the country. There are evident signs of the surface on which they
now stand having been that on which they were last worked. The people
get more juice from their small straw-coloured canes in these pestle-
and-mortar mills than they can from those with cylindrical rollers in
the present rude state of the mechanical arts all over India; and the
straw-coloured cane is the only kind that yields good sugar. The
large purple canes yield a watery and very inferior juice; and are
generally and almost universally sold in the markets as a fruit. The
straw-coloured canes, from being crowded under a very slovenly
System, with little manure and less weeding, degenerate into a mere
reed. The Otaheite cane, which was introduced into India by me in
1827, has spread over the Nerbudda, and many other territories; but
that that will degenerate in the same manner under the same slovenly
system of tillage, is too probable.[3]
Notes:
1. The lake known as Barwâ Sâgar was formed by a Bundêla chief, who
constructed an embankment nearly three-quarters of a mile long to
retain the waters of the Barwâ stream, a tributary of the Betwâ. The
work was begun in 1705 and completed in 1737. The town is situated at
the north-west corner of the lake, on the road from Jhânsî to the
cantonment of Nowgong (properly Naugâon, or Nayâgâon), at a distance
of twelve miles from Jhânsî (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, 1st ed., vol. i, pp.
243 and 387).
2. The rude sketch given here in the author's text is not worth
reproduction.
3. The 'pestle-and-mortar' pattern of mill above described is the
indigenous model formerly in universal use in India, but, in most
parts of the country, where stone is not available, the 'mortar'
portion was made of wood. The stone mills are expensive. In the Bânda
and Hamîrpur districts of Bundêlkhand sugar-cane is now grown only in
the small areas where good loam soil is found. The method of
cultivation differs in several respects from that practised in the
Gangetic plains, but the editor never observed the slovenliness of
which the author complains. He always found the cultivation in sugar-
cane villages to be extremely careful and laborious. Ancient stone
mills are sometimes found in black soil country, and it is difficult
to understand how sugarcane can ever have been grown there. The
author was mistaken in supposing that the indigenous pattern of mill
is superior to a good roller mill. The indigenous mill has been
completely superseded in most parts of the Panjâb, United Provinces,
and Bihâr, by the roller mill patented by Messrs. Mylne and Thompson
of Bihîa in 1869, and largely improved by subsequent modifications.
The original patent having expired, thousands of roller mills are
annually made by native artisans, with little regard to the rights of
the Bihîa firm. The iron rollers, cast in Delhi and other places, are
completed on costly lathes in many country towns. The mills are
generally hired out for the season, and kept in repair by the
speculator. The Râjâ of Nâhan or Sirmûr in the Panjâb, who has a
foundry employing six hundred men, does a large business of this
kind, and finds it profitable. Since the first patent was taken out,
many improvements in the design have been effected, and the best
mills squeeze the cane absolutely dry. Messrs. Mylne and Thompson
have been successful in introducing other improved machinery for the
manufacture of sugar in villages. The Rosa factory near Shahjahânpur
in the United Provinces makes sugar on a large scale by European
methods.
When the author says that the large canes are sold 'as a fruit' he
means that the canes are used for eating, or rather sucking like a
sugar-stick. The varieties of sugar-cane are numerous, and the names
vary much in different districts. According to Balfour, the Otaheite
(Tahiti) cane is 'probably _Saccharum violaceum_'. The ordinary
Indian kinds belong to the species _Saccharum officinarum_. The
Otaheite cane was introduced into the West Indies about 1794, and
came to India from the Mauritius. It is more suitable for the roller
mill than for the indigenous mill, the stems being hard (_Cyclopaedia
of India_, 3rd ed., 1885, s.v. 'Saccharum'). In a letter dated
December 15, 1844, the author refers to his introduction of the
Otaheite cane, and mentions that the Indian Agricultural Society
awarded him a gold medal for this service. The cane was first planted
in the Government Botanical Garden at Calcutta.
CHAPTER 29
Interview with the Chiefs of Jhânsî--Disputed Succession.
On the 14th[1] we came on fourteen miles to Jhânsî.[2] About five
miles from our last ground we crossed the Baitantî river over a bed
of syenite. At this river we mounted our elephant to cross, as the
water was waist-deep at the ford. My wife returned to her palankeen
as soon as we had crossed, but our little boy came on with me on the
elephant, to meet the grand procession which I knew was approaching
to greet us from the city. The Râjâ of Jhânsî, Râm Chandar Râo, died
a few months ago, leaving a young widow and a mother, but no
child.[3]
He was a young man of about twenty-eight years of age, timid, but of
good capacity, and most amiable disposition. My duties brought us
much into communication; and, though we never met, we had conceived a
mutual esteem for each other. He had been long suffering from an
affection of the liver, and had latterly persuaded himself that his
mother was practising upon his life, with a view to secure the
government to the eldest son of her daughter, which would, she
thought, ensure the real power to her for life. That she wished him
dead with this view, I had no doubt; for she had ruled the state for
several years up to 1831, during what she was pleased to consider his
minority; and she surrendered the power into his hands with great
reluctance, since it enabled her to employ her _paramour_ as
minister, and enjoy his society as much as she pleased, under the
pretence of holding _privy councils_ upon affairs of great public
interest.[4] He used to communicate his fears to me; and I was not
without apprehension that his mother might some day attempt to hasten
his death by poison. About a month before his death he wrote to me to
say that spears had been found stuck in the ground, under the water
where he was accustomed to swim, with their sharp points upwards;
and, had he not, contrary to his usual practice, walked into the
water, and struck his foot against one of them, he must have been
killed. This was, no doubt, a thing got up by some designing person
who wanted to ingratiate himself with the young man; for the mother
was too shrewd a woman ever to attempt her son's life by such awkward
means. About four months before I reached the capital, this amiable
young prince died, leaving two paternal uncles, a mother, a widow,
and one sister, the wife of one of our Sâgar pensioners, Morîsar Râo.
The mother claimed the inheritance for her grandson by this daughter,
a very handsome young lad, then at Jhânsî, on the pretence that her
son had adopted him on his death-bed. She had his head shaved, and
made him go through all the other ceremonies of mourning, as for the
death of his real father. The eldest of his uncles, Raghunâth Râo,
claimed the inheritance as the next heir; and all his party turned
the young lad out of caste as a Brahman, for daring to go into
mourning for a father who was yet alive; one of the greatest of
crimes, according to Hindoo law, for they would not admit that he had
been adopted by the deceased prince.[5]
The question of inheritance had been referred for decision to the
Supreme Government through the prescribed channel when I arrived, and
the decision was every day expected. The mother, with her daughter
and grandson, and the widow, occupied the castle, situated on a high
hill overlooking the city; while the two uncles of the deceased
occupied their private dwellings in the city below. Raghunâth Râo,
the eldest, headed the procession that came out to meet me about
three miles, mounted upon a fine female elephant, with his younger
brother by his side. The minister, Nârû Gopâl, followed, mounted upon
another, on the part of the mother and widow. Some of the Râjâ's
relations were upon two of the finest male elephants I have ever
seen; and some of their friends, with the 'Bakshî', or paymaster
(always an important personage), upon two others. Raghunâth Râo's
elephant drew up on the right of mine, and that of the minister on
the left; and, after the usual compliments had passed between us, all
the others fell back, and formed a line in our rear. They had about
fifty troopers mounted upon very fine horses in excellent condition,
which curvetted before and on both sides of us; together with a good
many men on camels, and some four or five hundred foot attendants,
all well dressed, but in various costumes. The elephants were so
close to each other that the conversation, which we managed to keep
up tolerably well, was general almost all the way to our tents; every
man taking a part as he found the opportunity of a pause to introduce
his little compliment to the Honourable Company or to myself, which I
did my best to answer or divert. I was glad to see the affectionate
respect with which the old man was everywhere received, for I had in
my own mind no doubt whatever that the decision of the Supreme
Government would be in his favour. The whole _cortège_ escorted me
through the town to my tent, which was pitched on the other side; and
then they took their leave, still seated on their elephants, while I
sat on mine, with my boy on my knee, till all had made their bow and
departed. The elephants, camels, and horses were all magnificently
caparisoned, and the housings of the whole were extremely rich. A
good many of the troopers were dressed in chain-armour, which, worn
outside their light-coloured quilted vests, looked very like black
gauze scarfs.
My little friend the Sarîmant's own elephant had lately died; and,
being unable to go to the cost of another with all its appendages, he
had come thus far on horseback. A native gentleman can never
condescend to ride an elephant without a train of at least a dozen
attendants on horseback--he would almost as soon ride a horse
_without a tail_.[6] Having been considered at one time as the equal
of all these Râjâs, I knew that he would feel a little mortified at
finding himself buried in the crowd and dust; and invited him, as we
approached the city, to take a seat by my side. This gained him
consideration, and evidently gave him great pleasure. It was late
before we reached our tents, as we were obliged to move slowly
through the streets of the city, as well for our own convenience as
for the safety of the crowd on foot before and around us. My wife,
who had gone on before to avoid the crowd and dust, reached the tents
halt an hour before us.
In the afternoon, when my second large tent had been pitched, the
minister came to pay me a visit with a large train of followers, but
with little display; and I found him a very sensible, mild, and
gentlemanly man, just as I expected from the high character he bears
with both parties, and with the people of the country generally. Any
unreserved conversation here in such a crowd was, of course, out of
the question, and I told the minister that it was my intention early
next morning to visit the tomb of his late master; where I should be
very glad to meet him, if he could make it convenient to come without
any ceremony. He seemed much pleased with the proposal, and next
morning we met a little before sunrise within the railing that
encloses the tomb or cenotaph; and there had a good deal of quiet
and, I believe, unreserved talk about the affairs of the Jhânsî
state, and the family of the late prince. He told me that, a few
hours before the Râjâ's death, his mother had placed in his arms for
adoption the son of his sister, a very handsome lad of ten years of
age--but whether the Râjâ was or was not sensible at the time he
could not say, for he never after heard him speak; that the mother of
the deceased considered the adoption as complete, and made her
grandson go through the funeral ceremonies as at the death of his
father, which for nine days were performed unmolested; but, when it
came to the tenth and last--which, had it passed quietly, would have
been considered as completing the title of adoption--Raghunâth Râo
and his friends interposed, and prevented further proceedings,
declaring that, while there were so many male heirs, no son could be
adopted for the deceased prince according to the usages of the
family.
The widow of the Râjâ, a timid, amiable young woman, of twenty-five
years of age, was by no means anxious for this adoption, having
shared the suspicions of her husband regarding the practices of his
mother; and found his sister, who now resided with them in the
castle, a most violent and overbearing woman, who would be likely to
exclude her from all share in the administration, and make her life
very miserable, were her son to be declared the Râjâ. Her wish was to
be allowed to adopt, in the name of her deceased husband, a young
cousin of his, Sadâsheo, the son of Nânâ Bhâo. Gangâdhar, the younger
brother of Raghunâth Râo, was exceedingly anxious to have his elder
brother declared Râjâ, because he had no sons, and from the
debilitated state of his frame, must soon die, and leave the
principality to him. Every one of the three parties had sent agents
to the Governor-General's representative in Bundêlkhand to urge their
claim; and, till the final decision, the widow of the late chief was
to be considered the sovereign. The minister told me that there was
one unanswerable argument against Raghunâth Râo's succeeding, which,
out of regard to his feelings, he had not yet urged, and about which
he wished to consult me as a friend of the late prince and his widow;
this was, that he was a leper, and that the signs of the disease were
becoming every day more and more manifest.
I told him that I had observed them in his face, but was not aware
that any one else had noticed them. I urged him, however, not to
advance this as a ground of exclusion, since they all knew him to be
a very worthy man, while his younger brother was said to be the
reverse; and more especially I thought it would be very cruel and
unwise to distress and exasperate him by so doing, as I had no doubt
that, before this ground could be brought to their notice, Government
would declare in his favour, right being so clearly on his side.
After an agreeable conversation with this sensible and excellent man,
I returned to my tents to prepare for the reception of Raghunâth Râo
and his party. They came about nine o'clock with a much greater
display of elephants and followers than the minister had brought with
him. He and his friends kept me in close conversation till eleven
o'clock, in spite of my wife's many considerate messages to say
breakfast was waiting. He told me that the mother of the late Râjâ,
his nephew, was a very violent woman, who had involved the state in
much trouble during the period of her regency, which she managed to
prolong till her son was twenty-five years of age, and resigned with
infinite reluctance only three years ago; that her minister during
her regency, Gangadhar Mûlî, was at the same time her _paramour_, and
would be surely restored to power and to her embraces, were her
grandson's claim to the succession recognized; that it was with great
difficulty he had been able to keep this atrocious character under
surveillance pending the consideration of their claims by the Supreme
Government; that, by having the head of her grandson shaved, and
making him go through all the other funeral ceremonies with the other
members of the family, she had involved him and his young _innocent
wife_ (who had unhappily continued to drink out of the same cup with
her husband) _in the dreadful crime of mourning for a father whom
they knew to be yet alive_, a crime that must be expiated by the
'prâyaschit,'[7] which-would be exacted from the young couple on
their return to Sâgar before they could be restored to caste, from
which they were now considered as excommunicated. As for the young
widow, she was everything they could wish; but she was so timid that
she would be governed by the old lady, if she should have any
ostensible part assigned her in the administration.[8]
I told the old gentleman that I believed it would be my duty to pay
the first visit to the widow and mother of the late prince, as one of
pure condolence, and that I hoped my doing so would not be considered
any mark of disrespect towards him, who must now be looked up to as
the head of the family. He remonstrated against this most earnestly;
and, at last, tears came into his eyes as he told me that, if I paid
the first visit to the castle, he should never again be able to show
his face outside his door, so great would be the indignity he would
be considered to have suffered; but, rather than I should do this, he
would come to my tents, and escort me himself to the castle. Much was
to be said on both sides of the weighty question; but, at last, I
thought that the arguments were in his favour--that, if I went to the
castle first, he might possibly resent it upon the poor woman and the
prime minister when he came into power, as I had no doubt he soon
would--and that I might be consulting their interest as much as his
feelings by going to his house first. In the evening I received a
message from the old lady, urging the necessity of my paying the
first visit of condolence for the death of my young friend to the
widow and mother. 'The rights of mothers', said she, 'are respected
in all countries; and, in India, the first visit of condolence for
the death of a man is always due to the mother, if alive.' I told the
messenger that my resolution was unaltered, and would, I trusted, be
found the best for all parties under present circumstances. I told
him that I dreaded the resentment towards them of Raghunâth Râo, if
he came into power.
'Never mind that,' said he: 'my mistress is of too proud a spirit to
dread resentment from any one--pay her the compliment of the first
visit, and let her enemies do their worst.' I told him that I could
leave Jhânsî without visiting either of them, but could not go first
to the castle; and he said that my departing thus would please the
old lady better than the _second visit_. The minister would not have
said this--the old lady would not have ventured to send such a
message by him--the man was an understrapper; and I left him to mount
my elephant and pay my two visits.[9]
With the best _cortège_ I could muster, I went to Raghunâth Râo's,
where I was received with a salute from some large guns in his
courtyard, and entertained with a party of dancing girls and
musicians in the usual manner. Attar of roses and 'pân'[10] were
given, and valuable shawls put before me, and refused in the politest
terms I could think of; such as, 'Pray do me the favour to keep these
things for me till I have the happiness of visiting Jhânsî again, as
I am going through Gwâlior, where nothing valuable is a moment safe
from thieves'. After sitting an hour, I mounted my elephant, and
proceeded up to the castle, where I was received with another salute
from the bastions. I sat for half an hour in the hall of audience
with the minister and all the principal men of the court, as
Raghunâth Râo was to be considered as a private gentleman till the
decision of the Supreme Government should be made known; and the
handsome lad, Krishan Râo, whom the old woman wished to adopt, and
whom I had often seen at Sâgar, was at my request brought in and
seated by my side. By him I sent my message of condolence to the
widow and mother of his deceased uncle, couched in the usual terms--
that the happy effects of good government in the prosperity of this
city, and the comfort and happiness of the people, had extended the
fame of the family all over India; and that I trusted the reigning
member of that family, whoever he might be, would be sensible that it
was his duty to sustain that reputation by imitating the example of
those who had gone before him. After attar of roses and pân had been
handed round in the usual manner, I went to the summit of the highest
tower in the castle, which commands an extensive view of the country
around.
The castle stands upon the summit of a small hill of syenitic rock.
The elevation of the outer wall is about one hundred feet above the
level of the plain, and the top of the tower on which I stood about
one hundred feet more, as the buildings rise gradually from the sides
to the summit of the hill. The city extends out into the plain to the
east from the foot of the hill on which the castle stands. Around the
city there is a good deal of land, irrigated from four or five tanks
in the neighbourhood, and now under rich wheat crops; and the gardens
are very numerous, and abound in all the fruit and vegetables that
the people most like. Oranges are very abundant and very fine, and
our tents have been actually buried in them and all the other fruits
and vegetables which the kind people of Jhânsî have poured in upon
us. The city of Jhânsî contains about sixty thousand inhabitants, and
is celebrated for its manufacture of carpets.[11] There are some very
beautiful temples in the city, all built by Gosâins, one [_sic_] of
the priests of Siva who here engage in trade, and accumulate much
wealth.[12] The family of the chief do not build tombs; and that now
raised over the place where the late prince was buried is dedicated
as a temple to Siva, and was made merely with a view to secure the
place from all danger of profanation.[13]
The face of the country beyond the influence of the tanks is neither
rich nor interesting. The cultivation seemed scanty and the
population thin, owing to the irremediable sterility of soil, from
the poverty of the primitive rock from whose detritus it is chiefly
formed. Raghunâth Râo told me that the wish of the people in the
castle to adopt a child as the successor to his nephew arose from the
desire to escape the scrutiny into the past accounts of disbursements
which he might be likely to order. I told him that I had myself no
doubt that he would be declared the Râjâ, and urged him to turn all
his thoughts to the future, and to allow no inquiries to be made into
the past, with a view to gratify either his own resentment, or that
of others; that the Rajas of Jhânsî had hitherto been served by the
most respectable, able, and honourable men in the country, while the
other chiefs of Bundêlkhand could get no man of this class to do
their work for them--that this was the only court in Bundêlkhand in
which such men could be seen, simply because it was the only one in
which they could feel themselves secure--while other chiefs
confiscated the property of ministers who had served them with
fidelity, on the pretence of embezzlement; the wealth thus acquired,
however, soon disappearing, and its possessors being obliged either
to conceal it or go out of the country to enjoy it. Such rulers thus
found their courts and capitals deprived of all those men of wealth
and respectability who adorned the courts of princes in other
countries, and embellished, not merely their capitals, but the face
of their dominions in general with their chateaus and other works of
ornament and utility. Much more of this sort passed between us, and
seemed to make an impression upon him; for he promised to do all that
I had recommended to him. Poor man! he can have but a short and
miserable existence, for that dreadful disease, the leprosy, is
making sad inroads in his System already.[14] His uncle, Raghunâth
Râo, was afflicted with it; and, having understood from the priests
that by _drowning_ himself in the Ganges (taking the 'samâdh'), he
should remove all traces of it from his family, he went to Benares,
and there drowned himself, some twenty years ago. He had no children,
and is said to have been the first of his family in whom the disease
showed itself.[15]
Notes:
1. December, 1835.
2. Now the head-quarters of the British district of the same name,
and also of the Indian Midland Railway. Since the opening of this
railway and the restoration of the Gwâlior fort to Sindhia in 1886,
the importance of Jhânsî, both civil and military, has much
increased. The native town was given up by Sindhia in exchange for
the Gwâlior stronghold.
3. This chief is called Râjâ Râo Râmchand in the _N.W.P. Gazetteer_,
1st ed. He died on August 20, 1835. His administration had been weak,
and his finances were left in great disorder. Under his successor the
disorder of the administration became still greater.
4. Dowagers in Indian princely families are frequently involved in
such intrigues and plots. The editor could specify instances in his
personal experience. Compare Chapter 34, _post_.
5. An adopted son passes completely out of the family of his natural,
into that of his adoptive, father, all his rights and duties as a son
being at the same time transferred. In this case, the adoption had
not really taken place, and the lad's duty to his living natural
father remained unaffected.
6. This statement will not apply to those districts in the United
Provinces where elephants are numerous and often kept by gentry of no
great rank or wealth, A Râjâ, of course, always likes to have a few
mounted men clattering behind him, if possible.
7. The 'prâyaschit' is an expiating atonement by which the person
humbles himself in public. It is often imposed for crimes committed
in a _former birth_, as indicated by inflictions suffered in this.
[W. H. S.] The practical working of Hindoo caste rules is often
frightfully cruel. The victims of these rules in the case described
by the author were a boy ten years old, and his child-wife of still
more tender years. Yet all the penalties, including rigorous fasts,
would be mercilessly exacted from these innocent children. Leprosy
and childlessness are among the afflictions supposed to prove the
sinfulness of the sufferer in some former birth, perhaps thousands of
years ago.
8. The poor young widow died of grief some months after my visit; her
spirits never rallied after the death of her husband, and she never
ceased to regret that she had not burned herself with his remains.
The people of Jhânsî generally believe that the prince's mother
brought about his death by (_dînâî_) slow poison, and I am afraid
that that was the impression on the mind of the poor widow. The
minister, who was entirely on her side, and a most worthy and able
man, was quite satisfied that this suspicion was without any
foundation whatever in truth. [W. H. S.]
9. Considering the fact that, 'till the final decision, the widow of
the late chief was to be considered the sovereign', it would be
difficult to justify the anthor's decision. The reigning sovereign
was clearly entitled to the first visit. Questions of precedence,
salutes, and etiquette are as the very breath of their nostrils to
the Indian nobility.
10. The leaf of _Piper betel_, handed to guests at ceremonial
entertainments, along with the nut of _Areca catechu_, made up in a
packet of gold or silver leaf.
11. This estimate of the population was probably excessive. The
population in 1891, including the cantonments, was 53,779, and in
1911, 70,208. The fort of Gwâlior and the cantonment of Morâr were
surrendered by the Government of India to Sindhia in exchange for the
fort and town of Jhânsî on March 10, 1886. Sindhia also relinquished
fifty-eight villages in exchange for thirty given up by the
Government of India, the difference in value being adjusted by cash
payments. The arrangements were finally sanctioned by Lord Dufferin
on June 13, 1888.
12. These buildings are both tombs and temples. The Gosâins of Jhânsî
do not burn, but bury their dead; and over the grave those who can
afford to do so raise a handsome temple, and dedicate it to Siva. [W.
H. S.] The custom of burial is not peculiar to the Saiva Gosâins of
Jhânsî. It is the ordinary practice of Gosâins throughout India. Many
of the Gosâins are devoted to the worship of Vishnu. Burial of the
dead is practised by a considerable number of the Hindoo castes of
the artisan grade, and by some divisions of the sweeper caste. See
Crooke, 'Primitive Rites of Disposal of the Dead' (_J. Anthrop.
Institute_, vol. xxix, N.S., vol. ii (1900), pp. 271-92).
13. This tact lends some support to W. Simpson's theory that the
Hindoo temple is derived from a sepulchral structure.
14. This chief died of leprosy in May, 1838. [W. H. S.]
15. Raghunâth Râo was the first of his family invested by the Peshwâ
with the government of the Jhânsî territory, which he had acquired
from the Bundêlkhand chiefs. He went to Benares in 1795 to drown
himself, leaving his government to his third brother, Sheorâm Bhâo,
as his next brother, Lachchhman Râo, was dead, and his sons were
considered incapable. Sheorâm Bhâo died in 1815, and his eldest son,
Krishan Râo, had died four years before him, in 1811, leaving one
son, the late Râjâ, and two daughters. This was a noble sacrifice to
what he had been taught by his spiritual teachers to consider as a
duty towards his family; and we must admire the man while we condemn
the religion and the priests. There is no country in the world where
parents are more reverenced than in India, or where they more readily
make sacrifices of all sorts for their children, or for those they
consider as such. We succeeded in [June] 1817 to all the rights of
the Peshwâ in Bundêlkhand, and, with great generosity, converted the
viceroys of Jhânsî and Jâlaun into independent sovereigns of
hereditary principalities, yielding each ten lakhs of rupees. [W. H.
S.] The statement in the note that Raghunâth Râo I 'went to Benares
in 1795 to drown himself' is inconsistent with the statement in the
text that this event happened 'some twenty years ago'. The word
'twenty' is evidently a mistake for 'forty'. The _N. W. P.
Gazetteer_, 1st ed., names several persons who governed Jhânsî on
behalf of the Peshwâ between 1742 and 1770, in which latter year
Raghunâth Râo I received charge. According to the same authority,
Sheo (Shio) Râm Bhâo is called 'Sheo Bhâo Hari, better known as Sheo
Râo Bhâo', and is said to have succeeded Raghunâth Râo I in 1794, and
to have died in 1814, not 1816. A few words may here be added to
complete the history. The leper Raghunâth Râo II, whose claim the
author strangely favoured, was declared Râjâ, and died, as already
noted, in May, 1838, 'his brief period of rule being rendered unquiet
by the opposition made to him, professedly on the ground of his being
a leper'. His revenues fell from twelve lâkhs (£120,000) to three
lâkhs of rupees (£30,000) a year. On his death in 1838, the
succession was again contested by four claimants. Pending inquiry
into the merits of their claims, the Governor-General's Agent assumed
the administration. Ultimately, Gangâdhar Râo, younger brother of the
leper, was appointed Râjâ. The disorder in the state rendered
administration by British officers necessary as a temporary measure,
and Gangâdhar Râo did not obtain power until 1842. His rule was, on
the whole, good. He died childless in November, 1853, and Lord
Dalhousie, applying the doctrine of lapse, annexed the estate in
1854, granting a pension of five thousand rupees, or about five
hundred pounds, monthly to Lacchhmî Bâî, Gangâdhar Râo's widow, who
also succeeded to personal property worth about one hundred thousand
pounds. She resented the refusal of permission to adopt a son, and
the consequent annexation of the state, and was further deeply
offended by several acts of the English Administration, above all by
the permission of cow-slaughter. Accordingly, when the Mutiny broke
out, she quickly joined the rebels. On the 7th and 8th June, 1857,
all the Europeans in Jhânsî, men, women, and children, to the number
of about seventy persons, were cruelly murdered by her orders, or
with her sanction. On the 9th June her authority was proclaimed. In
the prolonged fighting which ensued, she placed herself at the head
of her troops, whom she led with great gallantry. In June, 1858,
after a year's bloodstained reign, she was killed in battle. By
November, 1858, the country was pacified.
CHAPTER 30
Haunted Villages.
On the 16th[1] we came on nine miles to Amabâi, the frontier village
of the Jhânsî territory, bordering upon Datiyâ,[2] where I had to
receive the farewell visits of many members of the Jhânsî parties,
who came on to have a quiet opportunity to assure me that, whatever
may be the final order of the Supreme Government, they will do their
best for the good of the people and the state; for I have always
considered Jhânsî among the native states of Bundêlkhand as a kind of
oasis in the desert, the only one in which a man can accumulate
property with the confidence of being permitted by its rulers freely
to display and enjoy it. I had also to receive the visit of
messengers from the Râjâ of Datiyâ, at whose capital we were to
encamp the next day, and, finally, to take leave of my amiable little
friend the Sarîmant, who here left me on his return to Sâgar, with a
heavy heart I really believe.
We talked of the common belief among the agricultural classes of
villages being haunted by the spirits of ancient proprietors whom it
was thought necessary to propitiate. 'He knew', he said, 'many
instances where these spirits were so very _froward_ that the present
heads of villages which they haunted, and the members of their little
communities, found it almost impossible to keep them in good humour;
and their cattle and children were, in consequence, always liable to
serious accidents of one kind or another. Sometimes they were bitten
by snakes, sometimes became possessed by devils, and, at others, were
thrown down and beaten most unmercifully. Any person who falls down
in an epileptic fit is supposed to be thrown down by a ghost, or
possessed by a devil.[3] They feel little of our mysterious dread of
ghosts; a sound _drubbing_ is what they dread from them, and he who
hurts himself in one of the fits is considered to have got it. 'As
for himself, whenever he found any one of the villages upon his
estate haunted by the spirit of an old "patêl" (village proprietor),
he always made a point of giving him a _neat little shrine_, and
having it well endowed and attended, to keep him in good humour; this
he thought was a duty that every landlord owed to his tenants.'
Râmchand, the pundit, said that 'villages which had been held by old
Gond (mountaineer) proprietors were more liable than any other to
those kinds of visitations; that it was easy to say what village was
and was not haunted, but often exceedingly difficult to discover to
whom the ghost belonged. This once discovered, his nearest surviving
relation was, of course, expected to take steps to put him to rest;
but', said he, 'it is wrong to suppose that the ghost of an old
proprietor must be always doing mischief--he is often the best friend
of the cultivators, and of the present proprietor too, if he treats
him with proper respect; for he will not allow the people of any
other village to encroach upon their boundaries with impunity, and
they will be saved all the expense and annoyance of a reference to
the "adâlat" (judicial tribunals) for the settlement of boundary
disputes. It will not cost much to conciliate these spirits, and the
money is generally well laid out.'
Several anecdotes were told me in illustration; and all that I could
urge against the probability or possibility of such Visitation
appeared to them very inconclusive and unsatisfactory. They mentioned
the case of the family of village proprietors in the Sâgar district,
who had for several generations, at every new settlement, insisted
upon having the name of the spirit of the old proprietor inserted in
the lease instead of their own, and thereby secured his good graces
on all occasions. Mr. Fraser had before mentioned this case to me. In
August, 1834, while engaged in the settlement of the land revenue of
the Sâgar district for twenty years, he was about to deliver the
lease of the estate made out in due form to the head of the family, a
very honest and respectable old gentleman, when he asked him
respectfully in whose name it had been made out. 'In yours, to be
sure; have you not renewed your lease for twenty years?' The old man,
in a state of great alarm, begged him to have it altered immediately,
or he and his family would all be destroyed--that the spirit of the
ancient proprietor presided over the village community and its
interests, and that all affairs of importance were transacted is his
name. 'He is', said the old man, 'a very jealous spirit, and will not
admit of any living man being considered for a moment as a proprietor
or joint proprietor of the estate. It has been held by me and my
ancestors immediately under Government for many generations; but the
lease deeds have always been made out in his name, and ours have been
inserted merely as his managers or bailiffs--were this good old rule,
under which we have so long prospered, to be now infringed, we should
all perish under his anger.' Mr. Fraser found, upon inquiring, that
this had really been the case; and, to relieve the old man and his
family from their fears, he had the papers made out afresh, and the
_ghost_ inserted as the proprietor. The modes of flattering and
propitiating these beings, natural and supernatural, who are supposed
to have the power to do mischief, are endless.[4]
While I was in charge of the district of Narsinghpur, in the valley
of the Nerbudda, in 1823, a cultivator of the village of Bêdû, about
twelve miles distant from my court, was one day engaged in the
cultivation of his field on the border of the village of Barkharâ,
which was supposed to be haunted by the spirit of an old proprietor,
whose temper was so froward and violent that the lands could hardly
be let for anything, for hardly any man would venture to cultivate
them lest he might unintentionally incur his ghostship's displeasure.
The poor cultivator, after begging his pardon in secret, ventured to
drive his plough a few yards beyond the proper line of his boundary,
and thus add half an acre of Barkharâ to his own little tenement,
which was situated in Bêdû. That very night his only son was bitten
by a snake, and his two bullocks were seized with the murrain. In
terror he went of to the village temple, confessed his sin, and
vowed, not only to restore the half-acre of land to the village of
Barkharâ, but to build a very handsome shrine upon the spot as a
perpetual sign of his repentance. The boy and the bullocks all three
recovered, and the shrine was built; and is, I believe, still to be
seen as the boundary mark.
The fact was that the village stood upon an elevated piece of ground
rising out of a moist plain, and a colony of snakes had taken up
their abode in it. The bites of these snakes had on many occasions
proved fatal, and such accidents were all attributed to the anger of
a spirit which was supposed to haunt the village. At one time, under
the former government, no one would take a lease of the village on
any terms, and it had become almost entirely deserted, though the
soil was the finest in the whole district. With a view to remove the
whole prejudices of the people, the governor, Goroba Pundit, took the
lease himself at the rent of one thousand rupees a year; and, in the
month of June, went from his residence, twelve miles, with ten of his
own ploughs to superintend the commencement of so _perilous_ an
undertaking.
On reaching the middle of the village, situated on the top of the
little hill, he alighted from his horse, sat down upon a carpet that
had been spread for him under a large and beautiful banyan-tree, and
began to refresh himself with a pipe before going to work in the
fields. As he quaffed his hookah, and railed at the follies of the
men, 'whose absurd superstitions had made them desert so beautiful a
village with so noble a tree in its centre', his eyes fell upon an
enormous black snake, which had coiled round one of its branches
immediately over his head, and seemed as if resolved at once to
pounce down and punish him for his blasphemy. He gave his pipe to his
attendant, mounted his horse, from which the saddle had not yet been
taken, and never pulled rein till he got home. Nothing could ever
induce him to visit this village again, though he was afterwards
employed under me as a native collector; and he has often told me
that he verily believed this was the spirit of the old landlord that
he had unhappily neglected to propitiate before taking possession.
My predecessor in the civil charge of that district, the late Mr.
Lindsay of the Bengal Civil Service, again tried to remove the
prejudices of the people against the occupation and cultivation of
this fine village. It had never been measured, and all the revenue
officers, backed by all the farmers and cultivators of the
neighbourhood, declared that the spirit of the old proprietor would
never allow it to be so. Mr. Lindsay was a good geometrician, and had
long been in the habit of superintending his revenue surveys himself,
and on this occasion be thought himself particularly called upon to
do so. A new measuring cord was made for the occasion, and, with fear
and trembling, all his officers attended him to the first field; but
in measuring it the rope, by some accident, broke. Poor Lindsay was
that morning taken ill and obliged to return to Narsinghpur, where he
died soon after from fever. No man was ever more beloved by all
classes of the people of his district than he was; and I believe
there was not one person among them who did not believe him to have
fallen a victim to the resentment of the spirit of the old
proprietor. When I went to the village some years afterwards, the
people in the neighbourhood all declared to me that they saw the cord
with which he was measuring fly into a thousand pieces the moment the
men attempted to straighten it over the first field.[5]
A very respectable old gentleman from the Concan, or Malabar
coast,[6] told me one day that every man there protects his field of
corn and his fruit-tree by dedicating it to one or other of the
spirits which there abound, or confiding it to his guardianship. He
sticks up something in the field, or ties on something to the tree,
in the name of the said spirit, who from that moment feels himself
responsible for its safe keeping. If any one, without permission from
the proprietor, presumes to take either an ear of corn from the
field, or fruit from the tree, he is sure to be killed outright, or
made extremely ill. 'No other protection is required', said the old
gentleman, 'for our fields and fruit-trees in that direction, though
whole armies should have to march through them.' I once saw a man
come to the proprietor of a jack-tree,[7] embrace his feet, and in
the most piteous manner implore his protection. He asked what was the
matter. 'I took', said the man, 'a jack from your tree yonder three
days ago, as I passed at night; and I have been suffering dreadful
agony in my stomach ever since. The spirit of the tree is upon me,
and you only can pacify him.' The proprietor took up a bit of cow-
dung, moistened it, and made a mark with it upon the man's forehead,
_in the name of the spirit_, and put some of it into the knot of hair
on the top of his head. He had no sooner done this than the man's
pains all left him, and he went off, vowing never again to give
similar cause of offence to one of these guardian spirits. 'Men',
said my old friend, 'do not die there in the same regulated spirit,
with their thoughts directed exclusively towards God, as in other
parts; and whether a man's spirit is to haunt the world or not after
his death all depends on that.'
Notes:
1. December, 1835.
2. Datiyâ (Datia, Dutteeah) is a small state, with an area of about
911 square miles, and a cash revenue of about four lâkhs of rupees.
On the east it touches the Jhânsî district, but in all other
directions it is enclosed by the territories of Sindhia, the Maharaja
of Gwâlior. The principality was separated from Orchhâ by a family
partition in the seventeenth century. The first treaty between the
Râjâ and the British Government was concluded on the 15th March,
1804.
3. The belief that epileptic patients are possessed by devils is, of
course, in no wise peculiar to India. It is almost universal.
Professor Lombroso discusses the belief in diabolical possession in
chap. 4 of _The Man of Genius_ (London ed., 1891).
4. 'The educated European of the nineteenth century cannot realize
the dread in which the Hindoo stands of devils. They haunt his paths
from the cradle to the grave. The Tamil proverb in fact says, "The
devil who seizes yon in the cradle, goes with you to the funeral
pile".' The fear and worship of ghosts, demons, and devils are
universal throughout India, and the rites practised are often
comical. The ghost of a bibulous European official with a hot temper,
who died at Muzaffarnagar, in the United Provinces, many years ago,
was propitiated by offerings of beer and whisky at 'his tomb. Much
information on the subject is collected in the articles 'Demon',
'Devils', 'Dehwâr', and 'Deified Warriors' in Balfour, _Cyclopaedia
of India_ (3rd ed.). Almost every number of Mr. Crooke's periodical
_North Indian Notes and Queries_ (Allahabad: Pioneer Press; London:
A. Constable & Co., 5 vols., from 1891-2 to 1895-6) gave fresh
instances of the oddities of demon-worship.
5. The officials of the native Governments were content to use either
a rope or a bamboo for field measurements, and these primitive
instruments continued to satisfy the early British officers. For many
years past a proper chain has been always employed for revenue
surveys.
6. 'The author uses the term 'Concan' (Konkan) in a wide sense, so as
to cover all the territory between the Western Ghâts and the sea,
including Malabar in the south. The term is often used in a more
restricted sense to mean Bombay and certain other districts, to the
north of Malabar.
7. _Artocarpus integrifolius_. The jack fruit attains an enormous
size, and sometimes weighs fifty or sixty pounds. Indians delight in
it, but to most Europeans it is extremely offensive.
CHAPTER 31
Interview with the Râjâ of Datiyâ--Fiscal Errors of Statesmen--
Thieves and Robbers by Profession.
On the 17th[1] we came to Datiyâ, nine miles over a dry and poor
soil, thinly, and only partially, covering a bed of brown and grey
syenite, with veins of quartz and feldspar, and here and there dykes
of basalt, and a few boulders scattered over the surface. The old
Râjâ, Parîchhit,[2] on one elephant, and his cousin, Dalîp Singh,
upon a second, and several of their relations upon others, all
splendidly caparisoned, came out two miles to meet us, with a very
large and splendid _cortège_. My wife, as usual, had gone on in her
palankeen very early, to avoid the crowd and dust of this 'istikbâl',
or meeting; and my little boy, Henry, went on at the same time in the
palankeen, having got a slight fever from too much exposure to the
sun in our slow and stately entrance into Jhânsî. There were more men
in steel chain armour in this _cortège_ than in that of Jhânsî; and,
though the elephants were not quite so fine, they were just as
numerous, while the crowd of foot attendants was still greater. They
were in fancy dresses, individually handsome, and collectively
picturesque; though, being all soldiers, not quite pleasing to the
eye of a soldier. I remarked to the Râjâ, as we rode side by side on
our elephants, that we attached much importance to having our
soldiers all in uniform dresses, according to their corps, while he
seemed to care little about these matters. 'Yes,' said the old man,
with a smile, 'with me every man pleases himself in his dress, and I
care not what he wears, provided it is neat and clean.' They
certainly formed a body more picturesque from being allowed
individually to consult their own fancies in their dresses, for the
native taste in dress is generally very good. Our three elephants
came on abreast, and the Râjâ and I conversed as freely as men in
such situations can converse. He is a stout, cheerful old gentleman,
as careless apparently about his own dress as about that of his
soldiers, and a much more sensible and agreeable person than I
expected; and I was sorry to learn from him that he had for twelve
years been suffering from an attack of sciatica on one side, which
had deprived him of the use of one of his legs. I was obliged to
consent to halt the next day that I might hunt in his preserve
(_ramnâ_) in the morning, and return his visit in the evening. In the
Râjâ's cortege there were several men mounted on excellent horses,
who carried guitars, and played upon them, and sang in a very
agreeable style, I had never before seen or heard of such a band, and
was both surprised and pleased.
The great part of the wheat, gram,[3] and other exportable land
produce which the people consume, as far as we have yet come, is
drawn from our Nerbudda districts, and those of Mâlwa which border
upon them; and, _par conséquent_, the price has been rapidly
increasing as we recede from them in our advance northward. Were the
soil of those Nerbudda districts, situated as they are at such a
distance from any great market for their agricultural products, as
bad as it is in the parts of Bundêlkhand that I came over, no net
surplus revenue could possibly be drawn from them in the present
state of arts and industry. The high prices paid here for land
produce, arising from the necessity of drawing a great part of what
is consumed from such distant lands, enables the Râjâs of these
Bundêlkhand states to draw the large revenue they do. These chiefs
expend the whole of their revenue in the maintenance of public
establishments of one kind or other; and, as the essential articles
of subsistence, wheat and gram, &c., which are produced in their own
districts, or those immediately around them, are not sufficient for
the supply of these establishments, they must draw them from distant
territories. All this produce is brought on the backs of bullocks,
because there is no road from the districts whence they obtain it,
over which a wheeled carriage can be drawn with safety; and, as this
mode of transit is very expensive, the price of the produce, when it
reaches the capitals, around which these local establishments are
concentrated, becomes very high. They must pay a price equal to the
collective cost of purchasing and bringing this substance from the
most distant districts, to which they are at any time obliged to have
recourse for a supply, or they will not be supplied; and, as there
cannot be two prices for the same thing in the same market, the wheat
and gram produced in the neighbourhood of one of these Bundêlkhand
capitals fetch as high a price there as that brought from the most
remote districts on the banks of the Nerbudda river; while it costs
comparatively nothing to bring it from the former lands to the
markets. Such lands, in consequence, yield a rate of rent much
greater compared with their natural powers of fertility than those of
the remotest districts whence produce is drawn for these markets or
capitals; and, as all the lands are the property of the Râjâs, they
drew all those rents as revenue.[4]
Were we to take this revenue, which the Rajas now enjoy, in tribute
for the maintenance of public establishments concentrated at distant
seats, all these local establishments would, of course, be at once
disbanded; and all the effectual demand which they afford for the raw
agricultural produce of distant districts would cease. The price of
this produce would diminish in proportion, and with it the value of
the lands of the districts around such capitals. Hence the folly of
conquerors and paramount powers, from the days of the Greeks and
Romans down to those of Lord Hastings[5] and Sir John Malcolm,[6] who
were all bad political economists, supposing that conquered and ceded
territories could always be made to yield to a foreign state the same
amount of gross revenue as they had paid to their domestic
government, whatever their situation with reference to the markets
for their produce--whatever the state of their arts and their
industry--and whatever the character and extent of the local
establishments maintained out of it. The settlements of the land
revenue in all the territories acquired in Central India during the
Marâthâ war, which ended in 1817, were made upon the supposition that
the lands would continue to pay the same rate of rent under the new
as they had paid under the old government, uninfluenced by the
diminution of all local establishments, civil and military, to one-
tenth of what they had been; that, under the new order of things, all
the waste lands must be brought into tillage, and be able to pay as
high a rate of rent as before tillage, and, consequently, that the
aggregate available net revenue must greatly and rapidly increase.
Those who had the making of the settlements and the governing of
these new territories did not consider that the diminution of every
_establishment_ was the removal of a _market_, of an effectual demand
for land produce; and that, when all the waste lands should be
brought into tillage, the whole would deteriorate in fertility, from
the want of fallows, Under the prevailing system of agriculture,
which afforded the lands no other means of renovation from over-
cropping. The settlements of land which were made throughout our new
land acquisitions upon these fallacious assumptions of course failed.
During a series of quinquennial settlements the assessment has been
everywhere gradually reduced to about two-thirds of what it was when
our rule began, to less than one-half of what Sir John Malcolm, and
all the other local authorities, and even the worthy Marquis of
Hastings himself, under the influence of their opinions, expected it
would be. The land revenues of the native princes of Central India,
who reduced their public establishments, which the new order of
things seemed to render useless, and thereby diminished the only
markets for the raw produce of their lands, have been everywhere
falling off in the same proportion; and scarcely one of them now
draws two-thirds of the income he drew from the same lands in 1817.
There are in the valley of the Nerbudda districts that yield a great
deal more produce every year than either Orchhâ, Jhânsî, or Datiyâ;
and yet, from the want of the same domestic markets, they do not
yield one-fourth of the amount of land revenue. The lands are,
however, rated equally high to the assessment, in proportion to their
value to the farmers and cultivators. To enable them to yield a
larger revenue to Government, they require to have larger
establishments as markets for land produce. These establishments may
be either public, and paid by Government; or they may be private, as
manufactories, by which the land produce of these districts would be
consumed by people employed in investing the value of their labour in
commodities suited to the demand of distant markets, and more
valuable than land produce in proportion to their weight and bulk.[7]
These are the establishments which Government should exert itself to
introduce and foster; since the valley of the Nerbudda, in addition
to a soil exceedingly fertile, has in its whole line, from its source
to its embouchure, rich beds of coal reposing for the use of future
generations, under the sandstone of the Sâtpura and Vindhya ranges,
and beds no less rich of very fine iron. These advantages have not
yet been justly appreciated; but they will be so by and by.[8]
About half-past four in the afternoon of the day we reached Datiyâ, I
had a visit from the Râjâ, who came in his palankeen, with a very
respectable, but not very numerous or noisy, train, and he sat with
me about an hour. My large tents were both pitched parallel to each
other, about twenty paces distant, and united to each other at both
ends by separate 'kanâts', or cloth curtains. My little boy was
present, and behaved extremely well in steadily refusing, without
even a look from me, a handful of gold mohurs, which the Râjâ pressed
several times upon his acceptance. I received him at the door of my
tent, and supported him upon my arm to his chair, as he cannot walk
without some slight assistance, from the affection already mentioned
in his leg. A salute from the guns at his castle announced his
departure and return to it. After the audience, Lieutenant Thomas and
I ascended to the summit of a palace of the former Râjâs of this
state, which stands upon a high rock close inside the eastern gate of
the city, whence we could see to the west of the city a still larger
and handsomer palace standing, I asked our conductors, the Râjâ's
servants, why it was unoccupied. 'No prince these degenerate days',
said they, 'could muster a family and court worthy of such a palace--
the family and court of the largest of them would, within the walls
of such a building, feel as if they were in a desert. Such palaces
were made for princes of the older times, who were quite different
beings from those of the present day.'
From the deserted palace we went to the new garden which is preparing
for the young Râjâ, an adopted son of about ten years of age. It is
close to the southern wall of the city, and is very extensive and
well managed. The orange-trees are all grafted, and sinking under the
weight of as fine fruit as any in India. Attempting to ascend the
steps of an empty bungalow upon a raised terrace at the southern
extremity of the garden, the attendants told us respectfully that
they hoped we would take off our shoes if we wished to enter, as the
ancestor of the Râjâ by whom it was built, Râm Chand, had lately
_become a god_, and was there worshipped. The roof is of stone,
supported on carved stone pillars. On the centre pillar, upon a
ground of whitewash, is a hand or trident. This is the only sign of a
sacred character the building has yet assumed; and I found that it
owed this character of sanctity to the circumstance of some one
having vowed an offering to the manes of the builder, if he obtained
what his soul most desired; and, having obtained it, all the people
believe that those who do the same at the same place in a pure spirit
of faith will obtain what they pray for.
I made some inquiries about Hardaul Lâla, the son of Bîrsingh Deo,
who built the fort of Dhamonî, one of the ancestors of the Datiyâ
Râjâ, and found that he was as much worshipped here at his birthplace
as upon the banks of the Nerbudda as the supposed great _originator_
of the cholera morbus. There is at Datiyâ a temple dedicated to him
and much frequented; and one of the priests brought me a flower in
his name, and chanted something indicating that Hardaul Lâla was now
worshipped even so far as the British _capital of Calcutta_, I asked
the old prince what he thought of the origin of the worship of this
his ancestor; and he told me that when the cholera broke out first in
the camp of Lord Hastings, then pitched about three stages from his
capital, on the bank of the Sindh at Chândpur Sunârî, several people
recovered from the disease immediately after making votive offerings
in his name; and that he really thought the spirit of his great-
grandfather had worked some wonderful cures upon people afflicted
with this dreadful malady.[9]
The town of Datiyâ contains a population of between forty and fifty
thousand souls. The streets are narrow, for, in buildings, as in
dress, the Râjâ allows every man to consult his own inclinations.
There are, however, a great many excellent houses in Datiyâ, and the
appearance of the place is altogether very good. Many of his
feudatory chiefs reside occasionally in the city, and have all their
establishments with them, a practice which does not, I believe,
prevail anywhere else among these Bundêlkhand chiefs, and this makes
the capital much larger, handsomer, and more populous than that of
Tehrî. This indicates more of mutual confidence between the chief and
his vassals, and accords well with the character they bear in the
surrounding countries. Some of the houses occupied by these barons
are very pretty. They spend the revenue of their distant estates in
adorning them, and embellishing the capital, which they certainly
could not have ventured to do under the late Râjâs of Tehrî, and may
not possibly be able to do under the future Rajas of Datiyâ. The
present minister of Datiyâ, Ganêsh, is a very great knave, and
encourages the residence upon his master's estate of all kinds of
thieves and robbers, who bring back from distant districts every
season vast quantities of booty, which they share with him. The chief
himself is a mild old gentleman, who would not suffer violence to be
offered to any of his nobles, though he would not, perhaps, quarrel
with his minister for getting him a little addition to his revenue
from without, by affording a sanctuary to such kind of people. As in
Tehrî, so here, the pickpockets constitute the entire population of
several villages, and carry their depredations northward to the banks
of the Indus, and southward to Bombay and Madras.[10] But colonies of
thieves and robbers like these abound no less in our own territories
than in those of native states. There are more than a thousand
families of them in the districts of Muzaffarnagar, Sahâranpur, and
Meerut in the Upper Doâb,[11] all well enough known to the local
authorities, who can do nothing with them.
They extend their depredations into remote districts, and the booty
they bring home with them they share liberally with the native police
and landholders under whose protection they live. Many landholders
and police officers make large fortunes from the share they get of
this booty. Magistrates do not molest them, because they would
despair of ever finding the proprietors of the property that might be
found upon them; and, if they could trace them, they would never be
able to persuade them to come and 'enter upon a worse sea of
troubles' in prosecuting them. These thieves and robbers of the
professional classes, who have the sagacity to avoid plundering near
home, are always just as secure in our best regulated districts as
they are in the worst native states, from the only three things which
such depredators care about--the penal laws, the odium of the society
in which they move, and the vengeance of the god they worship; and
they are always well received in the society around them, as long as
they can avoid having their neighbours annoyed by summons to give
evidence for or against them in our courts. They feel quite sure of
the goodwill of the god they worship, provided they give a fair share
of their booty to his priests; and no less secure of immunity from
penal laws, except on very rare occasions when they happen to be
taken in the tact, in a country where such laws happen to be in
force.[12]
Notes:
1. December, 1835.
2. Râjâ Parîchhit died in 1839.
3. The word gram (_Cicer arietinum_) is misprinted 'grain' in the
author's text, in this place and in many others.
4. Bundêlkhand exports to the Ganges a great quantity of cotton,
which enables it to pay for the wheat, gram, and other land produce
which it draws from distant districts, [W. H. S.] Other considerable
exports from Bundêlkhand used to be the root of the _Morinda
citrifolia_, yielding a dark red dye, and the coarse _kharwâ_ cloth,
a kind of canvas, dyed with this dye, which is known by the name of
'_ âl_'. But modern chemistry has nearly killed the trade in
vegetable dyes. The construction of railways and roads has
revolutionized the System of trade, and equalized prices.
5. Governor-General from October 4, 1813, till January 1, 1823. He
was Earl of Moira when he assumed office.
6. Sir John Malcolm was Agent to the Governor-General in Central
India from 1817 to 1822, and was appointed Governor of Bombay in
1827.
7. The construction of railways and the development of trade with
Europe have completely altered the conditions. The Nerbudda valley
can now yield a considerable revenue.
8. The iron ore no doubt is good, but the difficulties in the way of
working it profitably are so great that the author's sanguine
expectations seem unlikely to be fully realized. V. Ball, in his day
the best authority on the subject, observes, 'As will be abundantly
shown in the course of the following pages, the manufacture of iron
has, in many parts of India, been wholly crushed out of existence by
competition with English iron, while in others it is steadily
decreasing, and it seems destined to become extinct' (_Economic
Geology_ (1881), being part of the _Manual of the Geology of India_,
p. 338). Ball thought that, if improved methods of reduction should
be employed, the Chândâ ore might be worked profitably. As regards
the rest of India, with the doubtful exception of Upper Assam, he had
little hope of success. Full details of the working of the mines in
the Jabalpur, Narsinghpur, and Chândâ districts of the Central
Provinces are given in pp. 384 to 392 of the same work. See also _I.
G._ (1908), vol. x, p. 51; and _The Oxford Survey of the British
Empire_ (Oxford, 1914), vol. ii, Asia, pp. 143, 160. A powerful
company formed at Bombay in 1907, operating at a spot on the borders
of the Central Provinces and Orissa, hopes to turn out 7,000 tons of
'steel shapes' per month.
Coal is not found below the very ancient sandstone rocks, classed by
geologists under the name of the Vindhyan Series. The principal beds
of coal are found in the great series of rocks, known collectively as
the Gondwâna System, which is supposed to range in age from the
Permian to the Upper Jurassic periods of European geologists
(_Manual_, vol. i, p. 102). This Gondwâna System includes sandstones.
A coalfield at Mohpâni, ninety-five miles west-south-west from
Jabalpur by rail, was worked from 1862 to 1904 by the Nerbudda Coal
and Iron Company; and is now worked by the G. I. P. Railway Company.
The principal coal-field of the Central Provinces for some years was
that near Warôrâ in the Chândâ district, but the amount which can be
extracted profitably is approaching exhaustion; in fact the colliery
was closed in 1906. Thick seams are known to exist to the south of
Chândâ near the Wardhâ river. See _I. G._, 1907, vol. iii, chap. iii,
p. 135; vol. x. p. 51.
9. See note to Chapter 25, _ante_, note 7.
10. 'Pickpockets' is not a suitable term.
11. The Persian word 'doâb' means the tract of land between two
rivers, which ultimately meet. The upper doâb referred to in the text
lies between the Ganges and the Jumna.
12. These 'colonies of thieves and robbers' are still the despair of
the Indian administrator. They are known to Anglo-Indian law as
'criminal tribes', and a special Act has been passed for their
regulation. The principle of that Act is police supervision,
exercised by means of visits of inspection, and the issue of
passports. The Act has been applied from time to time to various
tribes, but has in every case failed. In 1891, Sir Auckland Colvin,
then Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces, adopted the
strong measure of suddenly capturing many hundreds of Sânsias, a
troublesome criminal tribe, in the Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, and Alîgarh
Districts. Some of the prisoners were sent to a special jail, or
reformatory, called a 'settlement', at Sultânpur in Oudh, and the
others were drafted off to various landlords' estates. These latter
were supposed to devote themselves to agriculture. The editor, as
Magistrate of Muzaffarnagar, effected the capture of more than seven
hundred Sânsias in that district, and dispatched them in accordance
with orders. As most people expected, the agricultural pupils
promptly absconded. Multitudes of Sânsias in the Panjâb and elsewhere
remained unaffected by the raid, which could not have any permanent
effect. The milder expedient of settling and nursing a large colony,
organized in villages, of another criminal tribe, the Bâwarias
(Boureahs), was also tried many years ago in the same district of
Muzaffarnagar. The people settled readily enough, and reclaimed a
considerable area of waste land, but were not in the least degree
reformed. At the beginning of the cold season, in October or
November, most of the able-bodied men annually leave the villages,
and remain absent on distant forays till March or April, when they
return with their booty, enjoying almost complete immunity, for the
reasons stated in the text. On one occasion some of these Bâwarias of
Muzaffarnagar stole a lâkh and a half of rupees (about £12,000 at
that time), in currency notes at Tuticorin, in the south of the
peninsula, 1,400 miles distant from their home. The number of such
criminal tribes, or castes, is very great, and the larger of these
communities, such as the Sânsias, each comprise many thousands of
members, diffused over an enormous area in several provinces. It is,
therefore, impossible to put them down, except by the use of drastic
measures such as no civilized European Government could propose or
sanction. The criminal tribes, or castes, are, to a large extent,
races; but, in many of these castes, fresh blood is constantly
introduced by the admission of outsiders, who are willing to eat with
the members of the tribe, and so become for ever incorporated in the
brotherhood. The gipsies of Europe are closely related to certain of
these Indian tribes. The official literature on the subject is of
considerable bulk. Mr. W. Crooke's small book, _An Ethnographic
Glossary_, published in 1891 (Government Press, Allahabad), is a
convenient summary of most of the facts on record concerning the
criminal and other castes of Northern India, and gives abundant
references to other publications. See also his larger work, _Castes
and Tribes of the N. W. P. and Oudh_, 4 vols. Calcutta, 1906. The
author's folio book, _Report on the Budhuk alias Bagree Decoits and
other Gang Robbers by Hereditary Profession, and on the Measures
adopted by the Government of India for their Suppression_ (Calcutta,
1849), _ante_, Bibliography No. 12, probably is the most valuable of
the original authorities on the subject, but it is rare and seldom
consulted.
CHAPTER 32
Sporting at Datiyâ--Fidelity of Followers to their Chiefs in India--
Law of Primogeniture wanting among Muhammadans.
The morning after we reached Datiyâ, I went out with Lieutenant
Thomas to shoot and hunt in the Râjâ's large preserve, and with the
_humane_ and determined resolution of killing no more game than our
camp would be likely to eat; for we were told that the deer and wild
hogs were so very numerous that we might shoot just as many as we
pleased.[l] We were posted upon two terraces, one near the gateway,
and the other in the centre of the preserve; and, after waiting here
an hour, we got each a shot at a hog. Hares we saw, and might have
shot, but we had loaded all our barrels with ball for other game. We
left the 'ramnâ', which is a quadrangle of about one hundred acres of
thick grass, shrubs, and brushwood, enclosed by a high stone wall.
There is one gate on the west side, and this is kept open during the
night, to let the game out and in. It is shut and guarded during the
day, when the animals are left to repose in the shade, except on such
occasions as the present, when the Râjâ wants to give his guests a
morning's sport. On the plains and woods outside we saw a good many
large deer, but could not manage to get near them in our own way, and
had not patience to try that of the natives, so that we came back
without killing anything, or having had any occasion to exercise our
_forbearance_. The Râjâ's people, as soon as we left them, went about
their sport after their own fashion, and brought us a fine buck
antelope after breakfast. They have a bullock trained to go about the
fields with them, led at a quick pace by a halter, with which the
sportsman guides him, as he walks along with him by the side opposite
to that facing the deer he is in pursuit of. He goes round the deer
as he grazes in the field, shortening the distance at every circle
till he comes within shot. At the signal given the bullock stands
still, and the sportsman rests his gun upon his back and fires. They
seldom miss. Others go with a fine buck and doe antelope, tame, and
trained to browse upon the fresh bushes, which are woven for the
occasion into a kind of hand-hurdle, behind which a man creeps along
over the fields towards the herd of wild ones, or sits still with his
matchlock ready, and pointed out through the leaves. The herd seeing
the male and female strangers so very busily and agreeably employed
upon their apparently inviting repast, advance to accost them, and
are shot when they get within a secure distance.[2] The hurdle was
filled with branches from the 'dhau' (_Lythrum fructuosum_) tree, of
which the jungle is for the most part composed, plucked as we went
along; and the tame antelopes, having been kept long fasting for the
purpose, fed eagerly upon them. We had also two pairs of falcons; but
a knowledge of the brutal manner in which these birds are fed and
taught is enough to prevent any but a _brute_ from taking much
delight in the sport they afford.[3]
The officer who conducted us was evidently much disappointed, for he
was really very anxious, as he knew his master the Râjâ was, that we
should have a good day's sport. On our way back I made him ride by my
side, and talk to me about Datiyâ, since he had been unable to show
me any sport. I got his thoughts into a train that I knew would
animate him, if he had any soul at all for poetry or poetical
recollections, as I thought he had. 'The noble works in palaces and
temples,' said he, 'which you see around you, Sir, mouldering in
ruins, were built by princes who had beaten emperors in battle, and
whose spirits still hover over and protect the place. Several times,
under the late disorders which preceded your paramount rule in
Hindustan, when hostile forces assembled around us, and threatened
our capital with destruction, lights and elephants innumerable were
seen from the tops of those battlements, passing and repassing under
the walls, ready to defend them had the enemy attempted an assault.
Whenever our soldiers endeavoured to approach near them, they
disappeared; and everybody knew that they were spirits of men like
Bîrsingh Deo and Hardaul Lâla that had come to our aid, and we never
lost confidence.' It is easy to understand the devotion of men to
their chiefs when they believe their progenitors to have been
demigods, and to have been faithfully served by their ancestors for
several generations. We neither have, nor ever can have, servants so
personally devoted to us as these men are to their chiefs, though we
have soldiers who will fight under our banners with as much courage
and fidelity. They know that their grandfathers served the
grandfathers of these chiefs, and they hope their grandchildren will
serve their grandsons. The one feels as much pride and pleasure in so
serving, as the other in being so served; and both hope that the link
which binds them may never be severed. Our servants, on the contrary,
private and public, are always in dread that some accident, some
trivial fault, or some slight offence, not to be avoided, will sever
for ever the link that binds them to their master.
The fidelity of the military classes of the people of India to their
immediate chief, or leader, whose _salt they eat_, has been always
very remarkable, and commonly bears little relation to his _moral
virtues_, or conduct to _his_ superiors. They feel that it is their
duty to serve him who feeds and protects them and their families in
all situations, and under all circumstances; and the chief feels
that, while he has a right to their services, it is his imperative
duty so to feed and protect them and their families. He may change
sides as often as he pleases, but the relations between him and his
followers remain unchanged. About the side he chooses to take in a
contest for dominion, they ask no questions, and feel no
responsibility. God has placed their destinies in dependence upon
his; and to him they cling to the last. In Mâlwa, Bhopâl, and other
parts of Central India, the Muhammadan rule could be established over
that of the Râjpût chief only by the annihilation of the entire race
of their followers.[4] In no part of the world has the devotion of
soldiers to their immediate chief been more remarkable than in India
among the Râjpûts; and in no part of the world bas the fidelity of
these chiefs to the paramount power been more unsteady, or their
devotion less to be relied upon. The laws of Muhammad, which
prescribe that the property in land be divided equally among the
sons,[5] leaves no rule for succession to territorial or political
dominion. It has been justly observed by Hume: 'The right of
primogeniture was introduced with the feudal law; an institution
which is hurtful by producing and maintaining an unequal division of
property; but it is advantageous in another respect by accustoming
the people to a preference for the eldest son, and thereby preventing
a partition or disputed succession in the monarchy.'
Among the Muhammadan princes there was no law that bound the whole
members of a family to obey the eldest son of a deceased prince.
Every son of the Emperor of Hindustan considered that he had a right
to set up his claim to the throne, vacated by the death of his
father; and, in anticipation of that death, to strengthen his claim
by negotiations and intrigues with all the territorial chiefs and
influential nobles of the empire. However _prejudicial to the
interests_ of his elder brother such measures might be, they were
never considered to be an _invasion of his rights_, because such
rights had never been established by the laws of their prophet. As
all the sons considered that they had an equal right to solicit the
support of the chiefs and nobles, so all the chiefs and nobles
considered that they could adopt the cause of whichever _son_ they
chose, without incurring the reproach of either _treason_ or
dishonour. The one who succeeded thought himself justified by the law
of self-preservation to put, not only his brothers, but all their
sons, to death; so that there was, after every new succession, an
entire _clearance_ of all the male members of the imperial family.
Aurangzêb said to his pedantic tutor, who wished to be raised to high
station on his accession to the imperial throne, 'Should not you,
instead of your flattery, have taught me something of that point so
important to a king, which is, what are the reciprocal duties of a
sovereign to his subjects, and those of the subjects to their
sovereign? And ought not you to have considered that one day I should
be obliged, with the sword, to dispute my life and the crown with my
brothers? Is not that the destiny, almost of all the sons of
Hindustan?'[6] Now that they have become pensioners of the British
Government, the members increase like white ants; and, as Malthus has
it, 'press so hard against their means of subsistence' that a great
many of them are absolutely starving, in spite of the enormous
pension the head of the family receives for their maintenance.[7]
The city of Datiyâ is surrounded by a stone wall about thirty feet
high, with its foundation on a solid rock; but it has no ditch or
glacis, and is capable of little or no defence against cannon. In the
afternoon I went, accompanied by Lieutenant Thomas, and followed by
the best _cortège_ we could muster, to return the Râjâ's visit. He
resides within the walls of the city in a large square garden,
enclosed with a high wall, and filled with fine orange-trees, at this
time bending under the weight of the most delicious fruit. The old
chief received us at the bottom of a fine flight of steps leading up
to a handsome pavilion, built upon the wall of one of the faces of
this garden. It was enclosed at the back, and in front looked into
the garden through open arcades. The floors were spread with handsome
carpets of the Jhânsî manufacture. In front of the pavilion was a
wide terrace of polished stone, extending to the top of the flight of
the steps; and, in the centre of this terrace, and directly opposite
to us as we looked into the garden, was a fine _jet d'eau_ in a large
basin of water in full play, and, with its shower of diamonds,
showing off the rich green and red of the orange-trees to the best
advantage.
The large quadrangle thus occupied is called the 'kila', or fort, and
the wall that surrounds it is thirty feet high, with a round
embattled tower at each corner. On the east face is a fine large
gateway for the entrance, with a curtain as high as the wall itself.
Inside the gate is a piece of ordnance painted red, with the largest
calibre I ever saw.[8] This is fired once a year, at the festival of
the Dasahra.[9]
Our arrival at the wall was announced by a salute from some fine
brass guns upon the bastions near the gateway. As we advanced from
the gateway up through the garden to the pavilion, we were again
serenaded by our friends with their guitars and excellent voices.
They were now on foot, and arranged along both sides of the walk that
we had to pass through. The open garden space within the walls
appeared to me to be about ten acres. It is crossed and recrossed at
right angles by numerous walks, having rows of plantain and other
fruit trees on each side; and orange, pomegranate, and other small
fruit trees to fill the space between; and anything more rich and
luxuriant one can hardly conceive. In the centre of the north and
west sides are pavilions with apartments for the family above,
behind, and on each side of the great reception room, exactly similar
to that in which we were received on the south face. The whole
formed, I think, the most delightful residence that I have seen for a
hot climate. There is, however, no doubt that the most healthy
stations in this, and every other hot climate, are those situated
upon dry, open, sandy plains, with neither shrubberies nor
basins.[10]
We were introduced to the young Râjâ, the old man's adopted son, a
lad of about ten years of age, who is to be married in February next.
He is plain in person, but has a pleasing expression of countenance;
and, if he be moulded after the old man, and not after his minister,
the country may perhaps have in him the 'lucky accident' of a good
governor.[11] I have rarely seen a finer or more prepossessing man
than the Râjâ, and all his subjects speak well of him. We had an
elephant, a horse, abundance of shawls, and other fine clothes placed
before us as presents; but I prayed the old gentleman to keep them
all for me till I returned, as I was a mere voyageur without the
means of carrying such valuable things in safety; but he would not be
satisfied till I had taken two plain hilts of swords and spears, the
manufacture of Datiyâ, and of little value, which Lieutenant Thomas
and I promised to keep for his sake. The rest of the presents were
all taken back to their places. After an hour's talk with the old man
and his ministers, attar of roses and pân were distributed, and we
took our leave to go and visit the old palace, which as yet we had
seen only from a distance. There were only two men besides the Râjâ,
his son, and ourselves, seated upon chairs. All the other principal
persons of the court sat around cross-legged on the carpet; but they
joined freely in the conversation, I was told by these courtiers how
often the young chief had, during the day, asked when he could have
the happiness of seeing me; and the old chief was told, in my
hearing, how many _good things_ I had said since I came into his
territories, all tending to his honour and my credit. This is a
species of barefaced flattery to which we are all doomed to submit in
our intercourse with these native chiefs; but still, to a man of
sense, it never ceases to be distressing and offensive; for he can
hardly ever help feeling that they must think him a mere child before
they could venture to treat him with it. This is, however, to put too
harsh a construction upon what in reality, the people mean only as
civility; and they, who can so easily consider the grandfathers of
their chiefs as gods, and worship them as such, may be suffered to
treat _us_ as heroes and sayers of good things without offence.[12]
We ascended to the summit of the old palace, and were well repaid for
the trouble by the view of an extremely rich sheet of wheat, gram,
and other spring crops, extending to the north and east, as far as
the eye could reach, from the dark belt of forest, three miles deep,
with which the Râjâ has surrounded his capital on every side as
hunting grounds. The lands comprised in this forest are, for the most
part, exceedingly poor, and water for irrigation is unattainable
within them, so that little is lost by this taste of the chief for
the sports of the field, in which, however, he cannot himself now
indulge.
On the 19th[13] we left Datiyâ, and, after emerging from the
surrounding forest, came over a fine plain covered with rich spring
crops for ten miles, till we entered among the ravines of the river
Sindh, whose banks are, like those of all rivers in this part of
India, bordered to a great distance by these deep and ugly
inequalities. Here they are almost without grass or shrubs to clothe
their hideous nakedness, and have been formed by the torrents, which,
in the season of the rains, rush from the extensive plain, as from a
wide ocean, down to the deep channel of the river in narrow streams.
These streams cut their way easily through the soft alluvial soil,
which must once have formed the bed of a vast lake.[14] On coming
through the forest, before sunrise we discovered our error of the day
before, for we found excellent deer-shooting in the long grass and
brushwood, which grow luxuriantly at some distance from the city. Had
we come out a couple of miles the day before, we might have had noble
sport, and really required the _forbearance and humanity_ to which we
had so magnanimously resolved to sacrifice our 'pride of art' as
sportsmen; for we saw many herds of the nîlgâi, antelope, and spotted
deer,[15] browsing within a few paces of us, within the long grass
and brushwood on both sides of the road. We could not stay, however,
to indulge in much sport, having a long march before us.
Notes:
1. Some readers may be shocked at the notion of the author shooting
pig, but, in Bundêlkhand, where pig-sticking, or hog-hunting, as the
older writers call it, is not practised, hog-shooting is quite
legitimate.
2. The common antelope, or black buck (_Antilope bezoartica_, or
_cervicapra_) feed in herds, sometimes numbering many hundreds, in
the open plains, especially those of black soil. Men armed with
matchlocks can scarcely get a shot except by adopting artifices
similar to those described in the text.
3. Sixteen species of hawks, belonging to several genera, are trained
in India. They are often fed by being allowed to suck the blood from
the breasts of live pigeons, and their eyes are darkened by means of
a silken thread passed through holes in the eyelids. 'Hawking is a
very dull and very cruel sport. A person must become insensible to
the sufferings of the most beautiful and most inoffensive of the
brute creation before he can feel any enjoyment in it. The cruelty
lies chiefly in the mode of feeding the hawks' (_Journey through the
Kingdom of Oude_, vol. i, p, 109). Asoka forbade the practice by the
words: 'The living must not be fed with the living' (Pillar Edict V,
_c._ 243 B.C., in V. A. Smith, _Asoka_, 2nd ed. (1909), p. 188).
4. The wording of this sentence is unfortunate, and it is not easy to
understand why the author mentioned Bhopâl. The principality of
Bhopâl was formed by Dost Mohammed Khân, an Afghân officer of
Aurangzêb, who became independent a few years after that sovereign's
death in 1707. Since that time the dynasty has always continued to be
Muhammadan. The services of Sikandar Bêgam in the Mutiny are well
known. Mâlwa is the country lying between Bundêlkhand, on the east,
and Râjputâna, on the west, and includes Bhopâl. Most of the states
in this region are now ruled by Hindoos, but the local dynasty which
ruled the kingdom of Mâlwa and Mândû from A.D. 1401 to 1531 was
Musalmân. (See Thomas, _Chronicles of the Pathan Kings of Dehli_, pp.
346-53.)
5. All near relatives succeed to a Muhammadan's estate, which is
divided, under complicated rules, into the necessary number of
shares. A son's share is double that of a daughter. As between
themselves all sons share equally.
6. Bernier's _Revolutions of the Mogul Empire_. [W. H. S.] The author
seems to have used either the London edition of 1671, entitled _The
History of the Late Revolution of the Empire of the Great Mogul_, or
one of the reprints of that edition. The anecdote referred to is
called by Bernier 'an uncommonly good story'. Aurangzêb made a long
speech, ending by dismissing the unlucky pedagogue with the words:
'Go! withdraw to thy native village. Henceforth let no man know
either who thou art, or what is become of thee.' (Bernier, _Travels
in the Mogul Empire_, pp. 154-161, ed. Constable and V. A, Smith,
1914.) Manucci repeats the story with slight variations (_Storie da
Mogor_, vol. ii, pp. 29-33).
7. Compare the forcible description of the state of the Delhi royal
family in Chapter 76, _post_. The old emperor's pension was one
hundred thousand rupees a month. The events of the Mutiny effected a
considerable clearance, though the number of persons claiming
relationship with the royal house is still large. A few of these have
taken service under the British Government, but have not
distinguished themselves.
8. The author, unfortunately, does not give the dimensions of this
piece. Rûmî Khân's gun at Bîjâpur, which was cast in the sixteenth
century at Ahmadnagar, is generally considered the largest ancient
cannon in India. It is fifteen feet long, and weighs about forty-one
tons, the calibre being two feet four inches. Like the gun at Datiyâ,
it is painted with red lead, and is worshipped by Hindoos, who are
always ready to worship every manifestation of power. Another big gun
at Bîjâpur is thirty feet in length, built up of bars bound together.
Other very large pieces exist at Gâwîlgarh in Berâr, and Bîdar in the
Nîzam's dominions. (Balfour, _Cyclopaedia_, 3rd ed., s.v. Gun,
Bîjâpur, Gawilgarh Hill Range, and Beder.)
9. The Dasahra festival, celebrated at the beginning of October,
marks the close of the rains and the commencement of the cold season.
It is observed by all classes of Hindus, but especially by Râjâs and
the military classes, for whom this festival has peculiar importance.
In the old days no prince or commander, whether his command consisted
of soldiers or robbers, ever undertook regular operations until the
Dasahra had been duly observed. All Râjâs still receive valuable
offerings on this occasion, which form an important element in their
revenue. In some places buffaloes are sacrificed by the Râjâ in
person. The soldiers worship the weapons which they hope to use
during the coming season. Among the Marâthâs the ordnance received
especial attention and worship. The ceremony of worshipping certain
leguminous trees at this festival has been noticed _ante_, Chapter 26
note 8.
10. Few Europeans nowadays could join in the author's enthusiastic
admiration of the Datiyâ garden. The arrangements seem to have been
those usual in large formal native gardens in Northern India.
11. This lad has since succeeded his adoptive father as the chief of
the Datiyâ principality. The old chief found him one day lying in the
grass, as he was shooting through one of his preserves. His elephant
was very near treading upon the infant before he saw it. He brought
home the boy, adopted him as his son, and declared him his successor,
from having no son of his own. The British Government, finding that
the people generally seemed to acquiesce in the old man's wishes,
sanctioned the measure, as the paramount power. [W. H. S.] The old
Râjâ died in 1839, and the succession of the boy, Bijai Bahâdur, thus
strangely favoured by fortune, was unsuccessfully opposed by one of
the nobles of the state. Bijai Bahâdur governed the state with
sufficient success until his death in 1857. The succession was then
again disputed, and disturbances took place which were suppressed by
an armed British force. The state is still governed by its hereditary
ruler, who has been granted the privilege of adoption (_N.W.P.
Gazetteer_, 1st ed., vol. i, p. 410, s.v. Datiyâ).
12. The fact is that all Oriental rulers thoroughly enjoy the most
outrageous flattery, and would feel defrauded if they did not get it
in abundance. Even Akbar, the greatest of them, could enjoy it, and
allow the courtly poet to say 'See Akbar, and you see God'. Indians
find it difficult to believe that European officials really dislike
attentions which are exacted by rulers of their own races.
13. December, 1835.
14. This theory is probably incorrect. See _ante_, Chapter 14, note
7, on formation of black soil.
15. Nîlgâi, or 'blue-bull', a huge, heavy antelope of bovine form,
common in India, scientifically named _Portax pictus_. By 'antelope'
the author means the common antelope, or black buck, the _Antilope
bezoartica_, or _cervicapra_ of naturalists. The spotted deer, or
'chîtal', a very handsome creature, is the _Axis maculata_ of Gray,
the _Cervus axis_ of other zoologists.
CHAPTER 33
'Bhûmiâwat.'
Though no doubt very familiar to our ancestors during the Middle
Ages, this is a thing happily but little understood in Europe at the
present day. 'Bhûmiâwat', in Bundêlkhand, signifies a war or fight
for landed inheritance, from 'bhûm', the land, earth, &c.; 'bhûmia',
a landed proprietor.
When a member of the landed aristocracy, no matter how small, has a
dispute with his ruler, he collects his followers, and levies
indiscriminate war upon his territories, plundering and burning his
towns and villages, and murdering their inhabitants till he is
invited back upon his own terms. During this war it is a point of
honour not to allow a single acre of land to be tilled upon the
estate which he has deserted, or from which he has been driven; and
he will murder any man who attempts to drive a plough in it, together
with all his family, if he can. The smallest member of this landed
aristocracy of the Hindoo military class will often cause a terrible
devastation during the interval that he is engaged in his bhûmiâwat;
for there are always vast numbers of loose characters floating upon
the surface of Indian society, ready to 'gird up their loins' and use
their sharp swords in the service of marauders of this kind, when
they cannot get employment in that of the constituted authorities of
government.
Such a marauder has generally the sympathy of nearly all the members
of his own class and clan, who are apt to think that his case may one
day be their own. He is thus looked upon as contending for the
interests of all; and, if his chief happens to be on bad terms with
other chiefs in the neighbourhood, the latter will clandestinely
support the outlaw and his cause, by giving him and his followers
shelter in the hills and jungles, and concealing their families and
stolen property in their castles. It is a maxim in India, and, in the
less settled parts of it, a very true one, that 'one Pindhâra or
robber makes a hundred'; that is, where one robber, by a series of
atrocious murders and robberies, frightens the people into non-
resistance, a hundred loose characters from among the peasantry of
the country will take advantage of the occasion, and adopt his name,
in order to plunder with the smallest possible degree of personal
risk to themselves.
Some magistrates and local rulers, under such circumstances, have
very unwisely adopted the measure of prohibiting the people from
carrying or having arms in their houses, the very thing which, above
all others, such robbers most wish; for they know, though such
magistrates and rulers do not, that it is the innocent only, and the
friends to order, who will obey the command. The robber will always
be able to conceal his arms, or keep with them out of reach of the
magistrate; and he is now relieved altogether from the salutary dread
of a shot from a door or window. He may rob at his leisure, or sit
down like a gentleman and have all that the people of the surrounding
towns and villages possess brought to him, for no man can any longer
attempt to defend himself or his family.[1] Weak governments are
obliged soon to invite back the robber on his own terms, for the
people can pay them no revenue, being prevented from cultivating
their lands, and obliged to give all they have to the robbers, or
submit to be plundered of it. Jhânsî and Jâlaun are exceedingly weak
governments, from having their territories studded with estates held
rent-free, or at a quit-rent, by Pawâr, Bundêla, and Dhandêl barons,
who have always the sympathy of the numerous chiefs and their barons
of the same class around.
In the year 1832, the Pawâr barons of the estates of Noner, Jignî,
Udgâon, and Bilharî in Jhânsî had some cause of dissatisfaction with
their chief; and this they presented to Lord William Bentinck as he
passed through the province in December. His lordship told them that
these were questions of internal administration which they must
settle among themselves, as the Supreme Government would not
interfere. They had, therefore, only one way of settling such
disputes, and that was to raise the standard of bhûmiâwat, and cry,
'To your tents, O Israel!' This they did; and, though the Jhânsî
chief had a military force of twelve thousand men, they burnt down
every town and village in the territory that did not come into their
terms; and the chief had possession of only two, Jhânsî, the capital,
and the large commercial town of Mau,[2] when the Bundêla Râjâs of
Orchhâ and Datiyâ, who had hitherto clandestinely supported the
insurgents, consented to become the arbitrators. A suspension of arms
followed, the barons got all they demanded, and the bhûmiâwat ceased.
But the Jhânsî chief, who had hitherto lent large sums to the other
chiefs in the province, was reduced to the necessity of borrowing
from them all, and from Gwâlior, and mortgaging to them a good
portion of his lands.[3]
Gwâlior is itself weak in the same way. A great portion of its lands
are held by barons of the Hindoo military classes, equally addicted
to bhûmiâwat, and one or more of them is always engaged in this kind
of indiscriminate warfare; and it must be confessed that, unless they
are always considered to be ready to engage in it, they have very
little chance of retaining their possessions on moderate terms, for
these weak governments are generally the most rapacious when they
have it in their power.
A good deal of the lands of the Muhammadan sovereign of Oudh are, in
the same manner, held by barons of the Râjpût tribe; and some of them
are almost always in the field engaged in the same kind of warfare
against their sovereign. The baron who pursues it with vigour is
almost sure to be invited back upon his own terms very soon. If his
lands are worth a hundred thousand a year, he will get them for ten;
and have this remitted for the next five years, until he is ready for
another bhûmiâwat, on the ground of the injuries sustained during the
last, from which his estate has to recover. The baron who is
peaceable and obedient soon gets rack-rented out of his estate, and
reduced to beggary.[4]
In 1818, some companies of my regiment were for several months
employed in Oudh, after a young 'bhûmiâwatî' of this kind, Sheo Ratan
Singh. He was the nephew and heir of the Râjâ of Partâbgarh,[5] who
wished to exclude him from his inheritance by the adoption of a
brother of his young bride. Sheo Ratan had a small village for his
maintenance, and said nothing to his old uncle till the governor of
the province, Ghulâm Husani[6], accepted an invitation to be present
at the ceremony of adoption. He knew that, if he acquiesced any
longer, he would lose his inheritance, and cried, 'To your tents, 0
Israel!' He got a small band of three hundred Râjpûts, with nothing
but their swords, shields, and spears, to follow him, all of the same
clan and true men. They were bivouacked in a jungle not more than
seven miles from our cantonments at Partâbgarh, when Ghulâm Husain
marched to attack them with three regiments of infantry, one of
cavalry, and two nine-pounders. He thought he should surprise them,
and contrived so that he should come upon them about daybreak. Sheo
Ratan knew all his plans. He placed one hundred and fifty of his men
in ambuscade at the entrance to the jungle, and kept the other
hundred and fifty by him in the centre. When they had got well in,
the party in ambush rushed upon the rear, while he attacked them in
front. After a short resistance, Ghulâm Husain's force took to
flight, leaving five hundred men dead on the field, and their guns
behind them. Ghulâm Husain was so ashamed of the drubbing he got that
he bribed all the news-writers[7] within twenty miles of the place to
say nothing about it in their reports to court, and he never made any
report of it himself. A detachment of my regiment passed over the
dead bodies in the course of the day, on their return to cantonments
from detached command, or we should have known nothing about it. It
is true, we heard the firing, but that we heard every day; and I have
seen from my bungalow half a dozen villages in flames, at the same
time, from this species of contest between the Râjpût landholders and
the government authorities. Our cantonments were generally full of
the women and children who had been burnt out of house and home.
In Oudh such contests generally begin with the harvests. During the
season of tillage all is quiet; but, when the crops begin to ripen,
the governor begins to rise in his demands for revenue, and the
Râjpût landholders and cultivators to sharpen their swords and
burnish their spears. One hundred of them always consider themselves
a match for one thousand of the king's troops in a fair field,
because they have all one heart and soul, while the king's troops
have many.[8]
While the Pawârs were ravaging the Jhânsî state with their bhûmiâwat,
a merchant of Sâgar had a large convoy of valuable cloths, to the
amount, I think, of forty thousand rupees,[9] intercepted by them on
its way from Mirzâpur[10] to Râjputâna. I was then at Sâgar, and
wrote off to the insurgents to say that they had mistaken one of our
subjects for one of the Jhânsî chiefs, and must release the convoy.
They did so, and not a piece of the cloth was lost. This bhûmiâwat is
supposed to have cost the Jhânsî chief above twenty lâkhs of
rupees,[11] and his subjects double that sum.
Gopâl Singh, a Bundêla, who had been in the service of the chief of
Pannâ,[12] took to bhûmiâwat in 1809, and kept a large British force
employed in pursuit through Bundêlkhand and the Sâgar territories for
three years, till he was invited back by our Government in the year
1812, by the gift of a fine estate on the banks of the Dasân river,
yielding twenty thousand rupees[13] a year, which his son now enjoys,
and which is to descend to his posterity, many of whom will, no
doubt, animated by their fortunate ancestor's example, take to the
same trade. He had been a man of no note till he took to this trade,
but by his predatory exploits he soon became celebrated throughout
India; and, when I came to the country, no other man's chivalry was
so much talked of.
A Bundêla, or other landholder of the Hindoo military class, does not
think himself, nor is he indeed thought by others, in the slightest
degree less respectable for having waged this indiscriminate war upon
the innocent and unoffending, provided he has any cause of
dissatisfaction with his liege lord; that is, provided he cannot get
his land or his appointment in his service upon his own terms,
because all others of the same class and clan feel more or less
interested in his success.
They feel that their tenure of land, or of office, is improved by the
mischief he does; because every peasant he murders, and every field
he throws out of tillage, affects their liege lord in his most tender
point, his treasury; and indisposes him to interfere with their
salaries, their privileges, or their rents. He who wages this war
goes on marrying his sisters or his daughters to the other barons or
landholders of the same clan, and receiving theirs in marriage during
the whole of his bhûmiâwat,[14] as if nothing at all extraordinary
had happened, and thereby strengthening his hand at the game he is
playing.
Umrâo Singh of Jaklôn in Chandêrî, a district of Gwâlior bordering
upon Sâgar,[15] has been at this game for more than fifteen years out
of twenty, but his alliances among the baronial families around have
not been in the slightest degree affected by it. His sons and his
grandsons have, perhaps, made better matches than they might, had the
old man been at peace with all the world, during the time that he has
been desolating one district by his atrocities, and demoralizing all
those around it by his example, and by inviting the youth to join him
occasionally in his murderous enterprises. Neither age nor sex is
respected in their attacks upon towns or villages; and no Muhammadan
can take more pride and pleasure in defacing idols--the most
monstrous idol--than a 'bhûmiâwatî' takes in maiming an innocent
peasant, who presumes to drive his plough in lands that he chooses to
put under the _ban_.
In the kingdom of Oudh, this bhûmiâwat is a kind of nursery for our
native army; for the sons of Râjpût yeomen who have been trained in
it are all exceedingly anxious to enlist in our native infantry
regiments, having no dislike to their drill or their uniform. The
same class of men in Bundêlkhand and the Gwâlior State have a great
horror of the drill and uniform of our regular infantry, and nothing
can induce them to enlist in our ranks. Both are equally brave, and
equally faithful to their salt--that is, to the person who employs
them; but the Oudh Râjpût is a much more tameable animal than the
Bundêla. In Oudh this class of people have all inherited from their
fathers a respect for our rule and a love for our service. In
Bundêlkhand they have not yet become reconciled to our service, and
they still look upon our rule as interfering a good deal too much
with their sporting propensities.[16]
Notes:
1. Since the author's time conditions have much changed. Then, and
for long afterwards, up to the Mutiny, every village throughout the
country was fall of arms, and almost every man was armed.
Consequently, in those tracts where the Mutiny of the native army was
accompanied by popular insurrection, the flame of rebellion burned
fiercely, and was subdued with difficulty. The painful experience of
1857 and 1858 proved the necessity of general disarmament, and nearly
the whole of British India has been disarmed under the provisions of
a series of Acts. Licences to have and carry ordinary arms and
ammunition are granted by the magistrates of districts. Licences to
possess artillery are granted only by the Governor-General in
Council. The improved organization of the police and of the executive
power generally renders possible the strict enforcement of the law.
Some arms are concealed, but very few of these are serviceable. With
rare exceptions, arms are now carried only for display, and knowledge
of the use of weapons has died out in most classes of the population.
The village forts have been everywhere dismantled. Robbery by armed
gangs still occurs in certain districts (_see ante_, Chapter 23, note
14), but is much less frequent than it used to be in the author's
days.
2. Many towns and villages bear the name of Mau (_auglicè_, Mhow),
which may be, as Mr. Growse suggests, a form of the Sanskrit _mahi_,
'land' or 'ground'. The town referred to in the text is the principal
town of the Jhânsî district, distinguished from its homonyms as Mau-
Rânîpur, situated about east-south-east from Jhânsî, at a distance of
forty miles from that city. Its special export used to be the
'kharwâ' cloth, dyed with 'ai' (_see ante_., Chapter 31, note 4).
3. This insurrection continued into the year 1833. 'The inhabitants
were reduced to the greatest distress, and have, even to the present
day, scarcely recovered the losses they then sustained' (_N.W.P.
Gazetteer_, vol. i (1870), p. 296).
4. See the author's _Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, passim_.
5. Partâbgarh is now a separate district in the Fyzâbâd Division of
Oudh. The chief town, also called Partâbgarh, is thirty-two miles
north of Allahabad, and still possesses a Râjâ, who, at present
(1914), is a most respectable gentleman, with no thoughts of
violence. Further details about the Partâbgarh family are given in
the _Journey_, vol. i, p. 231.
6. Transcriber's note:- The author then uses the spelling 'Husain'
consistently.
7. 'The news department is under a Superintendent-General, who has
sometimes contracted for it, as for the revenues of a district, but
more commonly holds it in _amânî_, as a manager. . . . He nominates
his subordinates, and appoints them to their several offices, taking
from each a present gratuity and a pledge for such monthly payments
as he thinks the post will enable him to make. They receive from four
to fifteen rupees a month each, and have each to pay to their
President, for distribution among his patrons or patronesses at
Court, from one hundred to five hundred rupees a month in ordinary
times. Those to whom they are accredited have to pay them, under
ordinary circumstances, certain sums monthly, to prevent their
inventing or exaggerating cases of abuse of power or neglect of duty
on their part; but, when they happen to be really guilty of great
acts of atrocity, or great neglect of duty, they are required to pay
extraordinary sums, not only to the news-writers, who are especially
accredited to them, but to all others who happen to be in the
neighbourhood at the time. There are six hundred and sixty news-
writers of this kind employed by the king, and paid monthly three
thousand one hundred and ninety-four rupees, or, on an average,
between four and five rupees each; and the sums paid by them to their
President for distribution among influential officers and Court
favourites averages [sic] above one hundred and fifty thousand rupees
a year. . . . Such are the reporters of the circumstances in all the
cases on which the sovereign and his ministers have to pass orders
every day in Oudh. . . . the European magistrate of one of our
neighbouring districts one day, before the Oudh Frontier Police was
raised, entered the Oudh territory at the head of his police in
pursuit of some robbers, who had found an asylum in one of the King's
villages. In the attempt to secure them some lives were lost: and,
apprehensive of the consequences, he sent for the official news-
writer, and _gratified_ him in the usual way. No report of the
circumstances was made to the Oudh Darbâr; and neither the King, the
President, nor the British Government ever heard anything about it'
(_Journey through the Kingdom of Oude_, vol. i, pp. 67-69). Such a
System of official news-writers was usually maintained by Asiatic
despots from the most ancient times.
8. full details of the rotten state of the king's army are given in
the _Journey through the Kingdom of Oude_.
9. Then worth £4,000, or more.
10. Mirzâpur (Mirzapore) on the Ganges, twenty-seven miles from
Benares, was, in the author's time, the principal depot for the
cotton and cloth trade of Northern India. Although the East Indian
Railway passes through the city, the construction of the railway has
diverted the bulk of the trade from Mirzâpur, which is now a
declining place. The population, which wag 70,621 in 1881, fell to
32,332 in 1911. The carpets made there are well known.
11. Then equal to £200,000, or more.
12. The Pannâ State lies between the British districts of Bândâ, in
the United Provinces, on the north, and Damoh and Jabalpur, in the
Central Provinces, on the south. The chief is a descendant of
Chhatarsâl. For description and engraving of the diamond mines see
_Economic Geology_ (1881), p. 39.
13. Then equivalent to £2,000, or more.
14. The words 'of the same clan' are inexact. The author has shown
(_ante_, Chapter 23 following [10], and Chapter 26 following [32])
that Râjpûts never marry into their own clan.
15. 'The Râjâ of Chandêrî belonged to the same family as the Orchhâ
chief. Sindhia annexed a great part of the Chandêrî State in 1811.
Chandêrî was for a time British territory, but is now again in
Sindhia's dominions. Its vicissitudes are related in _N.W.P.
Gazetteer_ (1870), vol. i, pp. 351-8.
16. In Oudh the misgovernment, anarchy, and cruel rapine, briefly
alluded to in the text, and vividly described in detail by the author
in his _Journey through the Kingdom of Oude_, lasted until the
annexation of the kingdom by Lord Dalhousie in 1856, and, after a
brief lull, were renewed during the insurrection of 1857 and 1858.
The events of those years are a curious commentary on the author's
belief that the people of Oudh entertained 'a respect for our rule
and a love for our service'. The service of the British Government is
sought because it pays, but a foreign Government must not expect
love. Respect for the British rule depends upon the strength of that
rule. Oudh still sends many recruits to the native army, though the
young men no longer enjoy the advantage of a training in 'bhûmiâwat'.
An occasional gang-robbery or bludgeon fight is the meagre modern
substitute. The Râjpûts or Thâkurs of Bundêlkhand and Gwâlior still
retain their old character for turbulence, but, of course, have less
scope for what the author calls their 'sporting propensities' than
they had in his time.
CHAPTER 34
The Suicide--Relations between Parents and Children in India.
The day before we left Datiyâ our cook had a violent dispute with his
mother, a thing of almost daily occurrence; for though a very fat and
handsome old lady, she was a very violent one. He was a quiet man,
but, unable to bear any longer the abuse she was heaping upon him, he
first took up a pitcher of water and flung it at her head. It missed
her, and he then snatched up a stick, and, for the first time in his
life, struck her. He was her only son. She quietly took up all her
things, and, walking off towards a temple, said she would leave him
for ever; and he, having passed the Rubicon, declared that he was
resolved no longer to submit to the parental tyranny which she had
hitherto exercised over him. My water carrier, however, prevailed
upon her with much difficulty to return, and take up her quarters
with him and his wife and five children in a small tent we had given
them. Maddened at the thought of a blow from her son, the old lady
about sunset swallowed a large quantity of opium; and before the
circumstance was discovered, it was too late to apply a remedy. We
were told of it about eight o'clock at night, and found her lying in
her son's arms--tried every remedy at hand, but without success, and
about midnight she died. She loved her son, and he respected her; and
yet not a day passed without their having some desperate quarrel,
generally about the orphan daughter of her brother, who lived with
them, and was to be married, as soon as the cook could save out of
his pay enough money to defray the expenses of the ceremonies. The
old woman was always reproaching him for not saving money fast
enough. This little cousin had now stolen some of the cook's tobacco
for his young assistant; and the old lady thought it right to
admonish her. The cook likewise thought it right to add his
admonitions to those of his mother; but the old lady would have her
niece abused by nobody but herself, and she flew into a violent
passion at his presuming to interfere. This led to the son's outrage,
and the mother's suicide. The son is a mild, good-tempered young man,
who bears an excellent character among his equals, and is a very good
servant. Had he been less mild it had perhaps been better; for his
mother would by degrees have given up that despotic sway over her
child, which in infancy is necessary, in youth useful, but in manhood
becomes intolerable. 'God defend us from the anger of the mild in
spirit', said an excellent judge of human nature, Muhammad, the
founder of this cook's religion;[1] and certainly the mildest tempers
are those which become the most ungovernable when roused beyond a
certain degree; and the proud spirit of the old woman could not brook
the outrage which her son, so roused, had been guilty of. From the
time that she was discovered to have taken poison till she breathed
her last she lay in the arms of the poor man, who besought her to
live, that her only son might atone for his crime, and not be a
parricide.
There is no part of the world, I believe, where parents are so much
reverenced by their sons as they are in India, in all classes of
society. This is sufficiently evinced in the desire that parents feel
to have sons. The duty of daughters is from the day of their marriage
transferred entirely to their husbands and their husbands' parents,
on whom alone devolves the duty of protecting and supporting them
through the wedded and the widowed state. The links that united them
to their parents are broken. All the reciprocity of rights and duties
which have bound together the parent and child from infancy is
considered to end with the consummation of her marriage; nor does the
stain of any subsequent female backsliding ever affect the family of
her parents; it can affect that only of her husband, who is held
alone responsible for her conduct. If a widow inherits the property
of her husband, on her death the property would go to her husband's
brother, supposing neither had any children by their husbands, in
preference to her own brother; but between the son and his parents
this reciprocity of rights and duties follows them to the grave.[2]
One is delighted to see in sons this habitual reverence for the
mother; but, as in the present case, it is too apt to occasion a
domineering spirit, which produces much mischief even in private
families, but still more in sovereign ones. A prince, when he attains
the age of manhood, and ought to take upon himself the duties of the
government, is often obliged to witness a great deal of oppression
and misrule, from his inability to persuade his widowed mother to
resign the power willingly into his hands. He often tamely submits to
see his country ruined, and his family dishonoured, as at Jhânsî,
before he can bring himself, by some act of desperate resolution, to
wrest it from her grasp.[3] In order to prevent his doing so, or to
recover the reins he has thus obtained, the mother has often been
known to poison her own son; and many a princess in India, like
Isabella of England, has, I believe, destroyed her husband, to enjoy
more freely the society of her paramour, and hold these reins during
the minority of her son.[4]
In the exercise of dominion from behind the curtain (for it is those
who live behind the curtain that seem most anxious to hold it), women
select ministers who, to secure duration to their influence, become
their paramours, or, at least, make the world believe that they are
so, to serve their own selfish purposes. The sons are tyrannized over
through youth by their mothers, who endeavour to subdue their spirit
to the yoke, which they wish to bind heavy upon their necks for life;
and they remain through manhood timid, ignorant, and altogether
unfitted for the conduct of public affairs, and for the government of
men under a despotic rule, whose essential principle is a _salutary
fear_ of the prince in all his public officers. Every unlettered
native of India is as sensible of this principle [as] Montesquieu
was; and will tell us that, in countries like India, a chief, to
govern well, must have a _smack of the devil_ ('shaitân') in him;
for, if he has not, his public servants will prey upon his innocent
and industrious subjects.[5] In India there are no universities or
public schools, in which young men might escape, as they do in
Europe, from the enervating and stultifying influence of the
zanâna.[6] The state of mental imbecility to which a youth of
naturally average powers of mind, born to territorial dominion, is in
India often reduced by a haughty and ambitious mother, would be
absolutely incredible to a man bred up in such schools. They are
often utterly unable to act, think, or speak for themselves. If they
happen, as they sometimes do, to get well informed in reading and
conversation, they remain, Hamlet-like, nervous and diffident; and,
however speculatively or _ruminatively_ wise, quite unfit for action,
or for performing their part in the great drama of life.
In my evening ramble on the bank of the river, which was flowing
against the wind and rising into waves, my mind wandered back to the
hours of infancy and boyhood when I sat with my brothers watching our
little vessels as they scudded over the ponds and streams of my
native land; and then of my poor brothers John and Louis, whose bones
now he beneath the ocean. As we advance in age the dearest scenes of
early days must necessarily become more and more associated in our
recollection with painful feelings; for they who enjoyed such scenes
with us must by degrees pass away, and be remembered with sorrow even
by those who are conscious of having fulfilled all their duties in
life towards them--but with how much more by those who can never
remember them without thinking of occasions of kindness and
assistance neglected or disregarded. Many of them have perhaps left
behind them widows and children struggling with adversity, and
soliciting from us aid which we strive in vain to give.
During my visit to the Râjâ, a person in the disguise of one of my
sipâhîs[7] went to a shop and purchased for me five-and-twenty
rupees' worth of fine Europe chintz, for which he paid in good
rupees, which were forthwith assayed by a neighbouring goldsmith. The
sipâhî put these rupees into his own purse, and laid it down, saying
that he should go and ascertain from me whether I wished to keep the
whole of the chintz or not; and, if not, he should require back the
same money--that I was to halt to-morrow, when he would return to the
shop again. Just as he was going away, however, he recollected that
he wanted a turban for himself, and requested the shopkeeper to bring
him one. They were sitting in the verandah, and the shopkeeper had to
go into his shop to bring out the turban. When he came out with it,
the sipâhî said it would not suit his purpose, and went off, leaving
the purse where it lay, cautioning the shopkeeper against changing
any of the rupees, as he should require his own identical money back
if his master rejected any of the chintz. The shopkeeper waited till
four o'clock in the afternoon of the next day without looking into
the purse.
Hearing then that I had left Datiyâ, and seeing no signs of the
sipâhî, he opened the purse, and found that the rupees were all
copper, with a thin coating of silver. The man had changed them while
he went into the shop for a turban, and substituted a purse exactly
the same in appearance. After ascertaining that the story was true,
and that the ingenious thief was not one of my followers, I insisted
upon the man's taking the money from me, in spite of a great deal of
remonstrance on the part of the Râjâ's agent, who had come on with
us.
Notes:
1. The editor has failed to trace this quotation, which may possibly
be from the _Mishkat-ul-Masâbih_ (_ante_, Chapter 5, note 10).
Compare '"There is nothing more horrible than the rebellion of a
sheep", said de Marsay' (Balzac, _Lost by a Laugh_).
2. The English doggerel expresses the opposite sentiment,
'My son's my son till he gets him a wife;
My daughter's my daughter all her life.'
3. _Ante_, chap. 29, text at [4], and before [7].
4. Edward II, A.D. 1327.
5. The principle, so bluntly enunciated by the author, is true,
though the truth may be unpalatable to people who think they know
better, and it applies with as much force to European officials as it
does to Indian princes. The 'shaitân' is more familiar in his English
dress as Satan. The editor has failed to find any such phrase in the
works of Montesquieu. In chapter 9 of Book III of _L'Esprit des Lois_
that author lays down the principle that 'il faut de la crainte dans
un gouvernement despotique; pour la vertu, elle n'y est point
nécessaire,'
6. It can no longer be said that universities do not exist, at least
in name, in India. Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Lahore, and Allahabad
are the seats of universities, and new foundations at Dacca and Patna
are promised (1914). The Indian universities, when first established,
were mere examining bodies, on the model of the University of London.
But changes, initiated by Lord Curzon, are in progress, and the
University of London is being remodelled (1914). The Indian
institutions are not frequented by young princes and nobles, and have
little influence on their education. Attempts have been made, with
partial success, to provide special boarding schools, or 'Chiefs'
Colleges', for the sons of ruling princes and native nobles. The most
notable of such institution are the colleges at Ajmêr, Râjkôt in
Kâthiâwâr, and Indore. The influence of the zanâna is invariably
directed against every proposal to remove a young nobleman from home
for the purpose of education, and obstacles of many kinds render the
task of rightly educating such a youth extraordinarily difficult and
unsatisfactory. In some cases a considerable degree of success has
been attained.
7. Armed follower. The word is more familiar in the corrupt form
'sepoy'.
CHAPTER 35
Gwâlior Plain once the Bed of a Lake--Tameness of Peacocks.
On the 19th, 20th, and 21st[1] we came on forty miles to the village
of Antrî in the Gwâlior territory, over a fine plain of rich alluvial
soil under spring crops. This plain bears manifest signs of having
been at no very remote period, like the kingdom of Bohemia, the bed
of a vast lake bounded by the ranges of sandstone hills which now
seem to skirt the horizon all round; and studded with innumerable
islands of all shapes and sizes, which now rise abruptly in all
directions out of the cultivated plain.[2] The plain is still like
the unruffled surface of a vast lake; and the rich green of the
spring crops, which cover the surface in one wide sheet unintersected
by hedges, tends to keep up the illusion, which the rivers have
little tendency to dispel; for, though they have cut their way down
immense depths to their present beds through this soft alluvial
deposit, the traveller no sooner emerges from the hideous ravines,
which disfigure their banks, than he loses all trace of them. Their
course is unmarked by trees, large shrubs, or any of the signs which
mark the course of rivers in other quarters.
The soil over the vast plain is everywhere of good quality, and
everywhere cultivated, or rather worked, for we can hardly consider a
soil cultivated which is never either irrigated or manured, or
voluntarily relieved by fallows or an alternation of crops, till it
has descended to the last stage of exhaustion. The prince rack-rents
the farmer, the farmer rack-rents the cultivator, and the cultivator
rack-rents the soil. Soon after crossing the Sindh river we enter
upon the territories of the Gwâlior chief, Sindhia.
The villages are everywhere few, and their communities very small.
The greater part of the produce goes for sale to the capital of
Gwâlior, when the money it brings is paid into the treasury in rent,
or revenue, to the chief, who distributes it in salaries among his
establishments, who again pay it for land produce to the cultivators,
farmers, and agricultural capitalists, who again pay it back into the
treasury in land revenue. No more people reside in the villages than
are absolutely necessary to the cultivation of the land, because the
chief takes all the produce beyond what is necessary for their bare
subsistence; and, out of what he takes, maintains establishments that
reside elsewhere. There is nowhere any jungle to be seen, and very
few of the villages that are scattered over the plains have any fruit
or ornamental trees left; and, when the spring crops, to which the
tillage is chiefly confined, are taken off the ground, the face of
the country must have a very naked and dreary appearance.[3] Near one
village on the road I saw some men threshing corn in a field, and
among them a peacock (which, of course, I took to be domesticated)
breakfasting very comfortably upon the grain as it flew around him. A
little farther on I saw another quietly working his way into a stack
of corn, as if he understood it to have been made for his use alone.
It was so close to me as I passed that I put out my stick to push it
off in play, and, to my surprise, it flew off in a fright at my white
face and strange dress, and was followed by the others. I found that
they were all wild, if that term can be applied to birds that live on
such excellent terms with mankind. On reaching our tents we found
several feeding in the corn-fields close around them, undisturbed by
our host of camp-followers; and were told by the villagers, who had
assembled to greet us, that they were all wild. 'Why', said they,
'should we think of _keeping_ birds that live among us on such easy
terms without being _kept_?' I asked whether they ever shot them, and
was told that they never killed or molested them, but that any one
who wished to shoot them might do so, since they had here no
religions regard for them.[4] Like the pariah dogs the peacocks seem
to disarm the people by confiding in them--their tameness is at once
the cause and the effect of their security. The members of the little
communities among whom they live on such friendly terms would not
have the heart to shoot them; and travellers either take them to be
domesticated, or are at once disarmed by their tameness.
At Antrî a sufficient quantity of salt is manufactured for the
consumption of the people of the town. The earth that contains most
salt is dug up at some distance from the town, and brought to small
reservoirs made close outside the walls. Water is here poured over
it, as over tea and coffee. Passing through the earth, it flows out
below into a small conduit, which takes it to small pits some yards'
distance, whence it is removed in buckets to small enclosed
platforms, where it is exposed to the Sun's rays, till the water
evaporates, and leaves the salt dry.[5] The want of trees over this
vast plain of fine soil from the Sindh river is quite lamentable. The
people of Antrî pointed out the place close to my tents where a
beautiful grove of mango-trees had been lately taken off to Gwâlior
for _gun-carriages_ and firewood, in spite of all the proprietor
could urge of the detriment to his own interest in this world, and to
those of his ancestors in that to which they had gone. Wherever the
army of this chief moved they invariably swept off the groves of
fruit-trees in the same reckless manner. Parts of the country, which
they merely passed through, have recovered their trees, because the
desire to propitiate the Deity, and to perpetuate their name by such
a work, will always operate among Hindoos as a sufficient incentive
to secure groves, wherever man has be made to feel that their rights
of property in the trees will be respected.[6] The lands around the
village, which had a well for irrigation, paid four times as much as
those of the same quality which had none, and were made to yield two
crops in the year. As everywhere else, so here, those lands into
which water flows from the town and can be made to stand for a time,
are esteemed the best, as this water brings down with it manures of
all kinds.[7] I had a good deal of talk with the cultivators as I
walked through the fields in the evenings; and they seemed to dwell
much upon the good faith which is observed by the farmers and
cultivators in the Honourable Company's territories, and the total
absence of it in those of Sindhia's, where no work, requiring an
outlay of capital from the land, is, in consequence, ever thought of-
-both farmers and cultivators engaging from year to year, and no
farmer ever feeling secure of his lease for more than one.
Notes:
1. December, 1835.
2. The anthor's favourite theory. See _ante_, Chapter 14 note 7,
Chapter 24 note 6, on the formation of black cotton soil. The Gwâlior
plain is covered with this soil.
3. It has a very desolate appearance. The Indian Midland Railway now
passes through Gwâlior.
4. In many parts of India, especially in Mathurâ (Mattra) on the
Jumna, and the neighbouring districts, the peacock is held strictly
sacred, and shooting one would be likely to cause a riot. Tavernier
relates a story of a rich Persian merchant being beaten to death by
the Hindoos of Gujarât for shooting a peacock. (Tavernier, _Travels_,
transl. Ball, vol. i, p. 70.) the bird is regarded as the vehicle of
the Hindoo god of war, variously called Kumâra, Skanda, or Kârtikeya.
the editor, like the author, has observed that in Bundêlkhand no
objection is raised to the shooting of peacocks by any one who cares
for such poor sport.
5. In British India the manufacture of salt can be practised only by
persons duly licensed.
6. The Revenue Settlement Regulations now in force in British India
provide liberally for the encouragement of groves, and hundred of
miles of road are annually planted with trees.
7. Sanitation did not trouble native states in those days.
CHAPTER 36
Gwâlior and its Government.
On the 22nd,[1] we came on fourteen miles to Gwâlior, over some
ranges of sandstone hills, which are seemingly continuations of the
Vindhyan range. Hills of indurated brown and red iron clay repose
upon and intervene between these ranges, with strata generally
horizontal, but occasionally bearing signs of having been shaken by
internal convulsions. These convulsions are also indicated by some
dykes of compact basalt which cross the road.[2]
Nothing can be more unprepossessing than the approach to Gwâlior; the
hills being naked, black, and ugly, with rounded tops devoid of grass
or shrubs, and the soil of the valleys a poor red dust without any
appearance of verdure or vegetation, since the few autumn crops that
lately stood upon them have been removed.[3] From Antrî to Gwâlior
there is no sign of any human habitation, save that of a miserable
police guard of four or five, who occupy a wretched hut on the side
of the road midway, and seem by their presence to render the scene
around more dreary.[4] the road is a mere footpath unimproved and
unadorned by any single work of art; and, except in this footpath,
and the small police guard, there is absolutely no single sign in all
this long march to indicate the dominion, or even the presence, of
man; and yet it is between two contiguous [_sic_] capitals, one
occupied by one of the most ancient, and the other by one of the
greatest native sovereigns of Hindustan.[5] One cannot but feel that
he approaches the capital of a dynasty of barbarian princes, who,
like Attila, would choose their places of residence, as devils choose
their pandemonia, for their ugliness, and rather reside in the dreary
wastes of Tartary than on the shores of the Bosphorus. There are
within the dominions of Sindhia seats for a capital that would not
yield to any in India in convenience, beauty, and salubrity; but, in
all these dominions, there is not, perhaps, another place so
hideously ugly as Gwâlior, or so hot and unhealthy. It has not one
redeeming quality that should recommend it to the choice of a
rational prince, particularly to one who still considers his capital
as his camp, and makes every officer of his army feel that he has as
little of permanent interest in his house as he would have in his
tent.[6]
Phûl Bâgh, or the _flower-garden_, was suggested to me as the best
place for my tents, where Sindhia had built a splendid summer-house.
As I came over this most gloomy and uninteresting march, in which the
heart of a rational man sickens, as he recollects that all the
revenues of such an enormous extent of dominion over the richest soil
and the most peaceable people in the world should have been so long
concentrated upon this point, and squandered without leaving one sign
of human art or industry, I looked forward with pleasure to a quiet
residence in the _flower-garden_, with good foliage above, and a fine
sward below, and an atmosphere free from dust, such as we find in and
around all the residences of Muhammadan princes. On reaching my tents
I found them pitched close outside the _flower-garden_, in a small
dusty plain, without a blade of grass or a shrub to hide its
deformity--just such a place as the pig-keepers occupy in the suburbs
of other towns. On one side of this little plain, and looking into
it, was the _summer-house_ of the prince, without one inch of green
sward or one small shrub before it.
Around the wretched little _flower-garden_ was a low, naked, and
shattered mud wall, such as we generally see in the suburbs thrown up
to keep out and in the pigs that usually swarm in such places--'and
the swine they crawled out, and the swine they crawled in'.[7] When I
cantered up to my tent-door, a sipâhî of my guard came up, and
reported that as the day began to dawn a gang of thieves had stolen
one of my best carpets, all the brass brackets of my tent-poles, and
the brass bell with which the sentries on duty sounded the hour; all
Lieutenant Thomas's cooking utensils, and many other things, several
of which they had found lying between the tents and the prince's
_pleasure-house_, particularly the contents of a large heavy box of
geological specimens. They had, in consequence, concluded the gang to
be lodged in the prince's pleasure-house. The guard on duty at this
place would make no answer to their inquiries, and I really believe
that they were themselves the thieves. The tents of the Râjâ of
Raghugarh, who had come to pay his respects to the Sindhia, his liege
lord, were pitched near mine. He had the day before had five horses
stolen from him, with all the plate, jewels, and valuable clothes he
possessed; and I was told that I must move forthwith from the
_flower-garden_, or cut off the tail of every horse in my camp.
Without tails they might not be stolen, with them they certainly
would. Having had sufficient proof of their dexterity, we moved our
tents to a grove near the residency, four miles from the flower-
garden and the court.[8]
As a citizen of the world I could not help thinking that it would be
an immense blessing upon a large portion of our species if an
earthquake were to swallow up this court of Gwâlior, and the army
that surrounds it. Nothing worse could possibly succeed, and
something better might. It is lamentable to think how much of evil
this court and camp inflict upon the people who are subject to them.
In January, 1828, I was passing with a party of gentlemen through the
town of Bhîlsâ, which belongs to this chief, and lies between Sâgar
and Bhopal,[9] when we found, lying and bleeding in one of the
streets, twelve men belonging to a merchant at Mirzapore, who had the
day before been wounded and plundered by a gang of robbers close
outside the walls of the town. Those who were able ran in to the
Âmil, or chief of the district, who resides in the town; and begged
him to send some horsemen after the banditti, and intercept them as
they passed over the great plains. 'Send your own people', said he,
'or hire men to send. Am I here to look after the private affairs of
merchants and travellers, or to collect the revenues of the prince?'
Neither he, nor the prince himself, nor any other officer of the
public establishments ever dreamed that it was their duty to protect
the life, property, or character of travellers, or indeed of any
other human beings, save the members of their own families. In this
pithy question the Âmil of Bhîlsâ described the nature and character
of the government. All the revenues of his immense dominions are
spent entirely in the maintenance of the court and camps of the
prince; and every officer employed beyond the boundary of the court
and camp considers his duties to be limited to the collection of the
revenue. Protected from all external enemies by our military forces,
which surround him on every side, his whole army is left to him for
purposes of parade and display; and having, according to his notions,
no use for them elsewhere, he concentrates them around his capital,
where he lives among them in the perpetual dread of mutiny and
assassination. He has nowhere any police, nor any establishment
whatever, for the protection of the life and property of his
subjects; nor has he, any more than his predecessors, ever, I
believe, for one moment thought that those from whose industry and
frugality he draws his revenues have any right whatever to expect
from him the use of such establishments in return. They have never
formed any legitimate part of the Marâthâ government, and, I fear,
never will.[10]
The misrule of such states, situated in the midst of our dominions,
is not without its use. There is, as Gibbon justly observes, 'a
strong propensity in human nature to depreciate the advantages, and
to magnify the evils, of the present times'; and, if the people had
not before their eyes such specimens of native rule to contrast with
ours, they would think more highly than they do of that of their past
Muhammadan and Hindoo sovereigns; and be much less disposed than they
are to estimate fairly the advantages of being under ours. The native
governments of the present day are fair specimens of what they have
always been--grinding military despotisms--their whole history is
that of 'Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of
thousands'; as if rulers were made merely to slay, and the ruled to
be slain. In politics, as in landscape, ''Tis distance lends
enchantment to the view', and the past might be all _couleur de rose_
in the imaginations of the people were it not represented in these
ill-governed states, where the 'lucky accident' of a good governor is
not to be expected in a century, and where the secret of the
responsibility of ministers to the people is yet undiscovered.[11]
The fortress of Gwâlior stands upon a tableland, a mile and a half
long by a quarter of a mile wide, at the north-east end of a small
insulated sandstone hill, running north-east and south-west, and
rising at both ends about three hundred and forty feet above the
level of the plain below. At the base is a kind of glacis, which runs
up at an angle of forty-five from the plain to within fifty, and, in
some places, within twenty feet of the foot of the wall.
The interval is the perpendicular face of the horizontal strata of
the sandstone rock. The glacis is formed of a bed of basalt in all
stages of decomposition, with which this, like the other sandstone
hills of Central India, was once covered, and of the debris and
chippings of the rocks above. The walls are raised a certain uniform
height all round upon the verge of the precipice, and being thus made
to correspond with the edge of the rock, the line is extremely
irregular. They are rudely built of the fine sandstone of the rock on
which they stand, and have some square and some semicircular bastions
of different sizes, few of these raised above the level of the wall
itself.[12] On the eastern face of the rock, between the glacis and
foot of the wall, are cut out, in bold relief, the colossal figures
of men sitting bareheaded under canopies, on each side of a throne or
temple; and, in another place, the colossal figure of a man standing
naked, and facing outward, which I took to be that of Buddha.[l3]
The town of Gwâlior extends along the foot of the hill on one side,
and consists of a single street above a mile long. There is a very
beautiful mosque, with one end built by a Muhammad Khan, A.D. 1665,
of the white sandstone of the rock above it. It looks as fresh as if
it had not been finished a month; and struck, as I passed it, with so
noble a work, apparently new, and under such a government, I alighted
from my horse, went in, and read the inscription, which told me the
date of the building and the name of the founder. There is no stucco-
work over any part of it, nor is any required on such beautiful
materials; and the stones are all so nicely cut that cement seems to
have been considered useless. It has the usual two minarets or
towers, and over the arches and alcoves are carved, as customary,
passages from the Korân, in the beautiful Kufic characters.[14] The
court and camp of the chief extends out from the southern end of the
hill for several miles.
The whole of the hill on which the fort of Gwâlior stands had
evidently, at no very distant period, been covered by a mass of
basalt, surmounted by a crust of indurated brown and red iron clay,
with lithomarge, which often assumes the appearance of common
laterite. The boulders of basalt, which still cap some part of the
hill, and form the greater part of the glacis at the bottom, are for
the most part in a state of rapid decomposition; but some of them are
still so hard and fresh that the hammer rings upon them as upon a
bell, and their fracture is brilliantly crystalline. The basalt is
the same as that which caps the sandstone hills of the Vindhya range
throughout Mâlwâ. The sandstone hills around Gwâlior all rise in the
same abrupt manner from the plain as those through Mâlwâ generally;
and they have almost all of them the same basaltic glacis at their
base, with boulders of that rock scattered over the top, all
indicating that they were at one time buried, in the same manner
under one great mass of volcanic matter, thrown out from their
submarine craters in streams of lava, or diffused through the ocean
or lakes in ashes, and deposited in strata. The geological character
of the country about Gwâlior is very similar to that of the country
about Sâgar; and I may say the same of the Vindhya range generally,
as far as I have seen it, from Mirzapore on the Ganges to Bhopâl in
Mâlwâ--hills of sandstone rising suddenly from alluvial plain, and
capped, or bearing signs of having been capped, by basalt reposing
immediately upon it, and partly covered in its turn by beds of
indurated iron clay.[15]
The fortress of Gwâlior was celebrated for its strength under the
Hindoo sovereigns of India; but was taken by the Muhammadans after a
long siege, A.D. 1197.[16] the Hindoos regained possession, but were
again expelled by the Emperor Îltutmish, A. D. 1235.[17] the Hindoos
again got possession, and after holding it one hundred years, again
surrendered it to the forces of the Emperor Ibrâhîm, A.D. 1519.[18]
In 1543 it was surrendered up by the troops of the Emperor
Humâyûn[19] to Shêr Khân, his successful competitor for the
empire.[20] It afterwards fell into the hands of a Jât chief, the
Rânâ of Gohad,[21] from whom it was taken by the Marâthâs. While in
their possession, it was invested by our troops under the command of
Major Popham; and, on the 3rd of August, 1780, taken by escalade.[22]
The party that scaled the wall was gallantly led by a very
distinguished and most promising officer, Captain Bruce, brother of
the celebrated traveller.[23]
It was made over to us by the Rânâ of Gohad, who had been our ally in
the war. Failing in his engagement to us, he was afterwards abandoned
to the resentment of Mâdhojî Sindhia, chief of the Marâthâs.[24] In
1783, Gwâlior was invested by Mâdhojî Sindhia's troops, under the
command of one of the most extraordinary men that have ever figured
in Indian history, the justly celebrated General De Boigne.[25] After
many unsuccessful attempts to take it by escalade, he bought over
part of the garrison, and made himself master of the place. Gohad
itself was taken soon after in 1784; but the Rânâ, Chhatarpat, made
his escape. He was closely pursued, made prisoner at Karaulî, and
confined in the fortress of Gwâlior, where he died in the year
1785.[26] He left no son, and his claims upon Gohad devolved upon his
nephew, Kîrat Singh, who, at the close of our war with the Marâthâs,
got from Lord Lake, in lieu of these claims, the estate of Dholpur,
situated on the left banks of the river Chambal, which is estimated
at the annual value of three hundred thousand, or three lâkhs, of
rupees. He died this year, 1835, and has been succeeded by his son,
Bhagwant Singh, a lad of seventeen years of age.[27]
Notes:
1. December, 1835.
2. Throughout the northern edge of the trap country in Râjputâna,
Gwâlior, and Bundêlkhand, dykes are rare or wanting.' (W. T.
Blandford, in _Manual of the Geology of India_, 1st ed., Part 1, p.
328.) The dykes mentioned in the text may not have been visited by
the officers of the Geological Surrey.
3. 'Basalt generally disintegrates into a reddish soil, quite
different from _regar_ in character. This reddish soil may be seen
passing into _regar_, but, as a rule, the black soil is confined to
the flatter ground at the bottom of the valleys, or on flat hill-
tops, the brown or red soils occupying the slopes' (ibid. p. 433).
4. Johnson, in his _Journey to the Western Islands_, observes: 'Now
and then we espied a little corn-field, which served to impress more
strongly the general barrenness.' [W. H. S.] The remark referred to
the shores of Loch Ness (p. 237 of volume viii of Johnson's Works,
London, 1820).
5. By this awkward phrase the author seems to mean Lucknow, on the
east, the capital of the kingdom of Oudh, and Udaipur, to the west,
the capital of the long-descended chieftain of Mêwâr. Alternatively,
the author may possibly have referred to Agra and Gwâlior, rather
than Lucknow and Udaipur.
6. 'The new city at Gwâlior below the fortress is, like the city of
Jhânsî, known as the 'Lashkar', or camp. The old city of Gwâlior
encircles the north end of the fortress. The new city, or Lashkar,
lies to the south, more than a mile distant. In January, 1859, the
population of the two cities together amounted to 142,044 persons
(_A.S.R._, vol. ii, p. 331).
7. Only those readers who have lived in India can fully understand
the reasons why the pigs should frequent such a place, and how great
would be the horrors of encamping in it.
8. In the description of the author's encampment at Gwâlior, he fell
into a mistake, which he discovered too late for correction in his
journal. His tents were not pitched within the Phûl Bâgh, as he
supposed, but without; and seeing nothing of this place, he imagined
that the dirty and naked ground outside was actually the flower-
garden. The Phûl Bâgh, however, is a very pleasing and well-ordered
garden, although so completely secluded from observation by lofty
walls that many other travellers must have encamped on the same spot
without being aware of its existence. (_Publishers' note at end of
volume ii of original edition_. )
9. Bhîlsâ is the principal town of the Isâgarh subdivision in the
Gwâlior State. The famous Buddhist antiquities near it are described
at length in Cunningham, _The Bhîlsâ Topes, or Buddhist Monuments of
Central India_ (1854), and in Maisey, _Sânchi and its Remains. A full
Description of the Ancient Buildings, Sculptures, and Inscriptions at
Sânchi, near Bhîlsâ, in Central India_. With an Introductory Note by
Major-General Sir Alexander Cunningham, K.C.I.E. (1892). It is
surprising that so keen an observer as the author appears not to have
noticed any of the great Buddhist buildings of Central India.
10. The government of Gwâlior has improved since the author wrote.
Many reforms have been begun and more or less fully executed. In May,
1887, the vast hoard of rupees buried in pits in the fort, valued at
five millions sterling, was exhumed, and lent to the Government of
India to be usefully employed. The passive opposition of a court like
that of Gwâlior to the effectual execution of reforms is continuous
and difficult to overcome.
11. The author's description of the ordinary Asiatic government at
almost all times and in all places as 'a grinding military despotism'
is correct. Sentimental persons in both India and England are apt to
forget this weighty truth. The golden age of India, excepting,
perhaps, the Gupta period between A.D. 330 and 455, is as mythical as
that of Ireland. What Persia now is, that would India be, if she had
been left to her own devices.
12. Sir A. Cunningham was stationed at Gwâlior for five years, and
had thus an exceptionally accurate knowledge of the fortress. His
account, which corrects the text in some particulars, is as follows:-
'the great fortress of Gwâlior is situated on a precipitous, flat-
topped, and isolated hill of sandstone, which rises 300 feet above
the town at the north end, but only 274 feet at the upper gate of the
principal entrance. The hill is long and narrow; its extreme length
from north to south being one mile and three-quarters, while its
breadth varies from 600 feet opposite the main entrance to 2,800 feet
in the middle opposite the great temple. The walls are from 30 to 35
feet in height, and the rock immediately below them is steeply, but
irregularly, scarped all round the hill. The long line of battlements
which crowns the steep scarp on the east is broken only by the lofty
towers and fretted domes of the noble palace of Râjâ Mân Singh. On
the opposite side, the line of battlements is relieved by the deep
recess of the Urwâhi valley, and by the zigzag and serrated parapets
and loopholed bastions which flank the numerous gates of the two
western entrances. At the northern end, where the rock has been
quarried for ages, the jagged masses of the overhanging cliff seem
ready to fall upon the city beneath them. To the south the hill is
less lofty, but the rock has been steeply scarped, and is generally
quite inaccessible. Midway over all towers the giant form of a
massive Hindu temple, grey with the moss of ages. Altogether, the
fort of Gwâlior forms one of the most picturesque views in Northern
India' (_A.S.R._, vol. ii, p. 330).
13. The nakedness of the image in itself proves that Buddha could not
be the person represented. His statues are never nude. The Gwâlior
figures are images of some of the twenty-four great saints
(Tîrthankaras or Jinas) of the Digambara sect of the Jain religion.
Jain statues are frequently of colossal size. The largest of those at
Gwâlior is fifty-seven feet high. The Gwâlior sculptures are of late
date--the middle of the fifteenth century. The antiquities of
Gwâlior, including these sculptures, are well described in _A.S.R._,
vol. ii, pp. 330-95, plates lxxxvi to xci.
14. This mosque is the Jâmi', or cathedral, mosque 'situated at the
eastern foot of the fortress, near the Âlamgîrî Darwâza (gate). It is
a neat and favourable specimen of the later Moghal architecture. Its
beauty, however, is partly due to the fine light-coloured sandstone
of which it is built. This at once attracted the notice of Sir Wm.
Sleeman, who, &c.' (_A.S.R._, vol. ii, p. 370). This mosque is in the
old city, described as 'a crowded mass of small flat-roofed stone
houses' (ibid. p. 330).
15. The Geological Survey recognizes a special group of 'transition'
rocks between the metamorphic and the Vindhyan series under the name
of the Gwâlior area. 'The Gwâlior area is . . . only fifty miles long
from east to west, and about fifteen miles wide. It takes its name
from the city of Gwâlior, which stands upon it, surrounding the
famous fort built upon a scarped outlier of Vindhyan sandstone, which
rests upon a base of massive bedded trap belonging to the transition
period' (_Manual of Geology of India_, 1st ed., Part l, p. 56). The
writers of the manual do not notice the basaltic cap of the fort hill
described by the author, and at p. 300 use language which implies
that the hill is outside the limits of the Deccan trap. But the
author's observations seem sufficiently precise to warrant the
conclusion that he was right in believing the basaltic cap of the
Gwâlior hill to be an outlying fragment of the vast Deccan trap
sheet. The relation between laterite and lithomarge is discussed in
p. 353 of the _Manual_, and the occurrence of laterite caps on the
highest ground of the country, at two places-near Gwâlior, 'outside
of the trap area', is noticed (ibid. p. 356). These two places are at
Râipur hill, and on the Kaimûr sandstone, about two miles to the
north-west. No doubt these two hills are outliers of the Central
India spread of laterite, which has been traced as far as Siprî,
about sixty miles south of the Râipur hill (Hacket, _Geology of
Gwâlior and Vicinity_, in _Records of Geol. Survey of India_, vol.
iii, p. 41). The geology of Gwâlior is also discussed in Mallet's
paper entitled 'Sketch of the Geology of Scindia's Territories'
(_Records_, vol. viii, p. 55). Neither writer refers to the basaltic
cap of Gwâlior fort hill. For the refutation of the author's theory
of the subaqueous origin of the Deccan trap see notes Chapters 14,
note 13, and Chapter 17, note 3 _ante_.
16. In the reign of Muizz-ud-dîn, Muhammad bin Sâm, also known by the
names of Shibâb-ud-din, and Muhammad Ghorî. He struck billon coins at
the Gwâlior mint. the correct date is A.D. 1196. The Hîjrî year 592
began on the 6th Dec., A.D. 1195.
17. Shams-ud-dîn Îltutmish, 'the greatest of the Slave Kings',
reigned from A.D. 1210 to 1235 (A.H. 607-633). He besieged Gwâlior in
A.H. 629 and after eleven months' resistance captured the place in
the month Safar, A.H. 630, equivalent to Nov.-Dec. A.D. 1232. The
date given in the text is wrong. The correct name of this king is
Îltutmish (_Z.D.M.G._, vol. lxi (1907), pp. 192, 193). It is written
Altumash by the author, and Altamsh by Thomas and Cunningham. A
summary of the events of his reign, based on coins and other original
documents, is given on page 45 of Thomas, _Chronicles of the Pathân
Kings of Delhi_. Îltutmish recorded an inscription dated A.H. 630 at
Gwâlior (ibid. p. 80). This inscription was seen by Bâbur, but has
since disappeared.
18. Ibrâhîm Lodî, A.D. 1517-26. He was defeated and killed by Bâbur
at the first battle of Pânîpat, A.D. 1526. the correct date of his
capture of Gwâlior, according to Cunningham (_A.S.R._, vol. ii, p.
340), is 1518.
19. Humâyûn was son of Bâbur, and father of Akbar the Great. His
first reign lasted from A.D. 1530 to 1540; his second brief reign of
less than six months was terminated by an accident in January A.D.
1556. The correct date of the surrender of Gwâlior to Shêr Shâh was
A.D. 1542, corresponding to A.H. 949 (_A. S .R._, vol. ii, p. 393),
which year began 17th April, 1542.
20. Shêr Khan is generally known as Shêr (or Shîr) Shâh. A good
summary of his career from A.D. 1528 to his death in A.D. 1545 (A.H.
934 to 952) is given by Thomas (op. cit. p. 393). He struck coins at
Gwâlior in A.H. 950, 951, 952 (ibid. p. 403).
21. Gohad lies between Etawah (Itâwâ) and Gwâlior, twenty-eight miles
north-east of the latter. The chief, originally an obscure Jât
landholder, rose to power during the confusion of the eighteenth
century, and allied himself with the British in 1789 (Thornton,
_Gazetteer_, s.v. 'Gohad').
22. This memorable exploit was performed during Warren Hastings's war
with the Marâthâs, Sir Eyre Coote being Commander-in-Chief. Captain
Popham first stormed the fort of Lahar, a stronghold west of Kâlpî
(Calpee), and then, by a cleverly arranged escalade, captured 'with
little trouble and small loss' the Gwâlior fortress, which was
garrisoned by a thousand men, and commonly supposed to be
impregnable. 'Captain Popham was rewarded for his gallant services by
being promoted to the rank of Major' (Thornton, _The History of the
British Empire in India_, 2nd ed., 1859, p. 149). 'It is said that
the spot (for escalade) was pointed out to Popham by a cowherd, and
that the whole of the attacking party were supplied with grass shoes
to prevent them from slipping on the ledges of rock. There is a story
also that the cost of these grass shoes was deducted from Popham's
pay when he was about to leave India as a Major-General, nearly a
quarter of a century afterwards' (_A.S.R._, vol. ii, p. 340).
23. James Bruce, 'the celebrated traveller', was Consul at Algiers.
He explored Tripoli, Tunis, Syria, and Egypt, and travelled in
Abyssinia from November 1769 to December 1771. He returned to Egypt
by the Nile, arriving at Cairo in January 1773. His travels were
published in 1790. He died in 1794.
24. The Sindhia family of Gwâlior was founded by Rânojî Sindhia, a
man of humble origin, in the service of the Peshwâ. Rânojî died about
A.D. 1750, and was succeeded by one of his natural sons, Mâhâdajî
(corruptly Mahdaju, &c.) Sindhia, whose turbulent and chequered
career lasted till 1794, when he was succeeded by his grand-nephew,
Daulat Râo. The Marâthâ power under Daulat Râo was broken in 1803, by
Sir Arthur Wellesley at Assaye and Argaum, and by Lord Lake at
Laswârî. Mâhâdajî's career is treated fully by Grant Duff, _A History
of the Mahrattas_ (1826 and reprint). Mr. H. G. Keene in his little
book (_Rulers of India_, Oxford, 1892) erroneously gives the chiefs
name as 'Mâdhava Rao'. The anthor's 'Mâdhojî' also is wrong.
25. It is impossible within the limits of a note to give an account
of the extraordinary career of General De Boigne. His Indian
adventures began in 1778, and terminated in September 1796, when he
retired from Sindhia's service, and sold his private regiment of
Persian cavalry, six hundred strong, to Lord Cornwallis, on behalf of
the East India Company, for three lakhs of rupees (about £30,000). He
settled in his native town, Chambéri in Savoy, and lived, in the
enjoyment of his great wealth, and of high honours conferred by the
sovereigns of France and Italy, until 21st June, 1830. He was created
a Count, and was succeeded in the title by his son. See G. M.
Raymond, _Mémoire sur la Carrière Militaire et Politique de M. le
Général Comte de Boigne, 2ième_ ed., Chambéry, 1830. Nine chapters of
Mr. Herbert Compton's book, _A Particular Account of European
Military Adventurers of Hindustan_ (London, 1892), are devoted to De
Boigne.
26. The cession of Gohad to Sindhia, sanctioned in the year 1805,
during the brief and inglorious second term of office of Lord
Cornwallis, was effected by Sir George Barlow. The transaction is
severely censured by Thornton (_History_, p. 343) as a breach of
faith. Gwâlior was given up to Sindhia along with Gohad. In January
1844, shortly after the battle of Maharâjpur, Gwâlior was again
occupied by the forces of the Company, and the fortress (save for the
Mutiny period) continued in British occupation until the 2nd December
1885, when Lord Dufferin restored it to Sindhia in exchange for
Jhânsî. In June 1857 the Gwâlior soldiery mutinied and massacred the
Europeans, but the Maharâjâ remained throughout loyal to the English
Government.
Sir Hugh Rose recaptured the place by assault on the 28th June 1858.
In the changed circumstances of the country, and with regard to the
modern developments of the art of war, the Gwâlior fortress is now of
slight military value.
27. The territory of the Dholpur chief is about fifty-four miles long
by twenty-three broad. The town of Dholpur is nearly midway between
Agra and Gwâlior. The revenue is estimated by Thornton (1858) as
seven lâkhs, not only three lâkhs as stated by the author. It was
about eight lâkhs in 1904 (_I.G._, 1908).
CHAPTER 37
Content for Empire between the Sons of Shâh Jahân.
Under the Emperors of Delhi the fortress of Gwâlior was always
considered as an imperial State prison, in which they confined those
rivals and competitors for dominion whom they did not like to put to
a violent death. They kept a large menagerie, and other things, for
their amusement. Among the best of the princes who ended their days
in this great prison was Sulaimân Shikoh, the eldest son of the
unhappy Dârâ.[1] A narrative of the contest for empire between the
four sons of Shâh Jahân may, perhaps, prove both interesting and
instructive; and, as I shall have occasion, in the course of my
rambles, to refer to the characters who figured in it, I shall
venture to give it a place. . . .[2]
Notes:
1. 'The prisons of Gwâlior are situated in a small outwork on the
western side of the fortress, immediately above the Dhondha gateway.
They are called "nau chaukî", or "the nine cells", and are both well
lighted and well ventilated. But in spite of their height, from
fifteen to twenty-six feet, they must be insufferably close in the
hot season. These were the State prisons in which Akbar confined his
rebellious cousins, and Aurangzêb the troublesome sons of Dârâ and
Murâd, as well as his own more dangerous son Muhammad. During these
times the fort was strictly guarded, and no one was allowed to enter
without a pass' (_A.S.R._, vol. ii, p. 369), Sulaimân Shikoh, whom
Manucci credits with 'all the gifts of nature', was poisoned at
Gwâlior early in the reign of Aurangzêb, by order of that monarch,
paternal uncle of the victim (Irvine, _Storia do Mogor_, i. 380). The
author, following Bernier, always calls Shâhjahân's eldest son simply
Dârâ. His name really was Dârâ Shikoh (or Shukoh), meaning 'in
splendour like Darius'.
2. The following twelve chapters contain an historical piece, to the
personages and events of which the author will have frequent occasion
to refer; and it is introduced in this place from its connexion with
Gwâlior, the State prison in which some of its actors ended their
days. [W. H. S.]
The 'historical piece' which occupies chapters 37 to 46, inclusive of
the author's text is little more than a paraphrase of _The History of
the Late Rebellion in the States of the Great Mogol_ by Bernier, as
the disquisition is called in Brock's translation. Mr. A. Constable's
revised and annotated translation of Bernier's work (Constable and
Co., 1891; reprinted with corrections. Oxford University Press, 1914)
renders superfluous the reprinting of Sleeman's paraphrase, which
would require much correction and comment before it could be
presented to readers of the present day. The main facts of the
narrative are, moreover, now easily accessible in the histories of
Elphinstone and innumerable other writers. Such explanations as may
be required to elucidate allusions to the excised portion in the
later chapters of the anthor's work will be found in the notes. The
titles of the chapters which have not been reprinted follow here for
facility of reference.
CHAPTER 38
Aurangzêb and Murâd Defeat their Father's Army near Ujain.
CHAPTER 39
Dârâ Marches in Person against his Brothers, and is Defeated.
CHAPTER 40
Dârâ Retreats towards Lahore--Is robbed by the Jâts--Their Character.
CHAPTER 41
Shâh Jahân Imprisoned by his Two Sons, Aurangzêb and Murâd.
CHAPTER 42
Aurangzêb Throws off the Mask, Imprisons his Brother Murâd, and
Assumes the Government of the Empire.
CHAPTER 43
Aurangzêb Meets Shujâ in Bengal and Defeats him, after Pursuing Dârâ
to the Hyphasis.
CHAPTER 44
Aurangzêb Imprisons his Eldest Son--Shujâ and all his Family are
Destroyed.
CHAPTER 45
Second Defeat and Death of Dârâ, and Imprisonment of his Two Sons.
CHAPTER 46
Death and Character of Amîr Jumla,
CHAPTER 47
Reflections on the Preceding History.
The contest for the empire of India here described is very like that
which preceded it, between the sons of Jahângîr, in which Shâh Jahân
succeeded in destroying all his brothers and nephews; and that which
succeeded it, forty years after,[1] in which Mu'azzam, the second of
the four sons of Aurangzêb, did the same;[2] and it may, like the
rest of Indian history, teach us a few useful lessons. First, we
perceive the advantages of the law of primogeniture, which accustoms
people to consider the right of the eldest son as sacred, and the
conduct of any man who attempts to violate it as criminal. Among
Muhammadans, property, as well real as personal, is divided equally
among the sons;[3] and their Korân, which is their only civil and
criminal, as well as religions, code, makes no provision for the
successions to sovereignty. The death of every sovereign is, in
consequence, followed by a contest between his sons, unless they are
overawed by some paramount power; and he who succeeds in this contest
finds it necessary, for his own security, to put all his brothers and
nephews to death, lest they should be rescued by factions, and made
the cause of future civil wars. But sons, who exercise the powers of
viceroys and command armies, cannot, where the succession is
unsettled, wait patiently for the natural death of their father--
delay may be dangerous. Circumstances, which now seem more favourable
to their views than to those of their brothers, may alter; the
military aristocracy depend upon the success of the chief they choose
in the enterprise, and the army more upon plunder than regular pay;
both may desert the cause of the more wary for that of the more
daring; each is flattered into an overweening confidence in his own
ability and good fortune; and all rush on to seize upon the throne
yet filled by their wretched parent, who, in the history of his own
crimes, now reads those of his children. Gibbon has justly observed
(chap. 7): 'the superior prerogative of birth, when it has obtained
the sanction of time and popular opinion, is the plainest and least
invidious of all distinctions among mankind. The acknowledged right
extinguishes the hopes of faction; and the conscious security disarms
the cruelty of the monarch. To the firm establishment of this idea we
owe the peaceful succession and mild administration of European
monarchies. To the defect of it we must attribute the frequent civil
wars through which an Asiatic despot is obliged to cut his way to the
throne of his fathers. Yet, even in the East, the sphere of
contention is usually limited to the princes of the reigning house;
and, as soon as the fortunate competitor has removed his brethren by
the sword and the bowstring, he no longer entertains any jealousy of
his meaner subjects.'
Among Hindoos, both real and personal property is divided in the same
manner equally among the sons;[4] but a principality is, among them,
considered as an exception to this rule; and every large estate,
within which the proprietor holds criminal jurisdiction, and
maintains a military establishment, is considered a principality. In
such cases the law of primogeniture is rigorously enforced; and the
death of the prince scarcely ever involves a contest for power and
dominion between his sons. The feelings of the people, who are
accustomed to consider the right of the eldest son to the succession
as religiously sacred, would be greatly shocked at the attempt of any
of his brothers to invade it. The younger brothers, never for a
moment supposing they could be supported in such a sacrilegious
attempt, feel for their eldest brother a reverence inferior only to
that which they feel for their father; and the eldest brother, never
supposing such attempts on their part as possible, feels towards them
as towards his own children. All the members of such a family
commonly live in the greatest harmony.[5] In the laws, usages, and
feelings of the people upon this subject we had the means of
preventing that eternal subdivision of landed property, which ever
has been, and ever will be, the bane of everything that is great and
good in India; but, unhappily, our rulers have never had the wisdom
to avail themselves of them. In a great part of India the property,
or the lease of a _village_ held in farm under Government, was
considered as a _principality_, and subject strictly to the same laws
of primogeniture--it was a _fief_, held under Government on condition
of either direct service, rendered to the State in war, in education,
or charitable or religions duties, or of furnishing the means, in
money or in kind, to provide for such service. In every part of the
Sâgar and Nerbudda Territories the law of primogeniture in such
leases was in force when we took possession, and has been ever since
preserved.[6] The eldest of the sons that remain united with the
father, at his death, succeeds to the estate, and to the obligation
of maintaining all the widows and orphan children of those of his
brothers who remained united to their parent stock up to their death,
all his unmarried sisters, and, above all, his mother. All the
younger brothers aid him in the management, and are maintained by him
till they wish to separate, when a division of the stock takes place,
and is adjusted by the elders of the village. The member, who thus
separates from the parent stock, from that time forfeits for ever all
claims to support from the possessor of the ancestral estate, either
for himself, his widow, or his orphan children.[7]
Next, it is obvious that no existing Government in India could, in
case of invasion or civil war, count upon the fidelity of their
aristocracy either of land or of office. It is observed by Hume, in
treating of the reign of King John in England, that 'men easily
change sides in a civil war, especially where the power is founded
upon an hereditary and independent authority, and is not derived from
the opinion and favour of the people'--that is, upon the people
collectively or the nation; for the hereditary and independent
authority of the English baron in the time of King John was founded
upon the opinion and fidelity of only that portion of the people over
which he ruled, in the same manner as that of the Hindoo chiefs of
India in the time of Shâh Jahân; but it was without reference either
to the honesty of the cause he espoused, or to the opinion and
feeling of the nation or empire generally regarding it. The Hindoo
territorial chiefs, like the feudal barons of the Middle Ages in
Europe, employed all the revenues of their estates in the maintenance
of military followers, upon whose fidelity they could entirely rely,
whatever side they might themselves take in a civil war; and the more
of these resources that were left at their disposal, the more
impatient they became of the restraints which settled governments
imposed upon them. Under such settled governments they felt that they
had an _arm_ which they could not use; and the stronger that arm, the
stronger was their desire to use it in the subjugation of their
neighbours. The reigning emperors tried to secure their fidelity by
assigning to them posts of honour about their court that required
their personal attendance in all their pomp of pride; and by taking
from each a daughter in marriage. If any one rebelled or neglected
his duties, he was either crushed by the imperial forces, or put to
the _ban of the empire_', and his territories were assigned to any
one who would undertake to conquer them.[8] Their attendance at our
viceroyal court would be a sad encumbrance;[9] and our Governor-
General could not well conciliate them by matrimonial alliances,
unless we were to alter a good deal in their favour our law against
polygamy; nor would it be desirable to 'let slip the dogs of war'
once more throughout the land by adopting the plan of putting the
refractory chiefs to the ban of the empire. Their troops would be of
no use to us in the way they are organized and disciplined, even if
we could rely upon their fidelity in time of need; and this I do not
think we ever can.[10]
If it be the duty of all such territorial chiefs to contribute to the
support of the public establishments of the paramount power by which
they are secured in the possession of their estates, and defended
from all external danger, as it most assuredly is, it is the duty of
that power to take such contribution in money, or the means of
maintaining establishments more suited to its purpose than their rude
militia can ever be; and thereby to impair the _powers_ of that arm
which they are so impatient to wield for their own aggrandizement,
and to the prejudice of their neighbours; and to strengthen that of
the paramount power by which the whole are kept in peace, harmony,
and security. We give to India what India never had before our rule,
and never could have without it, the assurance that there will always
be at the head of the Government a sensible ruler trained up to
office in the best school in the world; and that the security of the
rights, and the enforcement of the duties, presented or defined by
law, will not depend upon the will or caprice of individuals in
power. These assurances the people in India now everywhere thoroughly
understand and appreciate. They see in the native states around them
that the lucky accident of an able governor is too rare ever to be
calculated upon; while all that the people have of property, office,
or character, depends not only upon their governor, but upon every
change that he may make in his ministers.
The government of the Muhammadans was always essentially military,
and the aristocracy was always one of military office. There was
nothing else upon which an aristocracy could be formed. All high
civil offices were combined with the military commands. The emperor
was the great proprietor of all the lands, and collected and
distributed their rents through his own servants. Every Musalmân with
his Korân in his hand was his own priest and his own lawyer; and the
people were nowhere represented in any municipal or legislative
assembly--there was no bar, bench, senate, corporation, art, science,
or literature by which men could rise to eminence and power. Capital
had nowhere been concentrated upon great commercial or manufacturing
establishments. There were, in short, no great men but the military
servants of Government; and all the servants of Government held their
posts at the will and pleasure of their sovereign.[11]
If a man was appointed by the emperor to the command of five
thousand, the whole of this five thousand depended entirely on his
favour for their employment, and upon their employment for their
subsistence, whether paid from the imperial treasury, or by an
assignment of land in some distant province.[12] In our armies there
is a regular gradation of rank; and every officer feels that he holds
his commission by a tenure as high in origin, as secure in
possession, and as independent in its exercise, as that of the
general who commands; and the soldiers all know and feel that the
places of those officers, who are killed or disabled in action, will
be immediately filled by those next in rank, who are equally trained
to command, and whose authority none will dispute. In the Muhammadan
armies there was no such gradation of rank. Every man held his office
at the will of the chief whom he followed, and he was every moment
made to feel that all his hopes of advancement must depend upon his
pleasure. The relation between them was that of patron and client;
the client felt bound to yield implicit obedience to the commands of
his patron, whatever they might be; and the patron, in like manner,
felt bound to protect and promote the interests of his client, as
long as he continued to do so. As often as the patron changed sides
in a civil war, his clients all blindly followed him; and when he was
killed, they instantly dispersed to serve under any other leader whom
they might find willing to take their services on the same terms.
The Hindoo chiefs of the military class had hereditary territorial
possessions; and the greater part of these possessions were commonly
distributed on conditions of military service among their followers,
who were all of the same clan. But the highest Muhammadan officers of
the empire had not an acre more of land than they required for their
dwelling-houses, gardens, and cemeteries. They had nothing but their
office to depend upon, and were always naturally anxious to hold it
under the strongest side in any competition for dominion. When the
star of the competitor under whom they served seemed to be on the
wane, they soon found some plausible excuse to make their peace with
his rival, and serve under his banners. Each competitor fought for
his own life, and those of his children; the imperial throne could be
filled by only one man; and that man dared not leave one single
brother alive. His father had taken good care to dispose of all his
own brothers and nephews in the last contest. The subsistence of the
highest, as well as that of the lowest, officer in the army depended
upon their employment in the public service, and all such employments
would be given to those who served the victor in the struggle. Under
such circumstances one is rather surprised that the history of civil
wars in India exhibits so many instances of fidelity and devotion.
The mass of the people stood aloof in such contests without any
feeling of interest, save the dread that their homes might become the
seat of the war, or the tracks of armies which were alike destructive
to the people in their course whatever side they might follow. The
result could have no effect upon their laws and institutions, and
little upon their industry and property. As ships are from necessity
formed to weather the storms to which they are constantly liable at
sea, so were the Indian village communities framed to weather those
of invasion and civil war, to which they were so much accustomed by
land; and, in the course of a year or two, no traces were found of
ravages that one might have supposed it would have taken ages to
recover from. The lands remained the same, and their fertility was
improved by the fallow; every man carried away with him the
implements of his trade, and brought them back with him when he
returned; and the industry of every village supplied every necessary
article that the community required for their food, clothing,
furniture, and accommodation. Each of these little communities, when
left unmolested, was in itself sufficient to secure the rights and
enforce the duties of all the different members; and all they wanted
from their government was moderation in the land taxes, and
protection from external violence. Arrian says: 'If any intestine war
happens to break forth among the Indians, it is deemed a heinous
crime either to seize the husbandmen or spoil their harvest. All the
rest wage war against each other, and kill and slay as they think
convenient, while they live quietly and peaceably among them, and
employ themselves at their rural affairs either in their fields or
vineyards.'[13] I am afraid armies were not much more disposed to
forbearance in the days of Alexander than at present, and that his
followers must have supposed they remained untouched, merely because
they heard of their sudden rise again from their ruins by that spirit
of moral and political vitality with which necessity seems to have
endowed them.[14]
During the early part of his life and reign, Aurangzêb was employed
in conquering and destroying the two independent kingdoms of Golconda
and Bîjâpur in the Deccan, which he formed into two provinces
governed by viceroys. Each had had an army of above a hundred
thousand men while independent. The officers and soldiers of these
armies had nothing but their courage and their swords to depend upon
for their subsistence. Finding no longer any employment under settled
and legitimate authority in defending the life, property, and
independence of the people, they were obliged to seek it around the
standards of lawless freebooters; and upon the ruins of these
independent kingdoms and their disbanded armies rose the Marâthâ
power, the hydra-headed monster which Aurangzêb thus created by his
ambition, and spent the last twenty years of his life in vain
attempts to crush.[15] The monster has been since crushed by being
deprived of its Peshwâ, the head which alone could infuse into all
the members of the confederacy a feeling of nationality, and direct
all their efforts, when required, to one common object. Sindhia, the
chief of Gwâlior, is one of the surviving members of this great
confederacy--the rest are the Holkars of Indore, the Bhônslâs of
Nâgpur, and the Gaikwârs of Barodâ,[16] the grandchildren of the
commandants of predatory armies, who formed capital cities out of
their standing camps in the countries they invaded and conquered in
the name of their head, the Sâtârâ Râjâ,[17] and afterwards in that
of his mayor of the palace, the Peshwâ. There is not now the
slightest feeling of nationality left among the Marâthâ States,
either collectively or individually.[18] There is not the slightest
feeling of sympathy between the mass of the people and the chief who
rules over them, and his public establishments. To maintain these
public establishments he everywhere plunders the people, who most
heartily detest him and them. These public establishments are
composed of men of all religions and sects, gathered from all
quarters of India, and bound together by no common feeling, save the
hope of plunder and promotion. Not one in ten is from, or has his
family in, the country where he serves, nor is one in ten of the same
clan with his chief. Not one of them has any hope of a provision
either for himself, when disabled from wounds or old age from serving
his chief any longer, or for his family, should he lose his life in
his service.
In India[19] there are a great many native chiefs who were enabled,
during the disorders which attended the decline and fall of the
Muhammadan power and the rise and progress of the Marâthâs and
English, to raise and maintain armies by the plunder of their
neighbours. The paramount power of the British being now securely
established throughout the country, they are prevented from indulging
any longer in such sporting propensities; and might employ their vast
revenues in securing the blessing of good civil government for the
territories in the possession of which they are secured by our
military establishment. But these chiefs are not much disposed to
convert their swords into ploughshares; they continue to spend their
revenues on useless military establishments for purposes of parade
and show. A native prince would, they say, be as insignificant
without an army as a native gentleman upon an elephant without a
cavalcade, or upon a horse without a tail. But the said army have
learnt from their forefathers that they were to look to aggressions
upon their neighbours--to pillage, plunder, and conquest, for wealth
and promotion; and they continue to prevent their prince from
indulging in any disposition to turn his attention to the duties of
civil government. They all live in the hope of some disaster to the
paramount power which secures the increasing wealth of the
surrounding countries from their grasp; and threatened innovations
from the north-west raise their spirits and hopes in proportion as
they depress those of the classes engaged in all branches of peaceful
industry.
There are, in all parts of India, thousands and tens of thousands who
have lived by the sword, or who wish to live by the sword, but cannot
find employment suited to their tastes. These would all flock to the
standard of the first lawless chief who could offer them a fair
prospect of plunder; and to them all wars and rumours of war are
delightful. The moment they hear of a threatened invasion from the
north-west, they whet their swords, and look fiercely around upon
those from whose breasts they are 'to cut their pound of flesh'.[20]
Notes:
1. 'Fifty years after' would be more nearly correct. Aurangzêb wa
crowned 23rd July, 1658, according to the author. See end of next
note.
2. On the death of Aurangzêb, which took place in the Deccan, on the
3rd of March, 1707 (N.S.), his son 'Azam marched at the head of the
troops which he commanded in the Deccan, to meet Mu'azzam, who was
viceroy in Kabul. They met and fought near Agra. 'Azam was defeated
and killed. The victor marched to meet his other brother, Kâm Baksh,
whom he killed near Hyderabad in the Deccan, and secured to himself
the empire. On his death, which took place in 1713, his four sons
contended in the same way for the throne at the head of the armies of
their respective viceroyalties. Mu'izz-ud-dîn, the most crafty,
persuaded his two brothers, Rafî-ash-Shân and Jahân Shâh, to unite
their forces with his own against their ambitions brother, Azîm-ash-
Shân, whom they defeated and killed, Mu'izz-ud-dîn then destroyed his
two allies. [W. H. S.]
The above note is not altogether accurate. 'Azam, the third son of
Aurangzêb, was killed in battle near Agra, in June 1707. During the
interval between Aurangzêb's death and his own, he had struck coins.
Mu'azzam, the second, and eldest then surviving son, after the defeat
of his rival, ascended the throne under the title of Shâh Âlam
Bahâdur Shâh, and is generally known as Bahâdur Shâh. He was then
sixty-four years of age, his father having been eighty-seven years
old when he died. The events following the death of Bahâdur Shâh are
narrated as follows by Mr. Lane-Poole; 'The Deccan was the weakest
point in the empire from the beginning of the reign. Hardly had
Bahâdur appointed his youngest brother, Kâm Baksh ('Wish-fulfiller'),
viceroy of Bîjâpur and Haidarâbâd, when that infatuated prince
rebelled and committed such atrocities that the Emperor was compelled
to attack him. Zû-l-Fikâr engaged and defeated the rebel king (who
was striking coins in full assumption of sovereignty) near
Haidarâbâd, and Kâm Baksh died of his wounds (1708, A.H. 1120).
'In the midst of this confusion, and surrounded by portents of coming
disruption, Bahâdur died, 1712 (1124). He left four sons, who
immediately entered with the zest of their race upon the struggle for
the crown. The eldest, 'Azîm-ash-Shân ("Strong of Heart"), first
assumed the sceptre, but Zû-l-Fikâr, the prime minister, opposed and
routed him, and the prince was drowned in his flight. The successful
general next defeated and slew two other brothers, Khujistah Akhtâr
Jahân-Shâh and Rafî-ash-Shân, and placed the surviving of the four
sons of Bahâdur [i.e. Mu'izz-ud-dîn] on the throne with the title of
Jahândâr ("World-owner"). The new Emperor was an irredeemable
poltroon and an abandoned debauchee.' (_The History of the Moghul
Emperors of Hindustan illustrated by their Coins_, Constable, 1892,
and in Introd. to _B. M. Catal. of Moghul Emperors_, same date.)
He was killed in 1713, and was succeeded by Farrukh-sîyar, the son of
Azîm-ush-Shân. The chronology is as follows:-
No. Sovereign. A.H. A.D.
VI. Aurangzêb Âlamgîr, Muhayî-ud-dîn . 1068 1658
['Azam Shâh . . . . . 1118 1707
Kâm Baksh . . . . . 1119-20 1708]
VII. Bahâdur Shâh-'Âlam, Kutb-ud-dîn . . 1119 1707
VIII. Jahândâr Shâh, Mu'izz-ud-dîn . . 1124 1713
IX. Farrukhsîyar . . . . . 1124 1713
The question concerning the exact date from which the beginning of
Aurangzêb's reign should be reckoned is obscured by the conflict of
authorities and has given rise to much discussion. The results may be
stated briefly as follow:--
Aurangzêb formally took possession of the throne in a garden outside
Delhi on the 1st Zû'l Q'adah, A.H. 1068, July 31, A.D. 1658, but
subsequently orders were passed to antedate the beginning of the
reign to 1st Ramazân in the same year, equivalent to June 2, 1658.
After the destruction of Shâh Shujâ, Aurangzêb returned to Delhi in
May, A.D. 1659, and was again enthroned with full ceremonial on June
15, 1659 (= A.H. 1069). Some authors consequently assume the
accession to have taken place in 1659. But the reign certainly began
in A.D. 1658, and should be reckoned as running from the official
date, June 2 of that year. The dates given above are in New Style
(N.S.). If recorded in Old Style (O.S.) they would be ten days
earlier. (See Irvine and Hoernle in _J.A.S.B._, Part I, vol. lxii
(1893), pp. 256-67; and Irvine, in _Ind. Ant._, vol. xl (1911), pp.
74, 75.)
3. The author invariably ignores the fact that daughters and other
female relatives inherit under Muhammadan law.
4. Hindoo law does not ordinarily recognize any right of succession
for daughters, and so differs essentially from the law of Islam. The
exceptions to this general rule are unimportant.
5. The experience of most officials does not confirm this statement.
6. The statement now requires modification. After the Central
Provinces were constituted in 1861, the principle of succession by
primogeniture was maintained only in the Hoshangâbâd, Chhindwâra,
Chândâ, and Chhattîsgarh Districts. But even there the legal effect
of the restrictions on alienation and partition is 'not quite free
from doubt' (_I.G._ 1908, x. 73). The tendency of the law courts is
to apply everywhere uniform rules taken from the Hindoo law books.
7. 'See _ante_, Chapter 10, notes 10, 16. The gradual conversion of
tenure by leases from Government into proprietary right in land has
brought the land under the operation of the ordinary Hindoo law, and
each member of a joint family can now enforce partition of the land
as well as of the stock upon it. The evils resulting from incessant
partition are obvious, but no remedy can be devised. The people
insist on partition, and will effect it privately, if the law imposes
obstacles to a formal public division.
8. These remarks attribute too much System to the disorderly working
of an Asiatic despotism. No institution resembling the formal 'ban of
the empire' ever really existed in India.
9. The Râjâs at Simla might now be considered by some people as an
encumbrance.
10. The author could not foresee the gallant service to be rendered
by the Chiefs of the Panjâb and other territories in the Mutiny, nor
the institution of the Imperial Service Troops. Those troops, first
organized in 1888, in response to the voluntary offers made by many
princes as a reply to the Russian aggression on Panjdeh, are select
bodies, picked from the soldiery of certain native states, and
equipped and drilled in the European manner. Cashmere (Kâshmîr) and
many States in the Panjâb and elsewhere furnish troops of this kind,
officered by local gentlemen, under the guidance of English
inspecting officers. The Kâshmîr Imperial Service Troops did
excellent service during the campaign of 1892 in Hunza and Nagar. the
System so happily introduced is likely to be much further developed.
In 1907 the authorized strength was a little over 18,000 (_I.G._, iv
(1907), pp. 87, 373).
11. 'In Rome, as in Egypt and India, many of the great works which,
in modern nations, form the basis of gradations of rank in society,
were executed by Government out of public revenue, or by individuals
gratuitously for the benefit of the public; for instance, roads,
canals, aqueducts, bridges, &c., from which no one derived an income,
though all derived benefit. There was no capital invested, with a
view to profit, in machinery, railroads, canals, steam-engines, and
other great works which, in the preparation and distribution of man's
enjoyments, save the labour of so many millions to the nations of
modern Europe and America, and supply the incomes of many of the most
useful and most enlightened members of their middle and higher
classes of society. During the republic, and under the first
emperors, the laws were simple, and few derived any considerable
income from explaining them. Still fewer derived their incomes from
expounding the religion of the people till the establishment of
Christianity.
Man was the principal machine in which property was invested with a
view to profit, and the concentration of capital in hordes of slaves,
and the farm of the public revenues of conquered provinces and
tributary states, were, with the land, the great basis of the
aristocracies of Rome, and the Roman world generally. The senatorial
and equestrian orders were supported chiefly by lending out their
slaves as gladiators and artificers, and by farming the revenues, and
lending money to the oppressed subjects of the provinces, and to
vanquished princes, at an exorbitant interest, to enable them to pay
what the state or its public officers demanded. The slaves throughout
the Roman empire were about equal in number to the free population,
and they were for the most part concentrated in the hands of the
members of the upper and middle classes, who derived their incomes
from lending and employing them. They were to those classes in the
old world what canals, railroads, steam-engines, &c., are to those of
modern days. Some Roman citizens had as many as five thousand slaves
educated to the one occupation of gladiators for the public shows of
Rome. Julius Caesar had this number in Italy waiting his return from
Gaul; and Gordianus used commonly to give five hundred pair for a
public festival, and never less than one hundred and fifty.
In India slavery is happily but little known;[a] the church had no
hierarchy either among the Hindoos or Muhammadans; nor had the law
any high interpreters. In all its civil branches of marriage,
inheritance, succession, and contract, it was to the people of the
two religions as simple as the laws of the twelve tables; and
contributed just as little to the support of the aristocracy as they
did. In all these respects, China is much the same; the land belongs
to the sovereign, and is minutely subdivided among those who farm and
cultivate it--the great works in canals, aqueducts, bridges, roads,
&c., are made by Government, and yield no private income. Capital is
nowhere concentrated in expensive machinery; their church is without
a hierarchy, their law without barristers-their higher classes are
therefore composed almost exclusively of the public servants of the
Government. The rule which prescribes that princes of the blood shall
not be employed in the government of provinces and the command of
armies, and that the reigning sovereign shall have the nomination of
his successor, has saved China from a frequent return of the scenes
which I have described. None of the princes are put to death, because
it is known that all will acquiesce in the nomination when made
known, supported as it always is by the popular sentiment throughout
the empire. [W. H. S.]
a. the anthor's statement that in the year 1836 slavery was 'but
little known in India' is a truly astonishing one. Slavery of various
kinds--racial, predial, domestic--the slavery of captives, and of
debtors, had existed in India from time immemorial, and still
flourished in 1836. Slavery, so far as the law can abolish it, was
abolished by the Indian Act v of 1843, but the final blow was not
dealt until January l, 1862, when sections 370, &c., of the Indian
Penal Code came into force. In practice, domestic servitude exists to
this day in great Muhammadan households, and multitudes of
agricultural labourers have a very dim consciousness of personal
freedom. The Criminal Law Commissioners, who reported previous to the
passage of Act v of 1843, estimated that in British India, as then
constituted, the proportion of the slave to the free population
varied from one-sixth to two-fifths. Sir Bartle Frere estimated the
slave population of the territories included in British India in the
year 1841 as being between eight and nine millions. Slaves were
heritable and transferable property, and could be mortgaged or let
out on hire. The article 'Slave' in Balfour, _Cyclopaedia_ (3rd ed.),
from which most of the above particulars are taken, is copious, and
gives references to various authorities. The following works may also
be consulted: _The Law and Custom of Slavery in British India_, by
William Adam, 8vo, 1840; _An Account of Slave Population in the
Western Peninsula of India_, 1822, with an Appendix on Slavery in
Malabar; _India's Cries to British Humanity_, by J. Peggs, 8vo, 1830;
and _E.H.I._, 3rd ed. (1914), pp. 100, 178, 180, 441.
12. In Akbar's time there were thirty-three grades of official rank,
and the officers were known as 'commanders of ten thousand',
'commanders of five thousand', and so on. Only princes of the blood
royal were granted the commands of seven thousand and of ten
thousand. The number of troopers actually provided by each officer
did not correspond with the number indicated by his title. The graded
officials were called _mansabdârs_, no clear distinction between
civil and military duties being drawn (_The Emperor Akbar_, by Count
Von Noer; translated by Annette S. Beveridge, Calcutta, 1890, vol. i,
p. 267).
13. Diodorus Siculus has the same observation. 'No enemy ever does
any prejudice to the husbandmen; but, out of a due regard to the
common good, forbear to injure them in the least degree; and,
therefore, the land being never spoiled or wasted, yields its fruit
in great abundance, and furnishes the inhabitants with plenty of
victual and all other provisions.' Book II, chap. 3. [W. H. S.] These
allegations certainly cannot be accepted as accurate statements of
fact, however they may be explained. See _E.H.I._, 3rd ed. (1914), p.
442.
14. The rapid recovery of Indian villages and villagers from the
effects of war does not need for its explanation the evocation of 'a
spirit of moral and political vitality'. The real explanation is to
be found in the simplicity of the village life and needs, as
expounded by the author in the preceding passage. Human societies
with a low standard of comfort and a simple scheme of life are, like
individual organisms of lowly structure and few functions, hard to
kill. Human labour, and a few cattle, with a little grain and some
sticks, are the only essential requisites for the foundation or
reconstruction of a village.
15. Golconda was taken by Aurangzêb, after a protracted siege, in
1677. Bîjâpur surrendered to him on the 15th October, 1686. The vast
ruins of this splendid city, which was deserted after the conquest,
occupy a space thirty miles in circumference. The town has partially
recovered, and is now the head-quarters of a Bombay District, with
about 24,000 inhabitants. Sivâjî, the founder of the Marâthâ power,
died in 1680.
16. The Indore and Barodâ States still survive, and the reigning
chiefs of both have frequently visited England, and paid their
respects to their Sovereign. Bhônslâ was the family name of the
chiefs of Berâr, also known as the Râjâs of Nâgpur. The last Râjâ,
Raghojî III, died in December 1853, leaving no child begotten or
adopted. Lord Dalhousie annexed the State as lapsed, and his action
was confirmed in 1864 by the Court of Directors and the Crown.
17. The State of Sâtârâ, like that of Nâgpur, lapsed owing to failure
of heirs, and was annexed in 1854. It is now a district in the Bombay
Presidency.
18. During the early years of the twentieth century a spirit of
Marâthâ nationalism has been sedulously cultivated, with inconvenient
results.
19. This paragraph, and that next following, are, in the original
edition, printed as part of Chapter 48, 'The Great Diamond of
Kohinûr', with which they have nothing to do. They seem to belong
properly to Chapter 47, and are therefore inserted here. The
observations in both paragraphs are merely repetitions of remarks
already recorded.
20. It need hardly be said that these fire-eaters no longer exist.
CHAPTER 48
The Great Diamond of Kohinûr.
The foregoing historical episode occupies too large a space in what
might otherwise be termed a personal narrative; but still I am
tempted to append to it a sketch of the fortunes of that famous
diamond, called with Oriental extravagance the Mountain of Light,
which, by exciting the cupidity of Shâh Jahân, played so important a
part in the drama.
After slumbering for the greater part of a century in the imperial
treasury, it was afterwards taken by Nâdir Shâh, the king of Persia,
who invaded India under the reign of Muhammad Shâh, in the year
1738.[1] Nadir Shâh, in one of his mad fits, had put out the eyes of
his son, Razâ Kulî Mirzâ, and, when he was assassinated, the
conspirators gave the throne and the diamond to this son's son,
Shâhrukh Mirza, who fixed his residence at Meshed.[2] Ahmad Shâh, the
Abdâlî, commanded the Afghân cavalry in the service of Nâdir Shâh,
and had the charge of the military chest at the time he was put to
death. With this chest, he and his cavalry left the camp during the
disorders that followed the murder of the king, and returned with all
haste to Kandahâr, where they met Tarîkî Khân, on his way to Nâdir
Shâh's camp with the tribute of the five provinces which he had
retained of his Indian conquests, Kandahâr, Kâbul, Tatta, Bakkar,
Multân, and Peshâwar. They gave him the first news of the death of
the king, seized upon his treasure, and, with the aid of this and the
military chest, Ahmad Shâh took possession of these five provinces,
and formed them into the little independent kingdom of Afghânistan,
over which he long reigned, and from which he occasionally invaded
India and Khurâsân.[3]
Shâhrukh Mirzâ had his eyes put out some time after by a faction.
Ahmad Shâh marched to his relief, put the rebels to death, and united
his eldest son, Taimûr Shâh, in marriage to the daughter of the
unfortunate prince, from whom he took the diamond, since it could be
of no use to a man who could no longer see its beauties. He
established Taimûr as his viceroy at Herât, and his youngest son at
Kandahâr; and fixed his own residence at Kâbul, where he died.[4] He
was succeeded by Taimûr Shâh, who was succeeded by his eldest son,
Zamân Shâh, who, after a reign of a few years, was driven from his
throne by his younger brother, Mahmûd. He sought an asylum with his
friend Ashîk, who commanded a distant fortress, and who betrayed him
to the usurper, and put him into confinement. He concealed the great
diamond in a crevice in the wall of the room in which he was
confined; and the rest of his jewels in a hole made in the ground
with his dagger. As soon as Mahmûd received intimation of the arrest
from Ashîk, he sent for his brother, had his eyes put out, and
demanded the jewels, but Zamân Shâh pretended that he had thrown them
into the river as he passed over. Two years after this, the third
brother, the Sultân Shujâ, deposed Mahmûd, ascended the throne by the
consent of his elder brother, and, as a fair specimen of his notions
of retributive justice, he blew away from the mouths of cannon, not
only Ashîk himself, but his wife and all his innocent and unoffending
children.
He intended to put out the eyes of his deposed brother, Mahmûd, but
was dissuaded from it by his mother and Zamân Shâh, who now pointed
out to him the place where he had concealed the great diamond. Mahmûd
made his escape from prison, raised a party, drove out his brothers,
and once more ascended the throne. The two brothers sought an asylum
in the Honourable Company's territories; and have from that time
resided at an out frontier station of Lûdiâna, upon the banks of the
Hyphasis,[5] upon a liberal pension assigned for their maintenance by
our Government. On their way through the territories of the Sikh
chief, Ranjit Singh, Shujâ was discovered to have this great diamond,
the Mountain of Light, about his person; and he was, by a little
torture skilfully applied to the mind and body, made to surrender it
to his generous host.[6] Mahmûd was succeeded in the government of
the fortress and province of Herât by his son Kâmrân; but the throne
of Kâbul was seized by the mayor of the palace, who bequeathed it to
his son Dost Muhammad, a man, in all the qualities requisite in a
sovereign, immeasurably superior to any member of the house of Ahmad
Shâh Abdâlî. Ranjit Singh had wrested from him the province of
Peshâwar in times of difficulty, and, as we would not assist him in
recovering it from our old ally, he thought himself justified in
seeking the aid of those who would, the Russians and Persians, who
were eager to avail themselves of so fair an occasion to establish a
footing in India. Such a footing would have been manifestly
incompatible with the peace and security of our dominions in India,
and we were obliged, in self-defence, to give to Shujâ the aid which
he had so often before in vain solicited, to enable him to recover
the throne of his very limited number of legal ancestors.[7]
Notes:
1. Nâdir Shâh was crowned king of Persia in 1736, entered the Panjâb,
at the close of 1738, and occupied Delhi in March 1739. Having
perpetrated an awful massacre of the inhabitants, he retired after a
stay of fifty-eight days, He was assassinated in May 1747.
2. Meshed, properly Mashhad ('the place of martyrdom'), is the chief
city of Khurâsân. Nâdir Shâh was killed while encamped there.
3. Ahmad Shâh defeated the Marâthâs in the third great battle of
Pânîpat, A.D. 1761. He had conquered the Panjâb in 1748. He invaded
India five times.
4. In 1773.
5. Lûdiâna (misspelt 'Ludhiâna' in _I.G._, 1908) is named from the
Lodî Afghâns, who founded it in 1481. The town is now the
headquarters of the district of the same name under the Panjâb
Government. Part of the district lapsed to the British Government in
1836, other parts lapsed during the years 1846 and 1847, and the rest
came from territory already British by rearrangement of jurisdiction.
Hyphasis is the Greek name for the Biâs river.
6. The above history of the Kohinûr may, I believe, be relied upon. I
received a narrative of it from Shâh Zamân, the blind old king
himself, through General Smith, who commanded the troops at Lûdiâna;
forming a detail of the several revolutions too long and too full of
new names for insertion here. [W. H. S.] The above note is, in the
original edition, misplaced, and appended to two paragraphs of the
text, which have no connexion with the story of the diamond, and
really belong to Chapter 47, to which they have been removed in this
edition.
The author assumes the identity of the Kohinûr with the great diamond
found in one of the Golconda mines, and presented by Amîr Jumla to
Shâh Jahân. The much-disputed history of the Kohinûr has been
exhaustively discussed by Valentine Ball (Tavernier's _Travels in
India_: Appendix I (1), 'The Great Mogul's Diamond and the true
History of the Koh-i-nur; and (2) 'Summary History of the Koh-i-
nur'). He has proved that the Kohinûr is almost certainly the diamond
given by Amîr (Mîr) Jumla to Shâh Jahân, though now much reduced in
weight by mutilation and repeated cutting. Assuming the identity of
the Kohinûr with Amîr Jumla's gift, the leading incidents in the
history of this famous jewel are as follows;--
Event. Approximate
Date.
Found at mine of Kollûr on the Kistna (Krishna)
river . . . . . . . . .Not known
Presented to Shâh Jahân by Mîr Jumla, being
uncut, and weighing about 756 English carats 1656 or 1657
Ground by Hortensio Borgio, and greatly reduced
in weight . . . . . . . about 1657
Seen and weighed by Tavernier in Aurangzêb's
treasury, its weight being 268 19/50 English
carats . . . . . . . . . 1665
Taken by Nadir Shâh of Persia from Muhammad
Shâh of Delhi, and named Kohinûr . . . 1739
Inherited by Shâh Rukh, grandson of Nadir Shâh. . 1747
Given up by Shâh Rukh to Ahmad Shâh Abdâlî . . 1751
Inherited by Tîmûr, son of Ahmad Shâh . . . 1772
Inherited by Shâh Zamân, son of Tîmûr . . . 1793
Taken by Shâh Shujâ, brother of Shâh Zamân . . 1795
Taken by Ranjit Singh, of Lahore, from Shâh Shujâ . 1813
Inherited by Dilîp (Dhuleep) Singh,
reputed son of Ranjit Singh. . . . . 1839
Annexed, with the Panjâb, and passed, through
John Lawrence's waistcoat pocket
(see his _Life_), into the possession
of H.M. the Queen, its weight then being
186 1/16 English carats . . . . . 1849
Exhibited at Great Exhibition in London . . . 1851
Recut under supervision of Messrs. Garrards, and
reduced in weight to 106 1/16 English carats . 1852
The difference in weight between 268 19/50 carats in 1665 and 186
1/16 carats in 1849 seems to be due to mutilation of the stone during
its stay in Persia and Afghanistan.
7. The policy of the first Afghan War has been, it is hardly
necessary to observe, much disputed, and the author's confident
defence of Lord Auckland's action cannot be accepted.
CHAPTER 49
Pindhârî System--Character of the Marâthâ Administration--Cause of
their Dislike to the Paramount Power.
The attempt of the Marquis of Hastings to rescue India from that
dreadful scourge, the Pindhârî system, involved him in a war with all
the great Marâthâ states, except Gwâlior; that is, with the Peshwâ at
Pûnâ, Holkâr at Indore, and the Bhonslâ at Nâgpur; and Gwâlior was
prevented from joining the other states in their unholy league
against us only by the presence of the grand division of the army,
under the personal command of the Marquis, in the immediate vicinity
of his capital. It was not that these chiefs liked the Pindhârîs, or
felt any interest in their welfare, but because they were always
anxious to crush that rising paramount authority which had the power,
and had always manifested the will, to interpose and prevent the free
indulgence of their predatory habits--the free exercise of that
weapon, a standing army, which the disorders incident upon the
decline and fall of the Muhammadan army had put into their hands, and
which a continued series of successful aggressions upon their
neighbours could alone enable them to pay or keep under control. They
seized with avidity any occasion of quarrel with the paramount power
which seemed likely to unite them all in one great effort to shake it
off; and they are still prepared to do the same, because they feel
that they could easily extend their depredations if that power were
withdrawn; and they know no other road to wealth and glory but such
successful depredations. Their ancestors rose by them, their states
were formed by them, and their armies have been maintained by them.
They look back upon them for all that seems to them honourable in the
history of their families. Their bards sing of them in all their
marriage and funeral processions; and, as their imaginations kindle
at the recollection, they detest the arm that is extended to defend
the wealth and the industry of the surrounding territories from their
grasp. As the industrious classes acquire and display their wealth in
the countries around during a long peace, under a strong and settled
government, these native chiefs, with their little disorderly armies,
feel precisely as an English country gentleman would feel with a pack
of foxhounds, in a country swarming with foxes, and without the
privilege of hunting them.[1]
Their armies always took the auspices and set out _kingdom taking_
(mulk gîrî) after the Dasahra,[2] in November, as regularly as
English gentlemen go partridge-shooting on the 1st of September; and
I may here give, as a specimen, the excursion of Jean Baptiste
Filose,[3] who sallied forth on such an expedition, at the head of a
division of Sindhia's army, just before this Pindhârî war commenced.
From Gwâlior he proceeded to Karaulî,[4] and took from that chief the
district of Sabalgarh, yielding four lâkhs of rupees yearly.[5] He
then took the territory of the Râjâ of Chandêrî,[6] Mor Pahlâd, one
of the oldest of the Bundêlkhand chiefs, which then yielded about
seven lâkhs of rupees,[7] but now yields only four. The Râjâ got an
allowance of forty thousand rupees a year. He then took the
territories of the Râjâs of Raghugarh and Bajranggarh,[8] yielding
three lâkhs a year; and Bahâdurgarh, yielding two lâkhs a year;[9]
and the three princes got fifty thousand rupees a year for
subsistence among them. He then took Lopar, yielding two lâkhs and a
half, and assigned the Râjâ twenty-five thousand. He then took Garhâ
Kota,[10] whose chief gets subsistence from our Government. Baptiste
had just completed his kingdom taking expedition, when our armies
took the field against the Pindhârîs; and, on the termination of that
war in 1817, all these acquisitions were confirmed and guaranteed to
his master Sindhia by our Government. It cannot be supposed that
either he or his army can ever feel any great attachment towards a
paramount authority that has the power and the will to interpose, and
prevent their indulging in such sporting excursions as these, or any
great disinclination to take advantage of any occasion that may seem
likely to unite all the native chiefs in a common effort to crush it.
The Nepalese have the same feeling as the Marâthâs in a still
stronger degree, since their kingdom-taking excursions had been still
greater and more successful; and, being all soldiers from the same
soil, they were easily persuaded, by a long series of successful
aggressions, that their courage was superior to that of all other
men.[11]
In the year 1833, the Gwâlior territory yielded a net revenue to the
treasury of ninety-two lâkhs of rupees, after discharging all the
local costs of the civil and fiscal administration of the different
districts, in officers, establishments, charitable institutions,
religions endowments, military fiefs, &c.[12] In the remote
districts, which are much infested by the predatory tribes of
Bhîls,[13] and in consequence badly peopled and cultivated, the net
revenue is estimated to be about one-third of the gross collections;
but, in the districts near the capital, which are tolerably well
cultivated, the net revenue brought to the treasury is about five-
sixths of the gross collections; and these collections are equal to
the whole annual rent of the land; for every man by whom the land is
held or cultivated is a mere tenant at will, liable every season to
be turned out, to give place to any other man that may offer more for
the holding.
There is nowhere to be seen upon the land any useful or ornamental
work, calculated to attach the people to the soil or to their
villages; and, as hardly any of the recruits for the regiments are
drawn from the peasantry of the country, the agricultural classes
have nowhere any feeling of interest in the welfare or existence of
the government. I am persuaded that there is not a single village in
all the Gwâlior dominions in which nine-tenths of the people would
not be glad to see that government destroyed, under the persuasion
that they could not possibly have a worse, and would be very likely
to find a better.
The present force at Gwâlior consists of three regiments of infantry,
under Colonel Alexander; six under the command of Apâjî, the adopted
son of the late Bâlâ Bâî;[14] eleven under Colonel Jacobs and his
son; five under Colonel Jean Baptiste Filose; two under the command
of the Mâmû Sâhib, the maternal uncle of the Mahârâjâ; three in what
is called Bâbû Bâolî's camp; in all thirty regiments, consisting,
when complete, of six hundred men each, with four field-pieces. The
'Jinsî', or artillery, consists of two hundred guns of different
calibre. There are but few corps of cavalry, and these are not
considered very efficient, I believe.[15]
Robbers and murderers of all descriptions have always been in the
habit of taking the field in India immediately after the festival of
the Dasahrâ,[16] at the end of October, from the sovereign of a state
at the head of his armies, down to the leader of a little band of
pickpockets from the corner of some obscure village. All invoke the
Deity, and take the auspices to ascertain his will, nearly in the
same way; and all expect that he will guide them successfully through
their enterprises, as long as they find the omens favourable. No one
among them ever dreams that his undertaking can be less acceptable to
the Deity than that of another, provided he gives him the same due
share of what he acquires in his thefts, his robberies, or his
conquests, in sacrifices and offerings upon his shrines, and in
donations to his priests.[17] Nor does the robber often dream that he
shall be considered a less respectable citizen by the circle in which
he moves than the soldier, provided he spends his income as
liberally, and discharges all his duties in his relations with them
as well; and this he generally does to secure their goodwill,
whatever may be the character of his depredations upon distant
circles of society and communities. The man who returned to Oudh, or
Rohilkhand, after a campaign under a Pindhârî chief, was as well
received as one who returned after serving one under Sindhia, Holkâr,
or Ranjît Singh. A friend of mine one day asked a leader of a band of
'dacoits', or banditti, whether they did not often commit murder.
'God forbid', said he, 'that we should ever commit murder; but, if
people choose to oppose us, we, of course, _strike and kill_; but you
do the same. I hear that there is now a large assemblage of troops in
the upper provinces going to take foreign countries; if they are
opposed, they will kill people. We only do the same.'[18] The history
of the rise of every nation in the world unhappily bears out the
notion that princes are only robbers upon a large scale, till their
ambition is curbed by a balance of power among nations.
On the 25th[19] we came on to Dhamêlâ, fourteen miles, over a plain,
with the range of sandstone hills on the left, receding from us to
the west; and that on the right receding still more to the east. Here
and there were some insulated hills of the same formation rising
abruptly from the plain to our right. All the villages we saw were
built upon masses of this sandstone rock, rising abruptly at
intervals from the surface of the plain, in horizontal strata. These
hillocks afford the people stone for building, and great facilities
for defending themselves against the inroads of freebooters. There is
not, I suppose, in the world a finer stone for building than these
sandstone hills afford; and we passed a great many carts carrying
them off to distant places in slabs or flags from ten to sixteen feet
long, two to three feet wide, and six inches thick. They are white,
with very minute pink spots, and of a texture so very fine that they
would be taken for indurated clay on a slight inspection. The houses
of the poorest peasants are here built of this beautiful freestone,
which, after two hundred years, looks as if it had been quarried only
yesterday.
About three miles from our tents we crossed over the little river
Ghorapachhâr,[20] flowing over a bed of this sandstone. The soil all
the way very light, and the cultivation scanty and bad. Except within
the enclosures of men's houses, scarcely a tree to be anywhere seen
to give shelter and shade to the weary traveller; and we could find
no ground for our camp with a shrub to shelter man or beast. All are
swept away to form gun-carriages for the Gwâlior artillery, with a
philosophical disregard to the comforts of the living, the repose of
the dead who planted them with a view to a comfortable berth in the
next world, and to the will of the gods to whom they are dedicated.
There is nothing left upon the land of animal or vegetable life to
enrich it; nothing of stock but what is necessary to draw from the
soil an annual crop, and which looks to one harvest for its entire
return. The sovereign proprietor of the soil lets it out by the year,
in farms or villages, to men who depend entirely upon the year's
return for the means of payment. He, in his turn, lets the lands in
detail to those who till them, and who depend for their subsistence,
and for the means of paying their rents, upon the returns of the
single harvest. There is no manufacture anywhere to be seen, save of
brass pots and rude cooking utensils; no trade or commerce, save in
the transport of the rude produce of the land to the great camp at
Gwâlior, upon the backs of bullocks, for want of roads fit for
wheeled carriages. No one resides in the villages, save those whose
labour is indispensably necessary to the rudest tillage, and those
who collect the dues of government, and are paid upon the lowest
possible scale. Such is the state of the Gwâlior territories in every
part of India where I have seen them.[21] The miseries and misrule of
the Oudh, Hyderabad, and other Muhammadan governments, are heard of
everywhere, because there are, under these governments, a middle and
higher class upon the land to suffer and proclaim them; but those of
the Gwâlior state are never heard of, because no such classes are
ever allowed to grow up upon the land. Had Russia governed Poland,
and Turkey Greece, in the way that Gwâlior has governed her conquered
territories, we should never have heard of the wrongs of the one or
the other.
In my morning's ride the day before I left Gwâlior, I saw a fine
leopard standing by the side of the most frequented road, and staring
at every one who passed. It was held by two men, who sat by and
talked to it as if it had been a human being. I thought it was an
animal for show, and I was about to give them something, when they
told me that they were servants of the Mahârâjâ, and were training
the leopard to bear the sight and society of man. 'It had', they
said, 'been caught about three months ago in the jungles, where it
could never bear the sight and society of man, or of any animal that
it could not prey upon; and must be kept upon the most frequented
road till quite tamed. Leopards taken when very young would', they
said, 'do very well as pets, but never answered for hunting; a good
leopard for hunting must, before taken, be allowed to be a season or
two providing for himself, and living upon the deer he takes in the
jungles and plains.'
Notes:
1. For the characteristics of the Marâthâs and Pindhârîs, see _ante_,
Chapter 21, note 2.
2. _Ante_, Chapter 26, note 8, and Chapter 32, note 9.
3. _Ante_, Chapter 17, note 6.
4. A small principality, about seventy miles equidistant from Agra,
Gwâlior, Mathurâ, Alwar, Jaipur, and Tonk. The attack on Karaulî
occurred in 1813. Full details are given in the author's _Report on
Budhuk alias Bagree Decoits_, pp. 99-104.
5. Four hundred thousand rupees.
6. _Ante_, Chapter 33, note 15.
7. Seven hundred thousand rupees.
8. Raghugarh is now a mediatized chiefship in the Central India
Agency, controlled by the Resident at Gwâlior. Bajranggarh, a
stronghold eleven miles south of Gûnâ (Goonah), and about 140 miles
distant from Gwâlior, is in the Raghugarh territory.
9. Three hundred thousand and two hundred thousand rupees,
respectively. Bahâdurgarh is now included in the Isâgarh district of
the Gwâlior State.
10. I cannot find any mention of Lopar, if the name is correctly
printed. Garhâ Kota seems to be a slip of the pen for Garhâ. Garhâ
Kota is in British territory, in the Sâgar District, C. P. But Garhâ
is a petty state, formerly included in the Raghugarh State. The town
of Garhâ is on the eastern slope of the Mâlwâ plateau in 25° 2' N.
and 78° 3' E. (_I.G._, 1908, s.v.).
11. On the coronation or installation of every new prince of the
house of Sindhia, orders are given to plunder a few shops in the town
as a part of the ceremony, and this they call or consider 'taking the
auspices'. Compensation is _supposed_ to be made to the proprietors,
but rarely is made. I believe the same auspices are taken at the
installation of a new prince of every other Marâthâ house. The Moghal
invaders of India were, in the same manner, obliged to allow their
armies to _take the auspices_ in the sack of a few towns, though they
had surrendered without resistance. They were given up to pillage as
a _religions duty_. Even the accomplished Bâbar was obliged to
concede this privilege to his army. [W. H. S.]
In reply to the editor's inquiries, Colonel Biddulph, officiating
Resident at Gwâlior, has kindly communicated the following
information on the subject of the above note, in a letter dated 30th
December, 1892. 'The custom of looting some "Banias'" shops on the
installation of a new Maharaja in Gwâlior is still observed. It was
observed when the present Mâdho Râo Sindhia was installed on the
_gadî_ on 3rd July, 1886, and the looting was stopped by the police
on the owners of the shops calling out "Dohai Mâdho Mahârâjkî!" five
shops were looted on the occasion, and compensation to the amount of
Rs. 427, 4, 3 was paid to the owners. My informant tells me that the
custom has apparently no connexion with religion, but is believed to
refer to the days when the period between the decease of one ruler
and the accession of his successor was one of disorder and plunder.
The maintenance of the custom is supposed to notify to the people
that they must now look to the new ruler for protection.
'According to another informant, some "banias" are called by the
palace officers and directed to open their shops in the palace
precincts, and money is given them to stock their shops. The poor
people are then allowed to loot them. No shops are allowed to be
looted in the bazaar.
'I cannot learn that any particular name is given to the ceremony,
and there appears to be some doubt as to its meaning; but the best
information seems to show that the reason assigned above is the
correct one.
'I cannot give any information as to the existence of the custom in
other Mahratta states.'
The custom was observed late in the sixth century at the birth of
King Harsha-vardhana (_Harsa-Caritâ_, transl, Cowell and Thomas, p.
111). Anthropologists classify such practices as rites de passage,
marking a transition from the old to the new.
'Bania', or 'baniyâ', means shopkeeper, especially a grain dealer;
'gadî', or 'gaddî', is the cushioned seat, also known as 'masnad',
which serves a Hindoo prince as a throne; and 'dohâi' is the ordinary
form of a cry for redress.
12. Ninety-two lâkhs of rupees were then worth more than £920,000.
The _I.G._ (1908) states the normal revenue as 150 lâkhs of rupees,
equivalent (at the rate of exchange of 1_s._ 4_d._ to the rupee, or R
15 = £1) to one million pounds sterling. The fall in exchange has
greatly lowered the sterling equivalent.
13. The Bhîl tribes are included in the large group of tribes which
have been driven back by the more cultivated races into the hills and
jungles. They are found among the woods along the banks of the
Nerbudda, Taptî, and Mahî, and in many parts of Central India and
Râjputâna. Of late years they have generally kept quiet; in the
earlier part of the nineteenth century they gave much trouble in
Khândêsh. In Râjputâna two irregular corps of Bhîls have been
organized.
14. Daughter of Mâhâdajî Sindhia. She died in 1834. See _post_,
Chapter 70.
15. 'In 1886 the fort of Gwâlior and the cantonment of Morâr were
surrendered by the Government of India to Sindhia in exchange for the
fort and town of Jhânsî. Both forts were mutually surrendered and
occupied on 10th March, 1886. As the occupation of the fort of
Gwâlior necessitated an increase of Sindhia's army, the Mahârâjâ was
allowed to add 3,000 men to his infantry' (_Letter of Officiating
Resident, dated 30th Dec._, 1892). In 1908 the Gwâlior army,
comprising all arms, including three regiments of Imperial Service
Cavalry, numbered more than 12,000 men, described as troops of 'very
fair quality' (_I.G._, 1908).
16. _Ante_, Chapter 26, note 8; Chapter 32, note 9; Chapter 49, note
2.
17. In _Ramaseeana_ the author has fully described the practices of
the Thugs in taking omens, and the feelings with which they regarded
their profession. Similar information concerning other criminal
classes is copiously given in the _Report on Budhuk alias Bagree
Decoits_. See also Meadows Taylor, _Confessions of a Thug_, in any
edition.
18. These notions are still prevalent.
19. December, 1835, Christmas Day.
20. 'Overthrower of horses'; the same epithet is applied to the
Utangan river, south of the Agra district, owing to the difficulty
with which it is crossed when in flood (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, 1st ed.,
vol. vii, p. 423).
21. Sindhia's territories, measuring 25,041 square miles, are in
parts intermixed with those of other princes, and so extend over a
wide space. Gwâlior and its government have been discussed already in
Chapter 36.
CHAPTER 50
Dhôlpur, Capital of the Jât Chiefs of Gohad--Consequence of Obstacles
to the Prosecution of Robbers.
On the morning of the 26th,[1] we sent on one tent, with the
intention of following it in the afternoon; but about three o'clock a
thunder-storm came on so heavily that I was afraid that which we
occupied would come down upon us; and, putting my wife and child in a
palankeen, I took them to the dwelling of an old Bairâgî, about two
hundred yards from us. He received us very kindly, and paid us many
compliments about the honour we had conferred upon him. He was a kind
and, I think, a good old man, and had six disciples who seemed to
reverence him very much. A large stone image of Hanumân, the monkey-
god, painted red, and a good store of buffaloes, very comfortably
sheltered from the pitiless storm, were in an inner court. The
peacocks in dozens sought shelter under the walls and in the tree
that stood in the courtyard; and I believe that they would have come
into the old man's apartment had they not seen our white faces there.
I had a great deal of talk with him, but did not take any notes of
it. These old Bairâgîs, who spend the early and middle parts of life
as disciples in pilgrimages to the celebrated temples of their god
Vishnu in all parts of India, and the latter part of it as high
priests or apostles in listening to the reports of the numerous
disciples employed in similar wanderings are, perhaps, the most
intelligent men in the country. They are from all the castes and
classes of society. The lowest Hindoo may become a Bairâgî, and the
very highest are often tempted to become so; the service of the god
to which they devote themselves levelling all distinctions. Few of
them can write or read, but they are shrewd observers of men and
things, and often exceedingly agreeable and instructive companions to
those who understand them, and can make them enter into unreserved
conversation. Our tent stood out the storm pretty well, but we were
obliged to defer our march till the next day. On the afternoon of the
27th we went on twelve miles, over a plain of deep alluvion, through
which two rivers have cut their way to the Chambal; and, as usual,
the ravines along their banks are deep, long, and dreary.
About half-way we were overtaken by one of the heaviest showers of
rain I ever saw; it threatened us from neither side, but began to
descend from an apparently small bed of clouds directly over our
heads, which seemed to spread out on every side as the rain fell, and
fill the whole vault of heaven with one dark and dense mass. The wind
changed frequently; and in less than half an hour the whole surface
of the country over which we were travelling was under water. This
dense mass of clouds passed off in about two hours to the east; but
twice, when the sun opened and beamed divinely upon us in a cloudless
sky to the west, the wind changed suddenly round, and rushed back
angrily from the east, to fill up the space which had been quickly
rarefied by the genial heat of its rays, till we were again enveloped
in darkness, and began to despair of reaching any human habitation
before night. Some hail fell among the rain, but not large enough to
hurt any one. The thunder was loud and often startling to the
strongest nerves, and the lightning vivid, and almost incessant. We
managed to keep the road because it was merely a beaten pathway below
the common level of the country, and we could trace it by the greater
depth of the water, and the absence of all shrubs and grass. All
roads in India soon become watercourses--they are nowhere metalled;
and, being left for four or five months every year without rain,
their soil is reduced to powder by friction, and carried off by the
winds over the surrounding country.[2] I was on horseback, but my
wife and child were secure in a good palankeen that sheltered them
from the rain. The bearers were obliged to move with great caution
and slowly, and I sent on every person I could spare that they might
keep moving, for the cold blast blowing over their thin and wet
clothes seemed intolerable to those who were idle. My child's
playmate, Gulâb, a lad of about ten years of age, resolutely kept by
the side of the palankeen, trotting through the water with his teeth
chattering as if he had been in an ague. The rain at last ceased, and
the sky in the west cleared up beautifully about half an hour before
sunset. Little Gulâb threw off his stuffed and quilted vest, and got
a good dry English blanket to wrap round him from the palankeen. We
soon after reached a small village, in which I treated all who had
remained with us to as much coarse sugar (_gur_) as they could eat;
and, as people of all castes can eat of sweetmeats from the hands of
confectioners without prejudice to their caste, and this sugar is
considered to be the best of all good things for guarding against
colds in man or beast, they all ate very heartily, and went on in
high spirits. As the sun sank below us on the left, a bright moon
shone out upon us from the right, and about an hour after dark we
reached our tents on the north bank of the Kuârî river, where we
found an excellent dinner for ourselves, and good fires, and good
shelter for our servants. Little rain had fallen near the tents, and
the river Kuârî, over which we had to cross, had not, fortunately,
much swelled; nor did much fall on the ground we had left; and, as
the tents there had been struck and laden before it came on, they
came up the next morning early, and went on to our next ground.
On the 28th, we went on to Dhôlpur, the capital of the Jât chiefs of
Gohad,[3] on the left bank of the Chambal, over a plain with a
variety of crops, but not one that requires two seasons to reach
maturity. The soil excellent in quality and deep, but not a tree
anywhere to be seen, nor any such thing as a work of ornament or
general utility of any kind. We saw the fort of Dhôlpur at a distance
of six miles, rising apparently from the surface of the level plain,
but in reality situated on the summit of the opposite and high bank
of a large river, its foundation at least one hundred feet above the
level of the water. The immense pandemonia of ravines that separated
us from this fort were not visible till we began to descend into them
some two or three miles from the bed of the river. Like all the
ravines that border the rivers in these parts, they are naked,
gloomy, and ghastly, and the knowledge that no solitary traveller is
ever safe in them does not tend to improve the impression they make
upon us. The river is a beautiful clear stream, here flowing over a
bed of fine sand with a motion so gentle, that one can hardly
conceive it is she who has played such fantastic tricks along the
borders, and made such 'frightful gashes' in them. As we passed over
this noble reach of the river Chambal in a ferry-boat, the boatman
told us of the magnificent bridge formed here by the Baiza Bâî for
Lord William Bentinck in 1832, from boats brought down from Agra for
the purpose. 'Little', said they, 'did it avail her with the
Governor-General in her hour of need.[4]
The town of Dhôlpur lies some short way in from the north bank of the
Chambal, at the extremity of a range of sandstone hills which runs
diagonally across that of Gwâlior. This range was once capped with
basalt, and some boulders are still found upon it in a state of rapid
decomposition. It was quite refreshing to see the beautiful mango
groves on the Dhôlpur side of the river, after passing through a
large tract of country in which no tree of any kind was to be seen.
On returning from a long ride over the range of sandstone hills the
morning after we reached Dhôlpur, I passed through an encampment of
camels taking rude iron from some mines in the hills to the south
towards Agra. They waited here within the frontier of a native state
for a pass from the Agra custom house,[5] lest any one should, after
they enter our frontier, pretend that they were going to smuggle it,
and thus get them into trouble. 'Are you not', said I, 'afraid to
remain here so near the ravines of the Chambal, when thieves are said
to be so numerous?' 'Not at all,' replied they. 'I suppose thieves do
not think it worth while to steal rude iron?' 'Thieves, sir, think it
worth while to steal anything they can get, but we do not fear them
much here.' 'Where, then, do you fear them much?' 'We fear them when
we get into the Company's territories.' 'And how is this, when we
have good police establishments, and the Dhôlpur people none?' 'When
the Dhôlpur people get hold of a thief, they make him disgorge all
that he has got of our property for us, and they confiscate all the
rest that he has for themselves, and cut off his nose or his hands,
and turn him adrift to deter others. You, on the contrary, when you
get hold of a thief, worry us to death in the prosecution of your
courts; and, when we have proved the robbery to your satisfaction,
you leave all this ill-gotten wealth to his family,[6] and provide
him with good food and clothing for himself, while he works for you a
couple of years on the roads.[7] The consequence is, that here
fellows are afraid to rob a traveller, if they find him at all on his
guard, as we generally are, while in your districts they rob us where
and when they like.'
'But, my friends, you are sure to recover what we do get of your
property from the thieves.' 'Not quite sure of that neither,' said
they, 'or the greater part is generally absorbed on its way back to
us through the officers of your court; and we would always rather put
up with the first loss than run the risk of a greater by prosecution,
if we happen to get robbed within the Company's territories.'
The loss and annoyances to which prosecutors and witnesses are
subject in our courts are a source of very great evil to the country.
They enable police-officers everywhere to grow rich upon the
concealment of crimes. The man who has been robbed will bribe them to
conceal the robbery, that he may escape the further loss of the
prosecution in our courts, generally very distant; and the witnesses
will bribe them to avoid attending to give evidence; the whole
village communities bribe them, because every man feels that they
have the power of getting him summoned to the court in some capacity
or other, if they like; and that they will certainly like to do so,
if not bribed.
The obstacles which our system opposes to the successful prosecution
of robbers of all denominations and descriptions deprive our
Government of all popular support in the administration of criminal
justice; and this is considered everywhere to be the worst, and,
indeed, the only radically bad feature of our government. No
magistrate hopes to get a conviction against one in four of the most
atrocious gang of robbers and murderers of his district, and his only
resource is in the security laws, which enable him to keep them in
jail under a requisition of security for short periods. To this an
idle or apathetic magistrate will not have recourse, and under him
these robbers have a free licence.
In England, a judicial acquittal does not send back the culprit to
follow the same trade in the same field, as in India; for the
published proceedings of the court bring down upon him the
indignation of society--the moral and religions feelings of his
fellow men are arrayed against him, and from these salutary checks no
flaw in the indictment can save him. Not so in India. There no moral
or religions feelings interpose to assist or to supply the
deficiencies of the penal law. Provided he eats, drinks, smokes,
marries, and makes his offerings to his priest according to the rules
of his caste, the robber and the murderer incurs no odium in the
circle in which he moves, either religious or moral, and this is the
only circle for whose feelings he has any regard.[8]
The man who passed off his bad coin at Datiyâ, passed off more at
Dhôlpur while my advanced people were coming in, pretending that he
wanted things for me, and was in a great hurry to be ready with them
at my tents by the time I came up. The bad rupees were brought to a
native officer of my guard, who went with the shopkeepers in search
of the knave, but he could nowhere be found. The gates of the town
were shut up all night at my suggestion, and in the morning every
lodging-house in the town was searched for him in vain--he had gone
on. I had left some sharp men behind me, expecting that he would
endeavour to pass off his bad money immediately after my departure;
but in expectation of this he was now evidently keeping a little in
advance of me. I sent on some men with the shopkeepers whom he had
cheated to our next stage, in the hope of overtaking him; but he had
left the place before they arrived without passing any of his bad
coin, and gone on to Agra. The shopkeepers could not be persuaded to
go any further after him, for, if they caught him, they should, they
said, have infinite trouble in prosecuting him in our courts, without
any chance of recovering from him what they had lost.
On the 29th, we remained at Dhôlpur to receive and return the visits
of the young Râjâ, or, as he is called, the young Rânâ, a lad of
about fifteen years of age, very plain, and very dull. He came about
ten in the forenoon with a very respectable and well-dressed retinue,
and a tolerable show of elephants and horses. The uniforms of his
guards were made after those of our own soldiers, and did not please
me half so much as those of the Datiyâ guards, who were permitted to
consult their own tastes; and the music of the drums and fifes seemed
to me infinitely inferior to that of the mounted minstrels of my old
friend Parîchhit.[9] The lad had with him about a dozen old public
servants entitled to chairs, some of whom had served his father above
thirty years; while the ancestors of others had served his
grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and I could not help telling the
lad in their presence that 'these were the greatest ornament of a
prince's throne and the best signs and pledges of a good government'.
They were all evidently much pleased at the compliment, and I thought
they deserved to be pleased, from the good character they bore among
the peasantry of the country. I mentioned that I had understood the
boatmen of the Chambal at Dhôlpur never caught or ate fish. The lad
seemed embarrassed, and the minister took upon himself to reply that
'there was no market for it, since the Hindoos of Dhôlpur never ate
fish, and the Muhammadans had all disappeared'. I asked the lad
whether he was fond of hunting. He seemed again confounded, and the
minister said that 'his highness never either hunted or fished, as
people of his caste were prohibited from destroying life'. 'And yet',
said I, 'they have often showed themselves good soldiers in battle.'
They were all pleased again, and said that they were not prohibited
from killing tigers; but that there was no jungle of any kind near
Dhôlpur, and, consequently, no tigers to be found. The Jâts are
descendants of the Getae, and were people of very low caste, or
rather of no caste at all, among the Hindoos, and they are now trying
to raise themselves by abstaining from killing and eating
animals.[10] Among Hindoos this is everything; a man of low caste is
'_sab kuchh khâtâ_', sticks at nothing in the way of eating; and a
man of high caste is a man who abstains from eating anything but
vegetable or farinaceous food; if, at the same time, he abstains from
using in his cook-room all woods but one, and has that one washed
before he uses it, he is canonized.[11] Having attained to military
renown and territorial dominion in the usual way by robbery, the Jâts
naturally enough seek the distinction of high caste to enable them
the better to enjoy their position in society.
It had been stipulated that I should walk to the bottom of the steps
to receive the Rânâ, as is the usage on such occasions, and carpets
were accordingly spread thus far. Here he got out of his chair, and I
led him into the large room of the bungalow, which we occupied during
our stay, followed by all his and my attendants. The bungalow had
been built by the former Resident at Gwâlior, the Honourable R.
Cavendish, for his residence during the latter part of the rains,
when Gwâlior is considered to be unhealthy. At his departure the Rânâ
purchased this bungalow for the use of European gentlemen and ladies
passing through his capital.
In the afternoon, about four o'clock, I went to return his visit in a
small palace not yet finished, a pretty piece of miniature
fortification, surrounded by what they call their 'chhâonî', or
cantonments. The streets are good, and the buildings neat and
substantial; but there is nothing to strike or particularly interest
the stranger. The interview passed off without anything remarkable;
and I was more than ever pleased with the people by whom this young
chief is surrounded. Indeed, I had much reason to be pleased with the
manners of all the people on this side of the Chambal. They are those
of a people well pleased to see English gentlemen among them, and
anxious to make themselves useful and agreeable to us. They know that
their chief is indebted to the British Government for all the country
he has, and that he would be swallowed up by Sindhia's greedy army,
were not the sevenfold shield of the Honourable Company spread over
him. His establishments, civil and military, like those of the
Bundêlkhand chiefs, are raised from the peasantry and yeomanry or the
country; who all, in consequence, feel an interest in the prosperity
and independent respectability of their chief. On the Gwâlior side,
the members of all the public establishments know and feel that it is
we who interpose and prevent their master from swallowing up all his
neighbours, and thereby having increased means of promoting their
interest and that of their friends; and they detest us all most
cordially in consequence. The peasantry of the Gwâlior territory seem
to consider their own government as a kind of minotaur, which they
would be glad to see destroyed, no matter how or by whom; since it
gives no lucrative or honourable employment to any of their members,
so as to interest either their pride or their affections; nor throws
back among them for purposes of local advantage any of the produce of
their land and labour which it exacts. It is worthy of remark that,
though the Dhôlpur chief is peculiarly the creature of the British
Government, and indebted to it for all he has or ever will have, and
though he has never had anything, and never can have, or can hope to
have, anything from the poor pageant of the house of Tîmûr, who now
sits upon the throne of Delhi;[12] yet, on his seal of office he
declares himself to be the slave and creature of that imperial
'warrior for the faith of Islam'. As he abstains from eating the good
fish of the river Chambal to enhance his claim to caste among
Hindoos, so he abstains from acknowledging his deep debt of gratitude
to the Honourable Company, or the British Government, with a view to
give the rust of age to his rank and title. To acknowledge himself a
creature of the British Government were to acknowledge that he was a
man of yesterday; to acknowledge himself the slave of the Emperor is
to claim for his poor veins 'the blood of a line of kings'. The petty
chiefs of Bundêlkhand, who are in the same manner especially
dependent on the British Government, do the same thing.
At Dhôlpur, there are some noble old mosques and mausoleums built
three hundred years ago, in the reign of the Emperor Humâyûn, by some
great officers of his government, whose remains still rest
undisturbed among them, though the names of their families have been
for many ages forgotten, and no men of their creed now live near to
demand for them the respect of the living. These tombs are all
elaborately built and worked out of the fine freestone of the country
and the trellis-work upon some of their stone screens is still as
beautiful as when first made. There are Persian and Arabic
inscriptions upon all of them, and I found from them that one of the
mosques had been built by the Emperor Shâh Jahân in A.D. 1634,[13]
when he little dreamed that his three sons would here meet to fight
the great fight for the throne while he yet sat upon it.[14]
Notes:
1. December, 1835.
2. The author's remark that in India the roads are 'nowhere metalled'
must seem hardly credible to a modern traveller, who sees the country
intersected by thousands of miles of metalled road. The Grand Trunk
Road from Calcutta to Lahore, constructed in Lord Dalhousie's time,
alone measures about 1,200 miles. The development of roads since 1850
ha been enormous, and yet the mileage of good roads would have to be
increased tenfold to put India on an equality with the more advanced
countries of Europe.
3. _Ante_, Chanter 36, notes 26 & 27.
4. The Baiza Bâî was the widow of Daulat Râo Sindhia. He had died on
March 21, 1827. With the consent of the Government of India, she
adopted a boy as his successor, but, being an ambitions and
intriguing woman, she tried to keep all power in her own hands. The
young Mahârâjâ fled from her, and took refuge in the Residency in
October, 1832. In December of the same year Lord William Bentinck
visited Gwâlior, and assumed an attitude of absolute neutrality. The
result was that trouble continued, and seven months later the
Mahârâjâ again fled to the Residency. The troops then revolted
against the Baiza Bâî, and compelled her to retire to Dhôlpur. This
event put an end to her political activity. Ultimately she was
allowed to return to Gwâlior, and died there in 1862 (Malleson, _The
Native States of India_, pp. 160-4). The author wrote an unpublished
history of Baiza Bâî (_ante_, Bibliography).
5. Long since abolished.
6. The law now permits the person injured to be compensated out of
any fine realized.
7. The system of employing gangs of prisoners on the roads was open
to great abuses, and has been long given up. The prisoners are now,
as a rule, employed only on the jail promises, and cannot be utilized
for outside work, except under special circumstances by special
sanction.
8. The notes to this edition have recorded many changes in India, but
no change has taken place in the difficulties which beset the
administration of criminal law. They are still those which the author
describes, and Police Commissions cannot remove them. The power to
exact security for good behaviour from known bad characters still
exists, and, when discreetly used, is of great value. The conviction
of atrocious robbers and murderers is, perhaps, less rare than it was
in the author's time, though many still escape even the minor penalty
of arrest. The want of a sound moral public opinion is the
fundamental difficulty in Indian police administration--a truth fully
Understood by the author, but rarely realized by members of
Parliament.
9. The title of the Dhôlpur chief is now Mahârâjâ Rânâ. In 1905 his
reduced army numbered 1,216 of all ranks (_I. G._, 1908). The force
is not of serious military value.
10. The identification of the Jâts, or Jats, with the Getae is not
even probable. The anchor exaggerates the lowness of the social rank
of the Jâts, who cannot properly be described as people of 'very low
caste'. They are, and have long been, numerous and powerful in the
Panjâb and the neighbouring countries. It is true that they hate
Brahmans, care little for Brahman notions of propriety, either as
regards food or marriage, and to a certain extent stand outside the
orthodox Hindoo system; but they are heterodox rather than low-caste.
The Râjâs of Bharatpur, Dhôlpur, Nâbha, Patiâlâ, and Jînd are all
Jâts. The Jâts are a fine and interesting people, who seem to suffer
little deterioration from the notorious laxity of their matrimonial
arrangements. They are skilled and industrious cultivators. A saying
has been current in Upper India that, if the British power is ever
broken, the succession will pass to the Jâts.
11. This is the Brahman and Baniyâ theory. A high-spirited Râjpût of
Râjputâna, full of pride in his long ancestry, and yet fond of wild
boar's flesh, would indeed be wroth if denounced as a low-caste man.
It is, however, unfortunately, quite true that all races which become
entangled in the meshes of Hinduism tend to gradually surrender their
freedom, and to become proud of submission to the senseless
formalities and restrictions which the Brahman loves.
12. Akbar II. He was titular emperor from A.D. 1806 to 1837, and was
succeeded by Bahâdur Shâh II, the last of his line. The portrait of
Akbar II is the frontispiece to volume i of the original edition of
this work, and a miniature portrait of him is given in the
frontispiece of volume ii.
13. One of these tombs, namely, that of Bîbî Zarîna, dated A.H. 942 =
A.D. 1535-6, is described by Cunningham (_A.S.R._, xx, p. 113, pl.
xxxvii), who notes that according to an obviously false local popular
story, the lady was a daughter of Shâh Jahân, who lived a century
later. This story seems to have misled the author. No inscription of
the reign of Shâh Jahân at Dhôlpur is recorded.
14. The three sons were Dârâ Shikoh, Aurangzêb, and Murâd Baksh.
CHAPTER 51
Influence of Electricity on Vegetation--Agra and its Buildings.
On the 30th and 31st,[1] we went twenty-four miles over a dry plain,
with a sandy soil covered with excellent crops where irrigated, and a
very poor one where not. We met several long strings of camels
carrying grain from Agra to Gwâlior. A single man takes charge of
twenty or thirty, holding the bridle of the first, and walking on
before its nose. The bridles of all the rest are tied one after the
other to the saddles of those immediately preceding them, and all
move along after the leader in single file. Water must tend to
attract and to impart to vegetables a good deal of electricity and
other vivifying powers that would otherwise he dormant in the earth
at a distance. The mere circumstance of moistening the earth from
within reach of the roots would not be sufficient to account for the
vast difference between the crops of fields that are irrigated, and
those that are not. One day, in the middle of the season of the
rains, I asked my gardener, while walking with him over my grounds,
how it was that some of the fine clusters of bamboos had not yet
begun to throw out their shoots. 'We have not yet had a thunderstorm,
sir,' replied the gardener. 'What in the name of God has the
thunderstorm to do with the shooting of the bamboos?' asked I in
amazement. 'I don't know, sir,' said he, 'but certain it is that no
bamboos begin to throw out their shoots well till we get a good deal
of thunder and lightning.' The thunder and lightning came, and the
bamboo shoots soon followed in abundance. It might have been a mere
coincidence; or the tall bamboo may bring down from the passing
clouds, and convey to the roots, the electric fluid they require for
nourishment, or for conductors of nourishment.[2]
In the Isle of France,[3] people have a notion that the mushrooms
always come up best after a thunderstorm. Electricity has certainly
much more to do in the business of the world than we are yet aware
of, in the animal, mineral, and vegetable developments.[4]
At our ground this day, I met a very respectable and intelligent
native revenue officer who had been employed to settle some boundary
disputes between the yeomen of our territory and those of the
adjoining territory of Dhôlpur.
'The Honourable Company's rights and those of its yeomen must', said
he, 'be inevitably sacrificed in all such cases; for the Dhôlpur
chief, or his minister, says to all their witnesses, "You are, of
course, expected to speak the truth regarding the land in dispute;
but, by the sacred stream of the Ganges, if you speak so as to lose
this estate one inch of it, you lose both your ears"--and most
assuredly would they lose them,' continued he, 'if they were not to
swear most resolutely that all the land in question belonged to
Dhôlpur. Had I the same power to cut off the ears of witnesses on our
side, we should meet on equal terms. Were I to threaten to cut them
off, they would laugh in my face.' There was much truth in what the
poor man said, for the Dhôlpur witnesses always make it appear that
the claims of their yeomen are just and moderate, and a salutary
dread of losing their ears operates, no doubt, very strongly. The
threatened punishment of the prince is quick, while that of the gods,
however just, is certainly very slow--
Ut sit magna, tamen certe lenta ira deorum est.
On the 1st of January, 1836, we went on sixteen miles to Agra, and,
when within about six miles of the city, the dome and minarets of the
Tâj opened upon us from behind a small grove of fruit-trees, close by
us on the side of the road. The morning was not clear, but it was a
good one for a first sight of this building, which appeared larger
through the dusty haze than it would have done through a clear sky.
For five-and-twenty years of my life had I been looking forward to
the sight now before me. Of no building on earth had I heard so much
as of this, which contains the remains of the Emperor Shâh Jahân and
his wife, the father and mother of the children whose struggles for
dominion have been already described. We had ordered our tents to be
pitched in the gardens of this splendid mausoleum, that we might have
our fill of the enjoyment which everybody seemed to derive from it;
and we reached them about eight o'clock. I went over the whole
building before I entered my tent, and, from the first sight of the
dome and minarets on the distant horizon to the last glance back from
my tent-ropes to the magnificent gateway that forms the entrance from
our camp to the quadrangle in which they stand, I can truly say that
everything surpassed my expectations. I at first thought the dome
formed too large a portion of the whole building; that its neck was
too long and too much exposed; and that the minarets were too plain
in their design; but, after going repeatedly over every part, and
examining the _tout ensemble_ from all possible positions, and in all
possible lights, from that of the full moon at midnight in a
cloudless sky to that of the noonday sun, the mind seemed to repose
in the calm persuasion that there was an entire harmony of parts, a
faultless congregation of architectural beauties, on which it could
dwell for ever without fatigue.
After my quarter of a century of anticipated pleasure, I went on from
part to part in the expectation that I must by and by come to
something that would disappoint me; but no, the emotion which one
feels at first is never impaired; on the contrary, it goes on
improving from the first _coup d'il_ of the dome in the distance to
the minute inspection of the last flower upon the screen round the
tomb. One returns and returns to it with undiminished pleasure; and
though at every return one's attention to the smaller parts becomes
less and less, the pleasure which he derives from the contemplation
of the greater, and of the whole collectively, seems to increase; and
he leaves with a feeling of regret that he could not have it all his
life within his reach, and of assurance that the image of what he has
seen can never be obliterated from his mind 'while memory holds her
seat'. I felt that it was to me in architecture what Kemble and his
sister, Mrs. Siddons, had been to me a quarter of a century before in
acting--something that must stand alone--something that I should
never cease to see clearly in my mind's eye, and yet never be able
clearly to describe to others.[5]
The Emperor and his Queen he buried side by side in a vault beneath
the building, to which we descend by a flight of steps. Their remains
are covered by two slabs of marble; and directly over these slabs,
upon the floor above, in the great centre room under the dome, stand
two other slabs, or cenotaphs, of the same marble exquisitely worked
in mosaic. Upon that of the Queen, amid wreaths of flowers, are
worked in black letters passages from the Korân, one of which, at the
end facing the entrance, terminates with 'And defend us from the
tribe of unbelievers'; that very tribe which is now gathered from all
quarters of the civilized world to admire the splendour of the tomb
which was raised to perpetuate her name.[6] On the slab over her
husband there are no passages from the Korân--merely mosaic work of
flowers with his name and the date of his death.[7] I asked some of
the learned Muhammadan attendants the cause of this difference, and
was told that Shâh Jahân had himself designed the slab over his wife,
and saw no harm in inscribing the words of God upon it; but that the
slab over himself was designed by his more pious son, Aurangzêb, who
did not think it right to place these holy words upon a stone which
the foot of man might some day touch, though that stone covered the
remains of his own father. Such was this 'man of prayers', this
'Namâzî' (as Dara called him), to the last. He knew mankind well,
and, above all, that part of them which he was called upon to govern,
and which he governed for forty years with so much ability.[8]
The slab over the Queen occupies the centre of the apartments above
and in the vault below, and that over her husband lies on the left as
we enter. At one end of the slab in the vault her name is inwrought,
'Mumtâz-i-mahal Bânû Bêgam', the ornament of the palace, Bânû Bêgam,
and the date of her death, 1631. That of her husband and the date of
his death, 1666, are inwrought upon the other.[9]
She died in giving birth to a daughter, who is said to have been
heard crying in the womb by herself and her other daughters. She sent
for the Emperor, and told him that she believed no mother had ever
been known to survive the birth of a child so heard, and that she
felt her end was near. She had, she said, only two requests to make;
first, that he would not marry again after her death, and get
children to contend with hers for his favour and dominions; and,
secondly, that he would build for her the tomb with which he had
promised to perpetuate her name. She died in giving birth to the
child, as might have been expected when the Emperor, in his anxiety,
called all the midwives of the city, and all his secretaries of state
and privy counsellors to prescribe for her. Both her dying requests
were granted. Her tomb was commenced upon immediately. No woman ever
pretended to supply her place in the palace; nor had Shâh Jahân, that
we know of, children by any other.[10] Tavernier saw this building
completed and finished; and tells us that it occupied twenty thousand
men for twenty-two years.[11] The mausoleum itself and all the
buildings that appertain to it cost 3,17,48,026--three _karôr_,
seventeen lâkhs, forty-eight thousand and twenty-six rupees, or
3,174,802 pounds sterling;--three million one hundred and seventy-
four thousand eight hundred and two![12] I asked my wife, when she
had gone over it, what she thought of the building. 'I cannot', said
she, 'tell you what I think, for I know not how to criticize such a
building, but I can tell you what I feel. I would die to-morrow to
have such another over me.' This is what many a lady has felt, no
doubt.
The building stands upon the north side of a large quadrangle,
looking down into the clear blue stream of the river Jumna, while the
other three sides are enclosed with a high wall of red sandstone.[13]
The entrance to this quadrangle is through a magnificent gateway in
the south side opposite the tomb; and on the other two sides are very
beautiful mosques facing inwards, and corresponding exactly with each
other in size, design, and execution. That on the left, or west, side
is the only one that can be used as a mosque or church; because the
faces of the audience, and those of all men at their prayers, must be
turned towards the tomb of their prophet to the west. The pulpit is
always against the dead wall at the back, and the audience face
towards it, standing with their backs to the open front of the
building. The church on the east side is used for the accommodation
of visitors, or for any secular purpose, and was built merely as a
'jawâb' (answer) to the real one.[14] The whole area is laid out in
square parterres, planted with flowers and shrubs in the centre, and
with fine trees, chiefly the cypress, all round the borders, forming
an avenue to every road. These roads are all paved with slabs of
freestone, and have, running along the centre, a basin, with a row of
_jets d'eau_ in the middle from one extremity to the other. These are
made to play almost every evening, when the gardens are much
frequented by the European gentlemen and ladies of the station, and
by natives of all religions and sects. The quadrangle is from east to
west nine hundred and sixty-four feet, and from north to south three
hundred and twenty-nine.[l5]
The mausoleum itself, the terrace upon which it stands, and the
minarets, are all formed of the finest white marble, inlaid with
precious stones. The wall around the quadrangle, including the river
face of the terrace, is made of red sandstone, with cupolas and
pillars of the same white marble. The insides of the churches and
apartments in and upon the walls are all lined with marble or with
stucco work that looks like marble; but, on the outside, the red
sandstone resembles uncovered bricks. The dazzling white marble of
the mausoleum itself rising over the red wall is apt, at first sight,
to make a disagreeable impression, from the idea of a whitewashed
head to an unfinished building; but this impression is very soon
removed, and tends, perhaps, to improve that which is afterwards
received from a nearer inspection. The marble was all brought from
the Jeypore territories upon wheeled carriages, a distance, I
believe, of two or three hundred miles; and the sandstone from the
neighbourhood of Dhôlpur and Fathpur Sîkrî.[16] Shâh Jâhan is said to
have inherited his partiality for this colour from his grandfather,
Akbar, who constructed almost all his buildings from the same stone,
though he might have had the beautiful white freestone at the same
cost. What was figuratively said of Augustus may be most literally
said of Shâh Jahân; he found the cities (Agra and Delhi) all brick,
and left them all marble; for all the marble buildings, and additions
to buildings, were formed by him.[17]
This magnificent building and the palaces at Agra and Delhi were, I
believe, designed by Austin de Bordeaux, a Frenchman of great talent
and merit, in whose ability and integrity the Emperor placed much
reliance. He was called by the natives 'Ustân [_sic_] Isâ, Nâdir-ul-
asr', 'the wonderful of the age'; and, for his office of 'naksha
navîs', or plan-drawer, he received a regular salary of one thousand
rupees a month, with occasional presents, that made his income very
large. He had finished the palace at Delhi, and the mausoleum and
palace of Agra; and was engaged in designing a silver ceiling for one
of the galleries in the latter, when he was sent by the Emperor to
settle some affairs of great importance at Goa. He died at Cochin on
his way back, and is supposed to have been poisoned by the
Portuguese, who were extremely jealous of his influence at court. He
left a son by a native, called Muhammad Sharîf, who was employed as
an architect on a salary of five hundred rupees a month, and who
became, as I conclude from his name, a Musalmân. Shâh Jahân had
commenced his own tomb on the opposite side of the Jumna; and both
were to have been united by a bridge.[18] The death of Austin de
Bordeaux, and the wars between his [_scil._ Shâh Jahân's] sons that
followed prevented the completion of these magnificent works.[19]
We were encamped upon a fine green sward outside the entrance to the
south, in a kind of large court, enclosed by a high cloistered wall,
in which all our attendants and followers found shelter. Colonel and
Mrs. King, and some other gentlemen, were encamped in the same place,
and for the same purpose; and we had a very agreeable party. The band
of our friend Major Godby's regiment played sometimes in the evening
upon the terrace of the Tâj; but, of all the complicated music ever
heard upon earth, that of a flute blown gently in the vault below,
where the remains of the Emperor and his consort repose, as the sound
rises to the dome amidst a hundred arched alcoves around, and
descends in heavenly reverberations upon those who sit or recline
upon the cenotaphs above the vault, is, perhaps, the finest to an
inartificial car. We feel as if it were from heaven, and breathed by
angels; it is to the ear what the building itself is to the eye; but,
unhappily, it cannot, like the building, live in our recollections.
All that we can, in after life, remember is that it was heavenly, and
produced heavenly emotions.
We went all over the palace in the fort, a very magnificent building
constructed by Shâh Jahân within fortifications raised by his
grandfather Akbar.[20]
The fretwork and mosaic upon the marble pillars and panels are equal
to those of the Tâj; or, if possible, superior; nor is the design or
execution in any respect inferior, and yet a European feels that he
could get a house much more commodious, and more to his taste, for a
much less sum than must have been expended upon it. The Marquis of
Hastings, when Governor-General of India, broke up one of the most
beautiful marble baths of this palace to send home to George IV of
England, then Prince Regent, and the rest of the marble of the suite
of apartments from which it had been taken, with all its exquisite
fretwork and mosaic, was afterwards sold by auction, on account of
our Government, by order of the then Governor-General, Lord W.
Bentinck. Had these things fetched the price expected, it is probable
that the whole of the palace, and even the Tâj itself, would have
been pulled down, and sold in the same manner.[21]
We visited the Motî Masjid or Pearl Mosque. It was built by Shâh
Jahân, entirely of white marble; and completed, as we learn from an
inscription on the portico, in the year A.D. 1656.[22] There is no
mosaic upon any of the pillars or panels of this mosque; but the
design and execution of the flowers in bas-relief are exceedingly
beautiful. It is a chaste, simple, and majestic building;[23] and is
by some people admired even more than the Tâj, because they have
heard less of it; and their pleasure is heightened by surprise. We
feel that it is to all other mosques what the Tâj is to all other
mausoleums, a _facile princeps_.
Few, however, go to see the 'mosque of pearls' more than once, stay
as long as they will at Agra; and when they go, the building appears
less and less to deserve their admiration; while they go to the Tâj
as often as they can, and find new beauties in it, or new feelings of
pleasure from it, every time[24]
I went out to visit this tomb of the Emperor Akbar at Sikandara, a
magnificent building, raised over him by his son, the Emperor
Jahângîr. His remains he deposited in a deep vault under the centre,
and are covered by a plain slab of marble, without fretwork or
mosaic. On the top of the building, which is three or four stories
high, is another marble slab, corresponding with the one in the vault
below.[25] This is beautifully carved, with the 'nau nauwê nâm'-the
ninety-nine names, or attributes of the Deity, from the Korân.[26] It
is covered by an awning, not to protect the tomb, but to defend the
'words of God' from the rain, as my cicerone assured me.[27] He told
me that the attendants upon this tomb used to have the hay of the
large quadrangle of forty acres in which it stands,[28] in addition
to their small salaries, and that it yielded them some fifty rupees a
year; but the chief native officer of the Tâj establishment demanded
half of the sum, and when they refused to give him so much, he
persuaded his master, the European engineer, _with much difficulty_,
to take all this hay for the public cattle. 'And why could you not
adjust such a matter between you, without pestering the engineer?'
'Is not this the way', said he, with emotion, 'that Hindustan has cut
its own throat, and brought in the stranger at all times? Have they
ever had, or can they ever have, confidence in each other, or let
each other alone to enjoy the little they have in peace?' Considering
all the circumstances of time and place, Akbar has always appeared to
me among sovereigns what Shakespeare was among poets; and, feeling as
a citizen of the world, I reverenced the marble slab that covers his
bones more, perhaps, than I should that over any other sovereign with
whose history I am acquainted.[29]
Notes:
1. December, 1835.
2. It is not, perhaps, generally known, though it deserves to be so,
that the bamboo seeds only once, and dies immediately after seeding.
All bamboos from the same seed die at the same time, whenever they
may have been planted. The life of the common large bamboo is about
fifty years. [W. H. S.] The period is said to vary between thirty and
sixty years. Bamboo seed is eaten as rice when obtainable. The
author's theories about electricity are more ingenious than
satisfactory.
3. Better known as the Mauritius.
4. This proposition may be accepted with confidence. Electricity is a
great mystery, which becomes more mysterious the more it is studied.
5. A letter of the author's, dated 13th March, 1809, is extant, in
which he gives a full description of the performance of _Macbeth_ at
the Haymarket by Kemble and Mrs. Siddons on Saturday, 11th March. The
author sailed in the _Devonshire_ on the 24th March.
6. No European had ever before, I believe, noted this, [W. H. S.]
Moîn-ud-dîn (p. 49) says that this phrase, 'Thou art our patron, help
as therefore against the unbelieving nations,' is from the long
chapter 2 ('The Cow') of the Korân, but I have not succeeded in
finding the exact words in Sale's version of that chapter. I suspect
that the words have been misread. Moîn-ud-dîn gives as the words at
the north side of the tomb, _script characters_ 'the unbelieving
nations', whereas Muh. Latîf (_Agra_, p. 111) says that the words 'on
the head of the sarcophagus' are _script characters_ 'He is the
everlasting. He is sufficient.' It will be observed that the
characters in the two readings are almost identical.
7. The Empress had been a good deal exasperated against the
Portuguese and Dutch by the treatment her husband received from them
when a fugitive, after an unsuccessful rebellion against his father;
and her hatred to them extended, in some degree, to all Christians,
whom she considered to be included in the term 'Kâfir', or
unbeliever. [W. H. S.] Prince Shâh Jahân (Khurram) rebelled against
his father, Jahângîr, in A.D. 1623, and submitted in A.D. 1625. The
terrible punishment inflicted by Shâh Jahân when Emperor on the
Portuguese of Hûgli (Hooghly) is related by Bernier (Constable's ed.,
pp. 177, 287). The Emperor had previously destroyed the Jesuits'
church at Lahore completely, and the greater part of the church at
Agra.
8. The cleverness, astuteness, energy, and business capacity of
Aurangzêb are undoubted, and yet his long reign was a disastrous
failure. The author reflects the praises of Muhammadans who cherish
the memory of the 'namâzî'. The Emperor himself knew better when, in
his old ago, he wrote to his son Azam the pathetic words, 'I have not
done well by the country or its people. My years have gone by
profitless' (Lane-Poole's version in _Aurangzib_ (Rulers of India),
p. 203. Letter No. 72 in Bilimoria, _Letters of Aurungzbe_, Bombay,
1908. Another version in E. and D. vii, 562.) His reign lasted for
almost forty-nine years, from June 1658 to February 1707, and not for
only forty years.
9. The real tombs are in the vault below. Beautiful cenotaphs stand
under the dome. The inscription on the tomb of the Empress is exactly
repeated on her cenotaph, and runs thus:-
'The splendid sepulchre of Arjumand Bânô Bêgam, entitled Mumtâz
Mahall, deceased in the year 1040 Hijrî.'
The epitaph on Shâh Jahân's tomb is as follows:-
'The sacred sepulchre of His Moat Exalted Majesty, nesting in
Paradise, the Second Lord of the Conjunction, Shâh Jahân, the
Emperor. May his mausoleum ever flourish. Year 1076 Hijrî.'
The inscription on Shâh Jahân's cenotaph adds more titles and gives
the exact date of death as 'the night of Rajab 28, A.H. 1076'. 1040
Hîjrî corresponds with the period from July 31, A.D. 1630 to July 19,
1631; and 1076 Hijrî with the period July 4, A. D. 1665 to June 23,
1666, Old Style. The dates in New Style would be ten days later.
The epithet 'nesting in Paradise' (_firdaus âshiyânî_) was the
official posthumous title of Shâh Jahân, frequently used by
historians instead of his name.
The title 'Second Lord of the Conjunction' means that Shâh Jahân was
held to have been born under the fortunate conjunction of Venus and
Jupiter, as his ancestor Tîmûr had been.
10. The details in the text are inaccurate. Arjumand Bânô Bêgam,
daughter of Âsaf Khân, brother of Nûr Jahân, the queen of Jahângîr,
was born in A.D. 1592, married in 1612, and died July 7, 1631 (o.s.),
at Burhânpur in the Deccan. After a delay of six months her remains
were removed to Agra, and there rested six months longer at a spot in
the Tâj gardens still remembered, until her tomb was sufficiently
advanced for the final interment. Her titles were Mumtâz-i-Mahall,
'Exalted in the Palace'; Qudsia Bêgam, and Nawâb Aliyâ Bêgam. She
bore her husband eight sons and six daughters, fourteen children in
all, of whom seven were alive at the time of her death. The child
whose birth cost the mother's life was Gauharârâ Bêgam, who survived
for many years (Irvine, _Storia do Mogor_, iv. 425). Beale wrongly
gives her name as Dahar Ârâ.
Shâh Jahân, two years before his union with Arjumand Bâno Bêgam, had
been married to a Persian princess, by whom he had a daughter who
died young. Five and a half years after his marriage to Arjumand Bâno
Bêgam, he espoused a third wife, daughter of Shâh Nawâz Khân, by whom
he had a son, who died in infancy. This third marriage was dictated
by motives of policy, and did not impair the Emperor's devotion to
his favourite consort (Muh. Latîf, _Agra_, p. 101).
11. The testimony of Tavernier is doubtless correct if understood as
referring to the whole complex of buildings connected with the
mausoleum. He visited Agra several times. He left India in January,
1654, returning to the country in 1659. Work on the Tâj began in
1632, and so appears to have been completed about the close of, 1653
(Tavernier, _Travels_, transl. Ball, vol. i, pp. xxi, xxii, 25, 110,
142, 149). The latest dated inscription, that of the calligraphist
Amânat Khan at the entrance to the domed mausoleum, was recorded in
the twelfth year of the reign, A.H. 1048, equivalent to A.D. 1638-9.
That year may be taken as the date of the completion of the mausoleum
itself, as distinguished from the great mass of supplementary
structures.
12. Various records of the cost differ enormously, apparently because
they refer to different things. If all the buildings and the vast
value of the materials be included, the highest estimate, namely,
four and a half millions of pounds sterling, in round numbers, is not
excessive (_H.F.A._, 1911, p. 415) The figures are recorded with
minute accuracy as 411 lâkhs, 48,826 rupees, 7 annas, and 6 pies. A
_karôr_ (crore) is 100 lâkhs, or 10 millions.
13. The enclosure occupies a space of more than forty-two acres.
14. This statement, though commonly made, is erroneous. The building
is named the 'assembly house' (jamâ'at khâna), or 'guest-house'
(mihmân khâna) and was intended as the place for the congregation to
assemble before prayers, or on the anniversaries of the deaths of the
Emperor Shâh Jahân or his consort. Tâj Mahal (Muh. Latîf, _Agra_, p.
113). Of course, it also serves as an architectural balance for the
mosque.
15. The gardens of the Tâj have been much improved since the author's
time, and are now under the care of a skilled European
superintendent, and full of beautiful shrubs and trees. The author's
measurements of the quadrangle seem to be wrong. Different figures
are given by Moîn-ud-dîn (_Hist. of the Tâj_, p. 29) and Fergusson
(ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 313). No official survey is available.
16. The white marble that forms the substance of the building came,
Mr. Keene thinks, from Makrâna near Jaipur, but according to Mr.
Hacket (_Records of the Geographical Survey of India_, x. 84), from
Raiwâla in Jaipur, near the Alwar border [note]. The account of these
marbles given in the _Râjputâna Gazetteer_, 1st ed. (ii. 127) favours
Mr. Keene's view' (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, 1st ed., vol. vii, p. 707).
The ornamental stones used for the inlay work in the Tâj are lapis
lazuli, jasper, heliotrope, Chalcedon agate, chalcedony, cornelian,
sarde, plasma (or quartz and chlorite), yellow and striped marble,
clay slate, and nephrite, or jade (_Dr. Voysey, in Asiatic
Researches_, vol. xv, p. 429, quoted by V. Bail in _Records of the
Geological Survey of India_, vii. 109). Moîn-ud-dîn (pp. 27-9) gives
a longer list, from the custodians' Persian account.
17. There is some exaggeration in this statement. Shâh Jahân's
concern was with his wife's tomb, and his fortified palaces, more
than with 'the cities'.
18. Sleeman's talk about Austin de Bordeaux is wholly based on his
misreading of _Ustân_ for _Ustâd_, meaning 'Master', in the Persian
account, which names Muhammed-i-Îsâ Afandi (Effendi) as the chief
designer. He had the title of Ustâd, and some versions represent
Muhammad Sharîf, the second draughtsman, as his son. Muhammad, the
son of Îsâ ('Jesus'), apparently was a Turk. He had the Turkish title
of 'Effendi', and the Persian MS. used by Moîn-ud-dîn asserts that he
came from Turkey. The same authority states that Muhammad Sharîf was
a native of Samarkand.
Austin de Bordeaux was wholly distinct from Muhammad-i-Îsâ, Ustâd
Afandi, and there is no reason to suppose that he had anything to do
with the Tâj. Sleeman's story about his work at Agra and his death
comes from Tavernier (i. 108, transl. Ball: see next note). Austin
was in the service of Jahângîr as early as 1621, and probably came
out to India from Persia in 1614. He is described as an engineer
(_ingénieur_), and is recorded to have made a golden throne for
Jahângîr (_J.R.A.S._, 1910, pp. 494, 1343-5). Sleeman's misreading of
_ustâd_ as _ustân_, and his consequent blunders, have misled
innumerable writers. In cursive Persian the misreading is easy and
natural. He took Ustân as intended for 'Austin'. Certain marks in the
garden on the other side of the river indicate the spot where Shâh
Jahân had begun work on his own tomb. Aurangzêb, as Tavernier
observes, was 'not disposed to complete it' (see _A.S.R._, iv. 180).
For a summary of the controversy concerning the alleged share of
Geronimo Veroneo in the design of the Tâj, see _H.F.A._, 1911, pp.
416-18. Personally, I am of opinion, as I was more than twenty years
ago, that 'the incomparable Tâj is the product of a combination of
European and Asiatic genius'. That opinion makes some people very
angry.
19. I would not be thought very positive upon this point, I think I
am right, but feel that I may be wrong. Tavernier says that Shâh
Jahân was obliged to give up his intention of completing a silver
ceiling to the great hall in the palace, because Austin de Bordeaux
had been killed, and no other person could venture to attempt it.
Ustân [_sic_] Îsâ, in all the Persian accounts, stands first among
the salaried architects. [W. H. S.] Tavernier's words are, 'Shâh
Jahân had intended to cover the arch of a great gallery which is on
the right hand with silver, and a Frenchman, named Augustin de
Bordeaux, was to have done the work. But the Great Mogul, seeing
there was no one in his kingdom who was more capable to send to Goa
to negotiate an affair with the Portuguese, the work was not done,
for, as the ability of Augustin was feared, he was poisoned on his
return from Cochin.' (_Tavernier_, transl. Ball, vol. i, p. 108. )
The statement that Austin had 'finished the palace at Delhi, and the
mausoleum and palace of Agra' is not warranted by any evidence known
to the editor.
20. Akbar erected his works on the site of an older fort, named
Bâdalgarh, presumably of Hindu origin, 'which was of brick, and had
become ruinous.' No existing building within the precincts can be
referred with certainty to an earlier date than that of Akbar. The
erection began in A.H. 972, corresponding to A.D. 1564-5, and the
work continued for eight (or, according to another authority, four)
years, costing 3,500,000 rupees, or about £350,000 sterling. The
walls are of rubble, faced with red sandstone. The best account is
the article by Nûr Baksh, entitled 'The Agra Fort and its Buildings',
in _A.S. Ann. Rep._, 1903-4, pp. 164-93.
21. It is difficult to understand how men like the Marquis of
Hastings and Lord William Bentinck could have been guilty of such
barbarous stupidity. But the fact is beyond doubt, and numberless
officials of less exalted rank must share the disgrace of the ruin
and spoliation, which, both at Agra and Delhi, have destroyed two
noble palaces, and left but a few disconnected fragments. Fergusson's
indignant protests (_History of Indian and Eastern Architecture_, ed.
1910, vol. ii, p. 312, &c.) are none too strong. Sir John Strachey,
who was Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces in 1876,
is entitled to the credit of having done all that lay in his power to
remedy the effects of the parsimony and neglect of his predecessors.
The buildings which remain at both Agra and Delhi are now well cared
for, and large sums are spent yearly on their reparation and
conservation. The credit for the modern policy of reverence for the
ancient monuments is due to Lord Curzon more than to any one else.
22. This date is erroneous. The inscription is dated A.H. 1063, in
the 26th year of Shâh Jahân, equivalent practically to A.D. 1653. It
is given in full, with both text and translation, in _A.S. Ann. Rep._
for 1903-4, p. 183. It states that the building was erected in the
course of seven years at a cost of 300,000 rupees, which = £33,750,
at the rate of 2_s_. 3_d_. to the rupee current at the time. Errors
on the subject disfigure most of the guide-books and other works
commonly read.
23. The beauty of the Motî Masjid, like that of most mosques, is all
internal. The exterior is ugly. The interior deserves all praise.
Fergusson describes this mosque as 'one of the purest and most
elegant buildings of its class to be found anywhere', and truly
observes that 'the moment you enter by the eastern gateway the effect
of its courtyard is surpassingly beautiful'. 'I hardly know
anywhere', he adds, 'of a building so perfectly pure and elegant.'
(_Ind. and E. Arch._, ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 317. See also _H.F.A._,
p. 412, fig. 242.)
24. I would, however, here enter my humble protest against the
quadrille and tiffin [_scil._ lunch] parties, which are sometimes
given to the European ladies and gentlemen of the station at this
imperial tomb; drinking and dancing are, no doubt, very good things
in their season, even in a hot climate, but they are sadly out of
place in a sepulchre, and never fail to shock the good feelings of
sober-minded people when given there. Good church music gives us
great pleasure, without exciting us to dancing or drinking; the Tâj
does the same, at least to the sober-minded. [W. H. S.] The
regulations now in force prevent any unseemly proceedings. The
gardens at the Tâj, of Itimâd-ud-daula's tomb, of Akbar's mausoleum
at Sikandara, and the Râm Bâgh, are kept up by means of income
derived from crown lands, aided by liberal grants from Government.
25. The anthor's curiously meagre description of the magnificent
mausoleum of Akbar is, in the original edition, supplemented by
coloured plates, prepared apparently from drawings by Indian artists.
The structure is absolutely unique, being a square pyramid of five
stories, the uppermost of which is built of pure white marble, while
the four lower ones are of red sandstone. All earlier descriptions of
the building have been superseded by the posthumous work of E. W.
Smith, a splendidly illustrated quarto, entitled, _Akbar's Tomb,
Sikandarah, Agra_, Allahabad Government Press, 1909, being vol. xxxv
of A. S. India. Work had been begun in the lifetime of Akbar. The
lower part of the enclosing wall of the park dates from his reign.
The whole of the mausoleum itself probably is to be assigned to the
reign of Jahângîr, who in 1608 disapproved of the structure which had
been three or four years in course of erection, and caused the design
to be altered to please himself. The work was finished in 1613 at a
cost of five millions of rupees (50 lâkhs, more than half a million
of pounds sterling). The exquisitely carved cenotaph on the top story
is inadequately described by Sleeman as 'another marble slab'. It is
a single block of marble 3 1/4 feet high. The tomb in the vault 'is
perfectly plain with the exception of a few mouldings'.
26. The ninety-nine names of God do not occur in the Korân. They are
enumerated in chapter 1 of Book X of the 'Mishkât-ul-Masâbih' (see
note 10, Chapter 5 _ante_): 'Abû Hurairah said, "Verily there are
ninety-nine names for God; and whoever counts them shall enter into
paradise. He is Allaho, than which there is no other; Al-Rahmân-ul-
Rahîmo, the compassionate and merciful," &c., &c.' (Matthews, vol. i,
p. 542.) The list is reproduced in the introduction to Palmer's
translation of the Korân, and in Bosworth-Smith, _Muhammad and
Muhammadanism_.
27. The court, 70 feet square, of the topmost story, is open to the
sky, but the original intention was to provide a light dome,
presumably similar to that built a little later to crown the
mausoleum of Itimâd-ud-daula. Finch, the traveller, who was at Agra
about 1611, was informed that the cenotaph was 'to be inarched over
with the most curious white and speckled marble, and to be seeled all
within with pure sheet gold, richly inwrought.' The reason for
omitting the dome is not recorded.
28. The area is much larger than 40 acres, being really about 150
acres. Each side is approximately 3 1/2 furlongs.
29. This remarkable eulogium is quoted with approval by another
enthusiastic admirer of Akbar, Count von Noer (Prince Frederick
Augustus of Schleswig-Holstein), who observes that 'as Akbar was
unique amongst his contemporaries, so was his place of burial among
Indian tombs--indeed, one may say with confidence, among the
sepulchres of Asia.' (_The Emperor Akbar, a Contribution towards the
History of India in the 16th Century_, by Frederick Augustus, Count
of Noer; edited from the Author's papers by Dr. Gustav von Buchwald;
translated from the German by Annette S. Beveridge. Calcutta, 1890.)
This work of Count von Noer, unsatisfactory though it is in many
respects, is still the best exiting modern account of Akbar's reign.
The competent scholar who will undertake the exhaustive treatment of
the life and reign of Akbar will be in possession of perhaps the
finest great historical subject as yet unappropriated. The editor
long cherished the idea of writing such an exhaustive work, but if he
should now attempt to deal with the fascinating theme, he must be
content with a less ambitions performance. Colonel Malleson's little
book in the 'Rulers of India' series, although serviceable as a
sketch, adds nothing to the world's knowledge. Akbar's reign (1556-
1605) was almost exactly coincident with that of Queen Elizabeth
(1558-1603). The character and deeds of the Indian monarch will bear
criticism as well as those of his great English contemporary. 'In
dealing', observes Mr. Lane-Poole, 'with the difficulties arising in
the Government of a peculiarly heterogeneous empire, he stands
absently supreme among Oriental sovereigns, and may even challenge
comparison with the greatest of European rulers.'
Unhappily, there is reason to believe that the marble slab no longer
covers the bones of Akbar. Manucci states positively that 'During the
time that Aurangzêb was actively at war with Shivâ Jî [_scil._ the
Marâthâs], the villagers of whom I spoke before broke into the
mausoleum in the year 1691 [in words], and after stealing all the
stones and all the gold work to be found, extracted the king's bones
and had the temerity to throw them on a fire and burn them' (_Storia
do Mogor_, i. 142). The statement is repeated with some additional
particulars in a later passage, which concludes with the words:
'Dragging out the bones of Akbar, they threw them angrily into the
fire and burnt them' (ibid. ii. 320). Irvine notes that the
plundering of the tomb by the Jâts is mentioned in detail by only one
other writer, Ishar Dâs Nâgar, author of the _Fatûhât-I-Alamgîrî_, a
manuscript in the British Museum. Manucci seems to be the sole
authority for the alleged burning of Akbar's bones. I should be glad
to disbelieve him, but cannot find any reason for doing so.
CHAPTER 52
Nûr Jahân, the Aunt of the Empress Nûr Mahal, over whose Remains the
Tâj is built.[1]
I crossed over the river Jumna one morning to look at the tomb of
Itimâd-ud-daula, the most remarkable mausoleum in the neighbourhood
after those of Akbar and the Tâj. On my way back, I asked one of the
boatmen who was rowing me who had built what appeared to me a new
dome within the fort. 'One of the Emperors, of course,' said he.
'What makes you think so?'
'Because such things are made only by Emperors,' replied the man
quietly, without relaxing his pull at the oar.
'True, very true,' said an old Musalmân trooper, with large white
whiskers and moustachios, who had dismounted to follow me across the
river, with a melancholy shake of the head, 'very true; who but
Emperors could do such things as these?'
Encouraged by the trooper, the boatman continued:--'The Jâts and the
Marâthâs did nothing but pull down and destroy while they held their
_accursed dominion_ here; and the European gentlemen who now govern
seem to have no pleasure in building anything but _factories, courts
of justice, and jails_.'
Feeling as an Englishman, as we all must sometimes do, be where we
will, I could hardly help wishing that the beautiful panels and
pillars of the bath-room had fetched a better price, and that palace,
Tâj, and all at Agra, had gone to the hammer--so sadly do they exalt
the past at the expense of the present in the imaginations of the
people.
The tomb contains in the centre the remains of Khwâja Ghiâs,[2] one
of the most prominent characters of the reign of Jahângîr, and those
of his wife. The remains of the other members of his family repose in
rooms all round them; and are covered with slabs of marble richly
cut. It is an exceedingly beautiful building, but a great part of the
most valuable stones of the mosaic work have been picked out and
stolen, and the whole is about to be sold by auction, by a decree of
the civil court, to pay the debt of the present proprietor, who is
entirely unconnected with the family whose members repose under it,
and especially indifferent as to what becomes of their bones. The
building and garden in which it stands were, some sixty years ago,
given away, I believe, by Nâjîf Khân, the prime minister, to one of
his nephews, to whose family it still belongs.[3] Khwaja Ghiâs, a
native of Western Tartary, left that country for India, where he had
some relations at the imperial court, who seemed likely to be able to
secure his advancement. He was a man of handsome person, and of good
education and address. He set out with his wife, a bullock, and a
small sum of money, which he realized by the sale of all his other
property. The wife, who was pregnant, rode upon the bullock, while he
walked by her side. Their stock of money had become exhausted, and
they had been three days without food in the great desert, when she
was taken in labour, and gave birth to a daughter. The mother could
hardly keep her seat on the bullock, and the father had become too
exhausted to afford her any support; and in their distress they
agreed to abandon the infant. They covered it over with leaves, and
towards evening pursued their journey. When they had gone on about a
mile, and had lost sight of the solitary shrub under which they had
left their child, the mother, in an agony of grief, threw herself
from the bullock upon the ground, exclaiming, 'My child, my child!'
Ghiâs could not resist this appeal. He went back to the spot, took up
his child, and brought it to its mother's breast. Some travellers
soon after came up, and relieved their distress, and they reached
Lahore, where the Emperor Akbar then held his court.[4]
Âsaf Khan, a distant relation of Ghiâs, held a high place at court,
and was much in the confidence of the Emperor. He made his kinsman
his private secretary. Much pleased with his diligence and ability,
Âsaf soon brought his merits to the special notice of Akbar, who
raised him to the command of a thousand horse, and soon after
appointed him master of the household. From this he was promoted
afterwards to that of Itimâd-ud-daula, or high treasurer, one of the
first ministers.[5]
The daughter who had been born in the desert became celebrated for
her great beauty, parts, and accomplishments, and won the affections
of the eldest son of the Emperor, the Prince Salîm, who saw her
unveiled, by accident, at a party given by her father. She had been
betrothed before this to Shêr Afgan, a Turkoman gentleman of rank at
court, and of great repute for his high spirit, strength, and
courage.[6] Salîm in vain entreated his father to interpose his
authority to make him resign his claim in his favour; and she became
the wife of Shêr Afgan. Salîm dare not, during his father's life,
make any open attempt to revenge himself; but he, and those courtiers
who thought it their interest to worship the rising sun, soon made
his [Afgan's] residence at the capital disagreeable, and he retired
with his wife to Bengal, where he obtained from the governor the
superintendency of the district of Bardwân.
Salîm succeeded his father on the throne;[7] and, no longer
restrained by his (_scil._ Akbar's) rigid sense of justice, he
recalled Shêr Afgan to court at Delhi. He was promoted to high
offices, and concluded that time had removed from the Emperor's mind
all feelings of love for his wife, and of resentment against his
successful rival--but he was mistaken; Salîm had never forgiven him,
nor had the desire to possess his wife at all diminished. A
Muhammadan of such high feeling and station would, the Emperor knew,
never survive the dishonour, or suspected dishonour, of his wife; and
to possess her he must make away with the husband. He dared not do
this openly, because he dreaded the universal odium in which he knew
it would involve him; and he made several unsuccessful attempts to
get him removed by means that might not appear to have been contrived
or executed by his orders. At one time he designedly, in his own
presence, placed him in a situation where the pride of the chief made
him contend, single-handed, with a large tiger, which he killed; and,
at another, with a mad elephant, whose proboscis he cut off with his
sword; but the Emperor's motives in all these attempts to put him
foremost in situations of danger became so manifest that Shêr Afgan
solicited, and obtained, permission to retire with his wife to
Bengal.
The governor of this province, Kutb,[8] having been made acquainted
with the Emperor's desire to have the chief made away with, hired
forty ruffians, who stole into his house one night. There happened to
be nobody else in the house; but one of the party, touched by remorse
on seeing so fine a man about to be murdered in his sleep, called out
to him to defend himself. He seized his sword, placed himself in one
corner of the room, and defended himself so well that nearly one-half
of the party are said to have been killed or wounded. The rest all
made off, persuaded that he was endowed with supernatural force.
After this escape he retired from Tânda, the capital of Bengal,[9] to
his old residence of Bardwân. Soon after, Kutb came to the city with
a splendid retinue, on pretence of making a tour of inspection
through the provinces under his charge, but in reality for the sole
purpose of making away with Shêr Afgan, who as soon as he heard of
his approach, came out some miles to meet him on horseback, attended
by only two followers. He was received with marks of great
consideration, and he and the governor rode on for some time side by
side, talking of their mutual friends, and the happy days they had
spent together at the capital. At last, as they were about to enter
the city, the governor suddenly called for his elephant of state, and
mounted, saying it would be necessary for him to pass through the
city on the first visit in some state. Shêr sat on horseback while he
mounted, but one of the governor's pikemen struck his horse, and
began to drive him before them. Shêr drew his sword, and, seeing all
the governor's followers with theirs ready drawn to attack him, he
concluded at once that the affront had been put upon him by the
orders of Kutb, and with the design to provoke him to an unequal
fight. Determined to have his life first, he spurred his horse upon
the elephant, and killed Kutb with his spear. He now attacked the
principal of officers, and five noblemen of the first rank fell by
his sword. All the crowd now rolled back, and formed a circle round
Shêr and his two companions, and galled them with arrows and musket
balls from a distance. His horse fell under him and expired; and,
having received six balls and several arrows in his body, Shêr
himself at last fell exhausted to the ground; and the crowd, seeing
the sword drop from his grasp, rushed in and cut him to pieces.[l0]
His widow was sent, 'nothing loth', to court, with her only child, a
daughter. She was graciously received by the Emperor's mother, and
had apartments assigned her in the palace; but the Emperor himself is
said not to have seen her for four years, during which time the fame
of her beauty, talents, and accomplishments filled the palace and
city. After the expiration of this time the feelings, whatever they
were, which prevented his seeing her, subsided; and when he at last
surprised her with a visit, he found her to exceed all that his
imagination had painted since their last separation. In a few days
their marriage was celebrated with great magnificence;[11] and from
that hour the Emperor resigned the reins of government almost
entirely into her hands; and, till his death, under the name first of
Nûr Mahall, 'Light of the Palace', and afterwards of Nûr Jahân,
'Light of the World ', she ruled the destinies of this great empire.
Her father was now raised from the station of high treasurer to that
of prime minister. Her two brothers obtained the titles of Âsaf Jâh
and Itikâd Khan; and the relations of the family poured in from
Tartary in search of employment, as soon as they heard of their
success.[12] Nûr Jahân had by Sher Afgan, as I have stated, one
daughter; but she had never any child by the Emperor Jahângîr.[13]
Âsaf Jâh became prime minister on the death of his father; and, in
spite of his sister, he managed to secure the crown to Shâh Jahân,
the third son of Jahângîr, who had married his daughter, the lady
over whose remains the Tâj was afterwards built. Jahângîr's eldest
son, Khusrû, had his eyes put out by his father's orders for repeated
rebellions, to which he had been instigated by a desire to revenge
his mother's murder, and by the ambition of her brother, the Hindoo
prince, Mân Singh,[14] who wished to see his own nephew on the
throne, and by his wife's father, the prime minister of Akbar, Khan
Azam.[15] Nûr Jahân had invited the mother of Khusrû, the sister of
Râjâ Mân Singh, to look with her down a well in the courtyard of her
apartments by moonlight, and as she did so she threw her in. As soon
as she saw that she had ceased to struggle she gave the alarm, and
pretended that she had fallen in by accident.[16]
By the murder of the mother of the heir-apparent she expected to
secure the throne to a creature of her own. Khusrû was treated with
great kindness by his father, after he had been barbarously deprived
of sight;[17] but when his brother, Shâh Jahân, was appointed to the
government of Southern India, he pretended great solicitude about the
comforts of his _poor blind brother_, which he thought would not be
attended to at court, and took him with him to his government in the
Deccan, where he got him assassinated, as the only sure mode of
securing the throne to himself.[18] Parwîz, the second son, died a
natural death;[19] so also did his only son; and so also Dâniyâl, the
fourth son of the Emperor.[20] Nûr Jahân's daughter by Shêr Afgan had
married Shahryâr, a young son of the Emperor by a concubine; and,
just before his death he (the Emperor), at the instigation of Nûr
Jahân, named this son as his successor in his will. He was placed
upon the throne, and put in possession of the treasury, and at the
head of a respectable army;[21] but the Empress's brother, Âsaf,
designed the throne for his own son-in-law, Shâh Jahân; and, as soon
as the Emperor died, he put up a puppet to amuse the people till he
could come up with his army from the Deccan--Bulâkî, the eldest son
of the deceased Khusrû. Shahryâr's troops were defeated; he was taken
prisoner, and had his eyes put out forthwith, and the Empress was put
into close confinement. As Shâh Jahân approached Lahore with his
army, Âsaf put his puppet, Bulâkî, and his younger brother, with the
two young sons of Dâniyâl, into prison, where they were strangled by
a messenger sent on for the purpose by Shâh Jahân, with the sanction
of Âsaf.[22] This measure left no male heir alive of the house of
Tîmûr (Tamerlane) in Hindustan, save Shâh Jahân himself and his four
sons. Dârâ was then thirteen years of age, Shujâ twelve, Aurangzêb
ten, and Murâd four;[23] and all were present to learn from their
father this sad lesson--that such of them who might be alive on his
death, save one, must, with their sons, be hunted down and destroyed
like mad dogs, lest they might get into the hands of the disaffected,
and be made the tools of faction.
Monsieur de Thevenot, who visited Agra, as I have before stated, in
1666, says, 'Some affirm that there are twenty-five thousand
Christian families in Agra; but all do not agree in that. The Dutch
have a factory in the town, but the English have now none, because it
did not turn to account.' The number must have been great, or so
sober a man as Monsieur Thevenot would not have thought such an
estimate worthy to be quoted without contradiction.[24] They were
all, except those connected with the single Dutch factory, maintained
from the salaries of office; and they gradually disappeared as their
offices became filled with Muhammadans and Hindoos. The duties of the
artillery, its arsenals, and foundries, were the chief foundation
upon which the superstructure of Christianity then stood in India.
These duties were everywhere entrusted exclusively to Europeans, and
all Europeans were Christians, and, under Shâh Jahân, permitted
freely to follow their own modes of worship. They were, too. Roman
Catholic, and spent the greater part of their incomes in the
maintenance of priests. But they could never forget that they were
strangers in the land, and held their offices upon a precarious
tenure; and, consequently, they never felt disposed to expend the
little wealth they had in raising durable tombs, churches, and other
public buildings, to tell posterity who or what they were. Present
physical enjoyment, and the prayers of their priests for a good berth
in the next world, were the only objects of their ambition.
Muhammadans and Hindoos soon learned to perform duties which they saw
bring to the Christians so much of honour and emolument; and, as they
did so, they necessarily sapped the walls of the fabric. Christianity
never became independent of office in India, and, I am afraid, never
will; even under our rule, it still mainly rests upon that
foundation.[25]
Notes:
1. The names and titles of the empress 'over whose remains the Tâj is
built' were Nawâb Aliyâ Begam, Arjumand Bânû, Mumtâz-i-Mahall. The
title Nûr Mahall, as applied to her, is without authority: it
properly belongs to her aunt. 'It is usual in this country', Bernier
observes, 'to give similar names to the members of the reigning
family. Thus the wife of _Chah-Jehan_--so renowned for her beauty,
and whose splendid mausoleum is more worthy of a place among the
wonders of the world than the unshapen masses and heaps of stones in
Egypt--was named _Tâge Mehalle_ [Mumtâz-i-Mahall], or the Crown of
the Seraglio; and the wife of Jehan-Guyre, who so long wielded the
sceptre, while her husband abandoned himself to drunkenness and
dissipation, was known first by the name of _Nour Mehalle_, the Light
of the Seraglio, and afterwards by that of _Nour-Jehan-Begum_, the
Light of the World.' (Bernier, _Travels_, ed. Constable, and V. A.
Smith, 1914, p. 5.)
2. Properly, Ghiâs-ud-dîn, meaning 'succourer of religion'. The word
Ghiâs cannot stand as a name by itself.
3. The author's slight description of Itimâd-ud-daula's exquisite
sepulchre is, in the original edition, illustrated by two coloured
plates, one of the exterior, and the other of the interior
(restored). The lack of grandeur in this building is amply atoned for
by its elegance and marvellous beauty of detail. An inscription,
dated A.H. 1027 = A.D. 1618, alleged to exist in connexion with the
building, has not, apparently, been published. (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_,
1st ed., vol. vii, p. 687.)
Fergusson's description and just criticism deserve quotation. 'The
tomb known as that of Itimâd-ud-daula, at Agra, . . . cannot be
passed over, not only from its own beauty of design, but also because
it marks an epoch in the style to which it belongs. It was erected by
Nûr-Jahân in memory of her father, who died in 1621, and [it] was
completed in 1628. It is situated on the left bank of the river, in
the midst of a garden surrounded by a wall measuring 540 feet on each
side. In the centre of this, on a raised platform, stands the tomb
itself, a square measuring 69 feet on each side. It is two stories in
height, and at each angle is an octagonal tower, surmounted by an
open pavilion. The towers, however, are rather squat in proportion,
and the general design of the building very far from being so
pleasing as that of many less pretentious tombs in the neighbourhood.
Had it, indeed, been built in red sandstone, or even with an inlay of
white marble like that of Humâyûn, it would not have attracted much
attention, its real merit consists in being wholly in white marble,
and being covered throughout with a mosaic in 'pietra dura'--the
first, apparently, and certainly one of the most splendid, examples
of that class of ornamentation in India....
'As one of the first, the tomb of Itimâd-ud-daula was certainly one
of the least successful specimens of its class. The patterns do not
quite fit the places where they are put, and the spaces are not
always those best suited for this style of decoration. [Altogether I
cannot help fancying that the Italians had more to do with the design
of this building than was at all desirable, and they are to blame for
its want of grace.[a]] But, on the other hand, the beautiful tracery
of the pierced marble slabs of its Windows, which resemble those of
Salîm Chishtî's tomb at Fatehpur Sikrî, the beauty of its white
marble walls, and the rich colour of its decorations, make up so
beautiful a whole, that it is only on comparing it with the works of
Shâh Jahân that we are justified in finding fault.' (_Indian and
Eastern Architecture_, ed. 1910, pp. 305-7.) Further details will be
found in Syad Muhammad Latîf, _Agra_ (Calcutta, 1896); _A.S.R._ iv,
pp. 137-41 (Calcutta, 1874); and more satisfactorily, in E. W. Smith,
_Moghul Colour Decoration of Agra_ (Allahabad, 1901), pp. 18-20, pl.
lxv-lxxvii. Mr. E. W. Smith, if he had lived, would have produced a
separate volume descriptive of this unique building.
The building is now carefully guarded and kept in repair. The
restoration of the inlay of precious stones is so enormously
expensive that much progress in that branch of the work is
impracticable. The mausoleum contains seven tombs.
a. This sentence has been deleted by Dr. Burgess in his edition,
1910.
4. This tale is mythical. The alleged circumstances could not be
known to any person besides the father and mother, neither of whom
would be likely to make them public. Blochmann (transl. _Âîn_, i.
508) gives a full account of Itimâd-ud-daula and his family. The
historians state that Nûr Jahân was born at Kandahâr, on the way to
India. Her father was the son of a high Persian official, but for
some reason or other was obliged to quit Persia with his family. He
was a native of Teheran, not of 'Western Tartary'. The personal name
of Nûr Jahân was Mihr-un-nisâ.
5. This story is erroneous, and inconsistent with the correct
statement in the heading of the chapter that Nûr Jahân, daughter of
Ghiâs-ud-dîn, was aunt of the Lady of the Tâj. The author makes out
Ghiâs-ud-dîn (whom he corruptly calls Aeeas) to be a distant relation
of Âsaf Khan. In reality, Âsaf Khân (whose original name was Mirzâ
Abûl Hasan) was the second son of Ghiâs-ud-dîn, and was elder brother
of Nûr Jahân, The genealogy, so far as relevant, is best shown in a
tabular form, thus:--
Mirzâ Ghiâs-ud-dîn Beg
(alias Itimâd-ud-daula).
|
|
|----------------|-------------------------|
| | |
Muhammad Âsaf Khan *Nûr Mahall*
Sharîf. (_alias_ Mirzâ (_alias_ *Nûrjâahân*),
Abûl Hasan). *Empress of Jahângîr*
| (and widow of
| Shêr Afgan).
|
*Mumtâz-i-Mahall*
(_alias_ Arjumand Bânû Bêgam,
_alias_ Nawâb Aliyâ Bêgam),
*Empress of Shâh Jahân*.
6. Alî Qulî Beg, from Persia entered Akbar's service, and in the war
with the Rânâ of Chitôr, served under Prince Salîm (Jahângîr), who
gave him the title of Shêr Afgan, 'tiger-thrower', with reverence to
his deeds of prowess. The spelling _afgan_ is correct. The word is
the radical of the Persian verb _afgandan_, 'to throw down'.
7. In October, 1605.
8. Properly Kutb-ud-dîn Khan. He was foster-brother of Prince Salîm
(Jahângîr), and his appointment as viceroy alarmed Shêr Afgan, and
caused the latter to throw up his appointment in Bengal. The word
Kutb (Qutb) cannot stand alone as a name. Kutb (Qutb)-ud-dîn means
'pole-star of religion'.
9. Tândân, or Tânra. Ancient town, now a petty village, in Mâlda
District, Bengal, the capital of Bengal after the decadence of Gaur.
Its history is obscure, and the very site of the city has not been
accurately determined. It is certain that it was in the immediate
neighbourhood of Gaur, and south-west of that town beyond the
Bhâgîrathî. Old Tândân has been utterly swept away by the changes in
the course of the Pâglâ. It was occupied by the Afghan king of Bengal
in A.D. 1564, and is not mentioned after 1660. (_I.G._, 1908.)
10. This narrative, notwithstanding all the minute details with which
it is garnished, cannot be accepted as sober history; and I do not
know from what source the author obtained it. 'This lady, whose
maiden name was Muhr-un-Nisâ, or "Seal of Womankind", had attracted
the admiration of Jahângîr when he was crown prince, but Akbar
married her to a young Turkomân and settled them in Bengal. After
Jahângîr's accession the husband was killed in a quarrel with the
governor of the province, and the wife was placed under the care of
one of Akbar's widows, with whom she remained four years, and then
married Jahângîr (1610). There is nothing to justify a suspicion of
the Emperor's connivance in the husband's death; nor do Indian
historians corroborate the invidious criticisms of "Normal" by
European travellers; on the contrary, they portray Nûr-Mahall as a
pattern of all the virtues, and worthy to wield the supreme influence
which she obtained over the Emperor.' (Lane-Poole, _The History of
the Moghul Emperors of Hindustan illustrated by their Coins_, p.
xix.) The authorities on which this statement is founded are given in
_E. & D._, vol. vi, pp. 397 and 402-5. See also Blochmann, _Âîn_,
vol. i, pp. 496, 524. Details of such stories in the various
chronicles always differ. Jahângîr openly rejoiced in the death of
Shêr Afgan, and it is by no means clear that he was not responsible
for the event. He was not troubled by nice scruples. The first
element in the lady's personal name seems to be _Mihr_, 'sun', not
_Muhr_, 'seal'. The words are identical in ordinary Persian writing.
11. The long interval which elapsed between Shêr Afgan's death and
the marriage with the Emperor is a fact opposed to the assumptions
which the author adopts that Nûr Mahall was 'nothing loth', and that
the death of her first husband was contrived by Jahângîr.
12. Quaint Sir Thomas Herbert thus expresses himself: 'Meher Metzia
[Mihr-un-nisâ] is forthwith espoused with all solemnity to the King,
and her name changed to Nourshabegem [Nûr Shâh Bêgam], or Nor-mahal,
i.e., Light or Glory of the Court; her Father upon this affinity
advanced upon all the other Umbraes ['umarâ', or nobles]; her
brother, Assaph-Chan [Âsaf Khân], and most of her kindred, smiled
upon, with the addition of Honours, Wealth, and Command. And in this
Sun-shine of content Jangheer [Jahângîr] spends some years with his
lovely Queen, without regarding ought save Cupid's Currantoes'
(_Travels_, ed. 1677, p. 74). Authority exists for the title Âsaf
Jâh, as well as for the variant Âsaf Khân.
Coins were struck in the joint names of Jahângîr and his consort,
bearing a rhyming Persian couplet to the effect that
'By command of Jahângîr the King, from the name of Nûr Jahân his
Queen, gold gained a hundred beauties.'
The Queen's administration is censured by some of the European
travellers who visited India during Jahângîr's reign as being venal
and inefficient, and she is accused of cruelty and perfidy. She died
on the 18th December (N.S.), 1645, and was buried by the aide of
Jahângîr in his mausoleum at Lahore. At her death she was in her 72nd
year, according to the Muhammadan lunar reckoning, and would thus
have been thirty-four solar years of age when the Emperor married her
in 1610 (Beale: Blochmann).
13. According to Sir Thomas Herbert (_Travels_, ed. 1677, p. 99),
'Queen Normahal and her three daughters' were confined by order of
Shâh Jahân in A.D. 1628.
14. Son of Bhagwân Dâs, of Ambêr or Jaipur, in Râjputâna, and one of
the greatest of Akbar's officers.
15. Also known as Azîz Kokah, a foster-brother of Akbar.
16. This story may or may not be true; but a charge of this kind is
absolutely incapable of proof, and would be readily generated in the
palace atmosphere.
17. According to a contemporary authority, the blinding was only
partial, and the prince recovered the sight of one eye (_E. & D._ vi.
448). With regard to such details the discrepancies in the histories
are innumerable.
18. A.H. 1031 = A.D. 1621-2. The charge seems to be true.
19. A.H. 1036 = A.D. 1626-7.
20. This is a blunder. Jahângîr's fourth son was named Jahândâr, and
died in or about A.H. 1035 = A.D. 1625-6. Dâniyâl was third son of
Akbar, and younger brother of Jahângîr. He died from _delirium
tremens_ in A.D. 1605, a few months before the death of Akbar,
21. Jahângîr died, when returning from Kâshmîr, on the 8th November,
A.D. 1627 (N.S.), and was buried near Lahore. The fight with Shahryâr
took place at Lahore.
22. Bulâkî assumed the title of Dâwar Baksh during his short reign,
and struck coins at Lahore. He 'vanished--probably to Persia--after
his three months' pretence of royalty; and on 25th January, 1628 (18
Jumâda I, 1037), Shâh-Jahân ascended at Agra the throne which he was
to occupy for thirty years'. Shahryâr was known by the nickname of
_Nâ-shudanî_, or 'Good-for-nothing' (Lane-Poole, _The History of the
Moghul Emperors of Hindustan, illustrated by their Coins_, p. xxiii).
The two nephews of Jahângîr, the sons of Dâniyâl, slaughtered at this
time, had been, according to Herbert, baptized as Christians
(_Travels_, ed. 1677, pp. 74, 98). There are great discrepancies in
the accounts given by various authorities concerning the fate of
Bulâkî and the other victims of Shâh Jahân. A dissuasion of the
evidence would take too much apace, and must be inconclusive, the
fact being that the proceedings were secret, and pains were taken to
conceal the truth.
23. The dates of birth are, in Old Style:-Dârâ Shikoh, March 20,
1615; Sultan Shujâ, May 12, 1616; Aurangzêb, October 10, 1619; and
Murâd Baksh, not stated (Beale).
24. _Ante_, Chapter 2, text following [8]. The quotation is from Part
III, chap. 19, p. 35 of _The Travels of Monsieur de Thevenot, now
made English. London, Printed in the year MDCLXXXVII_. The author, in
his quotation, omits between 'that' and 'The Dutch' the clause 'This
indeed is certain that there are few Heathens and Parsis in respect
of Mahometans there, and these surpass all the other sects in power
as they do in number.'
25. During the reign of Akbar, many Christians, Portuguese, English,
and others, visited Agra, and a considerable number settled there. A
Roman Catholic church was built, the steeple of which was pulled down
by Shâh Jahân. The oldest inscriptions in the cemetery adjoining the
Roman Catholic cathedral are in the Armenian character. Three
Catholic cemeteries exist at or near Agra, namely
(l) the old Catholic graveyard at the village of Lashkarpur, dating
from the time of Akbar, who made a grant of the site about A.D. 1600.
This cemetery includes the Martyrs' Chapel, also known as the Chapel
of Father Santus (Santucci), which was erected in memory of Khoja
Mortenepus, an Armenian merchant, whose epitaph is dated 1611. The
next oldest tombstone, that of Father Emmanuel d' Anhaya, who died in
prison, bears the date August, 1633. Father Joseph de Castro, who
died at Lahore, on December 15, 1646, lies in the same building.
(2) A cemetery in Pâdrîtola, the native Christian ward of the city
behind the old cathedral. Father Tieffenthaler is buried there.
(3) A cemetery in an unnamed village, granted by Jahângîr, and
situated a mile north of Lashkarpur. An unpublished letter in the
British Museum shows that Jahângîr closed the churches in his
dominions in 1615. Notwithstanding, the College at Agra was founded
about 1617 by an Armenian who is known by his title Mirzâ Zul-
Qarnain. The acute persecution by Shâh Jahân occurred in 1631.
The artillery men in the Mogul service were not all European
Christians. Turks from the Ottoman Empire were freely employed. (See
_Ep. Ind._, ii, 132 note.)
The facts concerning the early history of Christianity in Northern
India have been imperfectly studied. In this note I have used chiefly
a pamphlet by Father H. Hosten, S. J., entitled _Jesuit Missionaries
in Northern India, &c._ (Catholic Orphan Press, Calcutta, 1907), and
the confused little book by Fanthome, _Reminiscences of Agra_ (2nd
ed., Thacker, Spink & Co., Calcutta, 1895). The Jesuit and Capuchin
Fathers are working at the subject and hope to elucidate it. From the
_A.S. Progress Rep. N. Circle, Muhammadan Monuments_, for 1911-12, p.
21, it appears that arrangements for the proper maintenance of the
Old Catholic cemetery are in hand.
The author's observations concerning the official relations of
Christianity in India do not apply at all to the very ancient
churches of the South (See _E.H.I._, 3rd ed., 1914, App. M, pp. 245-
7). Even in the north, the modern missionary operations may claim to
be 'independent of office'.
CHAPTER 53
Father Gregory's Notion of the Impediments to Conversion in India--
Inability of Europeans to speak Eastern Languages.
Father Gregory, the Roman Catholic priest, dined with us one evening,
and Major Godby took occasion to ask him at table, 'What progress our
religion was making among the people?'
'Progress!' said he; 'why, what progress can we ever hope to make
among a people who, the moment we begin to talk to them about the
miracles performed by Christ, begin to tell us of those infinitely
more wonderful performed by Krishna, who lifted a mountain upon his
little finger, as an umbrella, to defend his shepherdesses at
Govardhan from a shower of rain.[1] The Hindoos never doubt any part
of the miracles and prophecies of our scripture--they believe every
word of them; and the only thing that surprises them is that they
should be so much less wonderful than those of their own scriptures,
in which also they implicitly believe. Men who believe that the
histories of the wars and amours of Râm and Krishna, two of the
incarnations of Vishnu, were written some fifty thousand years before
these wars and amours actually took place upon the earth, would of
course easily believe in the fulfilment of any prophecy that might be
related to them out of any other book;[2] and, as to miracles, there
is absolutely nothing too extraordinary for their belief. If a
Christian of respectability were to tell a Hindoo that, to satisfy
some scruples of the Corinthians, St. Paul had brought the sun and
moon down upon the earth, and made them rebound off again into their
places, like tennis balls, without the slightest injury to any of the
three planets [_sic_], I do not think he would feel the slightest
doubt of the truth of it; but he would immediately be put in mind of
something still more extraordinary that Krishna did to amuse the
milkmaids, or to satisfy some sceptics of his day, and relate it with
all the _naïveté_ imaginable.
I saw at Agra Mirzâ Kâm Baksh, the eldest son of Sulaimân Shikoh, the
eldest son of the brother of the present Emperor. He had spent a
season with us at Jubbulpore, while prosecuting his claim to an
estate against the Râjâ of Rîwâ. The Emperor, Shâh Âlam, in his
flight before our troops from Bengal (1762), struck off the high road
to Delhi at Mirzapore, and came down to Rîwâ, where he found an
asylum during the season of the rains with the Rîwâ Râjâ, who
assigned for his residence the village of Makanpur.[3] His wife, the
Empress, was here delivered of a son, the present Emperor, of
Hindustân, Akbar Shâh;[4] and the Râjâ assigned to him and his heirs
for ever the fee simple of this village. As the members of this
family increased in geometrical ratio, under the new system, which
gave them plenty to eat with nothing to do, the Emperor had of late
been obliged to hunt round for little additions to his income; and in
his search he found that Makanpur gave name to a 'pargana', or little
district, of which it was the capital, and that a good deal of
merchandize passed through this district, and paid heavy dues to the
Râjâ. Nothing, he thought, would be lost by trying to get the whole
district instead of the village; and for this purpose he sent down
Kâm Baksh, the ablest man of the whole family, to urge and prosecute
his claim; but the Râjâ was a close, shrewd man, and not to be done
out of his revenue, and Kâm Baksh was obliged to return minus some
thousand rupees, which he had spent in attempting to keep up
appearances.
The best of us Europeans feel our deficiencies in conversation with
Muhammadans of high rank and education, when we are called upon to
talk upon subjects beyond the everyday occurrences of life. A
Muhammadan gentleman of education is tolerably acquainted with
astronomy, as it was taught by Ptolemy; with the logic and ethics of
Aristotle and Plato; with the works of Hippocrates and Galen, through
those of Avicenna, or, as they call him, Abû-Alîsîna;[5] and he is
very capable of talking upon all subjects of philosophy, literature,
science, and the arts, and very much inclined to do so; and of
understanding the nature of the improvements that have been made in
them in modern times. But, however capable we may feel of discussing
these subjects, or explaining these improvements in our own language,
we all feel ourselves very much at a loss when we attempt to do it in
theirs. Perhaps few Europeans have mixed and conversed more freely
with all classes than I have; and yet I feel myself sadly deficient
when I enter, as I often do, into discussions with Muhammadan
gentlemen of education upon the subject of the character of the
governments and institutions of different countries--their effects
upon the character and condition of the people; the arts and the
sciences; the faculties and operations of the human mind; and the
thousand other things which are subjects of everyday conversation
among educated and thinking; men in our country. I feel that they
could understand me quite well if I could find words for my ideas;
but these I cannot find, though their languages abound in them, nor
have I ever met the European gentleman who could. East Indians
can;[6] but they commonly want the ideas as much as we want the
language. The chief cause of this deficiency is the want of
sufficient intercourse with men in whose presence we should be
ashamed to appear ignorant--this is the great secret, and all should
know and acknowledge it.
We are not ashamed to convey our orders to our native servants in a
barbarous language. Military officers seldom speak to their 'sipâhîs'
(sepoys) and native officers, about anything but arms, accoutrements,
and drill; or to other natives about anything but the sports of the
field; and, as long as they are understood, they care not one straw
in what language they express themselves. The conversation of the
civil servants with their native officers takes sometimes a wider
range; but they have the same philosophical indifference as to the
language in which they attempt to convey their ideas; and I have
heard some of our highest diplomatic characters talking,[7] without
the slightest feeling of shame or embarrassment, to native princes on
the most ordinary subjects of everyday interest in a language which
no human being but themselves could understand. We shall remain the
same till some change of system inspire us with stronger motives to
please and conciliate the educated classes of the native community.
They may be reconciled, but they can never be charmed out of their
prejudices or the errors of their preconceived opinions by such
language as the European gentlemen are now in the habit of speaking
to them.[8] We must learn their language better, or we must teach
them our own, before we can venture to introduce among them those
free institutions which would oblige us to meet them on equal terms
at the bar, on the bench, and in the senate.[9] Perhaps two of the
best secular works that were ever written upon the facilities and
operations of the human mind, and the duties of men in their
relations with each other, are those of Imâm-ud-dîn Ghazzâlî, and
Nasîr-ud-dîn of Tûs.[10] Their idol was Plato, but their works are of
a more practical character than his, and less dry than those of
Aristotle.
I may here mention the following, among many instances that occur to
me, of the amusing mistakes into which Europeans are liable to fall
in their conversation with natives.
Mr. J. W------n, of the Bengal Civil Service, commonly known by the
name of Beau W------n,[11] was the Honourable Company's opium agent
at Patna, when I arrived at Dinapore to join my regiment in 1810.[12]
He had a splendid house, and lived in excellent style; and was never
so happy as when he had a dozen young men from the Dinapore
cantonments living with him. He complained that year, as I was told,
that he had not been able to save more than one hundred thousand
rupees that season out of his salary and commission upon the opium,
purchased by the Government from the cultivators.[13] The members of
the civil service, in the other branches of public service, were all
anxious to have it believed by their countrymen that they were well
acquainted with their duties, and able and willing to perform them;
but the Honourable Company's commercial agents were, on the contrary,
generally anxious to make their countrymen believe that they neither
knew nor cared anything about their duties, because they were ashamed
of them. They were sinecure posts for the drones of the service, or
for those who had great interest and no capacity.[14] Had any young
man made it appear that he really thought W------n knew or cared
anything about his duties, he would certainly never have been invited
to his house again; and if any one knew, certainly no one seemed to
know that he had any other duty than that of entertaining his guests.
No one ever spoke the native language so badly, because no man had
ever so little intercourse with the natives; and it was, I have been
told, to his ignorance of the native languages that his bosom friend,
Mr. P------st, owed his life on one occasion. W. sat by the sick-bed
of his friend with unwearied attention, for some days and nights,
after the doctors had declared his case entirely hopeless. He
proposed at last to try change of air, and take him on the river
Ganges. The doctors, thinking that he might as well die in his boat
on the river as in his house at Calcutta, consented to his taking him
on board. They got up as far as Hooghly, when P. said that he felt
better and thought he could eat something. What should it be? A
little roasted kid perhaps. The very thing that he was longing for!
W. went out upon the deck to give orders for the kid, that his friend
might not be disturbed by the gruff voice of the old 'khânsâmâ'
(butler). P. heard the conversation, however.
'Khânsâmâ', said the Beau W., 'you know that my friend Mr. P. is very
ill?'
'Yes, sir.'
'And that he has not eaten anything for a month?'
'A long time for a man to fast, sir.'
'Yes, Khânsâmâ, and his stomach is now become very delicate, and
could not stand anything strong.'
'Certainly not, sir.'
'Well, Khânsâmâ, then he has taken a fancy to a roasted _mare_'
('mâdiyân'), meaning a 'halwân', or kid.'[15]
'A roasted mare, sir?'
'Yes, Khânsâmâ, a roasted mare, which you must have nicely prepared.'
'What, the whole, sir?'
'Not the whole at one time; but have the whole ready as there is no
knowing what part he may like best.'
The old butter had heard of the Tartars eating their horses when in
robust health, but the idea of a sick man, not able to move in his
bed without assistance, taking a fancy to a roasted mare, quite
staggered him.
'But, sir, I may not be able to get such a thing as a mare at a
moment's notice; and if I get her she will be very dear.'
'Never mind, Khânsâmâ, get you the mare, cost what she will; if she
costs a thousand rupees my friend shall have her. He has taken a
fancy to the mare, and the mare he shall have, if she costs a
thousand rupees.'
The butter made his salaam, said he would do his best, and took his
leave, requesting that the boats might be kept at the bank of the
river till he came back.
W. went into his sick friend, who, with great difficulty, managed to
keep his countenance while he complained of the liberties old
servants were in the habit of taking with their masters. 'They think
themselves privileged', said W., 'to conjure up difficulties in the
way of everything that one wants to have done.'
'Yes', said P------st, 'we like to have old and faithful servants
about us, particularly when we are sick; but they are apt to take
liberties, which new ones will not.'
In about two hours the butler's approach was announced from the deck,
and W. walked out to scold him for his delay. The old gentleman was
coming down over the bank, followed by about eight men bearing the
four quarters of an old mare. The butler was very fat; and the proud
consciousness of having done his duty, and met his master's wishes in
a very difficult and important point, had made him a perfect
Falstaff. He marshalled his men in front of the cooking-boat, and
then came towards his master, who for some time stood amazed, and
unable to speak. At last he roared out, 'And what the devil have you
here?'
'Why, the _mare_ that the sick gentleman took a fancy for; and dear
enough she has cost me; not a farthing less than two hundred rupees
would the fellow take for his mare.'
P------st could contain himself no longer; he burst into an
immoderate fit of laughter, during which the abscess in his liver
burst into the intestines, and he felt himself relieved, as if by
enchantment. The mistake was rectified--he got his kid; and in ten
days he was taken back to Calcutta a sound man, to the great
astonishment of all the doctors.
During the first campaign against Nepâl, in 1815, Colonel, now Major-
General, O.H., who commanded the------Regiment, N. I.,[16] had to
march with his regiment through the town of Darbhanga, the capital of
the Râjâ, who came to pay his respects to him. He brought a number of
presents, but the colonel, a high-minded, amiable man, never took
anything himself, nor suffered any person in his camp to do so, in
the districts they passed through without paying for it. He politely
declined to take any of the presents; but said that he 'had heard
that Darbhanga produced _crows_ ("kauwâ"), and should be glad to get
some of them if the Râjâ could spare them,'--meaning coffee, or
'kahwâ'.
The Râjâ stared, and said that certainly they had abundance of crows
in Darbhanga; but he thought they were equally abundant in all parts
of India.
'Quite the contrary, Râjâ Sâhib, I assure you,' said the colonel;
'there is not such a thing as a crow to be found in any part of the
Company's dominions that I have seen, and I have been all over them.'
'Very strange!' said the Râjâ, turning round to his followers.
'Yes,' replied they,' it is very strange, Râjâ Sâhib; but such is
your 'ikbâl' (good fortune), that everything thrives under it; and,
if the colonel should wish to have a few crows, we could easily
collect them for him.'
'If', said the colonel, greatly delighted, 'you could provide us with
a few of these crows, we should really feel very much obliged to you;
for we have a long and cold campaign before us among the bleak hills
of Nepal; and we are all fond of crows.'
'Indeed,' returned the Râjâ, 'I shall be happy to send you as many as
you wish.' ('Much' and 'many' are expressed by the same term.)
'Then we should be glad to have two or three bags full, if it would
not be robbing you.'
'Not in the least,' said the Râjâ; 'I will go home and order them to
be collected immediately.'
In the evening, as the officers, with the colonel at their head, were
sitting down to dinner, a man came up to announce the Râjâ's present.
Three fine large bags were brought in, and the colonel requested that
one might be opened immediately. It was opened accordingly, and the
mess butler ('khansâmân') drew out by the legs a fine old crow. The
colonel immediately saw the mistake, and laughed as heartily as the
rest at the result. A polite message was sent to the Râjâ, requesting
that he would excuse his having made it--for he had had half a dozen
men out shooting crows all day with their matchlocks. Few Europeans
spoke the language better than General ------, and I do not believe
that one European in a thousand, at this very moment, makes any
difference, or knows any difference, in the sound of the two terms.
Kâm Baksh had one sister married to the King of Oudh, and another to
Mirzâ Salîm, the younger son of the Emperor. Mirzâ Salîm and his wife
could not agree, and a separation took place, and she went to reside
with her sister, the Queen of Oudh. The King saw her frequently; and,
finding her more beautiful than his wife, he demanded her also in
marriage from her father, who resided at Lucknow, the capital of
Oudh, on a pension of five thousand rupees a month from the King. He
would not consent, and demanded his daughter; the King, finding her
willing to share his bed and board with her sister, would not give
her up.[17] The father got his old friend, Colonel Gardiner, who had
married a Muhammadan woman of rank, to come down and plead his cause.
The King gave up the young woman, but at the same time stopped the
father's pension, and ordered him and all his family out of his
dominions. He set out with Colonel Gardiner and his daughter, on his
road to Delhi, through Kâsganj, the residence of the colonel, who was
one day recommending the prince to seek consolation for the loss of
his pension in the proud recollection of having saved the honour of
the _house of Tamerlane_, when news was brought to them that the
daughter had run off from camp with his (Colonel Gardiner's) son
James, who had accompanied him to Lucknow. The prince and the colonel
mounted their horses, and rode after him; but they were so much
heavier and older than the young ones, that they soon gave up the
chase in despair. Sulaimân Shikoh insisted upon the colonel
immediately fighting him, after the fashion of the English, with
swords or pistols, but was soon persuaded that the honour of the
house of Tîmûr would be much better preserved by allowing the
offending parties to marry ![18] The King of Oudh was delighted to
find that the old man had been so punished; and the Queen no less so
to find herself so suddenly and unexpectedly relieved from all dread
of her sister's return. All parties wrote to my friend Kâm Baksh, who
was then at Jubbulpore;[19] and he came off with their letters to me
to ask whether I thought the incident might not be turned to account
in getting the pension for his father restored.[20]
Notes:
1. Govardhan is a very sacred place of pilgrimage, full of temples,
situated in the Mathurâ (Muttra) district, sixteen miles west of
Mathurâ, Regulation V of 1826 annexed Govardhan to the Agra district.
In 1832 Mathurâ was made the head-quarters of a new district,
Govardhan and other territory being transferred from Agra.
2. The Purânas, even when narrating history after a fashion, are cast
in the form of prophecies. The Bhâgavat Purâna is especially devoted
to the legends of Krishna. The Hindî version of the 10th Book
(_skandha_) is known as the 'Prêm Sâgar', or 'Ocean of Love', and is,
perhaps, the most wearisome book in the world.
3. This flight occurred during the struggles following the battle of
Plassy in 1757, which were terminated by the battle of Buxar in 1764,
and the grant to the East India Company of the civil administration
of Bengal, Bihâr and Orissa in the following year. Shâh Âlam bore, in
weakness and misery, the burden of the imperial title from 1759 to
1806. From 1765 to 1771 he was the dependent of the English at
Allahabad. From 1771 to 1803 he was usually under the control of
Marâthâ chiefs, and from the time of Lord Lake's entry into Delhi, in
1803 he became simply a prisoner of the British Government. His
successors occupied the same position. In 1788 he was barbarously
blinded by the Rohilla chief, Ghulâm Kâdir.
4. Akbar II. His position as Emperor was purely titular.
5. The name is printed as Booalee Shina in the original edition. His
full designation is Abû Alî al-Husain ibn Abdullah ibn Sînâ, which
means 'that Sînâ was his grandfather. Avicenna is a corruption of
either Abû Sînâ or Ibn Sînâ. He lived a strenuous, passionate life,
but found time to compose about a hundred treatises on medicine and
almost every subject known to Arabian science. He died in A.D. 1037.
A good biography of him will be found in _Encyclo. Brit._, 11th ed.,
1910.
6. Otherwise called Eurasians, or, according to the latest official
decree, Anglo-Indians.
7. 'Diplomatic characters' would now be described as officers of the
Political Department.
8. These remarks of the author should help to dispel the common
delusion that the English officials of the olden time spoke the
Indian languages better than their more highly trained successors.
9. The author wrote these words at the moment of the inauguration by
Lord William Bentinck and Macaulay of the new policy which
established English as the official language of India, and the
vehicle for the higher instruction of its people, as enunciated in
the resolution dated 7th March, 1835, and described by Boulger in
_Lord William Bentinck_ (Rulers of India, 1897), chap. 8. The
decision then formed and acted on alone rendered possible the
employment of natives of India in the higher branches of the
administration. Such employment has gradually year by year increased,
and certainly will further increase, at least up to the extreme limit
of safety. Indians now (1914) occupy seats in the Council of India in
London, and in the Executive and Legislative Councils of the
Governor-General, Provincial Governors, and Lieutenant-Governors.
They hold most of the judicial appointments and fill many responsible
executive offices.
10. Khojah Nasîr-ud-dîn of Tûs in Persia was a great astronomer,
philosopher, and mathematician in the thirteenth century. The
author's Imâm-ud-dîn Ghazzâlî is intended for Abû Hâmid Imâm al
Ghazzâlî, one of the most famous of Musulmân doctors. He was born at
Tûs, the modern Mashhad (Meshed) in Khurâsân, and died in A.D. 1111.
His works are numerous. One is entitled _The Ruin of Philosophies_,
and another, the most celebrated, is _The Resuscitation of Religious
Sciences_ (F. J. Arbuthnot, _A Manual of Arabian History and
Literature_, London, 1890). These authors are again referred to in a
subsequent chapter. I am not able to judge the propriety of Sleeman's
enthusiastic praise.
11. The gentleman referred to was Mr. John Wilton, who was appointed
to the service in 1775.
12. The cantonments at Dinapore (properly Dânâpur) are ten miles
distant from the great city of Patna.
13. The rupee was worth more than two shillings in 1810. The
remuneration of high officials by commission has been long abolished.
14. There used to be two opium agents, one at Patna, and the other at
Ghâzîpur, who administered the Opium Department under the control of
the Board of Revenue in Calcutta. In deference to the demands of the
Chinese Government and of public opinion in England, the Agency at
Ghâzîpur has been closed, and the Government of India is withdrawing
gradually from the opium trade. Such lucrative sinecures as those
described in the text have long ceased to exist.
15. These Persian words would not now be used in orders to servants.
16. This officer was Sir Joseph O'Halloran, K.C.B., attached to the
18th Regiment, N.I. He became a Lieutenant-Colonel on June 4, 1814,
and Major-General on January 10, 1837. He is mentioned in
_Ramaseeana_ (p 59) as Brigadier-General commanding the Sâgar
Division.
17. The King's demand was improper and illegal. The Muhammadan law,
like the Jewish (Leviticus xviii, 18), prohibits a man from being
married to two sisters at once. 'Ye are also forbidden to take to
wife two sisters; except what is already past: for God is gracious
and merciful' (_Korân_, chap. iv). Compare the ruling in 'Mishkât-ul-
Masâbih', Book XIII, chap. v, Part II (Matthews, vol. ii, p. 94).
18. The colonel's son has succeeded to his father's estates, and he
and his wife are, I believe, very happy together. [W. H. S.] Such an
incident would, of course, be now inconceivable. The family name is
also spelled Gardner. The romantic history of the Gardners is
summarized in the appendix to _A Particular Account of the European
Military Adventures of Hindustan, from 1784 to 1803_; compiled by
Herbert Compton: London, 1892.
19. _Ante_, Chapter 53 text between [2] and [3].
20. Kâsganj, the residence of Colonel Gardner, is in the Etah
district of the United Provinces. In 1911 the population was 16,429.
CHAPTER 54
Fathpur-Sîkrî--The Emperor Akbar's Pilgrimage--Birth of Jahângîr.
On the 6th January we left Agra, which soon after became the
residence of the Governor of the North-Western Provinces, Sir Charles
Metcalfe.[1] It was, when I was there, the residence of a civil
commissioner, a judge, a magistrate, a collector of land revenue, a
collector of customs, and all their assistants and establishments. A
brigadier commands the station, which contained a park of artillery,
one regiment of European and four regiments of native infantry.[2]
Near the artillery practice-ground, we passed the tomb of Jodh Bâî,
the wife of the Emperor Akbar, and the mother of Jahângîr. She was of
Râjpût caste, daughter of the Hindoo chief of Jodhpur, a very
beautiful, and, it is said, a very amiable woman.[3] The Mogul
Emperors, though Muhammadans, were then in the habit of taking their
wives from among the Râjpût princes of the country, with a view to
secure their allegiance. The tomb itself is in ruins, having only
part of the dome standing, and the walls and magnificent gateway that
at one time surrounded it have been all taken away and sold by a
thrifty Government, or appropriated to purposes of more practical
utility.[4]
I have heard many Muhammadans say that they could trace the decline
of their empire in Hindustan to the loss of the Râjpût blood in the
veins of their princes.[5] 'Better blood' than that of the Râjpûts of
India certainly never flowed in the veins of any human beings; or,
what is the same thing, no blood was ever believed to be finer by the
people themselves and those they had to deal with. The difference is
all in the imagination, and the imagination is all-powerful with
nations as with individuals. The Britons thought their blood the
finest in the world till they were conquered by the Romans, the
Picts, the Scots, and the Saxons. The Saxons thought theirs the
finest in the world till they were conquered by the Danes and the
Normans. This is the history of the human race. The quality of the
blood of a whole people has depended often upon the fate of a battle,
which in the ancient world doomed the vanquished to the hammer; and
the hammer changed the blood of those sold by it from generation to
generation. How many Norman robbers got their blood ennobled, and how
many Saxon nobles got theirs plebeianized by the Battle of Hastings;
and how difficult it would be for any of us to say from which we
descended--the Britons or the Saxons, the Danes or the Normans; or in
what particular action our ancestors were the victors or the
vanquished, and became ennobled or plebeianized by the thousand
accidents which influence the fate of battles. A series of successful
aggressions upon their neighbours will commonly give a nation a
notion that they are superior in courage; and pride will make them
attribute this superiority to blood--that is, to an old date. This
was, perhaps, never more exemplified than in the case of the Gûrkhas
of Nepal, a small diminutive race of men not unlike the Huns, but
certainly as brave as any men can possibly be. A Gûrkha thought
himself equal to any four other men of the hills, though they were
all much stronger; just as a Dane thought himself equal to four
Saxons at one time in Britain. The other men of the hills began to
think that he really was so, and could not stand before him.[6]
We passed many wells from which the people were watering their
fields, and found those which yielded a brackish water were
considered to be much more valuable for irrigation than those which
yielded sweet water. It is the same in the valley of the Nerbudda,
but brackish water does not suit some soils and some crops. On the
8th we reached Fathpur Sîkrî, which lies about twenty-four miles from
Agra, and stands upon the back of a narrow range of sandstone hills,
rising abruptly from the alluvial plains to the highest, about one
hundred feet, and extends three miles north-north-east and south-
south-west. This place owes its celebrity to a Muhammadan saint, the
Shaikh Salîm of Chisht, a town in Persia, who owed his to the
following circumstance:
The Emperor Akbar's sons had all died in infancy, and he made a
pilgrimage to the shrine of the celebrated Muîn-ud-dîn of Chisht, at
Ajmêr. He and his family went all the way on foot at the rate of
three 'kôs', or four miles, a day, a distance of about three hundred
and fifty miles. 'Kanâts', or cloth walls, were raised on each side
of the road, carpets spread over it, and high towers of burnt bricks
erected at every stage, to mark the places where he rested. On
reaching the shrine he made a supplication to the saint, who at night
appeared to him in his sleep, and recommended him to go and entreat
the intercession of a very holy old man, who lived a secluded life
upon the top of the little range of hills at Sîkrî. He went
accordingly, and was assured by the old man, then ninety-six years of
age, that the Empress Jodh Bâî, the daughter of a Hindoo prince,
would be delivered of a son, who would live to a good old age. She
was then pregnant, and remained in the vicinity of the old man's
hermitage till her confinement, which took place 31st of August,
1569. The infant was called after the hermit, Mirzâ Salîm, and became
in time Emperor of Hindostan, under the name of Jahângîr.[7] It was
to this Emperor Jahângîr that Sir Thomas Roe, the ambassador, was
sent from the English Court.[8] Akbar, in order to secure to himself,
his family, and his people, the advantage of the continued
intercessions of so holy a man, took up his residence at Sîkrî, and
covered the hill with magnificent buildings for himself, his
courtiers, and his public establishments.[9]
The quadrangle, which contains the mosque on the west side, and tomb
of the old hermit in the centre, was completed in the year 1578, six
years before his death; and is, perhaps, one of the finest in the
world. It is five hundred and seventy-five feet square, and
surrounded by a high wall, with a magnificent cloister all around
within.[10] On the outside is a magnificent gateway, at the top of a
noble flight of steps twenty-four feet high. The whole gateway is one
hundred and twenty feet in height, and the same in breadth, and
presents beyond the wall five sides of an octagon, of which the front
face is eighty feet wide. The arch in the centre of this space is
sixty feet high by forty wide.[11] This gateway is no doubt extremely
grand and beautiful; but what strikes one most is the disproportion
between the thing wanted and the thing provided--there seems to be
something quite preposterous in forming so enormous an entrance for a
poor diminutive man to walk through--and walk he must, unless carried
through on men's shoulders; for neither elephant, horse, nor bullock
could ascend over the flight of steps. In all these places the
staircases, on the contrary, are as disproportionately small; they
look as if they were made for rats to crawl through, while the
gateways seem as if they were made for ships to sail under.[12] One
of the most interesting sights was the immense swarms of swallows
flying round the thick bed of nests that occupy the apex of this
arch, and, to the spectators below, they look precisely like swarm of
bees round a large honeycomb. I quoted a passage in the Korân in
praise of the swallows, and asked the guardians of the place whether
they did not think themselves happy in having such swarms of sacred
birds over their heads all day long. 'Not at all,' said they; 'they
oblige us to sweep the gateway ten times a day; but there is no
getting at their nests, or we should soon get rid of them.' They then
told me that the sacred bird of the Korân was the 'abâbîl', or large
black swallow, and not the 'partâdîl', a little piebald thing of no
religious merit whatever.[13] On the right side of the entrance is
engraven on stone in large letters, standing out in bas-relief, the
following passage in Arabic: 'Jesus, on whom be peace, has said, "The
word is merely a bridge; you are to pass over it, and not to build
your dwellings upon it".' Where this saying of Christ is to be found
I know not, nor has any Muhammadan yet been able to tell me; but the
quoting of such a passage, in such a place, is a proof of the absence
of all bigotry on the part of Akbar.[14]
The tomb of Shaikh Salîm, the hermit, is a very beautiful little
building, in the centre of the quadrangle.[15] The man who guards it
told me that the Jâts, while they reigned, robbed this tomb, as well
as those at Agra, of some of the most beautiful and valuable portion
of the mosaic work.[16] 'But,' said he, 'they were well plundered in
their turn by your troops at Bharatpur; retribution always follows
the wicked sooner or later.'[17] He showed us the little roof of
stone tiles, close to the original little dingy mosque of the old
hermit, where the Empress gave birth to Jahângîr;[18] and told us
that she was a very sensible woman, whose counsels had great weight
with the Emperor.[19] 'His majesty's only fault was', he said, 'an
inclination to learn the art of magic, which was taught him by an old
Hindoo religious mendicant,' whose apartment near the palace he
pointed out to us.
'Fortunately,' said our cicerone, 'the fellow died before the Emperor
had learnt enough to practise the art without his aid.'
Shaikh Salîm had, he declared, gone more than twenty times on
pilgrimage to the tomb of the holy prophet; and was not much pleased
to have his repose so much disturbed by the noise and bustle of the
imperial court. At last, Akbar wanted to surround the hill with
regular fortifications, and the Shaikh could stand it no longer.[20]
'Either you or I must leave this hill,' said he to the Emperor; 'if
the efficacy of my prayers is no longer to be relied upon, let me
depart in peace.' 'If it be _your majesty's_ will,' replied the
Emperor, 'that one should go, let it be your slave, I pray.' The old
story: 'There is nothing like relying upon the efficacy of our
prayers,' say the priests, 'Nothing like relying upon that of our
sharp swords,' say the soldiers; and, as nations advance from
barbarism, they generally contrive to divide between them the surplus
produce of the land and labour of society.
The old hermit consented to remain, and pointed out Agra as a place
which he thought would answer the Emperor's purpose extremely well.
Agra, then an unpeopled waste, soon became a city, and Fathpur-Sîkrî
was deserted.[21] Cities which, like this, are maintained by the
public establishments that attend and surround the courts of
sovereign princes, must always, like this, become deserted when these
sovereigns change their resting-places. To the history of the rise
and progress, decline and fall, of how many cities is this the key?
Close to the tomb of the saint is another containing the remains of a
great number of his descendants, who continue to enjoy, under the
successors of Akbar, large grants of rent-free lands for their own
support, and for that of the mosque and mausoleum. These grants have,
by degrees, been nearly all resumed;[22] and, as the repair of the
buildings is now entrusted to the public officers of our government,
the surviving members of the saint's family, who still reside among
the ruins, are extremely poor. What strikes a European most in going
over these palaces of the Moghal Emperors is the want of what a
gentleman of fortune in his own country would consider elegantly
comfortable accommodations. Five hundred pounds a year would at the
present day secure him more of this in any civilized country of
Europe or America than the greatest of those Emperors could command.
He would, perhaps, have the same impression in going over the
domestic architecture of the most civilized nations of the ancient
world, Persia and Egypt, Greece and Rome.[23]
Notes:
1. The Act of 1833 (3 & 4 William IV, c. 85), which reconstituted the
government of India, provided that the upper Provinces should be
formed into a separate Presidency under the name of Agra, and Sir
Charles Metcalfe was nominated as the first Governor. On
reconsideration, this arrangement was modified, and instead of the
Presidency of Agra, the Lieutenant-Governorship of the North-Western
Provinces was formed, with head-quarters at Agra. Sir C. Metcalfe
became Lieutenant-Governor in 1836, but held the office for a short
time only, until January, 1838, when Lord Auckland, the Governor-
General, took over temporary charge. The seat of the Local Government
was moved to Allahabad in 1868. From 1877 the Lieutenant-Governor of
the North-Western Provinces was also Chief Commissioner of Oudh. The
name North-Western Provinces, which had become unsuitable and
misleading since the annexation of the Panjâb in 1849, could not be
retained after the formation of the North-West Frontier Province in
1902. Accordingly, from that year the combined jurisdiction of the
North-Western Provinces and Oudh received the new official name of
the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. The title of Chief
Commissioner of Oudh was dropped at the same time, but the legal
System and administration of the old kingdom of Oudh continued to be
distinct in certain respects.
2. The civil establishment and garrison are still nearly the same as
in the author's time. The inland customs department is now concerned
only with the restrictions on the manufacture of salt. The offices of
district magistrate and collector of land revenue have long been
combined in a single officer.
3. Akbar married the daughter of Bihârî Mal, chief of Jaipur, in A.D.
1562. There is little doubt that she, _Mariam-uz-Zamânî_, was the
mother of Jahângîr. See Blochmann, transl. _Aîn_, vol. i, p. 619. Mr.
Beveridge has given up the opinion which he formerly advocated in
_J.A.S.B._, vol. lvi (1887), Part I, pp. 164-7.
The Jodhpur princess was given the posthumous title of 'Mariam-uz-
Zamânî', or 'Mary of the age', which circumstance probably originated
the belief that Akbar had one Christian queen. Her tomb at Sikandara
is locally known simply as Rauza Maryam, 'the mausoleum of Mary', a
designation which has had much to do with the persistence of the
erroneous belief in the existence of a Christian consort of Akbar.
Mr. Beveridge holds, and I think rightly, that Jodh Bâî is not a
proper name. It seems to mean merely 'princess of Jodhpur'. The only
lady really known as Jodh Bâî was the daughter of Udai Singh (Môth
Râjâ) of Jaipur, who became a consort of Jahângîr. Sleeman's notion
that Jahângîr's mother also was called Jodh Bâî is mistaken
(Blochmann, _ut supra_).
4. It was blown up about 1832 by order of the Government, and the
materials of the gates, walls, and outer towns were used for the
building of barracks. But the mausoleum itself resisted the spoiler
and remained 'a huge shapeless heap of massive fragments of masonry'.
The building consisted of a square room raised on a platform with a
vault below. The marble tomb or cenotaph of the queen still exists in
the vault. A fine gateway formerly stood at the entrance to the
enclosure, and there was a small mosque to the west of the tomb
(_A.S.R._ vol. iv. (1874), p. 121: Muh. Latif, _Agra_, p. 192). It is
painful to be obliged to record so many instances of vandalism
committed by English officials. This tomb is the memorial of Jodh
Bâî, daughter of Udai Singh, _alias_ Môth Râjâ, who was married to
Jahângîr in A.D. 1585, and was the mother of Shâh Jahân. Her personal
names were Jagat Goshaini and Bâlmatî. She died in A.D. 1619. Akbar's
queen, Maryam-uz-Zamânî, daughter of Râjâ Bihârî Mall of Jaipur
(Ambêr), who died in A.D. 1623, is buried at Sîkandra. (See Beale,
s.v. 'Jodh Bâî' and 'Mariam Zamânî'; Blochmann, transl. _Aîn_, pp.
429, 619.) The tomb of Maryam-uz-Zamânî has been purchased by
Government from the missionaries, who had used it as a school, and
has been restored. (_Ann. Rep. A.S., India_, 1910-11, pp. 92-6.)
5. Although it may be admitted that the Râjpût strain of blood
improved the constitution of the royal family of Delhi, the decline
and fall of the Timuride dynasty cannot be truly ascribed to 'the
loss of the Râjpût blood in the veins' of the ruling princes. The
empire was tottering to its fall long before the death of Aurangzêb,
who 'had himself married two Hindoo wives; and he wedded his son
Muazzam (afterwards the Emperor Bahâdur) to a Hindoo princess, as his
forefathers had done before him'. (Lane-Poole, _The History of the
Moghul Emperors of Hindustan illustrated by their Coins_, p. xviii. )
The wonder is, not that the empire of Delhi fell, but that it lasted
so long.
6. When the author wrote the above remarks, Englishmen knew the
gallant Gûrkhas as enemies only; they now know them as worthy and
equal brethren in arms. The recruitment of Gûrkhas for the British
service began in 1838. The spelling 'Gôrkhâ' is more accurate.
7. The 'kôs' varies much in value, but in most parts of the United
Provinces it is reckoned as equal to two miles. According to the
_N.W.P. Gazetteer_ (p. 568), the nearest approximate value for the
Agra kôs is 1 3/4 mile. Three kôs would, therefore, be equal to about
5 1/4 miles. Muîn-ud-dîn died in A.D. 1236. Sleeman, on I know not
what authority, represents Akbar as resorting to Salîm Chishtî,
Shaikh of Fathpur-Sîkrî, on the advice given by a vision accorded at
Ajmêr. The _Tabaqât-i-Akbarî_ simply records that Akbar had visited
the Shaikh, the 'very holy old man' of Sleeman, several times, and
had obtained the promise of a son. That promise was fulfilled by the
birth of the princes Salîm and Murâd, who both saw the light at
Fathpur-Sîkrî. The pilgrimage of Akbar on foot to Ajmêr, which began
on Friday, Shabân (8th month) 12, A.H. 977, took place _after_ the
birth of Prince Salîm, which occurred on the 18th of Rabî-ul-auwwal
(3rd month) of the same Hijrî year. Akbar travelled at the rate of 7
or 8 _kôs_ a day, and spent about 25 days on the journey (E. & D. v.
333, 334). If he had moved at the rate stated by Sleeman he would
have been nearly three months on the road. He reached Ajmêr about the
middle of February (N.S.). Shaikh Salîm Chishtî died in A.D. 1572 (A.
H. 979) aged 96 lunar years.
8. Sir Thomas Roe was sent out by James I, and arrived at Jahângîr's
court in January, 1616. He remained there till 1618, and secured for
his countrymen the privilege of trading at Surat. The best edition of
his book is that by Mr. William Foster (Hakluyt Soc., 1899).
9. Fathpur-Sîkrî is fully described and illustrated in the late Mr.
E. W. Smith's fine work in quarto entitled _The Moghul Architecture
of Fathpur-Sîkrî_ (4 Parts, Allahabad Govt. Press, 1894-8), which
supersedes all other writings on the subject. The double name of the
town means 'Fathpur at Sîkrî' according to a familiar Indian
practice. The name Fathpur ('City of Victory') was bestowed in A.D.
1573 to commemorate the glorious campaign in Gujarât, but building on
the site had been begun in 1569. The historians usually call the town
simply Fathpur, which name also is found on the coinage, from
probably A.H. 977 (A.D. 1569-70). The mint was not in regular working
order until eight years later (A.H. 985). Coins continued to be
struck regularly at Fathpur until A.H. 989 (A.D. 1581-2). Akbar
abandoned his costly foundation a little later. The only coin from
the Fathpur mint of subsequent date is one of the first year of
Shâhjahân (Wright, _Catalogue of Coins in Indian Museum, Mughal
Emperors_, 1908, p. xlvii). But Rodgers believed in the genuineness
of a zodiacal gold coin of Jahângîr purporting to be struck at
Fathpur (_J.A.S.B._, vol. lvii (1888), Part I, p. 26).
10. Sleeman's dates and details require much correction. The mosque
was completed at some time in the year A.H. 979 (May 26, 1571, to May
13, 1572, o.s.), excepting the Buland Darwâza, which was erected in
A.H. 983 (1575-6). The 'old hermit', Shaikh Salîm, died on February
13, 1572 (Ramazân 27, A.H. 979). E. W. Smith (_op. cit._, Part IV, p.
1) gives the correct measurements as follow: 'Exclusive of the
bastions upon the angles it measures 542' from east to west to the
outside of the _lîwân_ or sanctuary, or 515' 3" to the outside of the
west main wall (which sets back from the outer wall of the lîwân) and
438' from north to south. The general plan adopted by Muhammadans for
their masjids has been followed. In the centre is a vast courtyard
open to the heavens, measuring 359' 10" by 438' 9", surrounded on the
north, south, and east sides by spacious cloisters 38' 3" in depth,
and on the west by the lîwân itself, 288' 2" in length by 65' deep.
It is said to be copied from one at Makka [Mecca], and was erected
according to a chronogram over the main arch in A.D. 1571, or at the
same time as Rajah Bir Bal's house.' The 'six years before his death'
of Sleeman's text should be 'six months' (Latif, _Agra_, p. 149).
11. The southern portal, known as the Buland Darwâza, or Lofty
Gateway, does not match the other gateways. It was built in A.D.
1575-6 (A.H. 983), and was adorned in A.D. 1601-2 (A.H. 1010) with an
inscription recording Akbar's triumphant return from his campaign in
the Deccan. The date is fixed by a chronogram, preserved in Beale's
work entitled _Miftâh-ul-tawârîkh_ (_Ann. Progr. Rep. A. S. Northern
Circle_, for 1905-6, p. 34, correcting E. W. Smith). Correct
measurements are:
From roadway below to pavement . . . 42 feet
From pavement to top of finial . . . 134 "
Breadth across main front . . . . 130 "
Breadth across back facing the mosque . . 123 "
Depth . . . . . . . . 88 1/2 feet.
Full details, with ample illustrations, are given by E. W. Smith, op.
cit., Part IV, chap. ii. In the original edition of Sleeman a
chromolithograph of the gateway is inserted. Photographs are
reproduced in _H.F.A._, Pl. xcvi, and Fergusson, _History of Indian
and E. Archit._ (ed. 1910), fig. 425.
12. Fergusson (ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 297) successfully justifies the
vast size of the gateway. 'The semi-dome is the modulus of the
design, and its scale that by which the imagination measures its
magnificence.'
The cramped staircases criticized by Sleeman are those ascending from
the pavement to the roof, one on the north-west, and the other on the
north-east side of the gate. Each flight has 123 steep steps.
13. See the 105th chapter of the Korân. 'Hast thou not seen how thy
Lord dealt with the masters of the elephant? Did he not make their
treacherous design an occasion of drawing them into error; and send
against them flocks of _swallows_ which cast down upon them stones of
baked clay, and rendered them like the leaves of corn eaten by
cattle?' [W. H. S.] The quotation is from Sale's translation, but
Sale uses the word 'birds', and not '_swallows_'. In his note, where
he tells the whole story, he speaks of 'a large flock of birds like
swallows'. The Arabic, Persian, and Hindustânî dictionaries give no
other word than 'abâbîl' for swallow. The word 'partâdîl' (purtadeel)
occurs in none of them. According to Oates, _Fauna of British India_
(London, 1890), the 'abâbîl' is the common swallow, _Hirundo
rustica_; and the 'mosque-swallow' ('masjid-abâbîl'), otherwise
called 'Sykes's striated swallow', is the _H. erythropygia, H.
Daurica_ of Balfour, _Cyclop. of India_, 3rd ed., s.v. Hirundinidae.
This latter species is the 'little piebald thing' mentioned by the
author.
14. Muh. Latif (Agra, pp. 146, 147) gives the text and English
rendering of the inscription, which is in Persian, except the
_logion_ ascribed to Jesus, which is in Arabic. His translation of
the Jesus saying is as follows:
'So said Jeans, on whom be peace! "The world is a bridge; pass over
it, but build no house on it. He who reflected on the distresses of
the Day of Judgement gained pleasure everlasting.
'"Worldly pleasures are but momentary; spend, then, thy life in
devotion and remember that what remains of it is valueless".'
Like the author, I am unable to trace the source of the quotation.
The inscription probably was recorded after Akbar's breach with
Islam, which may be dated from 1579 or 1580. When he built the
mosque, in 1571-5, he was still a devout Musalman, although
entertaining liberal opinions. He died on October 25, 1605 (N.S.;
October 15, O.S.)
15. For a full account of the exquisite sepulchre of Shaikh Salîm,
see E. W. Smith, op. cit.. Part III, chap. ii. An inscription over
the doorway is dated A.H. 979 = 1571-2, the year of the saint's
death. The building, constructed regardless of expense, must be
somewhat later. 'As originally built by Akbar, the tomb was of red
sandstone, and the marble trellis-work, the chief ornament of the
tomb, was erected subsequently by the Emperor Jahângîr' (Latif,
_Agra_, p. 144).
16. The first plundering of Akbar's tomb at Sikandra by the Jâts
occurred in 1691 according to Manucci (_ante_, chapter 51, note 29.).
The outrages at Fathpur-Sîkrî seem to have been later in date, and to
have happened after the capture of Agra in 1761 by Sûraj Mall, the
famous Râjâ of Bhurtpore (Bharatpur). The Jâts retained possession of
Agra until 1774 (_I.G._, 1908, vol. viii, p. 76). That is the period
while they reigned, to use the author's words. Tradition affirms that
daring that time they shot away the tops of the minarets at the
entrance to the Sikandra park; took the armour and books of Akbar
from his tomb, and sent them to Bharatpur, and also melted down two
silver doors at the Tâj, which had cost Shâh Jahân more than 125,000
rupees (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, 1st ed., vol. vii, p. 619)
17. We besieged and took Bharatpur in order to rescue the young
prince, our ally, from his uncle, who had forcibly assumed the office
of prime minister to his nephew. As soon as we got possession, all
the property we found, belonging either to the nephew or the uncle,
was declared to be prize-money, and taken for the troops. The young
prince was obliged to borrow an elephant from the prize agents to
ride upon. He has ever since enjoyed the whole of the revenue of his
large territory. [W. H. S.] The final siege and capture of Bharatpur
by Lord Combermere took place in January, 1826. The plundering, as
Metcalfe observed, 'has been very disgraceful, and has tarnished our
well-earned honours'. All the state treasures and jewels, amounting
to forty-eight lâkhs of rupees, or say half a million of pounds
sterling, which should have been made over to the rightful Râjâ, were
treated as lawful prize, and at once distributed among the officers
and men. Lord Combermere himself took six lâkhs (Marshman, _History
of India_, ed., 1869, vol. ii, p. 409).
18. The 'little dingy mosque' was built over the cave in which the
saint dwelt, and was presented to him by the local quarry-men. It is
therefore called The Stone-cutters' Mosque. It is fully described by
E. W. Smith, op. cit., Part IV. chap. iii. It is earlier in date than
any of Akbar's buildings, having been built in A. H. 945 (A.D. 1538-
9), a year after the saint had settled in the 'dangerous jungle'
(_Progr. Rep. A. S. N. Circle_, 1905-6, p. 35).
19. The people of India no doubt owed much of the good they enjoyed
under the long reign of Akbar to this most excellent woman, who
inspired not only her husband but the most able Muhammadan minister
that India has ever had, with feelings of universal benevolence. It
was from her that this great minister, Abûl Fazl, derived the spirit
that dictated the following passages in his admirable work, the Aîn-
i-Akbarî; 'Every sect becomes infatuated with its particular
doctrines; animosity and dissension prevail, and each man deeming the
tenets of his sect to be the dictates of truth itself, aims at the
destruction of all others, vilifies reputation, stains the earth with
blood, and has the vanity to imagine that he is performing
meritorious actions. Were the voice of reason attended to, mankind
would be sensible of their error, and lament the weaknesses which led
them to interfere in the religious concerns of each other.
Persecution, after all, defeats its own end; it obliges men to
conceal their opinions, but produces no change in them.
'Summarily, the Hindoos are religious, affable, courteous to
strangers, prone to inflict austerities on themselves, lovers of
justice, given to retirement, able in business, grateful, admirers of
truth, and of unbounded fidelity in all their dealings.
'This character shines brightest in adversity. Their soldiers know
not what it is to fly from the field of battle; when the success of
the combat becomes doubtful, they dismount from their horses, and
throw away their lives in payment of the debt of valour. They have
great respect for their tutors; and make no account of their lives
when they can devote them to the service of their God.
'They consider the Supreme Being to be above all labour, and believe
Brahmâ to be the creator of the world, Vishnu its preserver, and Siva
its destroyer. But one sect believes that God, who hath no equal,
appeared on earth under the three above-mentioned forms, without
having been thereby polluted in the smallest degree, in the same
manner as the Christians speak of the Messiah; others hold that all
these were only human beings, who, on account of their sanctity and
righteousness, were raised to these high dignities.' [W. H. S.] The
passage quoted is from Gladwin's translation, vol. ii, p. 318 (4th
ed., London, 1800). The wording varies in different editions of
Gladwin's work. A better version will be found in Jarrett, transl.
_Âîn_ (Calcutta, 1894), vol. iii, p. 8.
There is no substantial foundation for the author's statement that
Abûl Fazl learned his charity and toleration from the Hindoo mother
of Jahângîr. The influences which really moulded the opinions of both
Abûl Fazl and his royal master are well known. When Akbar and Abûl
Fazl are compared with Elizabeth and Burleigh, Philip II and Alva, or
the other sovereigns and ministers of the age in Europe, it seems to
be little less than a miracle that the Indian statesmen should have
held and practised the noble philosophy expounded in the above
quotation from the 'Institutes of Akbar'. No man has deserved better
than Akbar the stately eulogy pronounced by Wordsworth on a hero now
obscure:
A meteor wert thou in a darksome night;
Yet shall thy name, conspicuous and sublime,
Stand in the spacious firmament of time,
Fixed as a star: such glory is thy right.
(_Sonnets dedicated to Liberty_, Part Second, No. XVII.)
20. The story is absurd, the saint having died early in 1572, when
the Fathpur-Sîkrî buildings were in progress.
'The city . . . is enclosed on three sides by high embattlemented
stone walls pierced by. . . gateways protected by heavy and grim
semi-circular bastions of rubble masonry. The fourth side was
protected by a large lake.' There were nine gateways (E. W. Smith,
op. cit., pp. 1, 59; pl. xci, xciii). The Sangîn Burj, or Stone
Tower, is a fine unfinished fortification (ibid., p. 34). The dam of
the lake burst in the 27th year of the reign, A.D. 1582 (Latif,
_Agra_, p. 159). The circumference of the town is variously stated as
either six or seven miles.
21. Akbar began the works at the fort of Agra in A.H. 972,
corresponding to A.D. 1564-65, several years before he began those at
Fathpur in A.D. 1569-70 (E. & D., vol. v, pp. 295, 332); and the
buildings at Agra and Fathpur were carried on concurrently. He
continued building at Fathpur nearly to the close of his reign. Agra
was never 'an unpeopled waste' during Akbar's reign. Sikandar Lodî
had made it his capital in A.D. 1501.
22. That is to say, the grantees have now to pay land revenue, or
rent, to the state.
23. No good general description of the buildings at Agra, Sikandra,
and Fathpur-Sîkrî exists. The following list indicates the beat
treatises available.
(1) Syad Muhammad Latif--_Agra, Historical and Descriptive., &c._;
8vo, Calcutta, 1896, Useful, but crude and badly illustrated.
(2) E. W. Smith--_The Moghul Architecture of Fathpur-Sikri_; 4 Parts,
4to, Government Press, Allahabad, 1894-8.
(3) Same author--_Moghul Colour Decoration of Agra_; 4to, Government
Press, Allahabad, 1901.
(4) Same author--_Akbar's Tomb, Sikandarah_; posthumous; 4to,
Allahabad Government Press, 1909.
The three works by Mr. E. W. Smith are magnificently illustrated and
worthy of the subject.
(5) Nûr Baksh--'The Agra Fort and its Buildings', in _A.S. Annual
Report_ for 1903-4, pp. 164-93.
(6) Moin-ud-din--_The History of the Taj, &c._; thin 8vo, 116 pp.;
Moon Press, Agra, 1905. Useful, as being the only book devoted to the
Tâj and connected buildings, but crude and inadequate.
The Archaeological Survey of India, since its reorganization, has not
had time to study the Tâj buildings, except for conservation
purposes. The report by Mr. Carlleyle on the minor remains at and
near Agra in _A.S.R._, vol. iv, 1874, is almost worthless.
In 1873 Major Cole prepared a handsome volume entitled _Illustrations
of Buildings near Muttra and Agra, &c._
Some information, to be used with caution, is to be found in
gazetteers of different dates.
The brief observations in Fergusson's _History of Indian and Eastern
Architecture_ (ed. 1910) are of permanent value. The plan of the
editor's work, _A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon_ (H. F.
A.), Oxford, 1911, does not permit of detailed descriptions. The
well-known little Handbook by Mr. H. G. Keene contains many errors
and is unworthy of the author's reputation as an historian.
A good guide-book, prepared with knowledge and accuracy, is badly
wanted. It would be difficult to find an author possessed of the
needful local knowledge and sufficiently well read to compile a
satisfactory book. An adequate illustrated history of the Tâj
buildings on the lines of Mr. E. W. Smith's work on Fathpur-Sîkrî is
much to be desired, but would be a formidable undertaking, and is not
likely to be written for a long time to come. Perhaps some wealthy
admirer of Akbar and his achievements may appear and provide the
considerable funds required for the preparation of the desired
treatise. The Christian antiquities of Agra also deserve systematic
treatment. At present the information on record is in a chaotic
state.
CHAPTER 55
Bharatpur--Dîg--Want of employment for the Military and the Educated
Classes under the Company's Rule.
Our old friends, Mr. Charles Fraser, the Commissioner of the Agra
Division, then on his circuit, and Major Godby, had come on with us
from Agra and made our party very agreeable. On the 9th, we went
fourteen miles to Bharatpur, over a plain of alluvial, but seemingly
poor, soil, intersected by one low range of sandstone hills running
north-east and south-west. The thick belt of jungle, three miles
wide, with which the chiefs of Bharatpur used to surround their
fortress while they were freebooters, and always liable to be brought
into collision with their neighbours, has been fast diminishing since
the capture of the place by our troops in 1826; and will very soon
disappear altogether, and give place to rich sheets of cultivation,
and happy little village communities. Our tents had been pitched
close outside the Mathurâ gate, near a small grove of fruit-trees,
which formed the left flank of the last attack on this fortress by
Lord Combermere.[1] Major Godby had been present during the whole
siege; and, as we went round the place in the evening on our
elephants, he pointed out all the points of attack, and told all the
anecdotes of the day that were interesting enough to be remembered
for ten years. We went through the town, out at the opposite gate,
and passed along the line of Lord Lake's attack in 1805.[2] All the
points of his attack were also pointed out to us by our cicerone, an
old officer in the service of the Râjâ. It happened to be the
anniversary of the first attempt to storm, which was made on the 9th
of January, thirty-one years before. One old officer told us that he
remembered Lord Lake sitting with three other gentlemen on chairs not
more than half a mile from the ramparts of the fort.
The old man thought that the men of those days were quite a different
sort of thing to the men of the present day, as well those who
defended, as those who attacked the fort; and, if the truth must be
told, he thought that the European lords and gentlemen had fallen off
in the same scale as the rest.
'But', said the old man, 'all these things are matter of destiny and
providence. Upon that very bastion (pointing to the right point of
Lord Lake's attack) stood a large twenty-four pounder, which was
loaded and discharged three times by supernatural agency during one
of your attacks--not a living soul was near it.' We all smiled,
incredulous; and the old man offered to bring a score of witnesses to
the fact, men of unquestionable veracity. The left point of Lord
Lake's attack was the Baldêo bastion, so called alter Baldêo Singh,
the second son of the then reigning chief, Ranjît Singh. The feats
which Hector performed in the defence of Troy sink into utter
insignificance before those which Baldêo performed in the defence of
Bharatpur, according to the best testimony of the survivors of that
great day. 'But', said the old man, 'he was, of course, acting under
supernatural influence; he condescended to measure swords only with
Europeans'; and their bodies filled the whole bastion in which he
stood, according to the belief of the people, though no European
entered it, I believe, during the whole siege. They pointed out to us
where the different corps were posted. There was one corps which had
signalized itself a good deal, but of which I had never before heard,
though all around me seemed extremely well acquainted with it--this
was the _Antâ Gurgurs_. At last Godby came to my side, and told me
this was the name by which the Bombay troops were always known in
Bengal, though no one seemed to know whence it came. I am disposed to
think that they derive it from the peculiar form of the caps of their
sepoys, which are in form like the common hookah, called a 'gurgurî',
with a small ball at the top, like an 'antâ', or tennis, or billiard
ball; hence 'Antâ Gurgurs'. The Bombay sepoys were, I am told, always
very angry when they heard that they were known by this term--they
have always behaved like good soldiers, and need not be ashamed of
this or any other name.[3]
The water in the lake, about a mile to the west of Bharatpur, stands
higher than the ground about the fortress; and a drain had been
opened, through which the water rushed in and filled the ditch all
round the fort and great part of the plain to the south and east,
before Lord Lake undertook the siege in 1805.[4] This water might, I
believe, have been taken off to the eastward into the Jumna, had the
outlet been discovered by the engineers. An attempt was made to cut
the same drain on the approach of Lord Combermere in 1826; but a
party went on, and stopped the work before much water had passed, and
the ditch was almost dry when the siege began.
The walls being all of mud, and now dismantled, had a wretched
appearance;[5] and the town which is contained within them is, though
very populous, a mere collection of wretched hovels; the only
respectable habitation within is the palace, which consists of three
detached buildings--one for the chief, another for the females of his
family, and the third for his court of justice, I could not find a
single trace of the European officers who had been killed there,
either at the first or second siege, though I had been told that a
small tomb had been built in a neighbouring grove over the remains of
Brigadier-General Edwards, who fell in the last storm. It is, I
believe, the only one that has ever been raised. The scenes of
battles fought by the Muhammadan conquerors of India were commonly
crowded with magnificent tombs, built over the slain, and provided
for a time with the means of maintaining holy men who read the Korân
over their graves. Not that this duty was necessary for the repose of
their souls, for every Muhammadan killed in fighting against men who
believed not in his prophet went, as a matter of course, to paradise;
and every unbeliever, killed in the same action, went as surely to
hell. There are only a few hundred men, exclusive of the prophets,
who, according to Muhammad, have the first place in paradise--those
who shared in one or other of his first three battles, and believed
in his holy mission before they had the evidence of a single victory
over the unbelievers to support it. At the head of these are the men
who accompanied him in his flight from Mecca to Medina, when he had
no evidence either from _victories_ or _miracles_. In all such
matters the less the evidence adduced in proof of a mission the
greater the merit of those who believe in it, according to the person
who pretends to it; and unhappily, the less the evidence a man has
for his faith, the greater is his anger against other men for not
joining in it with him. No man gets very angry with another for not
joining with him in his faith in the demonstration of a problem in
mathematics. Man likes to think that he is on the way to heaven upon
such easy terms; but gets angry at the notion that others won't join
him, because they may consider him an imbecile for thinking that he
is so. The Muhammadan generals and historians are sometimes almost as
concise as Caesar himself in describing very conscientiously a battle
of this kind; instead of 'I came, I saw, I conquered', it is 'Ten
thousand Musâlmâns on that day tasted of the blessed fruit of
paradise, after sending fifty thousand unbelievers to the flames of
hell'.
On the 10th we came on twelve miles to Kumbhîr, over a plain of poor
soil, much impregnated with salt, and with some works in which salt
is made, with solar evaporation. The earth is dug up, water is
filtered through it, and drawn off into small square beds, where it
is evaporated by exposure to the solar heat. The gate of this fort
leading out to the road we came is called, modestly enough, after
Kumbhîr, a place only ten miles distant; that leading to Mathurâ,
three or four stages distant, is called the Mathurâ gate. At Delhi,
the gates of the city walls are called ostentatiously after distant
places--the _Kashmîr_, the _Kâbul_, the _Constantinople_ gates.
Outside the Kumbhîr gate, I saw, for the first time in my life, the
well peculiar to Upper India. It is built up in the form of a round
tower or cylindrical shell of burnt bricks, well cemented with good
mortar, and covered inside and out with good stucco work, and let
down by degrees, as the earth is removed by men at work in digging
under the light earthy or sandy foundation inside and out. This well
is about twenty feet below and twenty feet above the surface, and had
to be built higher as it was let into the ground.[6]
On the 11th we came on twelve miles to Dîg (Deeg), over a plain of
poor and badly cultivated soil, which must be almost all under water
in the rains. This was, and still is, the country seat of the Jâts of
Bharatpur, who rose, as I have already stated, to wealth and power by
aggressions upon their immediate neighbours, and the plunder of
tribute on its way to the imperial capital, and of the baggage of
passing armies during the contests for dominion that followed the
death of the Emperors, and during the decline and fall of the empire.
The Jâts found the morasses with which they were surrounded here a
source of strength. They emigrated from the banks of the Indus about
Multân, and took up their abode by degrees on the banks of the Jumna,
and those of the Chambal, from their confluence upwards, where they
became cultivators and robbers upon a small scale, till they had the
means to build garrisons, when they entered the lists with princes,
who were only robbers upon a large scale. The Jâts, like the
Marâthâs, rose, by a feeling of nationality, among a people who had
none. Single landholders were every day rising to principalities by
means of their gangs of robbers; but they could seldom be cemented
under one common head by a bond of national feeling.
They have a noble quadrangular garden at Dîg, surrounded by a high
wall. In the centre of each of the four faces is one of the most
beautiful Hindoo buildings for accommodation that I have ever seen,
formed of a very fine sandstone brought from the quarries of Rûpbâs,
which he between thirty and forty miles to the south, and eight or
ten miles west of Fathpur-Sîkrî. These stones are brought in in flags
some sixteen feet long, from two to three feet wide, and one thick,
with sides as flat as glass, the flags being of the natural thickness
of the strata. The garden is four hundred and seventy-five feet long,
by three hundred and fifty feet wide; and in the centre is an
octagonal pond, with openings on the four sides leading up to the
four buildings, each opening having, from the centre of the pond to
the foot of the flight of steps leading into them, an avenue of _jets
d'eau_.
Dîg as much surpassed, as Bharatpur fell short of, my expectations. I
had seen nothing in India of architectural beauty to be compared with
the buildings in this garden, except at Agra. The useful and the
elegant are here everywhere happily blended; nothing seems
disproportionate, or unsuitable to the purpose for which it was
designed; and all that one regrets is that so beautiful a garden
should be situated in so vile a swamp.[7] There was a general
complaint among the people of the town of a want of 'rozgâr'
(employment), and its fruit, subsistence; the taking of Bharatpur
had, they said, produced a sad change among them for the worse. Godby
observed to some of the respectable men about us, who complained of
this, that happily their chief had now no enemy to employ them
against. 'But what', said they, 'is a prince without an army? and why
do you keep up yours now that all your enemies have been subdued?'
'We want them', replied Godby, 'to prevent our friends from cutting
each other's throats, and to defend them all against a foreign
enemy.' 'True,' said they, 'but what are we to do who have nothing
but our swords to depend upon, now that our chief no longer wants us,
and you won't take us?' 'And what,' said some shopkeepers, 'are we to
do who provided these troops with clothes, food, and furniture, which
they can no longer afford to pay for?' _Company ke amal men kuchh
rozgâr nahîn_ ('Under the Company's dominion there is no
employment'). This is too true; we do the soldiers' work with one-
tenth of the soldiers that had before been employed in it over the
territories we acquire, and turn the other nine-tenths adrift. They
all sink into the lowest class of religions mendicants, or retainers;
or live among their friends as drones upon the land; while the
manufacturing, trading, and commercial industry that provided them
with the comforts, conveniences, and elegancies of life while they
were in a higher grade of service is in its turn thrown out of
employment; and the whole frame of society becomes, for a time,
deranged by the local diminution in the demand _for the services of
men and the produce of their industry_.
I say we do the soldiers' work with one-tenth of the numbers that
were formerly required for it. I will mention an anecdote to
illustrate this. In the year 1816 I was marching with my regiment
from the Nepâl frontier, after the war, to Allahabad. We encamped
about four miles from a mud fort in the kingdom of Oudh, and heard
the guns of the Amil, or chief of the district, playing all day upon
this fort, from which his batteries were removed at least two miles.
He had three regiments of infantry, a corps or two of cavalry, and a
good park of artillery; while the garrison consisted of only about
two hundred stout Râjpût landholders and cultivators, or yeomen. In
the evening, just as we had sat down to dinner, a messenger came to
the commanding officer, Colonel Gregory, who was a member of the
mess, from the said Amil, and begged permission to deliver his
message in private. I, as the senior staff officer, was requested to
hear what he had to say.
'What do you require from the commanding officer?'
'I require the loan of the regiment.'
'I know the commanding officer will not let you have the regiment.'
'If the Amil cannot get more, he will be glad to get two companies;
and I have brought with me this bag of gold, containing some two or
three hundred gold mohurs.'
I delivered the message to Colonel Gregory, before all the officers,
who desired me to say that he could not spare a single man, as he had
no authority to assist the Amil, and was merely marching through the
country to his destination, I did so. The man urged me to beg the
commanding officer, if he could do no more, merely to halt the next
day where he was, and lend the Amil the use of one of his drummers.
'And what will you do with him?'
'Why, just before daylight, we will take him down near one of the
gates of the fort, and make him beat his drum as hard as he can; and
the people within, thinking the whole regiment is upon them, will
make out as fast as possible at the opposite gate.'
'And the bag of gold--what is to become of that?'
'You and the old gentleman can divide it between you, and I will
double it for you, if you like.'
I delivered the message before all the officers to their great
amusement; and the poor man was obliged to carry back his bag of gold
to the Amil. The Amil is the collector of revenues in Oudh, and he is
armed with all the powers of government, and has generally several
regiments and a train of artillery with him.
The large landholders build these mud forts, which they defend by
their Râjpût cultivators, who are among the bravest men in the world.
One hundred of them would never hesitate to attack a thousand of the
king's regular troops, because they know the Amil would be ashamed to
have any noise made about it at court; but they know also that, if
they were to beat one hundred of the Company's troops, they would
soon have a thousand upon them; and, if they were to beat one
thousand, they would soon have ten. They provide for the maintenance
of those who are wounded in their fight, and for the widows and
orphans of those who are killed. Their prince provides for neither,
and his soldiers are, consequently, somewhat chary of fighting. It is
from this peasantry, the military cultivators of Oudh, that our
Bengal native infantry draws three out of four of its recruits, and
finer young men for soldiers can hardly anywhere be found.[8]
The advantage which arises to society from doing the soldiers' duty
with a smaller number has never been sufficiently appreciated in
India; but it will become every day more manifest, as our dominion
becomes more and more stable--for men who have lived by the sword do
not in India like to live by anything else, or to see their children
anything but soldiers. Under the former government men brought their
own arms and horses to the service, and took them away with them
again when discharged. The supply always greatly exceeded the demand
for soldiers, both in the cavalry and the infantry, and a very great
portion of the men armed and accoutred as soldiers were always
without service, roaming over the country in search of it. To such
men the profession next in rank after that of the soldier robbing in
the service of the sovereign was that of the robber plundering on his
own account. '_Materia munificentiae per bella et raptus. Nec arare
terram, aut expectare annum, tam facile persuaseris, quam vocare
hostes et vulnera mereri; pigrum quinimmo et iners videtur sudore
acquirere, quod possis sanguine parare._' 'War and rapine supply the
prince with the means of his munificence. You cannot persuade the
German to cultivate the fields and wait patiently for the harvest so
easily as you can to challenge the enemy, and expose himself to
honourable wounds. They hold it to be base and dishonourable to earn
by the sweat of their brow what they might acquire by their
blood.'[9]
The equestrian robber had his horse, and was called 'ghurâsî', horse-
robber, a term which he never thought disgraceful. The foot-robber
under the native government stood in the same relation to the horse-
robber as the foot-soldier to the horse-soldier, because the trooper
furnished his own horses, arms, and accoutrements, and considered
himself a man of rank and wealth compared with the foot-soldier;
both, however, had the wherewithal to rob the traveller on the
highway; and, in the intervals between wars, the high roads were
covered with them. There was a time in England, it is said, when the
supply of clergymen was so great compared with the demand for them,
from the undue stimulus given to clerical education, that it was not
thought disgraceful for them to take to robbing on the highway; and
all the high roads were, in consequence, infested by them.[10] How
much more likely is a soldier to consider himself justified in this
pursuit, and to be held so by the feelings of society in general,
when he seeks in vain for regular service under his sovereign and his
viceroys.
The individual soldiers not only armed, accoutred, and mounted
themselves, but they generally ranged themselves under leaders, and
formed well-organized bands for any purpose of war or plunder. They
followed the fortunes of such leaders whether in service or out of
it; and, when dismissed from that of their sovereign, they assisted
them in robbing on the highway, or in pillaging the country till the
sovereign was compelled to take them back, or give them estates in
rent-free tenure for their maintenance and that of their followers.
All this is reversed under our government. We do the soldiers' work
much better than it was ever before done with one-tenth--nay, I may
say, one-fiftieth--part of the numbers that were employed to do it by
our predecessors; and the whole number of the soldiers employed by us
is not equal to that of those who were under them actually in the
transition state, or on their way from the place where they had lost
service to the place where they hoped to find it; extorting the means
of subsistence either by intimidation or by open violence. Those who
are in this transition state under us are neither armed, accoutred,
nor mounted; we do not disband en masse, we only dismiss individuals
for offences, and they have no leaders to range themselves under.
Those who come to seek our service are the sons of yeomen, bred up
from their infancy with all those feelings of deference for superiors
which we require in soldiers. They have neither arms, horses, nor
accoutrements; and, when they leave us permanently or temporarily,
they take none with them--they never rob or steal--they will often
dispute with the shopkeepers on the road about the price of
provisions, or get a man to carry their bundles gratis for a few
miles, but this is the utmost of their transgressions, and for these
things they are often severely handled by our police.
It is extremely gratifying to an Englishman to hear the general
testimony borne by all classes of people to the merits of our rule in
this respect; they all say that no former government ever devoted so
much attention to the formation of good roads and to the protection
of those who travel on them; and much of the security arises from the
change I have here remarked in the character and number of our
military establishments. It is equally gratifying to reflect that the
advantages must go on increasing, as those who have been thrown out
of employment in the army find other occupations for themselves and
their children; for find them they must or turn mendicants, if India
should be blessed with a long interval of peace. All soldiers under
us who have served the government faithfully for a certain number of
years, are, when no longer fit for the active duties of their
profession, sent back with the means of subsistence in honourable
retirement for the rest of their lives among their families and
friends, where they form, as it were, fountains of good feeling
towards the government they have served. Under former governments, a
trooper was discharged as soon as his horse got disabled, and a foot-
soldier as soon as he got disabled himself--no matter how--whether in
the service of the prince, or otherwise; no matter how long they had
served, whether they were still fit for any other service or not.
Like the old soldier in _Gil Blas_, they tumed robbers on the
highway, where they could still present a spear or a matchlock at a
traveller, though no longer deemed worthy to serve in the ranks of
the army. Nothing tended so much to the civilization of Europe as the
substitution of standing armies for militia; and nothing has tended
so much to the improvement of India under our rule.
The troops to which our standing armies in India succeeded were much
the same in character as those licentious bodies to which the
standing armies of the different nations of Europe succeeded; and the
result has been, and will, I hope, continue to be the same, highly
beneficial to the great mass of the people.
By a statute of Elizabeth it was made a capital offence, felony
without benefit of clergy, for soldiers or sailors to beg on the high
roads without a pass; and I suppose this statute arose from their
frequently robbing on the highways in the character of beggars.[11]
There must at that time have been an immense number of soldiers in
the transition state in England; men who disdained the labours of
peaceful life, or had by long habit become unfitted for them.
Religions mendicity has hitherto been the great safety valve through
which the unquiet transition spirit has found vent under our strong
and settled government. A Hindoo of any caste may become a religious
mendicant of the two great monastic orders--of Gosâins, who are
disciples of Siva, and Bairâgîs, who are disciples of Vishnu; and any
Muhammadan may become a Fakîr; and Gosâins, Bairâgîs, and Fakîrs, can
always secure, or extort, food from the communities they visit.[12]
Still, however, there is enough of this unquiet transition spirit
left to give anxiety to a settled government; for the moment
insurrection breaks out at any point, from whatever cause, to that
point thousands are found flocking from north, east, west, and south,
with their arms and their horses, if they happen to have any, in the
hope of finding service either under the local authorities or the
insurgents themselves; as the troubled winds of heaven rush to the
point where the pressure of the atmosphere has been diminished.[13]
Notes:
1. On the sieges of Bharatpur see _ante_, chapter 17, note 9.
2. In the original edition the year is misprinted 1804, though the
correct date is indicated by the phrase 'thirty-one years before'.
The operations on January 9, 1805, are described in considerable
detail in Thornton's history, and Pearse, _The Life and Military
Services of Viscount Lake_ (Blackwood, 1908). Dîg was taken on
December 24, 1804, and Lord Lake's army moved from Mathurâ towards
Bharatpur on January 1, 1805.
3. The Bombay column joined Lord Lake on February 11, and took part
in the third and fourth assaults on the fortress.
4. As in the previous passage, this date is printed 1804 in the
original edition.
5. They have been repaired to some extent, and the town has improved
much since the author's time.
6. That is to say, the well-cylinder is gradually sunk by its own
weight, aided, if necessary, by heavy additional weights piled upon
it. The sinking often takes many months, and is continued till a
suitable resting-place is found. The cylinder is built on a strong
ring of timber. Indian bridge-piers commonly rest on wells of this
kind. The ring is sometimes made of iron. Such a method of sinking is
possible only in deep alluvium, free from rock, and consequently had
not been seen in the Sâgar and Nerbudda territories.
7. In the original edition Dîg is illustrated by four coloured
plates. The buildings are all the work of Sûraj Mal, the virtual
founder of the Bharatpur dynasty, between A.D. 1725 and 1763. The
palace wants, say Fergusson, 'the massive character of the fortified
palaces of other Râjpût states, but for grandeur of conception and
beauty of detail it surpasses them all. . . . The greatest defect of
the palace is that the style, when it was erected, was losing its
true form of lithic propriety. The forms of its pillars and their
ornaments are better suited for wood or metal than for stone
architecture.' It is a 'fairy creation'. (_History of Indian and
Eastern Architecture_, ed. 1910, vol. ii, pp. 178-81.)
8. On these topics see the 'Journey through the Kingdom of Oude',
_passim_. The composition of the Bengal army has been much changed.
9. The quotation is from the end of chapter 14 of the _Germania_ of
Tacitus.
10. This picture of English roads infested by clergymen turned
highwaymen is not to be found in the ordinary histories.
11. The Act alluded to probably is 14 Elizabeth, c. 5. Other Acts of
the same reign dealing with vagrancy and the first poor-law are 39
Elizabeth, c. 3, and 43 Elizabeth, c. 2 (A.D. 1601). In 1595 vagrancy
had assumed such alarming proportions in London that a provost-
marshal was appointed to give the wanderers the short shrift of
martial law. The course of legislation on the subject is summarized
in the article 'Poor Laws' in Chambers's _Encyclopaedia_ (1904), and
the articles 'Poor-Law and Vagrancy' in the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_, 11th ed., 1910. See also the chapter entitled 'The
England of Elizabeth' in Green's History of the English People.
12. As already observed, chapter 29, note 12, the term Gosâin is by
no means restricted to the special devotees of Siva; many Gosâins--
for example, those in Bengal and those at Gokul in the Mathurâ
district--are followers of Vishnu. The term 'fakîr' is vaguely used,
and often applied to Hindoos.
13. Even still, something of this unquiet spirit hovers about India,
and the incompatibility between the ideas of twentieth-century
Englishmen and those of Indian peoples whose mental attitude
approaches that of Europeans of the twelfth century is a perennial
source of unrest.
CHAPTER 56
Govardhan, the Scene of Krishna's Dalliance with the Milkmaids.
On the 10th[1] we came on ten miles over a plain to Govardhan, a
place celebrated in ancient history as the birthplace of Krishna, the
seventh incarnation of the Hindoo god of preservation, Vishnu, and
the scene of his dalliance with the milkmaids (_gôpîs_); and, in
modern days, as the burial--or burning-place of the Jât chiefs of
Bharatpur and Dîg, by whose tombs, with their endowments, this once
favourite abode of the god is prevented from being entirely
deserted.[2] The town stands upon a narrow ridge of sandstone hills,
about ten miles long, rising suddenly out of an alluvial plain and
running north-east and south-west. The population is now very small,
and composed chiefly of Brahmans, who are supported by the endowments
of these tombs, and the contributions of a few pilgrims. All our
Hindoo followers were much gratified as we happened to arrive on a
day of peculiar sanctity; and they were enabled to bathe and perform
their devotions to the different shrines with the prospect of great
advantage. This range of hills is believed by Hindoos to be part of a
fragment of the Himâlaya mountains which Hanumân, the monkey general
of Râma, the sixth incarnation of Vishnu, was taking down to aid his
master in the formation of his bridge from the continent to the
island of Ceylon, when engaged in the war with the demon king of that
island for the recovery of his wife Sîtâ. He made a false step by
some accident in passing Govardhan, and this small bit of his load
fell off. The rocks begged either to be taken on to the god Râma, or
back to their old place; but Hanumân was hard pressed for time, and
told them not to be uneasy, as they would have a comfortable resting-
place, and be worshipped by millions in future ages--thus, according
to popular belief, foretelling that it would become the residence of
a future incarnation, and the scene of Krishna's miracles. The range
was then about twenty miles long, ten having since disappeared under
the ground. It was of full length during Krishna's days; and, on one
occasion, he took up the whole upon his little finger to defend his
favourite town and its milkmaids from the wrath of Indra, who got
angry with the people, and poured down upon them a shower of burning
ashes.
As I rode along this range, which rises gently from the plains at
both ends and abruptly from the sides, with my groom by my side, I
asked him what made Hanumân drop all his burthen here.
'_All_ his burthen!' exclaimed he with a smile; 'had it been all,
would it not have been an immense mountain, with all its towns and
villages? while this is but an insignificant belt of rock. A mountain
upon the back of men of former days, sir, was no more than a bundle
of grass upon the back of one of your grass-cutters in the present
day.'
Nathû, whose mind had been full of the wonders of this place from
his infancy, happened to be with us, and he now chimed in.
'It was night when Hanumân passed this place, and the lamps were seen
burning in a hundred towns upon the mountain he had upon his back--
the people were all at their usual occupations, quite undisturbed;
this is a mere fragment of his great burthen.'
'And how was it that the men of those towns should have been so much
smaller than the men who carried them?' 'God only knew; but the fact
of the men of the plains having been so large was undisputed--their
beards were as many miles long as those of the present day are
inches. Did not Bhîm throw the forty-cubit stone pillar, that now
stands at Eran,[3] a distance of thirty miles, after the man who was
running away with his cattle?'
I thought of poor Father Gregory at Agra, and the heavy sigh he gave
when asked by Godby what progress he was making among the people in
the way of conversion.[4] The faith of these people is certainly
larger than all the mustard-seeds in the world.
I told a very opulent and respectable Hindoo banker one day that it
seemed to us very strange that Vishnu should come upon the earth
merely to sport with milkmaids, and to hold up an umbrella, however
large, to defend them from a shower. 'The earth, sir,' said he, 'was
at that time infested with innumerable demons and giants, who
swallowed up men and women as bears swallow white ants; and his
highness, Krishna, came down to destroy them. His own mother's
brother, Kans, who then reigned at Mathurâ over Govardhan, was one of
these horrible demons. Hearing that his sister would give birth to a
son that was to destroy him, he put to death several of her progeny
as soon as they were born.[5] When Krishna was seven days old, he
sent a nurse, with poison on her nipple, to destroy him likewise; but
his highness gave such a pull at it, that the nurse dropped down
dead. In falling, she resumed her real shape of a she-demon, and her
body covered no less than six square miles, and it took several
thousand men to cut her up and burn her, to prevent the pestilence
that must have followed. His uncle then sent a crane, which caught up
his highness, who always looked very small for his age, and swallowed
him as he would swallow a frog. But his highness kicked up such a
rumpus in the bird's stomach that he was immediately thrown up again.
When he was seven years old his uncle invited him to a feast, and got
the largest and most ferocious elephant in India to tread him to
death as he alighted at the door. His highness, though then not
higher than my waist, took the enormous beast by one tusk, and, after
whirling him round in the air with one hand half a dozen times, he
dashed him on the ground and killed him.[6] Unable any longer to
stand the wickedness of his uncle, he seized him by the beard,
dragged him from his throne, and dashed him to the ground in the same
manner.'
I thought of poor old Father Gregory and the mustard-seeds again, and
told my rich old friend that it all appeared to us indeed passing
strange.
The orthodox belief among the Muhammadans is that Moses was sixty
yards high; that he carried a mace sixty yards long; and that he
sprang sixty yards from the ground when he aimed the fatal blow at
the giant Ûj, the son of Anak, who came from the land of Canaan, with
a mountain on his back, to crush the army of Israelites. Still, the
head of his mace could reach only to the ankle-bone of the giant.
This was broken with the blow. The giant fell, and was crushed under
the weight of his own mountain. Now a person whose ankle-bone was one
hundred and eighty yards high must have been almost as prodigious as
he who carried the fragment of the Himâlaya upon his back; and he who
believes in the one cannot fairly find fault with his neighbour for
believing in the other.[7] I was one day talking with a very sensible
and respectable Hindoo gentleman of Bundêlkhand about the accident
which made Hanumân drop this fragment of his load at Govardhan. 'All
doubts upon that point,' said the old gentleman, 'have been put at
rest by holy writ. It is related in our scriptures.
'Bharat, the brother of Râma, was left regent of the kingdom of
Ajodhya,[8] during his absence at the conquest of Ceylon. He happened
at night to see Hanumân passing with the mountain upon his back, and
thinking he might be one of the king of Ceylon's demons about
mischief, he let fly one of his blunt arrows at him. It hit him on
the leg, and he fell, mountain and all, to the ground. As he fell, he
called out in his agony, 'Râm, Râm', from which Bharat discovered his
mistake. He went up, raised him in his arms, and with his kind
attentions restored him to his senses. Learning from him the object
of his journey, and fearing that his wounded brother Lachhman would
die before he could get to Ceylon with the requisite remedy, he
offered to send Hanumân on upon the barb of one of his arrows,
mountain and all. To try him Hanumân took up his mountain and seated
himself with it upon the barb of the arrow as desired. Bharat placed
the arrow to the string of his bow, and drawing it till the barb
touched the bow, asked Hanumân whether he was ready. 'Quite ready,'
said Hanumân, 'but I am now satisfied that you really are the brother
of our prince, and regent of his kingdom, which was all I desired.
Pray let me descend; and be sure that I shall be at Ceylon in time to
save your wounded brother.' He got off, knelt down, placed his
forehead on Bharat's feet in submission, resumed his load, and was at
Ceylon by the time the day broke next morning, leaving behind him the
small and insignificant fragment, on which the town and temples of
Govardhan now stand.
'While little Krishna was frisking about among the milkmaids of
Govardhan,' continued my old friend, 'stealing their milk, cream, and
butter, Brahmâ, the creator of the universe, who had heard of his
being an incarnation of Vishnu, the great preserver of the universe,
visited the place, and had some misgivings, from his size and
employment, as to his real character. To try him, he took off through
the sky a herd of cattle, on which some of his favourite playmates
were attending, old and young, boys and all. Krishna, knowing how
much the parents of the boys and owners of the cattle would be
distressed, created, in a moment, another herd and other attendants
so exactly like those that Brahmâ had taken, that the owners of the
one, and the parents of the other, remained ignorant of the change.
Even the new creations themselves remained equally ignorant; and the
cattle walked into their stalls, and the boys into their houses,
where they recognized and were recognized by their parents, as if
nothing had happened.
'Brahmâ was now satisfied that Krishna was a true incarnation of
Vishnu, and restored to him the real herd and attendants. The others
were removed out of the way by Krishna, as soon as he saw the real
ones coming back.'
'But,' said I to the good old man, who told me this with a grave
face, 'must they not have suffered in passing from the life given to
death; and why create them merely to destroy them again?'
'Was he not God the Creator himself?' said the old man; 'does he not
send one generation into the world after another to fulfil their
destiny, and then to return to the earth from which they came, just
as he spreads over the land the grass and corn? All is gathered in
its season, or withers as that passes away and dies.' The old
gentleman might have quoted Wordsworth:
We die, my friend,
Nor we alone, but that which each man loved
And prized in his peculiar nook of earth
Dies with him, or is changed; and very soon,
Even of the good is no memorial left.[9]
I was one day out shooting with my friend, the Râjâ of Maihar,[10]
under the Vindhya range, which rises five or six hundred feet, almost
perpendicularly. He was an excellent shot with an English double-
barrel, and had with him six men just as good. I asked him whether we
were likely to fall in with any hares, using the term 'khargosh', or
'ass-eared'.
'Certainly not,' said the Râjâ, 'if you begin by abusing them with
such a name; call them "lambkanâs", sir, "long-eared", and we shall
get plenty.'
He shot one, and attributed my bad luck to the opprobrious name I had
used. While he was reloading, I took occasion to ask him how this
range of hills had grown up where it was.
'No one can say,' replied the Râjâ, 'but we believe that when Râma
went to recover his wife Sîtâ from the demon king of Ceylon, Râvan,
he wanted to throw a bridge across from the continent to the island,
and sent some of his followers up to the Himâlaya mountains for
stones. He had completed his bridge before they all returned, and a
messenger was sent to tell those who had not yet come to throw down
their burdens, and rejoin him in all haste. Two long lines of these
people had got thus far on their return when the messenger met them.
They threw down their loads here, and here they have remained ever
since, one forming the Vindhya range to the north of this valley, and
the other the Kaimûr range to the south.'
The Vindhya range extends from Mirzapore, on the Ganges, nearly to
the Gulf of Cambay, some six or seven hundred miles, so that my
sporting friend's faith was as capacious as any priest could well
wish it; and those who have it are likely never to die, or suffer
much, from an over stretch of the reasoning faculties in a hot
climate.
The town stands upon the belt of rocks, about two miles from its
north-eastern extremity; and in the midst is the handsome tomb of
Ranjit Singh, who defended Bharatpur so bravely against Lord Lake's
army.[11] The tomb has on one side a tank filled with water, and, on
the other, another much deeper than the first, but without any water
at all. We were surprised at this, and asked what the cause could be.
The people told us, with the air of men who had never known what it
was to feel the uneasy sensation of doubt, that 'Krishna, one hot
day, after skying with the milkmaids, had drunk it all dry; and that
no water would ever stay in it, lest it might be quaffed by less
noble lips'. No orthodox Hindoo would ever for a moment doubt that
this was the real cause of the phenomenon. Happy people! How much do
they escape of that pain which in hot climates wears us all down in
our efforts to trace moral and physical phenomena to their real
causes and sources! Mind! mind! mind! without any of it, those
Europeans who eat and drink moderately might get on very well in this
climate. Much of it weighs them down.
Oh, sir, the good die first, and those whose hearts (_brains_)
Are dry as summer dust burn to the socket.[12]
One is apt sometimes to think that Muhammad, Manu, and Confucius
would have been great benefactors in saving so many millions of their
species from the pain of thinking too much in hot climates, if they
had only written their books in languages less difficult of
acquirement. Their works are at once 'the bane and antidote' of
despotism--the source whence it comes, and the shield which defends
the people from its consuming fire.
The tomb of Sûraj Mall, the great founder of the Jât power at
Bharatpur, stands on the north-east extremity of this belt of rocks,
about two miles from the town, and is an extremely handsome building,
conceived in the very best taste, and executed in the very best
style.[13] With its appendages of temples and smaller tombs, it
occupies the whole of one side of a magnificent tank full of clear
water; and on the other side it looks into a large and beautiful
garden. All the buildings and pavements are formed of the fine white
sandstone of Rûpbâs, scarcely inferior either in quality or
appearance to white marble. The stone is carved in relief with
flowers in good taste. In the centre of the tomb is the small marble
slab covering the grave, with the two feet of Krishna carved in the
centre, and around them the emblems of the god, the discus, the
skull, the sword, the rosary. These emblems of the god are put on
that people may have something godly to fix their thoughts upon. It
is by degrees, and with fear and trembling, that the Hindoos imitate
the Muhammadans in the magnificence of their tombs. The object is
ostensibly to keep the ground on which the bodies have been burned
from being defiled; and generally Hindoos have been content to raise
small open terraces of brick and stucco work over the spot, with some
image or emblem of the god upon it. The Jâts here, like the princes
and Gosâins in Bundêlkhand, have gone a stage beyond this, and raised
tombs equal in costliness and beauty to those over Muhammadans of the
highest rank; still they do not venture to leave it without a divine
image or emblem, lest the gods might become jealous, and revenge
themselves upon the souls of the deceased and the bodies of the
living. On one side of Sûraj Mall's tomb is that of his wife, or some
other female member of his family; and upon the slab over her grave,
that is, over the precise spot where she was burned, are the same
emblems, except the sword, for which a necklace is substituted. At
each end of this range of tombs stands a temple dedicated to Baldêo,
the brother of Krishna; and in one of them I found his image, with
large eyes, a jet black complexion, and an _African countenance_. Why
is this that Baldêo should be always represented of this countenance
and colour, and his brother Krishna, either white, or of an azure
colour, and the _Caucasian countenance_?[14] The inside of the tomb
is covered with beautiful snow-white stucco work that resembles the
finest marble; but this is disfigured by wretched paintings,
representing, on one side of the dome, Sûraj Mall in 'darbâr',
smoking his hookah, and giving orders to his ministers; in another,
he is at his devotions; on the third, at his sports, shooting hogs
and deer; and on the fourth, at war, with some French officers of
distinction figuring before him. He is distinguished by his portly
person in all, and by his favourite light-brown dress in three
places. At his devotions he is standing all in white before the
tutelary god of his house, Hardêo.[15] In various parts, Krishna is
represented at his sports with the milkmaids. The colours are gaudy,
and apparently as fresh as when first put on eighty years ago; but
the paintings are all in the worst possible taste and style.[16]
Inside the dome of Ranjît Singh's tomb the siege of Bharatpur is
represented in the same rude taste and style. Lord Lake is
dismounted, and standing before his white horse giving orders to his
soldiers. On the opposite side of the dome, Ranjît Singh, in a plain
white dress, is standing erect before his idol at his devotions, with
his ministers behind him. On the other two sides he is at his
favourite field sports. What strikes one most in all this is the
entire absence of priestcraft. He wanted all his revenue for his
soldiers; and his tutelary god seems, in consequence, to have been
well pleased to dispense with the mediatory services of priests.[17]
There are few temples anywhere to be seen in the territories of these
Jât chiefs; and, as few of their subjects have yet ventured to follow
them in this innovation upon the old Hindoo usages of building
tombs,[18] the countries under their dominion are less richly
ornamented than those of their neighbours. Those who build tombs or
temples generally surround them with groves of mango and other fine
fruit-trees, with good wells to supply water for them, and, if they
have the means, they add tanks, so that every religions edifice, or
work of ornament, leads to one or more of utility. So it was in
Europe; often the Northern hordes swept away all that had grown up
under the institution of the Romans and the Saracens; for almost all
the great works of ornament and utility, by which these countries
became first adorned and enriched, had their origin in church
establishments. That portion of India, where the greater part of the
revenue goes to the priesthood, will generally be much more studded
with works of ornament and utility than that in which the greater
part goes to the soldiery. I once asked a Hindoo gentleman, who had
travelled all over India, what part of it he thought most happy and
beautiful. He mentioned some part of Southern India, about Tanjore, I
think, where you could hardly go a mile without meeting some happy
procession, or coming to a temple full of priests, or find an acre of
land uncultivated.
The countries under the Marâthâ Government improved much in
appearance, and in happiness, I believe, after the mayors of the
palace, who were Brahmans, assumed the Government, and put aside the
Sâtârâ Rajas, the descendants of the great Sivâjî.[19] Wherever they
could, they conferred the Government of their distant territories
upon Brahmans, who filled all the high offices under them with men of
the same caste, who spent the greater part of their incomes in tombs,
temples, groves, and tanks, that embellished and enriched the face of
the country, and thereby diffused a taste for such works generally
among the people they governed. The appearance of those parts of the
Marâthâ dominion so governed is infinitely superior to that of the
countries governed by the leaders of the military class, such as
Sindhia, Holkâr, and the Bhonslâ, whose capitals are still mere
standing camps--a collection of hovels, and whose countries are
almost entirely devoid of all those works of ornament and utility
that enrich and adorn those of their neighbours.[20] They destroyed
all they found in those countries when they conquered them; and they
have had neither the wisdom nor the taste to raise others to supply
their places. The Sikh Government is of exactly the same character;
and the countries they governed have, I believe, the same wretched
appearance--they are swarms of human locusts, who prey upon all that
is calculated to enrich and embellish the face of the land they
infest, and all that can tend to improve men in their social
relations, and to link their affection to their soil and their
government.[21] A Hindoo prince is always running to the extreme; he
can never take and keep a middle course. He is either ambitious, and
therefore appropriates all his revenues to the maintenance of
soldiers, to pour out in inroads upon his neighbours; or he is
superstitions, and devotes all his revenue to his priesthood, who
embellish his country at the same time that they weaken it, and
invite invasion, as their prince becomes less and less able to repel
it.
The more popular belief regarding this range of sandstone hills at
Govardhan is that Lachhman, the brother of Râma, having been wounded
by Râvan, the demon king of Ceylon, his surgeon declared that his
wound could be cured only by a decoction of the leaves of a certain
tree, to be found in a certain hill in the Himâlaya mountains.
Hanumân volunteered to go for it, but on reaching the place he found
that he had entirely forgotten the description of the tree required;
and, to prevent mistake, he took up the whole mountain upon his back,
and walked off with it to the plains. As he passed Govardhan, where
Bharat and Charat, the third and fourth brothers of Râma, then
reigned, he was seen by them.[22] It was night; and, thinking him a
strange sort of fish, Bharat let fly one of his arrows at him. It hit
him in the leg, and the sudden jerk caused this small fragment of his
huge burden to fall off. He called out in his agony, 'Râm, Râm', from
which they learned that he belonged to the army of their brother, and
let him pass on; but he remained lame for life from the wound. This
accounts very satisfactorily, according to popular belief, for the
halting gait of all the monkeys of that species;[23] those who are
descended lineally from the general inherit it, of course; and those
who are not, adopt it out of respect for his memory, as all the
soldiers of Alexander contrived to make one shoulder higher than the
other, because one of his happened to be so. When he passed,
thousands and tens of thousands of lamps were burning upon his
mountain, as the people remained entirely unconscious of the change,
and at their usual occupations. Hanumân reached Ceylon with his
mountain, the tree was found upon it, and Lachhman's wound cured.[24]
Govardhan is now within the boundary of our territory, and a native
collector resides here from Agra.[25]
Notes:
1. January, 1836.
2. See note on Govardhan, _ante_, chapter 53, note 1.
3. _Ante_, chapter 9, note 8.
4. _Ante_, beginning of chapter 53.
5. This Hindoo version of the Massacre of the Innocents necessarily
recalls to mind the story in St. Matthew's Gospel. Numerous incidents
of the Gospel narrative, including the birth among the cattle, the
stable, the manger, and the imperial census, are repeated in the
Indian legends of Krishna. The exact channel of communication is not
known, but the intercourse between Alexandria and India is, in
general terms, the explanation of the coincidences (Weber, _Die
Griechen in Indien_, 1890, and _Abh. über Krishna's Geburtfest_,
1868).
6. This story may be an adaptation of the similar Buddhist tale.
7. Ûj is the Og, King of Bashan, of the Hebrew version of the legend.
The extravagant stories quoted in the text are not in the Korân, but
are the inventions of the commentators. Sale gives references in his
notes to chap. 5 of the Korân.
8. The kingdom included the modern Oudh (Awadh). The capital was the
ancient city, also named Ajodhya, adjoining Fyzabad, which is still a
very sacred place of pilgrimage.
9. It is, I think, absolutely impossible for the most sympathetic
European to understand, or enter into, the mental position of the
learned and devout Hindoo who implicitly believes the wild myth
related in the text, and sees no incongruity in the congeries of
inconsistent ideas which are involved in the story. We may dimly
apprehend that Brahmâ is conceived as a [Greek text], or Architect of
the Universe, working in subordination to an impersonal higher power,
and not as the infinite, omniscient, omnipotent Creator whom the
Hebrews reverenced, but we shall still be a long way from attaining
the Hindoo point of view. The relations of Krishna, Vishnu, Brahma,
Râma, Siva, and all the other deities, with one another and with
mankind, seem to be conceived by the Hindoo in a manner so confused
and contradictory that every attempt at elucidation or explanation
must necessarily fail. A Hindoo is born, not made, and the
'inwardness' of Hinduism is not to be penetrated, even by the most
learned of 'barbarian' pundits.
10. _Ante_, chapter 20, note 6.
11. Râjâ of Bharatpur, not to be confounded with the Lion of the
Panjâb.
12. Wordsworth, _Excursion_, Book I.
13. The original edition gives a coloured plate of this tomb, which
is not noticed by Fergusson. That author's remarks on the palace at
Dîg would apply to this tomb also; the style is good, but not quite
the best. Sûraj Mall was killed in a skirmish in 1763.
14. Baldêo, or in Sanskrit Bâladeva, Bâlabhadra, or Bâlarâma, was the
elder brother of Krishna. His myth in some respects resembles that of
Herakles, as that of Krishna is related to the myths of Apollo. The
editor is not able to solve the queries propounded by the author.
15. i.e. Hari deva, a form of Vishnu. The temple of Hari deva at
Govardhan was built about A.D. 1560. (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, 1st ed.,
vol. viii, p. 94.)
16. Modern India shows little appreciation of good art, and the
paintings ordinarily executed for decorative purposes are as crude as
those described by the author. A school of clever artists in Bengal
is doing something to raise the public taste. The high merit of the
ancient Indian paintings at Ajantâ and elsewhere is now fully
recognized. A great revival of pictorial art took place about A.D.
1570 in the reign of Akbar. From that date the Indo-Persian and
Indian schools of painting maintained a high standard of excellence,
especially in portraiture, for a century approximately. During the
eighteenth century marked deterioration may be observed. See _A
History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon_, Oxford, 1911.
17. The Jâts detest Brahmans. The members of a Jât deputation
complained one day to the editor when in the Muzaffarnagar district
that they suffered many evils by reason of the Brahmans.
18. The author's meaning seems to be that building tombs is not an
old Hindoo usage.
19. Sivâjî, the indomitable opponent of Aurangzêb in the Deccan,
belonged to the agricultural Kunbî caste. He was born in May A.D.
1627, and died in April 1680. The Brahman ministers of the Râjâs of
Sâtârâ were known by the title of Peshwâ. Bâjî Râo I, who died in
1740, the second Peshwâ, was the first who superseded in actual power
his nominal master. The last of the Peshwâs was Bâjî Râo II, who
abdicated in 1818, after the termination of the great Marâthâ war,
and retired to Bithûr near Cawnpore. His adopted son was the
notorious Nânâ Sâhib. The Marquis of Hastings, in 1818, drew the Râjâ
of Sâtârâ from captivity, and re-established his dignity and power.
In 1839 the Râjâ's treachery compelled the Government of India to
depose him. His territory is now a district of the Bombay Presidency.
See Mânkar, _The Life and Exploits of Shivâji_, 2nd ed., Bombay,
Nirnayasâgar Press, 1886.
20. The Râjâ of Berâr, also known as the Râjâ of Nâgpur, was called
the Bhonslâ. The misrule of Gwâlior has been described _ante_, in
chapters 36 and 49. The condition of Gwâlior and Indore, the capitals
of Sindhia and Holkâr respectively, is now very different. The
Bhonslâ has vanished.
21. Since the annexation of the Panjâb in 1849, the Sikhs have justly
earned so much praise as loyal and gallant soldiers, the flower of
the Indian army, that their earlier less honourable reputation has
been effaced, Captain Francklin, writing in 1803, and apparently
expressing the opinion of George Thomas, declares that 'the Seiks are
false, sanguinary, and faithless; they are addicted to plunder and
the acquirement of wealth by any means, however nefarious'.
(_Military Memoirs of Mr. George Thomas, London reprint_, p. 112.)
The Sikh states of the Panjâb are now sufficiently well governed.
22. I know of no authority for the name Charat (Churut), which seems
to be a blunder for Satrughna. The sons of Dasaratha were Râma, by
the chief queen; Bharat, by a second; and Lachhman (Lakshmana), and
Satrughna by a third consort.
23. The species referred to is the long-tailed monkey called
'Hanumân', and 'langûr' in Hindi, the _Presbytis entellus_ of Jerdon
(=_P. anchises_, Elliot; = _Semnopithecus_, Cuvier).
24. The author seems to have forgotten that he has already told this
story, _ante_, this chapter following [8] in the text.
25. It is in the Mathurâ district. The town of Mathurâ (Muttra)
became the head-quarters of a separate District in 1832. The official
at Govardhan in 1836 must, therefore, have been subordinate to
Mathurâ, not to Agra.
CHAPTER 57
Veracity.
The people of Britain are described by Diodorus Siculus (Book V,
chap. 2) as in a very simple and rude state, subsisting almost
entirely on the produce of the land, but as being 'a people of much
integrity and sincerity, far from the craft and knavery of men among
us, contented with plain and homely fare, and strangers to the
luxuries and excesses of the rich'. In India we find strict veracity
most prevalent among the wildest and half-savage tribes of the hills
and jungles in Central India, or the chain of the Himâlaya mountains;
and among those where we find it prevail most, we find cattle-
stealing most common; the men of one tribe not deeming it to be any
disgrace to _lift_, or steal, the cattle of another. I have known the
man among the Gonds of the woods of Central India, whom nothing could
induce to tell a lie, join a party of robbers to lift a herd of
cattle from the neighbouring plains for nothing more than as much
spirits as he could enjoy at one bout. I asked a native gentleman of
the plains, in the valley of the Nerbudda, one day, what made the
people of the woods to the north and south more disposed to speak the
truth than those more civilized of the valley itself. 'They have not
yet learned the value of a lie,' said he, with the greatest
simplicity and sincerity, for he was a very honest and plain-spoken
man.
Veracity is found to prevail most where there is least to tempt to
falsehood, and most to be feared from it. In a very rude state of
society, like that of which I have been speaking, the only shape in
which property is accumulated is in cattle; things are bartered for
each other without the use of a circulating medium, and one member of
a community has no means of concealing from the other the articles of
property he has. If they were to steal from each other, they would
not be able to conceal what they stole--to steal, therefore, would be
no advantage. In such societies every little community is left to
govern itself; to secure the rights, and enforce the duties, of all
its several members in their relations with each other; they are too
poor to pay taxes to keep up expensive establishments, and their
Governments seldom maintain among them any for the administration of
justice, or the protection of life, property, or character. All the
members of all such little communities will often unite in robbing
the members of another community of their flocks and herds, the only
kind of property they have, or in applauding those who most
distinguish themselves in such enterprises; but the well-being of the
community demands that each member should respect the property of the
others, and be punished by the odium of all if he does not.[1]
It is equally necessary to the well-being of the community that every
member should be able to rely upon the veracity of the other upon the
very few points where their rights, duties, and interests clash. In
the very rudest state of society, among the woods and hills of India,
the people have some deity whose power they dread, and whose name
they invoke when much is supposed to depend upon the truth of what
one man is about to declare. The 'pîpal' tree (_Ficus religiosa_) is
everywhere sacred to the gods, who are supposed to sit among its
leaves and listen to the music of their rustling. The deponent takes
one of these leaves in his hand, and invokes the god who sits above
him to crush him, or those dear to him, as he crushes the leaf in his
hand, if he speak anything but the truth; he then plucks and crushes
the leaf, and states what he has to say.[2]
The large cotton-tree is, among the wild tribes of India, the
favourite seat of gods still more terrible,[3] because their
superintendence is confined exclusively to the neighbourhood; and
having their attention less occupied, they can venture to make a more
minute scrutiny into the conduct of the people immediately around
them. The 'pîpal' is occupied by one or other of the Hindoo triad,
the god of creation, preservation, or destruction, who have the
affairs of the universe to look after;[4] but the cotton and other
trees are occupied by some minor deities, who are vested with a local
superintendence over the affairs of a district, or perhaps, of a
single village.[5] These are always in the view of the people, and
every man knows that he is every moment liable to be taken to their
court, and to be made to invoke their vengeance upon himself, or
those dear to him, if he has told a falsehood in what he has stated,
or tells one in what he is about to state. Men so situated adhere
habitually, and I may say religiously, to the truth; and I have had
before me hundreds of cases in which a man's property, liberty, or
life has depended upon his telling a lie, and he has refused to tell
it to save either; as my friend told me, 'they had not learned the
value of a lie', or rather, they had not learned with how much
impunity a lie could be told in the tribunals of civilized society.
In their own tribunals, under the pîpal-tree or cotton-tree,
imagination commonly did what the deities, who were supposed to
preside, had the credit of doing; if the deponent told a lie, he
believed that the deity who sat on the sylvan throne above him, and
searched the heart of man, must know it; and from that moment he knew
no rest--he was always in dread of his vengeance; if any accident
happened to him, or to those dear to him, it was attributed to this
offended deity; and if no accident happened, some evil was brought
about by his own disordered imagination.[6]
In the tribunals we introduce among them, such people soon find that
the judges who preside can seldom search deeply into the hearts of
men, or clearly distinguish truth from falsehood in the declarations
of deponents; and when they can distinguish it, it is seldom that
they can secure their conviction for perjury. They generally learn
very soon that these judges, instead of being, like the judges of
their own woods and wilds, the only beings who can search the hearts
of men, and punish them for falsehood, are frequently the persons, of
all others, most blind to the real state of the deponent's mind, and
the degree of truth and falsehood in his narrative; that, however
well-intentioned, they are often labouring in the 'darkness visible'
created by the native officers around them. They not only learn this,
but they learn what is still worse, that they may tell what lies they
please in these tribunals; and that not one of them shall become
known to the circle in which they move, and whose good opinion they
value. If, by his lies told in such tribunals, a man has robbed
another, or caused him to be robbed, of his property, his character,
his liberty, or his life, he can easily persuade the circle in which
he resides that it has arisen, not from any false statements of his,
but from the blindness of the judge, or the wickedness of the native
officers of his court, because all circles consider the blindness of
the one, and the wickedness of the other, to be everywhere very
great.
Arrian, in speaking of the class of supervisors in India, says: 'They
may not be guilty of falsehood; and indeed none of the Indians were
ever accused of that crime.'[7] I believe that as little falsehood is
spoken by the people of India, in their village communities, as in
any part of the world with an equal area and population. It is in our
courts of justice where falsehoods prevail most, and the longer they
have been anywhere established, the greater the degree of falsehood
that prevails in them. Those entrusted with the administration of a
newly-acquired territory are surprised to find the disposition among
both principals and witnesses in cases to tell the plain and simple
truth. As magistrates, they find it very often difficult to make
thieves and robbers tell lies, according to the English fashion, to
avoid running a risk of criminating themselves. In England, this
habit of making criminals tell lies arose from the severity of the
penal code, which made the punishment so monstrously disproportionate
to the crime, that the accused, however clear and notorious his
crimes, became an object of general sympathy.[8] In India,
punishments have nowhere been, under our rule, disproportionate to
the crimes; on the contrary, they have generally been more mild than
the people would wish them to be, or think they ought to be, in order
to deter from similar crimes; and, in newly-acquired territories,
they have generally been more mild than in our old possessions. The
accused are, therefore, nowhere considered as objects of public
sympathy; and in newly-acquired territories they are willing to tell
the truth, and are allowed to do so, in order to save the people whom
they have injured, and their neighbours generally, the great loss and
annoyance unavoidably attending upon a summons to our courts. In the
native courts, to which ours succeed, the truth was seen through
immediately, the judges who presided could commonly distinguish truth
from falsehood in the evidence before them, almost as well as the
sylvan gods who sat in the pîpal- or cotton-trees; though they were
seldom supposed by the people to be quite so just in their decisions.
When we take possession of such countries, they, for a time at least,
give us credit for the same sagacity, with a little more integrity.
The prisoner knows that his neighbours expect him to tell the truth
to save them trouble, and will detest him if he does not; he supposes
that we shall have the sense to find out the truth whether he tells
it or not, and then humanity to visit his crime with the punishment
it merits, and no more.
The magistrate asks the prisoner what made him steal; and the
prisoner enters at once into an explanation of the circumstances
which reduced him to the necessity of doing so, and offers to bring
witnesses to prove them; but never dreams of offering to bring
witnesses to prove that he did not steal, if he really had done so;
because the general feeling would be in favour of his doing the one,
and against his doing the other. Tavernier gives an amusing sketch of
Amîr Jumla presiding in a court of justice, during a visit he paid
him in the kingdom of Golconda, in the year 1648. (See Book I, Part
II, chap. 11.)[9]
I asked a native law officer, who called on me one day, what he
thought would be the effect of an Act to dispense with oaths on the
Korân and Ganges water, and substitute a solemn declaration made in
the name of God, and under the same penal liabilities, as if the
Korân or Ganges water had been in the deponent's hand. 'I have
practised In the courts thirty years, sir,' said he, 'and during that
time I have found only three kinds of witnesses--two of whom would,
by such an Act, be left precisely where they were, while the third
would be released by it from a very salutary check.' 'And, pray, what
are the three classes into which you divide the witnesses in our
courts?'
'First, sir, are those who will always tell the truth, whether they
are required to state what they know in the form of an oath or not.'
'Do you think this a large class?'
'Yes, I think it is; and I have found among them many whom nothing on
earth could make to swerve from the truth; do what you please, you
could never frighten or bribe them into a deliberate falsehood. The
second are those who will not hesitate to tell a lie when they have a
motive for it, and are not restrained by an oath. In taking an oath
they are afraid of two things, the anger of God and the odium of men.
Only three days ago, 'continued my friend,' I required a power of
attorney from a lady of rank, to enable me to act for her in a case
pending before the court in this town. It was given to me by her
brother, and two witnesses came to declare that she had given it.
"Now," said I, "this lady is known to live under the curtain; and you
will be asked by the judge whether you saw her give this paper; what
will you say?" They both replied: "If the judge asks us the question
without an oath, we will say yes--it will save much trouble, and we
know that she did give this paper, though we did not really see her
give it; but if he puts the Korân into our hands we must say no, for
we should otherwise be pointed at by all the town as perjured
wretches--our enemies would soon tell everybody that we had taken a
false oath." Now,' my friend went on, 'the form of an oath is a great
check upon this sort of persons. The third class consists of men who
will tell lies whenever they have sufficient motive, whether they
have the Korân or Ganges water in their hands or not. Nothing will
ever prevent their doing so; and the declaration which you propose
would be just as well as any other for them.'
'Which class do you consider the most numerous of the three?'
'I consider the second the most numerous, and wish the oath to be
retained for them.'
'That is of all the men you see examined in our courts, you think the
most come under the class of those who will, under the influence of
strong motives, tell lies if they have not the Korân or Ganges water
in their hands?'
'Yes.'
'But do not a great many of those, whom you consider to be included
among the second class, come from the village communities--the
peasantry of the country?'
'Yes.'
'And do you not think that the greatest part of those men who tell
lies in the court, under the influence of strong motives, unless they
bear the Korân or Ganges water in their hands, would refuse to tell
lies, if questioned before the people of their villages among the
circle in which they live?'
'Of course I do; three-fourths of those who do not scruple to lie in
our courts, would be ashamed to be before their neighbours, or the
elders of their village.'
'You think that the people of the village communities are more
ashamed to tell lies before their neighbours than the people of
towns?'
'Much more[10] here is no comparison.'
'And the people of towns and cities bear in India but a small
proportion to the people of the village communities?'
'I should think a very small proportion indeed.'
'Then you think that in the mass of the population of India out of
our courts, and in their own circles, the first class, or those who
speak truth, whether they have the Korân or Ganges water in their
hands or not, would be found more numerous than the other two?'
'Certainly I do; if they were always to be questioned before their
neighbours or elders, or so that they could feel that their
neighbours and elders would know what they say.'
This man is a very worthy and learned Muhammadan, who has read all
the works on medicine to be found in Persian and Arabia; gives up his
time from sunrise in the morning till nine, to the indigent sick of
the town, whom he supplies gratuitously with his advice and
medicines, that cost him thirty rupees a month, out of about one
hundred and twenty that he can make by his labours all the rest of
the day.
There can be no doubt that, even in England, the fear of the odium of
society, which is sure to follow the man who has perjured himself,
acts more powerfully in making men tell the truth, when they have the
Bible in their hands before a competent and public tribunal, and with
a strong worldly motive to tell a lie, than the fear of punishment by
the Deity in the next world for having 'taken his name in vain' in
this. Christians, as well as other people, are too apt to think that
there is yet abundance of time to appease the Deity by repentance and
reformation; but they know that they cannot escape the odium of
society, with a free press and high tone of moral and religions
feeling, like those of England, if they deliberately perjure
themselves in open court, whose proceedings are watched with so much
jealousy. They learn to dread the name of 'perjured villain' or
'perjured wretch', which would embitter the rest of their lives, and
perhaps the lives of their children.[11]
In a society much advanced in arts and the refinements of life,
temptations to falsehood become very great, and require strong checks
from law, religion, or moral feeling. Religion is seldom of itself
found sufficient; for, though men cannot hope to conceal their
transgressions from the Deity, they can, as I have stated, always
hope in time to appease Him. Penal laws are not alone sufficient, for
men can always hope to conceal their trespasses from those who are
appointed to administer them, or at least to prevent their getting
that measure of judicial proof required for their conviction; the
dread of the indignation of their circle of society is everywhere the
more efficient of the three checks; and this check will generally be
found most to prevail where the community is left most to self-
government--hence the proverb, 'There is honour among thieves'. A
gang of robbers, who are outlaws, are, of course, left to govern
themselves; and, unless these could rely on each other's veracity and
honour in their relations with each other, they could do nothing. If
Governments were to leave no degree of self-government to the
communities of which the society is composed, this moral check would
really cease--the law would undertake to secure every right, and
enforce every duty; and men would cease to depend upon each other's
good opinion and good feelings.[12]
There is perhaps no part of the world where the communities of which
the society is composed have been left so much to self-government as
in India. There has seldom been any idea of a reciprocity of duties
and rights between the governing and the governed; the sovereign who
has possession feels that he has a right to levy certain taxes from
the land for the maintenance of the public establishments, which he
requires to keep down rebellion against his rule, and to defend his
dominions against all who may wish to intrude and seize upon them;
and to assist him in acquiring the dominions of other princes when
favourable opportunities offer; but he has no idea of a reciprocal
duty towards those from whom he draws his revenues. The peasantry
from whom the prince draws his revenues feel that they are bound to
pay that revenue; that, if they do not pay it, he will, with his
strong arm, turn them out and give to others their possessions--but
they have no idea of any right on their part to any return from him.
The village communities were everywhere left almost entirely to self-
government; and the virtues of truth and honesty, in all their
relations with each other, were indispensably necessary to enable
them to govern themselves.[13] A common interest often united a good
many village communities in a bond of union, and established a kind
of brotherhood over extensive tracts of richly cultivated land. Self-
interest required that they should unite to defend themselves against
attacks with which they were threatened at every returning harvest in
a country where every prince was a robber upon a scale more or less
large according to his means, and took the field to rob while the
lands were covered with the ripe crops upon which his troops might
subsist; and where every man who practised robbery with open violence
followed what he called an '_imperial_ trade' (pâdshâhî kâm)--the
only trade worthy the character of a gentleman. The same interest
required that they should unite in deceiving their own prince, and
all his officers, great and small, as to the real resources of their
estates; because they all knew that the prince would admit of no
other limits to his exactions than their abilities to pay at the
harvest. Though, in their relations with each other, all these
village communities spoke as much truth as those of any other
communities in the world; still, in their relation with the
Government, they told as many lies;--for falsehood, in the one set of
relations, would have incurred the odium of the whole of their
circles of society--truth, in the other, would often have involved
the same penalty. If a man had told a lie to _cheat_ his neighbour,
he would have become an object of hatred and contempt--if he told a
lie to _save_ his neighbour's fields from an increase of rent or tax,
he would have become an object of esteem and respect.[14] If the
Government officers were asked whether there was any truth to be
found among such communities, they would say, _No, that the truth was
not in them_; because they would not cut each other's throats by
telling them the real value of each other's fields.
If the peasantry were asked, they would say there was plenty of truth
to be found everywhere except among a few scoundrels, who, to curry
favour with the Government officers, betrayed their trust, and told
the value of their neighbours' fields. In their ideas, he might as
well have gone off, and brought down the common enemy upon them in
the shape of some princely robber of the neighbourhood.
Locke says: 'Outlaws themselves keep faith and rules of justice one
with another--they practise them as rules of convenience within their
own communities; but it is impossible to conceive that they embrace
justice as a practical principle who act fairly with their fellow
highwaymen, and at the same time plunder or kill the next honest man
they meet.' (Vol. i, p. 37.) In India, the difference between the
army of a prince and the gang of a robber was, in the general
estimation of the people, only in _degree_--they were both driving an
_imperial trade_, a 'pâdshâhî kâm'. Both took the auspices, and set
out on their expedition after the Dasahrâ, when the autumn crops were
ripening; and both thought the Deity propitiated as soon as they
found the omens favourable;[15] one attacked palaces and capitals,
the other villages and merchants' storerooms. The members of the army
of the prince thought as little of the justice or injustice of his
cause as those of the gang of the robber; the people of his capital
hailed the return of the victorious prince who had contributed so
much to their wealth, to his booty, and to their self-love by his
victory. The village community received back the robber and his gang
with the same feelings: by their skill and daring they had come back
loaded with wealth, which they were always disposed to spend
liberally with their neighbours. There was no more of truth in the
prince and his army in their relations with the princes and people of
neighbouring principalities, than in the robber and his gang in their
relations with the people robbed. The prince flatters the self-love
of his army and his people; the robber flatters that of his gang and
his village--the question is only in degree; the persons whose self-
love is flattered are blind to the injustice and cruelty of the
attack--the prince is the idol of a people, the robber the idol of a
gang. Was ever robber more atrocious in his attacks upon a merchant
or a village than Louis XIV of France in his attacks upon the
Palatine and Palatinate of the Rhine? How many thousand similar
instances might be quoted of princes idolized by their people for
deeds equally atrocious in their relations with other people? What
nation or sovereign ever found fault with their ambassadors for
telling lies to the kings, courts, and people of other countries?[16]
Rome, during the whole period of her history, was a mere den of
execrable thieves, whose feelings were systematically brutalized by
the most revolting spectacles, that they might have none of those
sympathies with suffering humanity, none of those 'compunctious
visitings of conscience', which might be found prejudicial to the
interests of the gang, and beneficial to the rest of mankind. Take,
for example, the conduct of this atrocious gang under Aemilius
Paulus, against Epirus and Greece generally after the defeat of
Perseus, all under the deliberate decrees of the senate: take that of
this gang under his son Scipio the younger, against Carthage and
Numantia; under Cato, at Cyprus--all in the same manner under the
_deliberate decrees of the senate_. Take indeed the whole of her
history as a republic, and we find it that of the most atrocious band
of robbers that was ever associated against the rest of their
species. In her relations with the rest of mankind Rome was
collectively devoid of truth; and her citizens, who were sent to
govern conquered countries, were no less devoid of truth
individually--they cared nothing whatever for the feelings or the
opinions of the people governed; in their dealings with them, truth
and honour were entirely disregarded. The only people whose
favourable opinion they had any desire to cultivate were the members
of the great gang; and the most effectual mode of conciliating them
was to plunder the people of conquered countries, and distribute the
fruits among them in presents of one kind or another. Can any man
read without shuddering that it was the practice among this atrocious
gang to have all the multitude of unhappy prisoners of both sexes,
and of all ranks and ages,--who annually graced the triumphs of their
generals, taken off and murdered just at the moment when these
generals reached the Capitol, amid the shouts of the multitude, that
their joys might be augmented by the sight or consciousness of the
sufferings of others? (See Hooke's _Roman History_, vol. iii, p. 488;
vol. iv, p. 541.) 'It was the custom that, when the triumphant
conqueror tumed his chariot towards the Capitol, he commanded the
captives to be led to prison, and there put to death, that so the
glory of the victor and the miseries of the vanquished might be in
the same moment at the utmost.' How many millions of the most
innocent and amiable of their species must have been offered up as
human sacrifices to the triumphs of the leaders of this great gang!
The women were almost as brutalized as the men; lovers met to talk
'soft nonsense', at exhibitions of gladiators. Valeria, the daughter
and sister of two of the first men in Rome, was beautiful, gay, and
lively, and of unblemished reputation. Having been divorced from her
husband, she and the monster Sylla made love to each other at one of
these exhibitions of gladiators, and were soon after married. Gibbon,
in speaking of the lies which Severus told his two competitors in the
contest for empire, says, 'Falsehood and insincerity, unsuitable as
they seem to the dignity of public transactions, offend us with a
less degrading idea of meanness than when they are found in the
intercourse of private life. In the latter, they discover a want of
courage; in the other, only a defect of power; and, as it is
impossible for the most able statesmen to subdue millions of
followers and enemies by their own personal strength, the world,
under the name of _policy_, seems to have granted them a very liberal
indulgence of craft and dissimulation.'[17]
But the weak in society are often obliged to defend themselves
against the strong by the same weapons; and the world grants them the
same liberal indulgence. Men advocate the use of the ballot in
elections that the weak may defend themselves and the free
institutions of the country, by dissimulation, against the strong who
would oppress them.[18] The circumstances under which falsehood and
insincerity are tolerated by the community in the best societies of
modern days are very numerous; and the worst society of modern days
in the civilized world, when slavery does not prevail, is
immeasurably superior to the best in ancient days, or in the Middle
Ages. Do we not every day hear men and women, in what are called the
best societies, declaring to one individual or one set of
acquaintances that the pity, the sympathy, the love, or the
admiration they have been expressing for others is, in reality, all
feigned to soothe or please? As long as the motive is not base, men
do not spurn the falsehood as such. How much of untruth is tolerated
in the best circles of the most civilized nations, in the relations
between electors to corporate and legislative bodies and the
candidates for election? between nominators to offices under
Government and the candidates for nomination? between lawyers and
clients, vendors and purchasers? (particularly of horses), between
the recruiting sergeant and the young recruit, whom he has found a
little angry with his widowed mother, whom he makes him kill by false
pictures of what a soldier may hope for in the 'bellaque matribus
detestata' to which he invites him?[19]
There is, I believe, no class of men in India from whom it is more
difficult to get the true statement of a case pending before a court
than the sepoys of our native regiments; and yet there are, I
believe, no people in the world from whom it is more easy to get it
in their own village communities, where they state it before their
relations, elders, and neighbours, whose esteem is necessary to their
happiness, and can be obtained only by adherence to truth. Every case
that comes before a regimental court involves, or is supposed to
involve, the interest or feelings of some one or other of their
companions; and the question which the deponent asks himself is-not
what religion, public justice, the interests of discipline and order,
or the wishes of his officers require, or what would appear manly and
honourable before the elders of his own little village, but what will
secure the esteem, and what will excite the hatred, of his comrades.
This will often be downright, deliberate falsehood, sworn upon the
Korân or the Ganges water before his officers.
Many a brave sepoy have I seen faint away from the agitated state of
his feelings, under the dread of the Deity if he told lies with the
Ganges water in his hands, and of his companions if he told the
truth, and caused them to be punished. Every question becomes a party
question, and the 'point of honour' requires that every witness shall
tell as many lies about it as possible.[20] When I go into a village,
and talk with the people in any part of India, I know that I shall
get the truth out of them on all subjects as long as I can satisfy
them that I am not come on the part of the Government to inquire into
the value of their fields with a view to new impositions, and this I
can always do; but, when I go among the sepoys to ask about anything,
I feel pretty sure that I have little chance of getting at the truth;
they will take the alarm and try to deceive me, lest what I learn
should be brought up at some future day against them or their
comrades. The Duke of Wellington says, speaking of the English
soldiers: 'It is most difficult to convict a prisoner before a
regimental court-martial, for, I am sorry to say, that soldiers have
little regard to the oath administered to them; and the officers who
are sworn well and truly to try and determine _according to the
evidence_, the matter before them, have too much regard to the strict
_letter_ of that administered to them.' Again: 'The witnesses being
in almost every instance common soldiers, whose conduct this tribunal
was instituted to control, the consequence is that perjury is almost
as common an offence as drunkenness and plunder, &c.'[21]
In the ordinary civil tribunals of Europe and America a man commonly
feels that, though he is removed far from the immediate presence of
those whose esteem is necessary for him, their eyes are still upon
him, because the statements he may give will find their way to them
through the medium of the press. This he does not feel in the civil
courts of India, nor in the military courts of Europe, or of any
other part of the world, and the man who judges of the veracity of a
whole people from the specimens he may witness in such courts, cannot
judge soundly.
Shaikh Sâdî, in his _Gulistân_, has the following tale: 'I have heard
that a prince commanded the execution of a captive who was brought
before him; when the captive, having no hope of life, told the prince
that he disgraced his throne. The prince, not understanding him,
tumed to one of his ministers and asked him what he had said. "He
says," replied the minister, quoting a passage from the Korân, "God
loves those who subdue their passions, forgive injuries, and do good
to his creatures." The prince pitied the poor captive, and
countermanded the orders for the execution. Another minister, who
owed a spite to the one who first spoke, said, "Nothing but truth
should be spoken by such persons as we in the presence of the prince;
the captive spoke abusively and insolently, and you have not
interpreted his words truly". The prince frowned and said, "His false
interpretation pleases me more than thy true one, because his was
given for a good, and thine for a malignant, purpose; and wise men
have said that 'a peace-making lie is better than a factious or anger
exciting truth'."'[22]
He who would too fastidiously condemn this doctrine should think of
the massacre of Thessalonica, and how much better it would have been
for the great Theodosius to have had by his side the peace-making
Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan, than the anger-exciting Rufinus, when
he heard of the offence which that city had committed.[23]
In despotic governments, where lives, characters, and liberties are
every moment at the mercy, not only of the prince but of all his
public officers from the highest to the lowest, the occasions in
which men feel authorized and actually called upon by the common
feelings of humanity to tell 'peacemaking lies' occur every day--nay,
every hour, every petty officer of government, 'armed with his little
brief authority', is a little tyrant surrounded by men whose all
depends upon his will, and who dare not tell him the truth--the
'point of honour' in this little circle demands that every one should
be prepared to tell him 'peace-making lies'; and the man who does not
do so when the occasion seems to call for it, incurs the odium of the
whole circle, as one maliciously disposed to speak 'anger-exciting or
factions truths'. Poor Cromwell and Anne Boleyn were obliged to talk
of _love_ and _duty_ toward their brutal murderer, Henry VIII, and
tell 'peace-making lies' on the scaffold to save their poor children
from his resentment. European gentlemen in India often, by their
violence surround themselves with circles of the same kind, in which
the 'point of honour' demands that every member shall be prepared to
tell 'peace-making lies', to save the others from the effects of
their master's ungovernable passions--falsehood is their only
safeguard; and, consequently, falsehood ceases to be odious.
Countenanced in the circles of the violent, falsehood soon becomes
countenanced in those of the mild and forbearing; their domestics
pretend a dread of their anger which they really do not feel; and
they gain credit for having the same good excuse among those who have
no opportunity of becoming acquainted with the real character of the
gentlemen in their domestic relations--all are thought to be more or
less _tigerish_ in these relations, particularly _before breakfast_,
because some are _known_ to be so.[24]
I have known the native officers of a judge who was really a very
mild and worthy man, but who lived a very secluded life, plead as
their excuse for all manner of bribery and corruption, that their
persons and character were never safe from his violence; and urge
that men whose tenure of office was very insecure, and who were every
hour in the day exposed to so much indignity, could not possibly be
blamed for making the most of their position. The society around
believed all this, and blamed, not the native officers, but the
judge, or the Government, who placed them in such a situation. Other
judges and magistrates have been known to do what this person was
merely reported to do, otherwise society would neither have given
credit to his officers nor have held them excused for their
malpractices.[25] Those European gentlemen who allow their passions
to get the better of their reason among their domestics do much to
lower the character of their countrymen in the estimation of the
people; but the high officials who forget what they owe to themselves
and the native officers of their courts, when presiding on the bench
of justice, do ten thousand times more; and I grieve to say that I
have known a few officials of this class.
We have in England known many occasions, particularly in the cases of
prosecutions by the officers of Government for offences against the
State, where little circles of society have made it a 'point of
honour' for some individuals to speak untruths, and for others to
give verdicts against their consciences; some occasions indeed where
those who ventured to speak the truth, or give a verdict according to
their conscience, were in danger from the violence of popular
resentment. Have we not, unhappily, in England and among our
countrymen in all parts of the world, experience of a wide difference
between what is exacted from members of particular circles of society
by the 'point of honour', and what is held to be strict religions
truth by the rest of society? Do we not see gentlemen cheating their
tradesmen, while they dare not leave a gambling debt unpaid? The
'point of honour' in the circle to which they belong demands that the
one should be paid, because the non-payment would involve a breach of
faith in their relations with each other, as in the case of the
members of a gang of robbers; but the non-payment of a tradesman's
bill involves only a breach of faith in a gentleman's relations with
a lower order. At least, some gentlemen do not feel any apprehension
of incurring the odium of the circle in which they move by cheating
of this kind. In the same manner the roué, or libertine of rank, may
often be guilty of all manner of falsehoods and crimes to the females
of the class below him, without any fear of incurring the odium of
either males or females of his own circle; on the contrary, the more
crimes he commits of this sort, the more sometimes he may expect to
be caressed by males and females of his own order. The man who would
not hesitate a moment to destroy the happiness of a family by the
seduction of the wife or the daughter, would not dare to leave one
shilling of a gambling debt unpaid--the one would bring down upon him
the odium of his circle, but the other would not; and the odium of
that circle is the only kind of odium he dreads. Appius Claudius
apprehended no odium from his own order--the patrician--from the
violation of the daughter of Virginius, of the plebeian order; nor
did Sextus Tarquinius of the royal order, apprehend any from the
violation of Lucretia, of the patrician order--neither would have
been punished by their own order, but they were both punished by the
injured orders below them.
Our own penal code punished with death the poor man who stole a
little food to save his children from starvation, while it left to
exult in the caresses of his own order, the wealthy libertine who
robbed a father and mother of their only daughter, and consigned her
to a life of infamy and misery. The poor victim of man's brutal
passions and base falsehood suffered inevitable and exquisite
punishment, while the laws and usages of society left the man himself
untouched. He had nothing to apprehend if the father of his victim
happened to be of the lower order, or a minister of the Church of
Christ; because his own order would justify his refusing to meet the
one in single combat, and the other dared not invite him to it, and
the law left no remedy.[26]
Take the two parties in England into which society is politically
divided. There is hardly any species of falsehood uttered by the
members of the party out of power against the members of the party in
power that is not tolerated and even applauded by one party; men
state deliberately what they know to be utterly devoid of truth
regarding the conduct of their opponent; they basely ascribe to them
motives by which they know they were never actuated, merely to
deceive the public, and to promote the interests of their party,
without the slightest fear of incurring odium by so doing in the
minds of any but their political opponents. If a foreigner were to
judge of the people of England from the tone of their newspapers, he
would say that there was assuredly neither honour, honesty, nor truth
to be found among the classes which furnished the nation with its
ministers and legislators; for a set of miscreants more atrocious
than the Whig and Tory ministers and legislators of England were
represented to be in these papers never disgraced the society of any
nation upon earth.
Happily, all foreigners who read these journals know that in what the
members of one party say of those of the other, or are reported to
say, there is often but little truth; and that there is still less of
truth in what the editors and correspondents of the ultra journals of
one party write about the characters, conduct, and sentiments of the
members of the other.
There is one species of untruth to which we English people are
particularly prone in India, and, I am assured, everywhere else. It
is this. Young 'miss in her teens', as soon as she finds her female
attendants in the wrong, no matter in what way, exclaims, 'It is so
like the natives'; and the idea of the same error, vice, or crime,
becomes so habitually associated in her mind with every native she
afterwards sees, that she can no more separate them than she can the
idea of ghosts and hobgoblins from darkness and solitude. The young
cadet or civilian, as soon as he finds his valet, butler, or groom in
the wrong, exclaims, 'It is so like blacky--so like the niggers; they
are all alike!' And what could you expect from him? He has been
constantly accustomed to the same vicious association of ideas in his
native land--if he has been brought up in a family of Tories, he has
constantly heard those he most reverenced exclaim, when they have
found, or fancied they found, a Whig in the wrong, 'It is so like the
Whigs--they are all alike--there is no trusting any of them.' If a
Protestant, 'It is so like the Catholics; there is no trusting them
in any condition of life.' The members of Whig and Catholic families
may say the same, perhaps, of Tories and Protestants. An untravelled
Englishman will sometimes say the same of a Frenchman; and the idea
of everything that is bad in man will be associated in his mind with
the image of a Frenchman. If he hears of an act of dishonour by a
person of that nation, 'It is so like a Frenchman--they are all
alike; there is no honour in them.' A Tory goes to America,
predisposed to find in all who live under republican governments
every species of vice and crime; and no sooner sees a man or woman
misbehave than he exclaims, 'It is so like the Americans--they are
all alike; but what could you expect from republicans?' At home, when
he considers himself in relation to the members of the parties
opposed to him in religion or politics, they are associated in his
mind with everything that is vicious; abroad, when he considers the
people of other countries in relation to his own, if they happen to
be Christians, he will find them associated in his mind with
everything that is good, or everything that is bad, in proportion as
their institutions happen to conform to those which his party
advocates. A Tory will abuse America and Americans, and praise the
Austrians. A Whig will, _perhaps_, abuse the Austrians and others who
live under paternal or despotic governments, and praise the
Americans, who live under institutions still more free than his own.
This has properly been considered by Locke as a species of madness
to which all mankind are more or less subject, and from which hardly
any individual can entirely free himself. 'There is', he says,
'scarce a man so free from it, but that if he should always, on all
occasions, argue or do as in some cases he constantly does, would not
be thought fitter for Bedlam than civil conversation. I do not here
mean when he is under the power of an unruly passion, but in the
steady, calm course of his life. That which thus captivates their
reason, and leads men of sincerity blindfold from common sense will,
when examined, be found to be what we are speaking of. Some
independent ideas, of no alliance to one another, are, by education,
custom, and the constant din of their party, so coupled in their
minds, that they always appear there together, and they can no more
separate them in their thoughts than if they were but one idea, and
they operate as if they really were so.' (Book II, Chap. 33.)
Perjury had long since ceased to be considered disgraceful, or even
discreditable, among the patrician order in Rome before the soldiers
ventured to break their oaths of allegiance. Military service had,
from the ignorance and selfishness of this order, been rendered
extremely odious to free-born Romans; and they frequently mutinied
and murdered their generals, though they would not desert, because
they had sworn not to do so. To break his oath by deserting the
standards of Rome was to incur the hatred and contempt of the great
mass of the people--the soldier dared not hazard this. But patricians
of senatorial and consular rank did not hesitate to violate their
oaths whenever it promised any advantage to the patrician order
collectively or individually, because it excited neither contempt nor
indignation in that order. 'They have been false to their generals,'
said Fabius, 'but they have never deceived the gods. I know they
_can_ conquer, and they shall swear to do so.' They swore, and
conquered.
Instead of adopting measures to make the duties of a soldier less
odious, the patricians tumed their hatred of these duties to account,
and at a high price sold an absolution from their oath. While the
members of the patrician order bought and sold oaths among themselves
merely to deceive the lower orders, they were still respected among
the plebeians; but when they began to sell dispensations to the
members of this lower order, the latter also, by degrees, ceased to
feel any veneration for the oath, and it was no longer deemed
disgraceful to desert duties which the higher order made no effort to
render less odious.
'That they who draw the breath of life in a court, and pass all their
days in an atmosphere of lies, should have any very sacred regard for
truth, is hardly to be expected. They experience such falsehood in
all who surround them, that deception, at least suppression of the
truth, almost seems necessary for self-defence; and, accordingly, if
their speech be not framed upon the theory of the French cardinal,
that language was given to man for the better concealment of his
thoughts, they at least seem to regard in what they say, not its
resemblance to the tact in question, but rather its subserviency to
the purpose in view.' (Brougham's _George IV._) 'Yet, let it never be
forgotten, that princes are nurtured in falsehood by the atmosphere
of lies which envelops their palace; steeled against natural
sympathies by the selfish natures of all that surround them; hardened
in cruelty, partly indeed by the fears incident to their position,
but partly too by the unfeeling creatures, the factions, the
unnatural productions of a court whom alone they deal with; trained
for tyrants by the prostration which they find in all the minds which
they come in contact with; encouraged to domineer by the unresisting
medium through which all their steps to power and its abuse are
made.' (Brougham's _Carnot_.)
But Lord Brougham is too harsh. Johnson has observed truly enough,
'Honesty is not necessarily greater where elegance is less'; nor does
a sense of supreme or despotic power necessarily imply the exercise
or abuse of it. Princes have, happily, the same yearning as the
peasant after the respect and affection of the circle around them,
and the people under them; and they must generally seek it by the
same means.
I have mentioned the village communities of India as that class of
the population among whom truth prevails most; but I believe there is
no class of men in the world more strictly honourable in their
dealings than the mercantile classes of India. Under native
governments a merchant's books were appealed to as 'holy writ', and
the confidence in them has certainly not diminished under our rule.
There have been instances of their being seized by the magistrate,
and subjected to the inspection of the officers of his court. No
officer of a native government ventured to seize them; the merchant
was required to produce them as proof of particular entries, and,
while the officers of government did no more, there was no danger of
false accounts.
An instance of deliberate fraud or falsehood among native merchants
of respectable station in society is extremely rare. Among the many
hundreds of bills I have had to take from them for private
remittances, I have never had one dishonoured, or the payment upon
one delayed beyond the day specified; nor do I recollect ever hearing
of one who had. They are so careful not to speculate beyond their
means, that an instance of failure is extremely rare among them. No
one ever in India hears of families reduced to ruin or distress by
the failure of merchants or bankers; though here, as in all other
countries advanced in the arts, a vast number of families subsist
upon the interest of money employed by them.[27]
There is no class of men more interested in the stability of our rule
in India than this of the respectable merchants; nor is there any
upon whom the welfare of our Government and that of the people more
depend. Frugal, first upon principle, that they may not in their
expenditure encroach upon their capitals, they become so by habit;
and when they advance in life they lay out their accumulated wealth
in the formation of those works which shall secure for them, from
generation to generation, the blessings of the people of the towns in
which they have resided, and those of the country around. It would
not be too much to say that one-half of the great works which
embellish and enrich the face of India, in tanks, groves, wells,
temples, &c., have been formed by this class of the people solely
with the view of securing the blessings of mankind by contributing to
their happiness in solid and permanent works.[28] 'The man who has
left behind him great works in temples, bridges, reservoirs, and
caravanserais for the public good, does not die,' says Shaikh
Sâdî,[29] the greatest of Eastern poets, whose works are more read
and loved than those of any other uninspired man that has ever
written, not excepting our own beloved Shakspeare.[30] He is as much
loved and admired by Hindoos as by Muhammadans; and from boyhood to
old age he continues the idol of the imaginations of both. The boy of
ten, and the old man of seventy, alike delight to read and quote him
for the music of his verses, and the beauty of his sentiments,
precepts, and imagery.[31]
It was to the class last mentioned, whose incomes are derived from
the profits of stock invested in manufactures and commerce, that
Europe chiefly owed its rise and progress after the downfall of the
Roman Empire, and the long night of darkness and desolation which
followed it. It was through the means of mercantile industry, and the
municipal institutions to which it gave rise, that the enlightened
sovereigns of Europe were enabled to curb the licence of the feudal
aristocracy, and to give to life, property, and character that
security without which society could not possibly advance; and it was
through the same means that the people were afterwards enabled to put
those limits to the authority of the sovereign, and to secure to
themselves that share in the government without which society could
not possibly be free or well constituted. Upon the same foundation
may we hope to raise a superstructure of municipal corporations and
institutions in India, such as will give security and dignity to the
society; and the sooner we begin upon the work the better.[32]
Notes:
1. Johnson says: 'Mountaineers are thievish because they are poor;
and, having neither manufactures nor commerce, can grow rich only by
robbery. They regularly plunder their neighbours, for their
neighbours are commonly their enemies; and, having lost that
reverence for property by which the order of civil life is preserved,
soon consider all as enemies whom they do not reckon as friends, and
think themselves licensed to invade whatever they are not obliged to
protect.' [W. H. S.] The quotation is from _A Journey to the Western
Islands of Scotland_.
The observations in the text apply largely to the settled Hindoo
villages, as well as to the forest tribes.
2. _Ficus religiosa_ is the Linnaean name for the 'pîpal'. Other
botanists call it _Urostigma religiosum_. In the original edition the
botanical name is erroneously given as _Ficus indicus_. The _Ficus
indica_ (_F. Bengalensis_, or _Urostigma B._) is the banyan. A story
is current that the traders of a certain town begged the magistrate
to remove a pîpal-tree which he had planted in the market-place,
because, so long as it remained, business could not be conducted.
They knew 'the value of a lie'.
3. The red cotton, or silk-cotton, tree, when in spring covered with
its huge magnolia-shaped scarlet blossoms, is one of the most
magnificent objects in nature. Its botanical name is _Salmalia
malabarica_ (_Bombax malabaricum; B. heptaphyllum_). This is the tree
referred to in the text. The white silk-cotton tree (_Eriodendron
anfractuosum; Bombax 'pentandrum; Ceiba pentandra; Gossampinus
Rumphii_) has a more southern habitat. (Balfour, _Cyclopaedia_, 3rd
ed., s.v. 'Salmalia' and 'Eriodendron'.)
4. The pîpal is usually regarded as sacred only to Vishnu, the
Preserver. The _Ficus indica_, or banyan, is sacred to Siva, the
Destroyer, and the _Butea frondosa_ (Hind. 'dhâk', 'palâs', or
'chhyûl ') to Brahmâ, the Creator, or [Greek text].
5. The sacred trees and plants of India are numerous. 'Balfour
(Cyclop., 3rd ed., s.v. 'Sacred') enumerates eighty, and the list is
by no mean complete. The same author's article, 'Tree', may also be
consulted. The minor 'deities' alluded to by the author are the real
gods of popular rural Hinduism. The observations of Mr. William
Crooke, probably the best authority on the subject of Indian popular
religion, though made with reference to a particular locality, are
generally applicable. 'Hinduism certainly shows no signs of weakness,
and is practically untouched by Christian and Muhammadan proselytism.
The gods of the Vedas are as dead as Jupiter, and the Krishna worship
only succeeds from its marvellous adaptability to the sensuous and
romantic side of the native mind. But it would be too much to say
that the creed exercises any real effect on life or morals. With the
majority of its devotees it is probably more sympathetic than
practical, and ranks with the periodical ablutions in the Ganges and
Jumna, and the traditional worship of the local gods and ghosts,
which really impress the rustic. He is enclosed on all sides by a
ring of precepts, which attribute luck or ill-luck to certain things
or actions. These and the bonds of caste, with its obligations for
the performance of marriage, death, and other ceremonies, make up the
religions life of the peasant. Nearly every village and hamlet has
its local ghost, usually the shrine of a childless man, or one whose
funeral rites remained for some reason unperformed. In the expressive
popular phrase, he is 'deprived of water' (_aud_). The pious make
oblations to his cenotaph twice a year, and propitiate his ghost with
offerings of water to allay his thirst in the lower world. The
primaeval serpent-worship is perpetuated in the reverence paid to
traditional village-snakes. Of the local ghosts some are beneficent.
Sometimes they are only mischievous, like Robin Goodfellow, and will
milk the cows, and sour the milk, or pull your hair, if you wander
about at night in certain well-known uncanny places. A more dangerous
demon is heard in the crackling of the dry leaves of the date-tree in
the night wind; and some trees are haunted by a vampire, who will
drag you up and devour you, if you venture near them in the
darkness.' (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, 1st ed., vol. vii. _Supplement_, p.
4.) See also the same author's work _Popular Religion and Folklore of
Northern India_, 2nd ed., 2 vols. Constable, 1896.
6. Compare the story of Râmkishan in Chapter 25. Books on
anthropology cite many instances of deaths caused by superstitious
fears.
7. Arrian, _Indica_, chap. 12: 'The sixth class consists of those
called "superintendents". They spy out what goes on in country and
town, and report everything to the king where the people have a king,
and to the magistrates where the people are self-governed, and it is
against use and wont for them to give a false report;--but indeed no
Indian is accused of lying.' (McCrindle, _Ancient India, as described
by Megasthenes and Arrian_, Trübner, 1877, p. 211). Arrian uses the
word [Greek text 1]; in the Fragments of Megasthenes quoted by
Diodorus and Strabo, the word is [Greek text 2]. The people referred
to seem to be the well-known 'news-writers' employed by Oriental
sovereigns (_ante_, chapter 33, note 7); a simple explanation missed
by McCrindle (op. cit. p. 43, note). The remark about the
truthfulness of the Indians appears to be Arrian's addition. It is
not in the Fragment of Megasthenes from which Arrian copies, and the
falsity of the remark is proved by the statement (ibid., p. 71) that
'a person convicted of bearing false witness suffers mutilation of
his extremities'. But in Fragment XXVII from Strabo (op. cit., p. 70)
Megasthenes says, 'Truth and virtue they hold alike in esteem'; and
in Fragment XXXIII (ibid., p. 85) he asserts that 'the ablest and
moat trustworthy men' are appointed [Greek text 2].
8. Up to the year 1827 'grand larceny', that is to say, stealing to a
value exceeding twelve pence, was punishable with death. The Act 7
George IV, cap. 28, abolished the distinction of grand and petty
larceny. In 1837, the first year of Queen Victoria's reign, the
punishment of death was abolished in the case of between thirty and
forty offences. Other statutes have further mitigated the ferocity of
the old law.
9. The year was 1652, not 1648 (Tavernier, _Travels_, transl. Ball,
vol. i, p. 260, note). The passages describing the criminal procedure
of Amîr Jumla are not very long, and deserve quotation, as giving an
accurate account of the administration of penal justice by an able
native ruler. 'On the 14th [September] we went to the tent of the
Nawâb to take leave of him, and to hear what he had to say regarding
the goods which we had shown him. But we were told that he was
engaged examining a number of criminals, who had been brought to him
for immediate punishment. It is the custom in this country not to
keep a man in prison; but immediately the accused is taken he is
examined and sentence is pronounced on him, which is then executed
without any delay. If the person whom they have seized is found
innocent, he is released at once; and whatever the nature of the case
may be, it is promptly concluded. . . . On the 15th, at seven o'clock
in the morning, we went to the Nawâb, and immediately we were
announced he asked us to enter his tent, where he was seated with two
of his secretaries by him. . . . The Nawâb had the intervals between
his toes full of letters, and he also had many between the fingers of
his left hand. He drew them sometimes from his feet, sometimes from
his hand, and sent his replies through his two secretaries, writing
some also himself. . . . While we were with the Nawâb he was informed
that four prisoners, who were then at the door of the tent, had
arrived. He remained more than half an hour without replying, writing
continually and making his secretaries write, but at length he
suddenly ordered the criminals to be brought in; and after having
questioned them, and made them confess with their own mouths the
crime of which they were accused, he remained nearly an hour without
saying anything, continuing to write and to make his secretaries
write, . . . Among these four prisoners who were brought into his
presence there was one who had entered a house and slain a mother and
her three infants. He was condemned forthwith to have his feet and
hands cut off, and to be thrown into a field near the high road to
end his days. Another had stolen on the high road, and the Nawâb
ordered him to have his stomach slit open and to be flung in a drain,
I could not ascertain what the others had done, but both their heads
were cut off. While all this passed the dinner was served, for the
Nawâb generally eats at ten o'clock, and he made us dine with him.'
(Ibid., pp. 290-3.) Such swift procedure and sharp punishments would
still be highly approved of by the great mass of Indian opinion in
the villages.
10. Misprinted 'much less' in original edition.
11. The new Act, V of 1840, prescribes the following declaration: 'I
solemnly affirm, in the presence of Almighty God, that what I shall
state shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth',--and declares that a false statement made on this shall be
punished as perjury. [W. H. S.] The law now in force is to the same
effect. This form of declaration is absolutely worthless as a check
on perjury, and never hinders any witness from lying to his heart's
content. The use of the Korân and Ganges water in the courts has been
given up.
12. The tendency of modern India is to rely too much on formal law
and the exercise of the powers of the central government. The
contemplation of the vast administrative machinery working with its
irresistible force and unfailing regularity in obedience to the will
of rulers, whose motives are not understood, undoubtedly has a
paralysing influence on the life of the nations of India, which, if
not counteracted, would work deep mischief. Something in the way of
counteraction has been done, though not always with knowledge. The
difficulties inherent in the problem of reconciling foreign rule with
self-government in an Asiatic country are enormous.
13. But panegyrics on the self-government of Indian villages must
always be read with the qualification that the standard of such
government was low, and that hundreds of acts and omissions were
tolerated, which are intolerable to a modern European Government.
Hence comes the difficulty of enforcing numerous reforms loudly
called for by European opinion. The vast Indian population hates
reform and innovation for many reasons, and, above all, because they
involve expense, which to the Indian mind appears wholly
unwarrantable.
14. The same phenomenon is observable in rural Ireland, where, as in
India, an unhappy history has generated profound distrust and dislike
of official authority. The Irish peasant has always been ready to
give his neighbour 'the loan of an oath', and a refusal to give it
would be thought unneighbourly. An Irish Land Commission and an
Indian Settlement Officer must alike expect to receive startling
information about the value of land.
15. _Ante_, chapter 49, text at [16].
16. Hume, in speaking of Scotland in the fifteenth century, says,
'Arms more than laws prevailed; and courage, preferably to equity and
justice, was the virtue most valued and respected. The nobility, in
whom the whole power resided, were so connected by hereditary
alliances, or so divided by inveterate enmities, that it was
impossible, without employing an armed force, either to punish the
most flagrant guilt, or to give security to the most entire
innocence. Rapine and violence, when employed against a hostile
tribe, instead of making a person odious among his own clan, rather
recommended him to their esteem and approbation; and, by rendering
him useful to the chieftain, entitled him to the preference above his
fellows.' [W. H. S.]
17. Gibbon, chap. 5. The remark refers to Septimius Severus.
18. The Ballot Act became law in 1872.
19. All that the author says is true, and yet it does not alter the
fact that Indian society is and always has been permeated and
paralysed by almost universal distrust. Such universal distrust does
not prevail in England. This difference between the two societies is
fundamental, and its reality is fully recognized by natives of India.
20. Compare the author's account of the fraudulent practices of the
Company's sepoys when on leave in Oudh. (_Journey through the Kingdom
of Oude_, vol. i, pp. 286-304.)
21. The editor has failed to find these quotations in the Wellington
Dispatches.
22. This is the first story in the first chapter of the _Gulistân_.
The _Mishkât-ul-Masâbih_ (Matthews, vol. ii, p. 427) teaches the same
doctrine as Sâdî: 'That person is not a liar who makes peace between
two people, and speaks good words to do away their quarrel although
they should be lies; and that person who carries good words from one
to another is not a tale-bearer.'
23. Gibbon, chapter 27. In the year A.D. 390 Botheric, the general of
Theodosius was murdered by a mob at Thessalonica. Acting on the
advice of Rufinus, the emperor avenged his officer's death by an
indiscriminate massacre of the inhabitants, in which numbers
variously estimated at from 7,000 to 15,000 perished. The emperor
quickly felt remorse for the atrocity of which he had been guilty,
and submitted to do public penance under the direction of Ambrose.
24. The sum total of truth in India would not, I fear, be appreciably
increased if every European had the temper of an angel.
25. The editor has never known a reputation for corruption in any way
lower the social position of an official of Indian birth.
26. The argument in the anthor's mind seems to be that the unveracity
practised and condoned by certain classes of the natives of India on
certain occasions is, at least, not more reprehensible than the vices
practised and condoned by certain classes of Europeans on certain
occasions.
27. Since the author wrote the above remarks, the conditions of
Indian trade have been revolutionized by the development of roads,
railways, motors, telegraph, postal facilities, and exports. The
Indian merchant has been drawn into the vortex of European and
American commerce. He is, in consequence, not quite so cautions as he
used to be, and is more liable to severe loss or failure, though he
is still, as a rule, far more inclined to caution than are his
Western rivals. The Indian private banker undoubtedly is honest in
ordinary banking transactions and anxious to maintain his commercial
credit, but he will often stoop to the most discreditable devices in
the purchase of a coveted estate, the foreclosure of a mortgage, and
the like. His books, nowadays, are certainly not 'appealed to as holy
writ', and many merchants keep a duplicate set for income-tax
purposes. The happy people of 1836 had never heard of income tax.
Private remittances are now made usually through the post office or
the joint-stock banks, which did not exist in the author's days. In
recent times failures of banks and merchants have been frequent.
28. These observations, which are perfectly true, form a corrective
to the fashionable abuse of the Indian capitalist, whose virtues and
merits are seldom noticed.
29. The editor has not succeeded in tracing this quotation, but
several passages to a similar effect occur in the _Gulistân_.
30. I ought to except Confucius, the great Chinese moralist. [W. H.
S.]
31. For a brief notice of Sâdî (Sa'dî) see _ante_, chapter 12, note
6. The _Gulistân_ is everywhere used as a text-book in schools where
Persian is taught. The author's extant correspondence shows that he
was fascinated by the charms of Persian poetry, even during the first
year of his residence in India.
32. The work was 'begun upon' many years ago, and 'a superstructure
of municipal corporations and institutions' now exists in every part
of India. But 'the same foundation' does not exist. The stout
burghers of the mediaeval English and German towns have no Indian
equivalents. The superstructure of the municipal institutions is all
that Acts of the Legislature can make it; the difficulty is to find
or make a solid foundation. Still, it was right and necessary to
establish municipal institutions in India, and, notwithstanding all
weaknesses and defects, they are of considerable value, and are
slowly developing.
CHAPTER 58
Declining Fertility of the Soil--Popular Notion of the Cause.
On the 18th[1] we came on ten miles to Sâhar, over a plain of poor
soil, carelessly cultivated, and without either manure or irrigation.
Major Godby left us at Govardhan to return to Agra. He would have
gone on with us to Delhi; but having the command of his regiment, and
being a zealous officer, he did not like to leave it so long during
the exercising season. We felt much the loss of his society. He is a
man of great observation and practical good sense; has an infinite
fund of good humour, and a cheerfulness of temperament that never
seems to flag--a more agreeable companion I have never met. The
villages in these parts are literally crowded with peafowl. I counted
no less than forty-six feeding close by among the houses of one
hamlet on the road, all wild, or rather _unappropriated_, for they
seemed on the best possible terms with the inhabitants. At Sâhar our
water was drawn from wells eighty feet deep, and this is said to be
the ordinary depth from which water is drawn; consequently irrigation
is too expensive to be common. It is confined almost exclusively to
small patches of garden cultivation in the vicinity of villages.
On the 14th we came on sixteen miles to Kosî, for the most part over
a poor soil badly cultivated, and almost exclusively devoted to
autumn crops, of which cotton is the principal. I lost the road in
the morning before daylight,[2] and the trooper, who usually rode
with me, had not come up. I got an old landholder from one of the
villages to walk on with me a mile, and put me in the right road. I
asked him what had been the state of the country under the former
government of the Jâts and Marâthâs, and was told that the greater
part was a wild jungle. 'I remember,' said the old man, 'when you
could not have got out of the road hereabouts without a good deal of
risk. I could not have ventured a hundred yards from the village
without the chance of having my clothes stripped off my back. Now the
whole face of the country is under cultivation, and the roads are
safe; formerly the governments kept no faith with their landholders
and cultivators, exacting ten rupees where they had bargained for
five, whenever they found the crops good; but, in spite of all this
"zulm"' (oppression), said the old man, 'there was then more "barkat"
(blessings from above) than now. The lands yielded more returns to
the cultivator, and he could maintain his little family better upon
five acres than he can now upon ten.'
'To what, my old friend, do you attribute this very unfavourable
change in the productive powers of your soil?'
'A man cannot, sir, venture to tell the truth at all times, and in
all places,' said he.
'You may tell it now with safety, my good old friend; I am a mere
traveller ("musafir") going to the hills in search of health, from
the valley of the Nerbudda, where the people have been suffering much
from blight, and are much perplexed in their endeavour to find a
cause.'
'Here, sir, we all attribute these evils to the dreadful System of
_perjury_, which the practices of your judicial courts have brought
among the people. You are perpetually putting the Ganges water into
the hands of the Hindoos, and the Korân into those of Muhammadans;
and all kinds of lies are every day told upon them. God Almighty can
stand this no longer; and the lands have ceased to be blessed with
that fertility which they had before this sad practice began. This,
sir, is almost the only fault we have, any of us, to find with your
government; men, by this System of perjury, are able to cheat each
other out of their rights, and bring down sterility upon the land, by
which the innocent are made to suffer for the guilty.'
On reaching our tents, I asked a respectable farmer, who came to pay
his respects to the Commissioner of the division, Mr. Fraser, what he
thought of the matter, telling him what I had heard from my old
friend on the road. 'The diminished fertility is,' said he, 'owing no
doubt to the want of those salutary fallows which the fields got
under former governments, when invasions and civil wars were things
of common occurrence, and kept at least two-thirds of the land waste;
but there is, on the other hand, no doubt that you have encouraged
perjury a good deal in your courts of justice; and this perjury must
have some effect in depriving the land of the blessing of God.[3]
Every man now, who has a cause in your civil courts, seems to think
it necessary either to swear falsely himself, or to get others to do
it for him. The European gentlemen, no doubt, do all they can to
secure every man his right, but, surrounded as they are by perjured
witnesses, and corrupt native officers, they commonly labour in the
dark.'
Much of truth is to be found among the village communities of India,
where they have been carefully maintained, if people will go among
them to seek it. Here, as almost everywhere else, truth is the result
of self-government, whether arising from choice, under municipal
institutions, or necessity, under despotism and anarchy; self-
government produces self-esteem and pride of character.
Close to our tents we found the people at work, irrigating their
fields from several wells, whose waters were all brackish. The crops
watered from these wells were admirable--likely to yield at least
fifteen returns of the seed. Wherever we go, we find the signs of a
great government passed away--signs that must tend to keep alive the
recollections, and exalt the ideas of it in the minds of the people.
Beyond the boundary of our military and civil stations we find as yet
few indications of our reign or character, to link us with the
affections of the people. There is hardly anything to indicate our
existence as a people or a government in this country; and it is
melancholy to think that in the wide extent of country over which I
have travelled there should be so few signs of that superiority in
science and arts which we boast of, and really do possess, and ought
to make conducive to the welfare and happiness of the people in every
part of our dominions. The people and the face of the country are
just what they might have been had they been governed by police
officers and tax-gatherers from the Sandwich Islands, capable of
securing life, property, and character, and levying honestly the
means of maintaining the establishments requisite for the purpose.[4]
Some time after the journey here described, in the early part of
November, after a heavy fall of rain, I was driving alone in my buggy
from Garhmuktesar on the Ganges to Meerut. The roads were very bad,
the stage a double one, and my horse became tired, and unable to go
on.[5] I got out at a small village to give him a little rest and
food; and sat down, under the shade of one old tree, upon the trunk
of another that the storm had blown down, while my groom, the only
servant I had with me, rubbed down and baited my horse. I called for
some parched gram from the same shop which supplied my horse, and got
a draught of good water, drawn from the well by an old woman in a
brass jug lent to me for the purpose by the shopkeeper.[6]
While I sat contentedly and happily stripping my parched gram of its
shell, and eating it grain by grain, the farmer, or head landholder
of the village, a sturdy old Râjpût, came up and sat himself, without
any ceremony, down by my side, to have a little conversation. To one
of the dignitaries of the land, in whose presence the aristocracy are
alone entitled to chairs, this easy familiarity on the part of a poor
farmer seems at first somewhat strange and unaccountable; he is
afraid that the man intends to offer him some indignity, or, what is
still worse, mistakes him for something less than the dignitary. The
following dialogue took place.
'You are a Râjpût, and a "zamîndâr"?' (landholder).
'Yes; I am the head landholder of this village.'
'Can you tell me how that village in the distance is elevated above
the ground? Is it from the debris of old villages, or from a rock
underneath?'
'It is from the debris of old villages. That is the original seat of
all the Râjpûts around; we all trace our descent from the founders of
that village who built and peopled it many centuries ago.'
'And you have gone on subdividing your inheritances here, as
elsewhere, no doubt, till you have hardly any of you anything to
eat?'
'True, we have hardy any of us enough to eat; but that is the fault
of the Government, that does not leave us enough, that takes from us
as much when the season is bad as when it is good.'[7]
'But your assessment has not been increased, has it?' 'No, we have
concluded a settlement for twenty years upon the same footing as
formerly.'
'And if the sky were to shower down upon you pearls and diamonds,
instead of water, the Government would never demand more from you
than the rate fixed upon?'
'No.'
'Then why should you expect remissions in the bad seasons?'
'It cannot be disputed that the "barkat" (blessing from above) is
less under you than it used to be formerly, and that the lands yield
less to our labour.'
'True, my old friend, but do you know the reason why?'
'No.'
'Then I will tell you. Forty or fifty years ago, in what you call the
times of the "barkat" (blessing from above), the cavalry of Sikh
freebooters from the Panjâb used to sweep over this fine plain, in
which stands the said village from which you are all descended; and
to massacre the whole population of some villages, and a certain
portion of that of every other village; and the lands of those killed
used to be waste for want of cultivators. Is not this all true?'
'Yes, quite true.'
'And the fine groves which had been planted over the plain by your
ancestors, as they separated from the great parent stock, and formed
independent villages and hamlets for themselves, were all swept away
and destroyed by the same hordes of freebooters, from whom your poor
imbecile emperors, cooped up in yonder large city of Delhi, were
utterly unable to defend you?'
'Quite true,' said the old man with a sigh. 'I remember when all this
fine plain was as thickly studded with fine groves of mango-trees as
Rohilkhand, or any other part of India.'
'You know that the land requires rest from labour, as well as men and
bullocks, and that, if you go on sowing wheat and other exhausting
crops, it will go on yielding less and less returns, and at last not
be worth the tilling?'
'Quite well.'
'Then why do you not give the land rest by leaving it longer fallow,
or by a more frequent alternation of crops relieve it?'
'Because we have now increased so much that we should not get enough
to eat were we to leave it to fallow; and unless we tilled it with
exhausting crops we should not get the means of paying our rents to
the Government.'
'The Sikh hordes in former days prevented this; they killed off a
certain portion of your families, and gave the land the rest which
you now refuse it. When you had exhausted one part, you found another
recovered by a long fallow, so that you had better returns; but now
that we neither kill you, nor suffer you to be killed by others, you
have brought all the cultivable lands into tillage; and under the old
System of cropping to exhaustion, it is not surprising that they
yield you less returns.'[8]
By this time we had a crowd of people seated around us upon the
ground, as I went on munching my parched gram, and talking to the old
patriarch.
They all laughed at the old man at the conclusion of my last speech,
and he confessed I was right.
'This is all true, sir, but still your Government is not considerate;
it goes on taking kingdom after kingdom, and adding to its dominions
without diminishing the burden upon us, its old subjects. Here you
have had armies away taking Afghanistan, but we shall not have one
rupee the less to pay.'[9]
'True, my friend, nor would you demand a rupee less from those honest
cultivators around us, if we were to leave you all your lands
untaxed. You complain of the Government--they complain of you.' (Here
the circle around us laughed at the old man again.) 'Nor would you
subdivide the lands the less for having it rent-free; on the
contrary, it would be every generation subdivided the more, inasmuch
as there would be more of local ties, and a greater disinclination of
families to separate and seek service abroad.'
'True, sir, very true--that is, no doubt, a very great evil.'
'And you know it is not an evil produced by us, but one arising out
of your own laws of inheritance. You have heard, no doubt, that with
us the eldest son gets the whole of the land, and the younger sons
all go out in search of service, with such share as they can get of
the other property of their father?'
'Yes, sir; but when shall we get service?--you have none to give us.
I would serve to-morrow if you would take me as a soldier,' said he,
stroking his white whiskers.
The crowd laughed heartily; and some wag observed that I should
perhaps think him too old.
'Well,' said the old man, smiling, 'the gentleman himself is not very
young, and yet I dare say he is a good servant of his Government.'
This was paying me off for making the people laugh at his expense.
'True, my old friend,' said I, 'but I began to serve when I was
young, and have been long learning.'
'Very well,' said the old man, 'but I should be glad to serve the
rest of my life upon a less salary than you got when you began to
learn.'
'Well, my friend, you complain of our Government; but you must
acknowledge that we do all we can to protect you, though it is true
that we are often acting in the dark.'
'Often, sir? you are always acting in the dark; you, hardly any of
you, know anything of what your revenue and police officers are
doing; there is no justice or redress to be got without paying for
it, and it is not often that those who pay can get it.'
'True, my old friend, that is bad all over the world. You cannot
presume to ask anything even from the Deity Himself, without paying
the priest who officiates in His temples; and if you should, you
would none of you hope to get from your Deity what you asked for.'
Here the crowd laughed again, and one of them said that 'there was
this certainly to be said for our Government, that the European
gentlemen themselves never took bribes, whatever those under them
might do'.
'You must not be too sure of that, neither. Did not the Lâl Bîbî, the
Red Lady, get a bribe for soliciting the judge, her husband, to let
go Amîr Singh, who had been confined in jail?'
'How did this take place?'
'About three years ago Amîr Singh was sentenced to imprisonment, and
his friends spent a great deal of money in bribes to the native
officers of the court, but all in vain. At last they were recommended
to give a handsome present to the Red Lady. They did so, and Amîr
Singh was released.'
'But did they give the present into the lady's own hand?'
'No, they gave it to one of her women.'
'And how do you know that she ever gave it to her mistress, or that
her mistress ever heard of the transaction?'
'She might certainly have been acting without her mistress'
knowledge; but the popular belief is that the Lâl Bîbî got the
present.'
I then told the story of the affair at Jubbulpore, when Mrs. Smith's
name had been used for a similar purpose, and the people around us
were all highly amused; and the old man's opinion of the transaction
with the Red Lady evidently underwent a change.[10]
We became good friends, and the old man begged me to have my tents,
which he supposed were coming up, pitched among them, that he might
have an opportunity of showing that he was not a bad subject, though
he grumbled against the Government.
The next day at Meerut I got a visit from the chief native judge,
whose son, a talented youth, is in my office. Among other things, I
asked him whether it might not be possible to improve the character
of the police by increasing the salaries of the officers, and
mentioned my conversation with the landholder.
'Never, sir,' said the old gentleman; 'the man that now gets twenty-
five rupees a month is contented with making perhaps fifty or
seventy-five more; and the people subject to his authority pay him
accordingly. Give him a hundred, sir, and he will put a shawl over
his shoulders, and the poor people will be obliged to pay him at a
rate that will make up his income to four hundred. You will only
alter his style of living, and make him a greater burthen to the
people. He will always take as long as he thinks he can with
impunity.'
'But do you not think that when people see a man adequately paid by
the Government they will the more readily complain of any attempt at
unauthorized exactions?'
'Not a bit, sir, as long as they see the same difficulties in the way
of prosecuting him to conviction. In the administration of civil
justice' (the old gentleman is a civil judge), 'you may occasionally
see your way, and understand what is doing; but in revenue and police
you never have seen it in India, and never will, I think. The
officers you employ will all add to their incomes by unauthorized
means; and the lower these incomes, the less their pretensions, and
the less the populace have to pay.'[11]
Notes:
1. January, 1836.
2. The old Anglo-Indian rose much earlier than his successor of the
present day commonly does.
3. For other popular explanations of the alleged decrease in
fertility of the soil, see _ante_, Chapter 27, where three
explanations are offered, namely, the eating of beef, the prevalence
of adultery, and the impiety of surveys.
4. The inapplicability of these observations of the author to the
present time is a good measure of the material progress of India
since his day. The Ganges Canal, the bridges over the Indus, Ganges,
and other great rivers, and numberless engineering works throughout
the empire, are permanent witnesses to the scientific superiority of
the ruling race. Buildings which can claim any high degree of
architectural excellence are, unfortunately, still rare, but the
public edifices of Bombay will not suffer by comparison with those of
most capital cities, and for some years past, considerable attention
has been paid to architecture as an art. A great architectural
experiment is in progress at the new official capital of Delhi
(1914).
5. The road is now an excellent one.
6. Parched gram, or chick-pea, is commonly used by Indian travellers
as a convenient and readily portable form of food. The 'brass jug'
lent to the author could be purified by fire after his use of it.
7. Growls of this kind must not be interpreted too literally. Any
village landholder, if encouraged, would grumble in the same strain.
8. This is the permanent difficulty of Indian revenue administration,
which no Government measures can seriously diminish.
9. The mission to Kabul, under Captain Alexander Burnes, was not
dispatched till September, 1837, and troops did not assemble before
the conclusion of the treaty with the Sikhs in June, 1838. The army
crossed the Indus in January, 1839. The conversation in the text is
stated to have taken place 'some time after the journey herein
described', and must, apparently, be dated in November, 1839. The
author was in the North-Western Provinces in that year.
10. Some of Mrs. Smith's suitors entered into a combination to
defraud a suitor in his court of a large sum of money, which he was
to pay to Mrs. Smith as she walked in the garden. A dancing girl from
the town of Jubbulpore was made to represent Mrs. Smith, and a suit
of Mrs. Smith's clothes was borrowed for her from the washerman. The
butler took the suitor to the garden, and introduced him to the
supposed Mrs. Smith, who received him very graciously, and
condescended to accept his offer of five thousand rupees in gold
mohurs. The plot was afterwards discovered, and the old butler,
washerman, and all, were sentenced to work in a rope on the roads.
[W. H. S.]
Penal labour on the roads has been discontinued long since. Similar
plots probably have often escaped detection. The whole conversation
is a valuable illustration of Indian habits and modes of thought.
11. The subject of the police administration is more fully discussed
_post_, in Chapter 69.
CHAPTER 59
Concentration of Capital and its Effects.
Kosî[1] stands on the borders of Fîrôzpur, the estate of the late
Shams-ud-dîn, who was hanged at Delhi on the 3rd of October, 1835,
for the murder of William Fraser, the representative of the Governor-
General in the Delhi city and territories.[2] The Mewâtîs of Fîrôzpur
are notorious thieves and robbers. During the Nawâb's time they dared
not plunder within his territory, but had a free licence to plunder
wherever they pleased beyond it.[3] They will now be able to plunder
at home, since our tribunals have been introduced to worry
prosecutors and their witnesses to death by the distance they have to
go, and the tediousness of our process; and thereby to secure
impunity to offenders, by making it the interest of those who have
been robbed, not only to bear with the first loss without complaint,
but largely to bribe police officers to conceal the crimes from their
master, the magistrate, when they happen to come to their knowledge.
Here it was that Jeswant Râo Holkâr gave a grand ball on the 14th of
October, 1804, while he was with his cavalry covering the siege of
Delhi by his regular brigade. In the midst of the festivity he had a
European soldier of the King's 76th Regiment, who had been taken
prisoner, strangled behind the curtain, and his head stuck upon a
spear and placed in the midst of the assembly, where the 'nâch'
(nautch) girls were made to dance round it. Lord Lake reached the
place the next morning in pursuit of this monster; and the gallant
regiment, who here heard the story, had soon an opportunity of
revenging the foul murder of their comrade in the battle of Dîg, one
of the most gallant passages of arms we have ever had in India.[4]
Near Kosî there is a factory in ruins belonging to the late firm of
Mercer & Company. Here the cotton of the district used to be
collected and screwed under the superintendence of European agents,
preparatory to its embarkation for Calcutta on the river Jumna. On
the failure of the firm, the establishment was broken up, and the
work, which was then done by one great European merchant, is now done
by a score or two of native merchants. There is, perhaps, nothing
which India wants more than the concentration of capital; and the
failure of a I [5] the great commercial houses in Calcutta, in the
year 1833, was, unquestionably, a great calamity. They none of them
brought a particle of capital into the country, nor does India want a
particle from any country; but they _concentrated_ it; and had they
employed the whole, as they certainly did a good deal of it, in
judiciously improving and extending the industry of the natives, they
might have been the source of incalculable good to India, its people,
and government.[6]
To this concentration of capital in great commercial and
manufacturing establishments, which forms the grand characteristic of
European in contradistinction to Asiatic societies in the present
day, must we look for those changes which we consider desirable in
the social and religions institutions of the people. Where land is
liable to eternal subdivision by the law and the religion of both the
Muhammadan and Hindoo population; where every great work that
improves its productive powers, and facilitates the distribution of
its produce among the people, in canals, roads, bridges, &c., is made
by Government; where capital is nowhere concentrated in great
commercial or manufacturing establishments, there can be no upper
classes in society but those of office; and of all societies, perhaps
that is the worst in which the higher classes are so exclusively
composed. In India, public office has been, and must continue to be,
the only road to distinction, until we have a _law of primogeniture_,
and a _concentration of capital_. In India no man has ever thought
himself respectable, or been thought so by others, unless he is armed
with his little 'hukûmat'; his 'little brief authority' under
Government, that gives him the command of some public establishment
paid out of the revenues of the State.[7] In Europe and America,
where capital has been concentrated in great commercial and
manufacturing establishments, and free institutions prevail almost as
the natural consequence, industry is everything; and those who direct
and command it are, happily, looked up to as the source of the
wealth, the strength, the virtue, and the happiness of the nation.
The concentration of capital in such establishments may, indeed, be
considered, not only as the natural consequence, but as the
prevailing cause of the free institutions by which the mass of the
people in European countries are blessed.[8] The mass of the people
were as much brutalized and oppressed by the landed aristocracy as
they could have been by any official aristocracy before towns and
higher classes were created by the concentration of capital.
The same observations are applicable to China. There the land all
belongs to the sovereign, as in India; and, as in India, it is liable
to the same eternal subdivision among the sons of those who hold it
under him. Capital is nowhere more concentrated in China than in
India; and all the great works that add to the fertility of the soil,
and facilitate the distribution of the land labour of the country are
formed by the sovereign out of the public revenue. The revenue is, in
consequence, one of office;[9] and no man considers himself
respectable,[10] unless invested with some office under Government,
that is, under the Emperor. Subdivision of labour, concentration of
capital, and machinery render an Englishman everywhere dependent upon
the co-operation of multitudes; while the Chinaman, who as yet knows
little of either, is everywhere independent, and able to work his way
among strangers. But this very dependence of the Englishman upon the
concentration of capital is the greatest source of his strength and
pledge of his security, since it supports those members of the higher
orders who can best understand and assert the rights and interests of
the whole.[11]
If we had any great establishment of this sort in which Christians
could find employment and the means of religious and secular
instruction, thousands of converts would soon flock to them; and they
would become vast sources of future improvement in industry, social
comfort, municipal institutions, and religion. What chiefly prevents
the spread of Christianity in India is the dread of exclusion from
caste and all its privileges; and the utter hopelessness of their
ever finding any respectable circle of society of the adopted
religion, which converts, or would-be converts, to Christianity now
everywhere feel. Form such circles for them, make the members of
these circles happy in the exertion of honest and independent
industry, let those who rise to eminence in them feel that they are
considered as respectable and as important in the social system as
the servants of Government, and converts will flock around you from
all parts, and from all classes of the Hindoo community. I have,
since I have been in India, had, I may say, at least a score of
Hindoo grass-cutters turn Musalmâns, merely because the grooms and
the other grass-cutters of my establishment happened to be of that
religion, and they could neither eat, drink, nor smoke with them.
Thousands of Hindoos all over India become every year Musalmâns from
the same motive;[12] and we do not get the same number of converts to
Christianity, merely because we cannot offer them the same
advantages. I am persuaded that a dozen such establishments as that
of Mr. Thomas Ashton of Hyde, as described by a physician at
Manchester, and noticed in Mr. Baines's admirable work on the _Cotton
Manufactures of Great Britain_ (page 447), would do more in the way
of conversion among the people of India than has ever yet been done
by all the religious establishments, or ever will be done by them,
without such aid.[13]
I have said that the great commercial houses of Calcutta, which in
their ruin involved that of so many useful establishments scattered
over India, like that of Kosî, brought no capital into the
country.[14] They borrowed from one part of the civil and military
servants of Government at a high interest that portion of their
salary which they saved; and lent it at a higher interest to others
of the same establishment, who for a time required or wished to spend
more than they received; or they employed it at a higher rate of
profit for great commercial and manufacturing establishments
scattered over India, or spread over the ocean. Their great error was
in mistaking nominal for real profits. Calculating their dividend on
the nominal profits, and never supposing that there could be any such
things as losses in commercial speculation, or bad debts from
misfortunes and bad faith, they squandered them in lavish hospitality
and ostentatious display, or allowed their retiring members to take
them to England and to every other part of the world where their
creditors might not find them, till they discovered that all the real
capital left at their command was hardly sufficient to pay back with
the stipulated interest one-tenth of what they had borrowed. The
members of those houses who remained in India up to the time of the
general wreck were of course reduced to ruin, and obliged to bear the
burthen of the odium and indignation which the ruin of so many
thousands of confiding constituents brought down upon them. Since
that time the savings of civil and military servants have been
invested either in Government securities at a small interest, or in
banks, which make their profit in the ordinary way, by discounting
bills of exchange, and circulating their own notes for the purpose,
or by lending out their money at a high interest of 10 or 12 per
cent. to other members of the same services.[15]
On the 16th of January we went on to Horal, ten miles over a plain,
with villages numerous and large, and in every one some fine large
building of olden times--sarâi, palace, temple, or tomb, but all
going to decay.[16] The population much more dense than in any of the
native states I have seen; villages larger and more numerous; trade
in the transit of cotton, salt, sugar, and grain, much brisker. A
great number of hares were here brought to us for sale at threepence
apiece, a rate at which they sell at this season in almost all parts
of Upper India, where they are very numerous, and very easily caught
in nets.
Notes:
1. Kosî is twenty-five miles north-west of Mathurâ.
2. The story of the murder of Mr. Fraser is fully detailed _post_ in
Chapter 64. After the execution of Shams-ud-dîn, the estate of the
criminal was taken possession of by Government, and the town of
Fîrôzpur is now the head-quarters of a sub-collectorship of the
Gurgâon district in the Panjâb. The Delhi territories were placed
under the government of the Lieutenant-Governor of the Panjâb in
1858.
3. The Mewâtî depredations had gone on for centuries. The Sultân
Balban (Ghiâs-ud-dîn, alias Ulugh Khan), who reigned from A.D. 1265-
87, temporarily suppressed them by punishments of awful cruelty,
flaying the criminals alive, and so forth. The Mewâtîs now supply men
to a few robber gangs, but are incapable of mischief on a large
scale.
4. Delhi was most nobly defended against Holkâr by a very small force
under Lieutenant-Colonel Burn, who 'repelled an assault, and defended
a city ten miles in circumference, and which had ever before been
given up at the first appearance of an enemy at its gates'.
The battle of Dîg was fought on November 13, 1804, by the division
under the command of General Fraser on the one side, and Holkâr's
infantry and artillery on the other. 'The 76th led the way, with its
wonted alacrity and determination,' and forced its way into the
village in advance of its supports. The fight resulted in the total
defeat of the Marâthâs, who lost nearly two thousand men, and eighty-
seven pieces of cannon. The English loss also was heavy, amounting to
upwards of six hundred and forty killed and wounded, including the
brave commander, who was mortally wounded, and survived the victory
only a few days.
On the night of November 17, General Lake in person routed Holkâr and
his cavalry, killing about three thousand men. The English loss on
this occasion amounted to only two men killed, and about twenty
wounded.
The fort of Dîg, with a hundred guns and a considerable quantity of
ammunition and military stores, was captured on December 24 of the
same year. (Thornton, _History of British India_, pp. 316-19, 2nd
ed., 1859.)
5. Transcription note. This clause is not intelligible to the
transcriber. The character '1' or 'I' appears in the text. Some words
appear to be missing.
6. The author was grievously mistaken in supposing that India did not
require 'a particle' of foreign capital. The railways, and the great
tea, coffee, indigo, and other industries, built up and developed
during the nineteenth century, and still growing, owe their existence
to the hundreds of millions sterling of English capital poured into
the country, and could not possibly have been financed from Indian
resources. The author seems not to have expected the construction of
railways in India, although when he wrote a beginning of the railway
system in England had been made.
7. This sentiment is still potent, and explains the eagerness often
shown by wealthy landholders of high social rank to obtain official
appointments, which to the European mind seem unworthy of their
acceptance.
8. Few readers are likely to accept this proposition.
9. This clause is not intelligible to the editor. The word 'revenue'
probably is a misprint for 'aristocracy'.
10. The original edition prints, 'No man considers himself less
respectable', which is nonsense.
11. This sentiment reads oddly in these days of social democracy and
continual conflict between capital and labour.
12. The steady progress of Islam in Lower and Eastern Bengal, first
made apparent by the census of 1872, has been confirmed by the
enumerations of 1901 and 1911. The feeling that the religion of the
Prophet gives its adherent a better position in both this world and
the next than Hinduism can offer to a low-caste man is the most
powerful motive for conversion. See Dr. James Wise's valuable
treatise, 'The Muhammadans of Eastern Bengal' (_J.A.S.B._, Part III
(1894), pp. 28-63), and the Census Reports from 1872 to 1911.
13. The author's whimsical notion that a development of commercial
and manufacturing organization in India would cause converts to flock
from all parts, and from all classes of the Hindoo community, has not
been verified by experience. Much capital is now concentrated in the
great cities, and the number of cotton, jute, and other factories is
considerable, but Christian converts are not among the goods
produced.
14. The modern commercial houses bring a large proportion of their
capital from Europe.
15. The three Presidency Banks, the Bank of Bengal, the Bank of
Madras, and the Bank of Bombay, in which the Indian Government is
interested, are the leading Indian banks. The Bank of Bengal was
opened in 1806. No bank in India is allowed to issue notes. The paper
money in use is issued by the Paper Currency Department of the
Government of India, and the notes are known as 'currency notes'. The
issue of these notes began in 1862-3. (Balfour, _Cyclopaedia_, 3rd
ed., s.v. 'Bank and Paper Currency'). Much Indian capital is now
invested in joint-stock companies of every kind.
16. More correctly, Hodal.
CHAPTER 60
Transit Duties in India--Mode of Collecting them.
At Horal[1] resides a Collector of Customs with two or three
uncovenanted European assistants as patrol officers.[2] The rule now
is to tax only the staple articles of produce from the west on their
transit down into the valley of the Jumna and Ganges, and to have
only one line on which these articles shall be liable to duties.[3]
They are free to pass everywhere else without search or molestation.
This has, no doubt, relieved the people of these provinces from an
infinite deal of loss and annoyance inflicted upon them by the former
System of levying the Customs duties, and that without much
diminishing the net receipts of Government from this branch of its
revenues. But the time may come when Government will be constrained
to raise a greater proportion of its collective revenues than it has
hitherto done from indirect taxation, and when this time comes, the
rule which confines the impost to a single line must of course be
abandoned.[4] Under the former system, one great man, with a very
high salary, was put in to preside over a host of native agents with
very small salaries, and without any responsible intermediate agent
whatever to aid him, and to watch over them. The great man was
selected without any reference to his knowledge of, or fitness for,
the duties entrusted to him, merely because he happened to be of a
certain standing in a certain exclusive service, which entitled him
to a certain scale of salary, or because he had been found unfit for
judicial or other duties requiring more intellect and energy of
character. The consequence was that for every one rupee that went
into the public treasury, ten were taken by these harpies from the
merchants, or other people over whom they had, or could pretend to
have, a right of search.[5]
Some irresponsible native officer who happened to have the confidence
of the great man (no matter in what capacity he served him) sold for
his own profit, and for that of those whose goodwill he might think
it worth while to conciliate, the offices of all the subordinate
agents immediately employed in the collection of the duties. A man
who was to receive an avowed salary of seven rupees a month would
give him three or four thousand for his post, because it would give
him charge of a detached post, in which he could soon repay himself
with a handsome profit. A poor 'peon', who was to serve under others,
and could never hope for an independent charge, would give five
hundred rupees for an office which yielded him avowedly only four
rupees a month. All arrogated the right of search, and the state of
Indian society and the climate were admirably suited to their
purpose. A person of any respectability would feel himself
dishonoured were the females of his family to be _seen_, much less
_touched_, while passing along the road in their palanquin or covered
carnage; and to save himself from such dishonour he was everywhere
obliged to pay these custom-house officers. Many articles that pass
in transit through India would suffer much damage from being opened
along the road at any season, and be liable to be spoiled altogether
during that of the rains; and these harpies could always make the
merchants open them, unless they paid liberally for their
forbearance. Articles were rated to the duty according to their
value; and articles of the same weight were often, of course, of very
different values. These officers could always pretend that packages
liable to injury from exposure contained within them, among the
articles set forth in the invoice, others of greater value in
proportion to their weight. Men who carried pearls, jewels, and other
articles very valuable compared with their bulk, always depended for
their security from robbers and thieves on their concealment; and
there was nothing which they dreaded so much as the insolence and
rapacity of these custom-house officers, who made them pay large
bribes, or exposed their goods. Gangs of thieves had members in
disguise at such stations, who were soon able to discover through the
insolence of the officers, and the fears and entreaties of the
merchants, whether they had anything worth taking or not.
A party of thieves from Datiyâ, in 1882, followed Lord William
Bentinck's camp to the bank of the river Jumna near Mathurâ, where
they found a poor merchant humbly entreating an insolent custom-house
officer not to insist upon his showing the contents of the little box
he carried in his carriage, lest it might attract the attention of
thieves, who were always to be found among the followers of such a
camp, and offering to give him anything reasonable for his
forbearance. Nothing he could be got to offer would satisfy the
rapacity of the man; the box was taken out and opened. It contained
jewels which the poor man hoped to sell to advantage among the
European ladies and gentlemen of the Governor-General's suite. He
replaced his box in his carriage; but in half an hour it was
travelling post-haste to Datiyâ, by relays of thieves who had been
posted along the road for such occasions. They quarrelled about the
division; swords were drawn, and wounds inflicted. One of the gang
ran off to the magistrate at Sâgar, with whom he had before been
acquainted;[6] and he sent him back with a small party, and a letter
to the Datiyâ Râjâ requesting that he would get the box of jewels for
the poor merchant. The party took the precaution of searching the
house of the thieves before they delivered the letter to their friend
the minister, and by this means recovered about half the jewels,
which amounted in all to about seven thousand rupees. The merchant
was agreeably surprised when he got back so much of his property
through the magistrate of Mathurâ, and confirmed the statement of the
thief regarding the dispute with the custom-house officer which
enabled them to discover the value of the box.
Should Government by and by extend the System that obtains in this
single line to the Customs all over India they may greatly augment
their revenue without any injury, and with but little necessary loss
and inconvenience to merchants. The object of all just taxation is to
make the subjects contribute to the public burthen in proportion to
their means, and with as little loss and inconvenience to themselves
as possible. The people who reside west of this line enjoy all their
salt, cotton, and other articles which are taxed on crossing the line
without the payment of any duties, while those to the east of it are
obliged to pay. It is, therefore, not a just line. The advantages
are, first, that it interposes a body of most efficient officers
between the mass of harpies and the heads of the department, who now
virtually superintend the whole System, whereas they used formerly to
do so merely ostensibly. They are at once the _tapis_ of Prince
Husain and the telescope of Prince Alî; they enable the heads of
departments to be everywhere and see everything, whereas before they
were nowhere and saw nothing.[7] Secondly, it makes the great staple
articles of general consumption alone liable to the payment of
duties, and thereby does away in a great measure with the odious
right of search.
At Kosî our friend, Charles Fraser, left us to proceed through
Mathurâ to Agra. He is a very worthy man and excellent public
officer, one of those whom one always meets again with pleasure, and
of whose society one never tires. Mr. Wilmot, the Collector of
Customs, and Mr. Wright, one of the patrol officers, came to dine
with us. The wind blew so hard all day that the cook and khânsâmân
(butler) were long in despair of being able to give us any dinner at
all. At last we managed to get a tent, closed at every crevice to
keep out the dust, for a cook-room; and they were thus able to
preserve their master's credit, which, no doubt, according to their
notions, depended altogether on the quality of his dinner.
Notes:
1. The place is a small town in the Gurgâon District, Panjâb.
2. The term 'uncovenanted' may require explanation for readers not
familiar with the details of Indian administration. The Civil Service
of India, commonly called Indian Civil Service, which supplies most
of the higher administrative and judicial officers, used to be known
as the Covenanted service, because its members sign a covenant with
the Secretary of State. All the other departmental services--Public
Works, Postal and the rest--were grouped together as uncovenanted. In
accordance with the Report of the Public Service Commission (1886-7)
the terms 'covenanted' and 'uncovenanted' have been disused.
3. The text refers to what was known as the 'customs hedge'. Before
the establishment of the British supremacy each of the innumerable
native jurisdictions levied transit duties on many kinds of goods at
each of its frontiers, to the infinite vexation of traders. Such
duties were gradually abolished in British territory, and few, if
any, are now enforced by native states. Salt cannot be manufactured
in British India without a licence, and the Salt (formerly called
Inland Customs) Department is charged with the duty of preventing the
manufacture or sale of illicit salt. In its later developments the
Customs hedge was used for the collection of the salt duty only. Sir
John Strachey took a leading part in its abolition. To secure the
levy of the duty on salt, he writes, 'there grew up gradually a
monstrous system, to which it would be almost impossible to find a
parallel in any tolerably civilized country. A Customs line was
established which stretched across the whole of India, which in 1869
extended from the Indus to the Mahânadî in Madras, a distance of
2,300 miles; and it was guarded by nearly 12,000 men and petty
officers, at an annual cost of £162,000. It would have stretched from
London to Constantinople. . . . It consisted principally of an
immense impenetrable hedge of thorny trees and bushes . . . A similar
line, 280 miles in length, was maintained in the north-eastern part
of the Bombay Presidency from Dohud to the Runn of Cutch.' In 1878
the salt duties were revised, and the necessary arrangements with the
native states were made. With effect from the 1st April, 1879, the
whole Customs line was abolished, with the exception of a small
portion on the Indus. (Sir J. Strachey, _The Finances and Public
Works of India_, 1869-81, London, 1882, pp. 219, 220, 225.) Great
mines of rock salt are worked near the Indus.
4. Most people who know India intimately are of opinion that indirect
taxation is more suitable to the circumstances of the country than
direct taxation. For municipal purposes, indirect taxation, under the
name of octroi, is levied by most considerable towns, and
notwithstanding its inconveniences, is far less unpopular and far
more productive than any form of direct taxation. The people have
been accustomed to indirect taxation of divers kinds from the most
remote times, and hate income tax or any other direct impost, however
reasonable it may be in theory. Since 1895 the general customs duty
is 5 per cent. _ad valorem_ on commodities imported into British
India by sea. (See _I.G._, 1907, vol. iv, chapter 8). The above
remarks on the suitability of indirect taxation for India are not
intended as a defence of the barbarous device of the 'Customs hedge',
which was indefensible.
5. That unsound System prevailed in all departments during the early
years of the nineteenth century. 'In Bengal, the monopoly of salt in
one form or other dates at least from the establishment of the Board
of Trade there in 1765. The strict monopoly of salt commenced in
1780, under a System of agencies. The System introduced in 1780
continued in force with occasional modifications till 1862, when the
several salt agencies were gradually abolished, leaving the Supply of
salt, whether by importations or excise manufacture, to private
enterprise. Since then, for Bengal Proper, the supply of the
condiment has been obtained chiefly by importation, but in part by
private manufacture under a System of excise.' (Balfour,
_Cyclopaedia_, 3rd ed., s.v. Salt.) At present the Salt Department is
controlled by a single Commissioner with the Government of India, The
fee payable for a licence to manufacture salt is fifty rupees. It is
inaccurate to describe the limitation imposed on the manufacture of
salt as a monopoly. Any one can sell salt, but it can be made only
under licence.
6. The author.
7. The same observations, _mutatis mutandis_, are applicable to the
magistracy of the country; and the remedy for all the great existing
evils must be sought in the same means, the interposition of a body
of efficient officers between the magistrate and the 'thânadârs', or
present head police officers of small divisions. [W. H. S.] Much has
been done to carry out this advice. The 'most efficient officers' of
the inland Customs department alluded to in the text were the
European or Eurasian 'uncovenanted' Collectors of Customs and their
assistants. The allusion to Prince Husain and Prince Alî refers to
the well-known tale in the _Arabian Nights_, 'The story of Prince
Ahmad and the Fairy Peri-Banu'. It is omitted, I believe, from Lane's
version.
CHAPTER 61
Peasantry of India attached to no existing Government--Want of Trees
in Upper India [1]--Cause and Consequence--Wells and Groves.
What strikes one most after crossing the Chambal is, I think, the
improved size and bearing of the men; they are much stouter, and more
bold and manly, without being at all less respectful. They are
certainly a noble peasantry, full of courage, spirit, and
intelligence; and heartily do I wish that we could adopt any system
that would give our Government a deep root in their affections, or
link their interests inseparably with its prosperity; for, with all
its defects, life, property, and character are certainly more secure,
and all their advantages more freely enjoyed under our Government
than under any other they have ever heard of, or that exists at
present in any other part of the country. The eternal subdivision of
the landed property reduces them too much to one common level, and
prevents the formation of that middle class which is the basis of all
that is great and good in European societies--the great vivifying
spirit which animates all that is good above it in the community.[2]
It is a singular fact that the peasantry, and, I may say, the landed
interest of the country generally, have never been the friends of any
existing government, have never considered their interests and that
of their government the same; and, consequently, have never felt any
desire for its success or its duration.[3]
The towns and villages all stand upon high mounds formed of the
debris of former towns and villages, that have been accumulating,
most of them, for thousands of years. They are for the most part mere
collections of wretched hovels built of frail materials, and destined
only for a brief period.
Man wants but little here below,
Nor wants that little long.[4]
And certainly there is no climate in the world where man wants less
than in this of India generally, and Upper India particularly. The
peasant lives in the open air; and a house to him is merely a thing
to eat and sleep in, and to give him shelter in the storm, which
comes upon him but seldom, and never in a pitiless shape. The society
of his friends he enjoys in the open air, and he never furnishes his
house for their reception or for display. The peasantry of India, in
consequence of living and talking so much in the open air, have all
stentorian voices, which they find it exceedingly difficult to
modulate to our taste when they come into our rooms.
Another thing in this part of India strikes a traveller from other
parts--the want of groves of fruit-trees around the villages and
along the roads. In every other part of India he can at every stage
have his tents pitched in a grove of mango-trees, that defend his
followers from the direct rays of the sun in the daytime, and from
the cold dews at night; but in the district above Agra, he may go for
ten marches without getting the shelter of a grove in one.[5] The
Sikhs, the Marâthâs, the Jâts, and the Pathâns destroyed them all
during the disorders attending the decline of the Muhammadan empire;
and they have never been renewed, because no man could feel secure
that they would be suffered to stand ten years. A Hindoo believes
that his soul in the next world is benefited by the blessings and
grateful feelings of those of his fellow creatures who unmolested eat
the fruit and enjoy the shade of the trees he has planted during his
sojourn in this world; and, unless he can feel assured that the
traveller and the public in general will be permitted to do so, he
can have no hope of any permanent benefit from his good work. It
might as well be cut down as pass into the hands of another person
who had no feeling of interest in the eternal repose of the soul of
the planter. That person would himself have no advantage in the next
world from giving the fruit and the shade of the trees to the public,
since the prayers of those who enjoyed them would be offered for the
soul of the planter, and not for his--he, therefore, takes all their
advantage to himself in this world, and the planter and the public
are defrauded. Our Government thought they had done enough to
encourage the renewal of these groves, when by a regulation they gave
to the present lessees of villages the privilege of planting them
themselves, or permitting others to plant them; but where they held
their leases for a term of only five years, of course they would be
unwilling to plant them. They might lose their lease when the term
expired, or forfeit it before; and the successor would have the land
on which the trees stood, and would be able to exclude the public, if
not the proprietor, from the enjoyment of any of their advantages.
Our Government has, in effect, during the thirty-five years that it
has held the dominion of the North-Western Provinces,[6] prohibited
the planting of mango groves, while the old ones are every year
disappearing. On the resumption of rent-free lands, even the ground
on which the finest of these groves stand has been recklessly
resumed, and the proprietors told me that they may keep the trees
they have, but cannot be allowed to renew them, as the lands are
become the property of Government. The lands of groves that have been
the pride of families for a century and a half have been thus
resumed. Government is not aware of the irreparable mischief they do
the country they govern by such measures.[7]
On my way back from Meerut, after the conversation already related
with the farmer of a small village (_ante_, chapter 58, text at [7]),
my tents were one day pitched, in the month of December, amidst some
very fine garden cultivation in the district of Alîgarh;[8] and in
the evening I walked out as usual to have some talk with the
peasantry. I came to a neighbouring well at which four pair of
bullocks were employed watering the surrounding fields of wheat for
the market, and vegetables for the families of the cultivators. Four
men were employed at the well, and two more in guiding the water into
the little embanked squares into which they divide their fields.
I soon discovered that the most intelligent of the four was a Jât;
and I had a good deal of conversation with him as he stood landing
the leather buckets, as the two pair of bullocks on his side of the
well drew them to the top, a distance of forty cubits from the
surface of the water beneath.
'Who built this well?' I began.
'It was built by one of my ancestors, six generations ago.'
'How much longer will it last?'
'Ten generations more, I hope; for it is now just as good as when
first made. It is of 'pakkâ' bricks without mortar cement.'[9]
'How many waterings do you give?'
'If there should be no rain, we shall require to give the land six
waterings, as the water is sweet; had it been brackish four would do.
Brackish water is better for wheat than sweet water; but it is not so
good for vegetables or sugar-cane.'
'How many "bîghâs" are watered from this well?'
'We water twenty "bîghâs", or one hundred and five "jarîbs", from
this well.'[10]
'And you pay the Government how much?'
'One hundred rupees, at the rate of five rupees the bîghâ. But only
the five immediately around the well are mine, the rest belong to
others.'
'But the well belongs to you; and I suppose you get from the
proprietors of the other fifteen something for your water?'
'Nothing. There is more water for my five bîghâs, and I give them
what they require gratis; they acknowledge that it is a gift from me,
and that is all I want.'
'And what does the land beyond the range of your water of the same
quality pay?'
'It pays at the rate of two rupees the bîghâ, and it is with
difficulty that they can be made to pay that. Water, sir, is a great
thing, and with that and manure we get good crops from the land.'[11]
'How many returns of the seed?'
'From these twenty bîghâs with six waterings, and cross ploughing,
and good manure, we contrive to get twenty returns; that is, if God
is pleased with us and blesses our efforts.'
'And you maintain your family comfortably out of the return from your
five?'
'If they were mine I could; but we had two or three bad seasons seven
years ago, and I was obliged to borrow eighty rupees from our banker
at 24 per cent., for the subsistence of my family. I have hardly been
able to pay him the interest with all I can earn by my labour, and I
now serve him upon two rupees a month.'
'But that is not enough to maintain you and your family?'
'No; but he only requires my services for half the day, and during
the other half I work with others to get enough for them.'
'And when do you expect to pay off your debt?'
'God only knows; if I exert myself, and keep a good "nîyat" (pure
mind or intentions), he will enable me or my children to do so some
day or other. In the meantime he has my five bîghâs of land in
mortgage, and I serve him in the cultivation.'
'But under those misfortunes, you could surely venture to demand
something from the proprietors of the other fifteen bîghâs for the
water of your well?'
'Never, sir; it would be said all over the country that such an one
sold God's water for his neighbours' fields, and I should be ashamed
to show my face. Though poor, and obliged to work hard, and serve
others, I have still too much pride for that.'
'How many bullocks are required for the tillage of these twenty
bîghâs watered from your well?'
'These eight bullocks do all the work; they are dear now. This was
purchased the other day on the death of the old one, for twenty-six
rupees. They cost about fifty rupees a pair--the late famine has made
them dear.'[12]
'What did the well cost in making?'
'I have heard that it cost about one hundred and twenty rupees; it
would cost about that sum to make one of this kind in the present
day, not more.'
'How long have the families of your caste been settled in these
parts?'
'About six or seven generations; the country had before been occupied
by a peasantry of the Kalâr caste. Our ancestors came, built up mud
fortifications, dug wells, and brought the country under cultivation;
it had been reduced to a waste; for a long time we were obliged to
follow the plough with our swords by our sides, and our friends
around us with their matchlocks in their hand, and their matches
lighted.'
'Did the water in your well fail during the late seasons of drought?'
'No, sir, the water of this well never fails.'
'Then how did bad seasons affect you?'
'My bullocks all died one after the other from want of fodder, and I
had not the means to till my lands; subsistence became dear, and to
maintain my family, I was obliged to contract the debt for which my
lands are now mortgaged. I work hard to get them back, and, if I do
not succeed, my children will, I hope, with the blessing of God.'[13]
The next morning I went on to Kâkâ, fifteen miles; and finding tents,
people, and cattle, without a tree to shelter them, I was much
pleased to see in my neighbourhood a plantation of mango and other
fruit-trees. It had, I was told, been planted only three years ago by
Hîrâman and Môtîrâm, and I sent for them, knowing that they would be
pleased to have their good work noticed by any European gentleman.
The trees are now covered with cones of thatch to shelter them from
the frost. The merchants came, evidently much pleased, and I had a
good deal of talk with them.
'Who planted this new grove?'
'We planted it three years ago.'
'What did your well cost you, and how many trees have you?'
'We have about four hundred trees, and the well has cost us two
hundred rupees, and will cost us two hundred more.'
'How long will you require to water them?'
'We shall require to water the mango and other large trees ten or
twelve years; but the orange, pomegranate, and other small trees will
always require watering.'
'What quantity of ground do the trees occupy?'
'They occupy twenty-two "bîghâs" of one hundred and five "jarîbs". We
place them all twelve yards from each other, that is, the large
trees; and the small ones we plant between them.'
'How did you get the land?'
'We were many years trying in vain to get a grant from the Government
through the collector; at last we got him to certify on paper that,
if the landholder would give us land to plant our grove upon, the
Government would have no objection. We induced the landholder, who is
a constituent of ours, to grant us the land; and we made our well,
and planted our trees.'
'You have done a good thing; what reward do you expect?'
'We hope that those who enjoy the shade, the water, and the fruit,
will think kindly of us when they are gone. The names of the great
men who built the castles, palaces, and tombs at Delhi and Agra have
been almost all forgotten, because no one enjoys any advantage from
them; but the names of those who planted the few mango groves we see
are still remembered and blessed by all who eat of their fruit, sit
in their shade, and drink of their water, from whatever part of the
world they come. Even the European gentlemen remember their names
with kindness; indeed, it was at the suggestion of a European
gentleman, who was passing this place many years ago, and talking
with us as you are now, that we commenced this grove. "Look over this
plain," said he, "it has been all denuded of the fine groves with
which it was, no doubt, once studded; though it is tolerably well
cultivated, the traveller finds no shelter in it from the noonday
sun--even the birds seem to have deserted you, because you refuse
them the habitations they find in other parts of India." We told him
that we would have the grove planted, and we have done so; and we
hope God will bless our undertaking.'
'The difficulty of getting land is, I suppose, the reason why more
groves are not planted, now that property is secure?'
'How could men plant without feeling secure of the land they planted
upon, and when Government would not guarantee it? The landholder
could guarantee it only during the five years of lease;[14] and, if
at the end of that time Government should transfer the lease of the
estate to another, the land of the grove would be transferred with
it. We plant not for worldly or immediate profits, but for the
benefit of our souls in the next world--for the prayers of those who
may derive benefit from our works when we are gone. Our landholders
are good men, and will never resume the lands they have given us; and
if the lands be sold at auction by Government, or transferred to
others, we hope the certificate of the collector will protect us from
his grasp.'[15]
'You like your present Government, do you not?'
'We like it much. There has never been a Government that gave so much
security to life and property; all we want is a little more of public
service, and a little more of trade; but we have no cause to
complain; it is our own fault if we are not happy.'
'But I have been told that the people find the returns from the soil
diminishing, and attribute it to the perjury that takes place in our
courts occasionally.'
'That, sir, is no doubt true; there has been a manifest falling off
in the returns; and people everywhere think that you make too much
use of the Korân and the Ganges water in your courts. God does not
like to hear lies told upon one or other, and we are apt to think
that we are all punished for the sins of those who tell them. May we
ask, sir, what office you hold?'
'It is my office to do the work which God assigns to me in this
world.'
'The work of God, sir, is the greatest of all works, and those are
fortunate who are chosen to do it.'
Their respect for me evidently increased when they took me for a
clergyman. I was dressed in black.
'In the first place, it is my duty to tell you that God does not
punish the innocent for the guilty, and that the perjury in courts
has nothing to do with the diminution of returns from the soil. Where
you apply water and manure, and alternate your crops, you always get
good returns, do you not?'
'Very good returns; but we have had several bad seasons that have
carried away the greater part of our population; but a small portion
of our lands can be irrigated for want of wells, and we had no rain
for two or three years, or hardly any in due season; and it was this
deficiency of rain which the people thought a chastisement from
heaven.'
'But the wells were not dried up, were they?'
'No.'
'And the people whose fields they watered had good returns, and high
prices for produce?'
'Yes, they had; but their cattle died for want of food, for there was
no grass any where to be found.'
'Still they were better off than those who had no wells to draw water
from for their fields; and the only way to provide against such evils
in future is to have a well for every field. God has given you the
fields, and he has given you the water; and when it does not come
from the clouds, you must draw it from your wells.'[16]
'True, sir, very true; but the people are very poor, and have not the
means to form the wells they require.'
'And if they borrow the money from you, you charge them with
interest?'
'From one to two per cent. a month according to their character and
circumstances; but interest is very often merely nominal, and we are
in most cases glad to get back the principal alone.'[17]
'And what security have you for the land of your grove in case the
landholder should change his mind, or die and leave sons not so well
disposed.'
'In the first place, we hold his bonds for a debt of nine thousand
rupees which he owes us, and which we have no hopes of his ever
paying. In the next, we have on stamped paper his deed of gift, in
which he declares that he has given us the land, and that he and his
heirs for ever shall be bound to make good the rents, should
Government sell the estate for arrears of revenue. We wanted him to
write this document in the regular form of a deed of sale; but he
said that none of his ancestors had ever yet sold their lands, and
that he would not be the first to disgrace his family, or record
their disgrace on stamped paper--it should, he was resolved, be a
deed of gift.'
'But, of course, you prevailed upon him to take the price?'
'Yes, we prevailed upon him to take two hundred rupees for the land,
and got his receipt for the same; indeed, it is so mentioned in the
deed of gift; but still the landlord, who is a near relation of the
late chief of Hatrâs, would persist in having the paper made out as a
deed, not of sale, but of gift. God knows whether, after all, our
grove will be secure--we must run the risk now we have begun upon
it.'
Notes:
1. This phrase is misleading. There is no want of trees in Upper
India generally; only certain limited areas are ill wooded. Most of
the districts in the plains of the Ganges and Jumna are well wooded.
2. This is a favourite doctrine of the author, often reiterated. The
absence of a powerful middle class is a characteristic, not of India
only, but of all Oriental despotisms, and the subdivision of landed
property is only one of the causes of the non-existence of such a
class.
3. This is quite true. The rural population want two things, first a
light assessment, secondly the minimum of official interference, They
do not care a straw who the ruler is, and they like best that ruler,
be his name or nationality what it may, who worries them least, and
takes least money from them.
4. Goldsmith, 'The Hermit' (in chapter 8 of _The Vicar of
Wakefield_).
5. Groves are still scarce in the Agra country, but much planting has
been done on the roads.
6. Gorakhpur, Azamgarh, and some other districts, forming half of the
old province of Oudh, ceded by the ruler of Oudh in 1801, were long
known as the Ceded Provinces. The western districts of the North-
Western Provinces, known as the Conquered Provinces, were taken from
the Marâthâs in 1803-5. The Province of Benares became British
territory in 1775. The hill districts of the Kumaun Division were
annexed in 1816, at the close of the war with Nepal. All the regions
named are now included in the Agra Province of the United Provinces
of Agra and Oudh, in which the editor served for twenty-nine years.
7. The author's remarks are not readily intelligible to readers
unversed in the technicalities of Indian revenue administration. The
author writes on the assumption that Government was the proprietor of
the soil. While he was writing, the settlements under Regulation IX
of 1833 were in progress. Those settlements, or revenue contracts,
were ordinarily sanctioned for periods of thirty years, and the
landholders, whom the author calls 'lessees', have gradually changed
into 'proprietors', with full power over their land, subject only to
the State lien for the 'land revenue' (Crown rent, or State share of
the produce), and to the laws of inheritance and succession. The
'resumption of rent-free lands' simply means the subjection of those
lands to the payment of 'land revenue'. It is inaccurate to say that
the lands are become 'the property of Government' by reason of their
being assessed. Even when land generally was regarded as the property
of the State, and the landholders were considered to be only lessees,
no objection would have been made to the planting of groves if
payment of the 'land revenue' had been continued for the planted area
as for cultivated land. Now that landholders have been recognized as
proprietors, there is nothing to prevent them from planting as much
land as they like with trees, although the State has not always been
willing to exempt the whole planted area from assessment. No one ever
objected to the renewal of trees except on the ground that the area
under trees might be excluded from assessment. For many years past
the Government of India has been most anxious to encourage tree-
planting, and has sanctioned liberal rules respecting the exemption
of grove land from assessment to 'land revenue', or 'rent', as the
author calls it. The Government of the United Provinces certainly is
not now liable to reproach for indifference to the value of groves.
Enormous progress in the planting of road avenues has also been made.
The deficiency of trees in the country about Agra is partly due to
nature, much of the ground being cut up by ravines, and unfavourable
for planting.
8. The Alîgarh district lies to the north and east of the Mathurâ
district. The fort of Alîgarh is fifty-five miles north of Agra, and
eighty-four miles south-east of Delhi.
9. 'pakkâ' here means 'burned in a kiln', as distinguished from 'sun-
dried'.
10. The 'bîghâ' is the unit of superficial land measure, varying, but
often taken as five-eighths of an acre. The 'jarîb' is a smaller
measure.
11. The rules now in force require assessing officers to make
allowance for permanent improvements, such as the well described in
the text, so as to give the fair benefit of the improvement to the
maker. In the early settlements this important matter was commonly
neglected.
12. Tolerable bullocks, fit for use at the well and in the plough,
would now cost much more. This conversation appears to have taken
place in the year 1839, The famine alluded to is that of 1837-8.
13. This conversation gives a very vivid and truthful picture of
rural life in Northern India. Most revenue officers have held similar
conversations with rustics, but the author is almost the only writer
on Indian affairs who has perceived that exact notes of casual chats
in the fields would be found interesting and valuable.
14. The early settlements were made for short terms.
15. The certificate would not be of much avail in a civil court.
16. The Alîgarh district is now irrigated by canals.
17. This is the lender's view of his business; the borrowers might
have a different story.
CHAPTER 62
Public Spirit of the Hindoos--Tree Cultivation and Suggestions for
extending it.
I may here be permitted to introduce as something germane to the
matter of the foregoing chapter a recollection of Jubbulpore,
although we are now far past that locality.
My tents are pitched where they have often been before, on the verge
of a very large and beautiful tank in a fine grove of mango-trees,
and close to a handsome temple. There are more handsome temples and
buildings for accommodation on the other side of the tank, but they
are gone sadly out of repair. The bank all round this noble tank is
beautifully ornamented by fine banyan and pîpal trees, between which
and the water's edge intervene numerous clusters of the graceful
bamboo. These works were formed about eighty years ago by a
respectable agricultural capitalist who resided at this place, and
died about twenty years after they were completed. No relation of his
can now be found in the district, and not one in a thousand of those
who drink of the water or eat of the fruit knows to whom he is
indebted. There are round the place some beautiful 'bâolîs', or large
wells with flights of stone steps from the top to the water's edge,
imbedded in clusters of beautiful trees. They were formed about the
same time for the use of the public by men whose grandchildren have
descended to the grade of cultivators of the soil, or belted
attendants upon the present native collectors, without the means of
repairing any of the injury which time is inflicting upon these
magnificent works. Three or four young pîpal-trees have begun to
spread their delicate branches and pale green leaves rustling in the
breeze from the dome of this fine temple; which these infant
Herculeses hold in their deadly grasp and doom to inevitable
destruction. Pigeons deposit the seeds of the pîpal-tree, on which
they chiefly feed, in the crevices of buildings.
No Hindoo dares, and no Christian or Muhammadan will condescend, to
lop off the heads of these young trees, and if they did, it would
only put off the evil and inevitable day; for such are the vital
powers of their roots, when they have once penetrated deeply into a
building, that they will send out their branches again, cut them off
as often as you may, and carry on their internal attack with
undiminished vigour.[1] No wonder that superstition should have
consecrated this tree, delicate and beautiful as it is, to the gods.
The palace, the castle, the temple, and the tomb, all those works
which man is most proud to raise to spread and to perpetuate his
name, crumble to dust beneath her withering grasp. She rises
triumphant over them all in her lofty beauty, bearing high in air
amidst her light green foliage fragments of the wreck she has made,
to show the nothingness of man's greatest efforts.
While sitting at my tent-door looking out upon this beautiful sheet
of water, and upon all the noble works around me, I thought of the
charge, so often made against the people of this fine land, of the
total want of _public spirit_ among them, by those who have spent
their Indian days in the busy courts of law, and still more busy
commercial establishments of our great metropolis.
If by the term public spirit be meant a disposition on the part of
individuals to sacrifice their own enjoyments, or their own means of
enjoyment for the common good, there is perhaps no people in the
world among whom it abounds so much as among the people of India. To
live in the grateful recollections of their countrymen for benefits
conferred upon them in great works of ornament and utility is the
study of every Hindoo of rank and property.[2] Such works tend, in
his opinion, not only to spread and perpetuate his name in this
world, but, through the good wishes and prayers of those who are
benefited by them, to secure the favour of the Deity in the next.
According to their notions, every drop of rain-water or dew that
falls to the ground from the green leaf of a fruit-tree, planted by
them for the common good, proves a refreshing draught for their souls
in the next [world]. When no descendant remains to pour the funeral
libations in their name, the water from the trees they have planted
for the public good is destined to supply its place. Everything
judiciously laid out to promote the happiness of their fellow
creatures will in the next world be repaid to them tenfold by the
Deity.
In marching over the country in the hot season, we every morning find
our tents pitched on the green sward amid beautiful groves of fruit-
trees, with wells of 'pakkâ' (brick or stone) masonry, built at great
expense, and containing the most delicious water; but how few of us
ever dream of asking at whose cost the trees that afford us and our
followers such agreeable shade were planted, or the wells that afford
us such copious streams of fine water in the midst of dry, arid
plains were formed! We go on enjoying all the advantages which arise
from the _noble public spirit_ that animates the people of India to
benevolent exertions, without once calling in question the truth of
the assertion of our metropolitan friends that 'the people of India
have no public spirit'.
Mânmôr, a respectable merchant of Mirzapore, who traded chiefly in
bringing cotton from the valley of the Nerbudda and Southern India
through Jubbulpore to Mirzapore, and in carrying back sugar and
spices in return, learning how much travellers on this great road
suffered from the want of water near the Hiliyâ pass, under the
Vindhya range of hills, commenced a work to remedy the evil in 1822.
Not a drop of wholesome water was to be found within ten miles of the
bottom of the pass, where the laden bullocks were obliged to rest
during the hot months, when the greatest thoroughfare always took
place. Mânmôr commenced a large tank and garden, and had laid out
about twenty thousand rupees in the work, when he died. His son, Lalû
Mânmôr, completed the work soon after his father's death, at a cost
of eighty thousand rupees more, that travellers might enjoy all the
advantages that his good old father had benevolently intended for
them. The tank is very large, always full of fine water even in the
driest part of the dry season, with flights of steps of cut freestone
from the water's edge to the top all round. A fine garden and
shrubbery, with temples and buildings for accommodations, are
attached, with an establishment of people to attend and keep them in
order.[3]
All the country around this magnificent work was a dreary solitude--
there was not a human habitation within many miles on any side. Tens
of thousands who passed this road every year were blessing the name
of the man who had created it where it was so much wanted, when the
new road from the Nerbudda to Mirzapore was made by the British
Government to descend some ten miles to the north of it. As many
miles were saved in the distance by the new cut, and the passage down
made comparatively easy at great cost, travellers forsook the Hiliyâ
road, and poor Mânmôr's work became comparatively useless. I brought
the work to the notice of Lord William Bentinck, who, in passing
Mirzapore some time after, sent for the son, and conferred upon him a
rich dress of honour, of which he has ever since been extremely
proud.[4]
Hundreds of works like this are undertaken every year for the benefit
of the public by benevolent and unostentatious individuals, who look
for their reward, not in the applause of newspapers and public
meetings, but in the grateful prayers and good wishes of those who
are benefited by them; and in the favour of the Deity in the next
world, for benefits conferred upon his creatures in this.[5]
What the people of India want is not public spirit, for no men in the
world have more of it than the Hindoos, but a disposition on the part
of private individuals to combine their efforts and means in
effecting great objects for the public good. With this disposition
they will be, in time, inspired under our rule, when the enemies of
all settled governments may permit us to divert a little of our
intellect and our revenue from the duties of war to those of
peace.[6]
In the year 1829, while I held the civil charge of the district of
Jubbulpore, in this valley of the Nerbudda, I caused an estimate to
be made of the public works of utility and ornament it contained. The
population of the district at that time amounted to 500,000 souls,
distributed among 4,053 occupied towns, villages, and hamlets. There
were 1,000 villages more which had formerly been occupied, but were
then deserted. There were 2,288 tanks, 209 'bâolîs', or large wells
with flights of steps extending from the top down to the water when
in its lowest stage; 1,560 wells lined with brick and stone, cemented
with lime, but without stairs; 860 Hindoo temples, and 22 Muhammadan
mosques. The estimated cost of these works in grain at the present
price, had the labour been paid in kind at the ordinary rate, was
R86,66,043 (866,604 pounds sterling).[7]
The labourer was estimated to be paid at the rate of about two-thirds
the quantity of corn he would get in England if paid in kind, and
corn sells here at about one-third the price it fetches in average
seasons in England. In Europe, therefore, these works, supposing the
labour equally efficient, would have cost at least four times the sum
here estimated; and such works formed by private individuals for the
public good, without any view whatever to return in profits, indicate
a very high degree of _public spirit_.
The whole annual rent of the lands of this district amounts to
R650,000 (65,000 pounds sterling), that is, 500,000 demandable by the
Government, and 150,000 by those who hold the lands at lease
immediately under Government, over and above what may be considered
as the profits of their stock as farmers. These works must,
therefore, have cost about thirteen times the amount of the annual
rent of the whole of the lands of the district, or the whole annual
rent for above thirteen years.[8]
But I have not included the groves of mango and tamarind, and other
fine trees with which the district abounds. Two-thirds of the towns
and villages are imbedded in fine groves of these trees, mixed with
the banyan (_Ficus Indica_) and the pîpal (_Ficus religiosa_). I am
sorry they were not numbered; but I should estimate them at three
thousand, and the outlay upon a mango grove is, on an average, about
four hundred rupees.
The groves of fruit-trees planted by individuals for the use of the
public, without any view to a return in profit, would in this
district, according to this estimate, have cost twelve lâkhs
[12,00,000] more, or about twice the amount of the annual rent of the
whole of the lands. It should be remarked that the whole of these
works had been formed under former governments. Ours was established
in the year 1817.[9]
The Upper Doâb and the Delhi Territories were denuded of their trees
in the wars that attended the decline and fall of the Muhammadan
empire, and the rise and progress of the Sikhs, Jâts, and Marâthâs in
that quarter. These lawless freebooters soon swept all the groves
from the face of every country they occupied with their troops, and
they never attempted to renew them or encourage the renewal. We have
not been much more sparing; and the finest groves of fruit-trees have
everywhere been recklessly swept down by our barrack-masters to
furnish fuel for their brick-kilns; and I am afraid little or no
encouragement is given for planting others to supply their place in
those parts of India where they are most wanted.
We have a regulation authorizing the lessee of a village to plant a
grove in his grounds, but where the settlements of the land-revenue
have been for short periods, as in all Upper and Central India, this
authority is by no means sufficient to induce them to invest their
property in such works. It gives no sufficient guarantee that the
lessee for the next settlement shall respect a grant made by his
predecessors; and every grove of mango-trees requires outlay and care
for at least ten years. Though a man destines the fruit, the shade,
and the water for the use of the public, he requires to feel that it
will be held for the public in his name, and by his children and
descendants, and never be exclusively appropriated by any man in
power for his own use.
If the lands were still to belong to the lessee of the estate under
Government, and the trees only to the planter and his heirs, he to
whom the land belonged might very soon render the property in the
trees of no value to the planter or his heirs.[10]
If Government wishes the Upper Doâb, the Delhi, Mathurâ, and Agra
districts again enriched and embellished with mango groves, they will
not delay to convey this feeling to the hundreds, nay, thousands, who
would be willing to plant them upon a single guarantee that the lands
upon which the trees stand shall be considered to belong to them and
their heirs as long as these trees stand upon them.[11] That the
land, the shade, the fruit, and the water will be left to the free
enjoyment of the public we may take for granted, since the good which
the planter's soul is to derive from such a work in the next world
must depend upon their being so; and all that is required to be
stipulated in such grants is that mango tamarind, pîpal, or 'bar'
(i.e. banyan) trees, at the rate of twenty-five the English acre,
shall be planted and kept up in every piece of land granted for the
purpose; and that a well of 'pakkâ' masonry shall be made for the
purpose of watering them, in the smallest, as well as in the largest,
piece of ground granted, and kept always in repair.
If the grantee fulfil the conditions, he ought, in order to cover
part of the expense, to be permitted to till the land under the trees
till they grow to maturity and yield their fruit; if he fails, the
lands, having been declared liable to resumption, should be resumed.
The person soliciting such grants should be required to certify in
his application that he had already obtained the sanction of the
present lessee of the village in which he wishes to have his grove,
and for this sanction he would, of course, have to pay the full value
of the land for the period of his lease. When his lease expires, the
land in which the grove is planted would be excluded from the
assessment; and when it is considered that every good grove must cost
the planter more than fifty times the annual rent of the land,
Government may be satisfied that they secure the advantage to their
people at a very cheap rate.[12]
Over and above the advantage of fruit, water, and shade for the
public, these groves tend much to secure the districts that are well
studded with them from the dreadful calamities that in India always
attend upon deficient falls of rain in due season. They attract the
clouds, and make them deposit their stores in districts that would
not otherwise be blessed with them; and hot and dry countries denuded
of their trees, and by that means deprived of a great portion of that
moisture to which they had been accustomed, and which they require to
support vegetation, soon become dreary and arid wastes. The lighter
particles, which formed the richest portion of their soil, blow off,
and leave only the heavy arenaceous portion; and hence, perhaps,
those sandy deserts in which are often to be found the signs of a
population once very dense.
In the Mauritius, the rivers were found to be diminishing under the
rapid disappearance of the woods in the interior, when Government had
recourse to the measure of preventing further depredations, and they
soon recovered their size.
The clouds brought up from the southern ocean by the south-east trade
wind are attracted, as they pass over the island, by the forests in
the interior, and made to drop their stores in daily refreshing
showers. In many other parts of the world governments have now become
aware of this mysterious provision of nature; and have adopted
measures to take advantage of it for the benefit of the people; and
the dreadful sufferings to which the people of those of our
districts, which have been the most denuded of their trees, have been
of late years exposed from the want of rain in due season, may,
perhaps, induce our Indian Government to turn its thoughts to the
subject.[13]
The province of Mâlwâ, which is bordered by the Nerbudda on the
south, Gujarât on the west, Râjputâna on the north, and Allahabad on
the east, is said never to have been visited by a famine; and this
exemption from so great a calamity must arise chiefly from its being
so well studded with hills and groves. The natives have a couplet,
which, like all good couplets on rural subjects, is attributed to
Sahadêo, one of the five demigod brothers of the Mahâbhârata, to this
effect: 'If it does not thunder on such a night, you, father, must go
to Mâlwâ, and I to Gujarât', meaning, 'The rains will fail us here,
and we must go to those quarters where they never fail'[14]
Notes:
1. The Archaeological Survey is engaged in unceasing battle with the
pîpal seedlings.
2. This proposition is too general.
3. The Hiliyâ, or Haliyâ, Pass is near the town of the same name in
the Mirzâpur district, thirty-one miles south-west of Mirzâpur. A
bilingual inscription, in English and Hindî, on a large slab on the
bank of the river, records the capture of the fort of Bhôpârî in 1811
by the 21st Regiment Native Infantry. The tank described in the text
is at Dibhôr, twelve miles south of Haliyâ, and is 430 feet long by
352 broad. The full name of the builder is Srîmân Nâyak Mânmôr, who
was the head of the Banjâra merchants of Mirzâpur. The inscription on
his temple is dated 23 February, 1825, A.D. 'I suppose', remarks
Cunningham, 'that the vagrant instinct of the old Banjâra preferred a
jungle site. No doubt he got the ground cheap; and from this vantage
point he was able to supply Mirzâpur with both wood and charcoal.'
(_A.S.R._, vol. xxi, pp. 121-5, pl. xxxi.)
4. The new road passes through the Katrâ Pass. The pass via Dibhôr
and Haliyâ, which the author calls the Hiliyâ Pass, is properly
called the Kerahi (Kerâi) Pass. Both old and new roads are now little
used. The construction of railways has altogether changed the course
of trade, and Cawnpore has risen on the ruins of Mirzâpur. Lalû,
Nâyak's 'grandson, died in comparative obscurity some years ago, and
only a few female relatives remain to represent the family--a
striking example, if one were needed, of the instability of Oriental
fortunes.' (_A.S.R._, vol. xxi, p. 124, quoting _Gazetteer_.)
5. Within a few miles of Gosalpur, at the village of Talwâ, which
stands upon the old high road leading to Mirzapore, is a still more
magnificent tank with one of the most beautiful temples in India, all
executed two or three generations ago at the expense of two or three
lakhs of rupees for the benefit of the public, by a very worthy man,
who became rich in the service of the former Government. His
descendants, all save one, now follow the plough; and that one has a
small rent-free village held on condition of appropriating the rents
to the repair of the tank. [W. H. S.]
The name Talwâ is only the rustic way of pronouncing 'tâl', meaning
the tank. Gosalpur is nineteen miles north-east of Jabalpur. Two or
three lakhs of rupees were then (in eighteenth century) worth about
22,000 pounds to 33,000 pounds sterling.
6. India, except on the frontiers, has been at peace since 1858, and
much revenue has been spent on the duties of peace, but the power of
combination for public objects has developed among the people to a
less degree than the author seems to have expected, though some
development undoubtedly has taken place.
7. In the original edition these statistics are given in words.
Figures have been used in this edition as being more readily grasped.
The _Central Provinces Gazetteer_ (1870) gives the following figures:
Area of district, 4,261 square miles; population, 620,201; villages,
2,707; wells in use, 5,515. The _Gazetteer_ figures apparently
include wells of all kinds, and do not reckon hamlets separately.
Wells are, of course, an absolute necessity, and their construction
could not be avoided in a country occupied by a fixed population. The
number of temples and mosques was very small for so large a
population. Many of the tanks, too, are indispensably necessary for
watering the cattle employed in agriculture. The 'bâolîs' may fairly
be reckoned as the fruit of the public spirit of individuals. This
chapter is a reprint of a paper entitled 'On the Public Spirit of the
Hindoos'. _See_ Bibliography, _ante_, No. 10.
8. The _C.P. Gazetteer_ (1870) states that in 1868-9 the land-revenue
was R5,70,434, as compared with R500,000 in the author's time. It has
since been largely enhanced. The lessees (zamîndârs) have now become
proprietors, and the land-revenue, according to the rule in force for
many years past, should not exceed half the estimated profit rental.
The early settlements were made in accordance with the theory of
native Governments that the land is the property of the State, and
that the lessees are entitled only to subsistence, with a small
percentage as payment for the trouble of collection from the actual
cultivators. The author's estimate gives the zamîndârs only 15/80ths,
or 3/16ths of the profit rental.
9. The people of the Jubbulpore district must have been very
different from those of the rest of India if they planted their
groves solely for the public benefit. The editor has never known the
fruit, not to mention the timber and firewood, of a grove to be
available for the use of the general public. Universal custom allows
all comers to use the shade of any established grove, but the fruit
is always jealousy guarded and gathered by the owners. Even one tree
is often the property of many sharing, and disputes about the
division of mangoes and other fruits are extremely frequent. The
framing of a correct record of rights in trees is one of the most
embarrassing tasks of a revenue officer.
10. Under the modern System it often happens that the land belongs to
one party, and the trees to another. Disputes, of course, occur, but,
as a rule, the rights of the owner of the trees are not interfered
with by the owner of the land. In thousands of such cases both
parties exercise their rights without friction.
11. This sentence shows clearly how remote from the author's mind was
the idea of private property in land in India. Government has long
since parted with the power of giving grants such as the author
recommends. The upper Doâb districts of Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, and
Sahâranpur now have plenty of groves.
12. The cost of establishing a grove varies much according to
circumstances, of which the distance of water from the surface is the
most important. Where water is distant, the cost of constructing and
working a well is very high. Where water is near, these items of
expense are small, because the roots of the trees soon reach a moist
stratum, and can dispense with irrigation.
13. The author, in his appreciation of the value of arboriculture and
forest conservancy, was far in advance of his Anglo-Indian
contemporaries. A modern meteorologist might object to some of his
phraseology, but the substance of his remarks is quite sound. His
statement of the ways in which trees benefit climate is incomplete.
One important function performed by the roots of trees is the raising
of water from the depths below the surface, to be dispersed by the
leaves in the form of vapour. Trees act beneficially in many other
ways also, which it would be tedious to specify.
The Indian Government long remained blind to the importance of the
duty of saving the country from denudation. The first forest
conservancy establishments were organized in 1852 for Madras and
Burma, and, by Act vii of 1865, the Forest Department was established
on a legal basis. Its operations have since been largely extended,
and trained foresters are now sent out each year to India. The
Department at the present time controls many thousand square miles of
forest. The reader may consult the article 'Forests' in Balfour,
_Cyclopaedia_, 3rd ed., and sundry official reports for further
details.
A yearly grant for arboriculture is now made to every district.
Thousands of miles of roads have been lined with trees, and
multitudes of groves have been established by both Government and
private individuals. The author was himself a great tree-planter. In
a letter dated 15th December, 1844, he describes the avenue which he
had planted along the road from Maihar to Jubbulpore in 1829 and
1830, and another, eighty-six miles long, from Jhânsî Ghât on the
Nerbudda to Châka. The trees planted were banyan, pîpal, mango,
tamarind, and jâman (_Eugenia jambolana_). He remarks that these
trees will last for centuries.
14. 'In 1899-1900 Mâlwâ suffered from a severe famine, such as had
not visited this favoured spot for more than thirty years. The people
were unused to, and quite unprepared for, this calamity, the distress
being aggravated by the great influx of immigrants from Râjputâna,
who had hitherto always been sure of relief in this region, of which
the fertility is proverbial. In 1903 a new calamity appeared in the
shape of plague, which has seriously reduced the agricultural
population in some districts' (_I.G._, 1908, xvii. 105).
CHAPTER 63
Cities and Towns, formed by Public Establishments, disappear as
Sovereigns and Governors change their Abodes.
On the 17th and 18th,[1] we went on twenty miles to Palwal,[2] which
stands upon an immense mound, in some places a hundred feet high,
formed entirely of the debris of old buildings. There are an immense
number of fine brick buildings in ruins, but not one of brick or
stone at present inhabited. The place was once evidently under the
former government the seat of some great public establishments,
which, with their followers and dependants, constituted almost the
entire population. The occasion which keeps such establishments at a
place no sooner passes away than the place is deserted and goes to
ruin as a matter of course. Such is the history of Nineveh,
Babylon,[3] and all cities which have owed their origin and support
entirely to the public establishments of the sovereign--any
revolution that changed the seat of government depopulated a city.
Sir Thomas Roe, the ambassador of James the First of England to the
court of Delhi during the reign of Jahângîr, passing through some of
the old capital cities of Western India, then deserted and in ruins,
writes to the Archbishop of Canterbury: 'I know not by what policy
the Emperors seek the ruin of all the ancient cities which were nobly
built, but now be desolate and in rubbish. It must arise from a wish
to destroy all the ancient cities in order that there might appear
nothing great to have existed before their time.'[4] But these
cities, like all which are supported in the same manner, by the
residence of a court and its establishments, become deserted as the
seat of dominion is changed. Nineveh, built by Ninus out of the
spoils he brought back from the wide range of his conquests,
continued to be the residence of the court and the principal seat of
its military establishments for thirteen centuries to the reign of
Sardanapalus. During the whole of this time it was the practice of
the sovereigns to collect from all the provinces of the empire their
respective quotas of troops, and to canton them within the city for
one year, at the expiration of which they were relieved by fresh
troops.' In the last years of Sardanapalus, four provinces of the
empire, Media, Persia, Babylonia, and Arabia, are said to have
furnished a quota of four hundred thousand; and, in the rebellion
which closed his reign, these troops were often beaten by those from
the other provinces of the empire, which could not have been much
less in number. The successful rebel, Arbaces, transferred the court
and his own appendages to its capital, and Nineveh became deserted,
and for more than eighteen centuries lost to the civilized world.[5]
Babylon in the same manner; and Susa, Ecbatana, Persepolis, and
Seleucia, all, one after the other, became deserted as sovereigns
changed their residence, and with it the seats of their public
establishments, which alone supported them. Thus Thebes became
deserted for Memphis, Memphis for Alexandria, and Alexandria for
Cairo, as the sovereigns of Egypt changed theirs; and thus it has
always been in India, where cities have been almost all founded on
the same bases--the residence of princes, and their public
establishments, civil, military, or ecclesiastical.
The city of Kanauj, on the Ganges, when conquered by Mahmûd of
Ghaznî,[6] is stated by the historians of the conqueror to have
contained a standing army of five hundred thousand infantry, with a
due proportion of cavalry and elephants, thirty thousand shops for
the sale of 'pân' alone, and sixty thousand families of opera
girls.[7] The 'pân' dealers and opera girls were part and parcel of
the court and its public establishments, and as much dependent on the
residence of the sovereign as the civil, military, and ecclesiastical
officers who ate their 'pân', and enjoyed their dancing and music;
and this great city no sooner ceased to be the residence of the
sovereign, the great proprietor of all the lands in the country, than
it became deserted.
After the establishment of the Muhammadan dominion in India almost
all the Hindoo cities, within the wide range of their conquest,
became deserted as the necessary consequence, as the military
establishments were all destroyed or disbanded, and the religions
establishments scattered, their lands confiscated, their idols
broken, and their temples either reduced to ruins in the first
ebullition of fanatical zeal, or left deserted and neglected to decay
from want of those revenues by which alone they had been, or could
be, supported.[8] The towns and cities of the Roman empire which owed
their origin to the same cause, the residence of governors and their
legions or other public establishments, resisted similar shocks with
more endurance, because they had most of them ceased to depend upon
the causes in which they originated, and began to rest upon other
bases. When destroyed by wave after wave of barbarian conquest, they
were restored for the most part by the residence of church
dignitaries and their establishments; and the military establishments
of the new order of things, instead of remaining as standing armies
about the courts of princes, dispersed after every campaign like
militia, to enjoy the fruits of the lands assigned for their
maintenance, when alone they could be enjoyed in the rude state to
which society had been reduced--upon the lands themselves.
For some time after the Muhammadan conquest of India, that part of it
which was brought effectually under the new dominion can hardly be
considered to have had more than one city with its dependent towns
and villages;[9] because the emperor chose to concentrate the greater
part of his military establishments around the seat of his residence,
and this great city became deserted whenever he thought it necessary
or convenient to change that seat.
But when the emperor began to govern his distant provinces by
viceroys, he was obliged to confide to them a share of his military
establishments, the only public establishments which a conqueror
thought it worth while to maintain; and while they moved about in
their respective provinces, the imperial camp became fixed. The great
officers of state, enriched by the plunder of conquered provinces,
began to spend their wealth in the construction of magnificent works
for private pleasure or public convenience. In time, the viceroys
began to govern their provinces by means of deputies, who moved about
their respective districts, and enabled their masters, the viceroys
of provinces, to convert their camps into cities, which in
magnificence often rivalled that of the emperor their master. The
deputies themselves in time found that they could govern their
respective districts from a central point; and as their camps became
fixed in the chosen spots, towns of considerable magnitude rose, and
sometimes rivalled the capitals of the viceroys. The Muhammadans had
always a greater taste for architectural magnificence, as well in
their private as in their public edifices, than the Hindoos,[10] who
sought the respect and good wishes of mankind through the medium of
groves and reservoirs diffused over the country for their benefit.
Whenever a Muhammadan camp was converted into a town or city almost
all the means of individuals were spent in the gratification of this
taste. Their wealth in money and movables would be, on their death,
at the mercy of their prince--their offices would be conferred on
strangers; tombs and temples, canals, bridges, and caravanserais,
gratuitously for the public good, would tend to propitiate the Deity,
and conciliate the goodwill of mankind, and might also tend to the
advancement of their children in the service of their sovereign. The
towns and cities which rose upon the sites of the standing camps of
the governors of provinces and districts in India were many of them
as much adorned by private and public edifices as those which rose
upon the standing camps of the Muhammadan conquerors of Spain.[11]
Standing camps converted into towns and cities, it became in time
necessary to fortify with walls against any surprise under any sudden
ebullition among the conquered people; and fortifications and strong
garrisons often suggested to the bold and ambitions governors of
distant provinces attempts to shake off the imperial yoke.[12] That
portion of the annual revenue, which had hitherto flowed in copious
streams of tribute to the imperial capital, was now arrested, and
made to augment the local establishments, adorn the cities, and
enrich the towns of the viceroys, now become the sovereigns of
independent kingdoms. The lieutenant-governors of these new
sovereigns, possessed of fortified towns, in their turn often shook
off the yoke of their masters in the same manner, and became in their
turn the independent sovereigns of their respective districts. The
whole resources of the countries subject to their rule being employed
to strengthen and improve their condition, they soon became rich and
powerful kingdoms, adorned with splendid cities and populous towns,
since the public establishments of the sovereigns, among whom all the
revenues were expended, spent all they received in the purchase of
the produce of the land and labour of the surrounding country, which
required no other market.
Thus the successful rebellion of one viceroy converted Southern India
into an independent kingdom; and the successful rebellion, of his
lieutenant-governors in time divided it into four independent
kingdoms, each with a standing army of a hundred thousand men, and
adorned with towns and cities of great strength and magnificence.[13]
But they continued to depend upon the causes in which they
originated--the public establishments of the sovereign; and when the
Emperor Akbar and his successors, aided by their own [_sic_]
intestine wars, had conquered these sovereigns, and again reduced
their kingdoms to tributary provinces, almost all these cities and
towns became depopulated as the necessary consequence. The public
establishments were again moving about with the courts and camps of
the emperor and his viceroys; and drawing in their train all those
who found employment and subsistence in contributing to their
efficiency and enjoyment. It was not, as our ambassador in the
simplicity of his heart supposed, the disinclination of the emperors
to see any other towns magnificent, save those in which they resided,
which destroyed them, but their ambition to reduce all independent
kingdoms to tributary provinces.
Notes:
1. January, 1836.
2. A small town, thirty-six miles south of Delhi, situated in the
Gurgâon district, now included in the Panjâb, but in the author's
time attached to the North-Western Provinces. The town is the chief
place in the 'pargana' of the same name.
3. Nineveh is not a well-chosen example, inasmuch as its decay was
due to deliberate destruction, and not to mere desertion by a
sovereign. It was deliberately burned and ruined by Nabopolassar,
viceroy of Babylon, and his allies, about 606 B.C. The decay of
Babylon was gradual. See note _post_, note 5.
4. Extract from a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, dated from
Ajmêr, January 29, 1616. The words immediately following 'rubbish'
are 'His own [i.e. the King's] houses are of stone, handsome and
uniform. His great men build not, for want of inheritance; but, as
far as I have yet seen, live in tents, or in houses worse than our
cottages. Yet, when the King likes, as at Agra, because it is a city
erected by him, the buildings, as is reported, are fair and of carved
stone.' (Pinkerton's _Collection_, vol. viii, p. 45.) The passage is
not reprinted in the Hakluyt Society edition (vol. i, p. 122), where
only extracts from the letter are given.
5. The site of Nineveh was forgotten for a period even longer than
that stated by the author. Mr. Claudius Rich, the Resident at
Baghdad, was the first European to make a tentative identification of
Nineveh with the mounds opposite Mosal, in 1818. Real knowledge of
the site and its history dates from the excavations of Botta begun in
1843, and those of Layard begun two years later. (Bonomi, _Nineveh
and its Palaces_, 2nd ed., 1853; Layard, _Nineveh and its Remains_, 2
vols, 1849.) The author's account of the fall of Nineveh, based on
that of Diodorus Siculus, is not in accordance with the conclusions
of the best modern authorities. The destruction of the city in or
about 606 B.C. was really effected some years after the death of
Sardanapalus (Assur-banipal), in 625 B.C., by Nabopolassar (Nabupal-
uzur), the rebel viceroy of Babylon, in alliance with Necho of Egypt,
Cyaxares of Media, and the King of Armenia. The Assyrian monarch who
perished in the assault was not Sardanapalus (Assur-banipal), but his
son Assur-ebel-ili, or, according to Professor Sayce, a king called
Saracus, After the destruction of Nineveh, Babylon became the capital
of the Mesopotamian empire, and under Nebuchadrezzar
(Nebuchadnezzar), son of Nabopolassar, who came to the throne in 604
B.C., attained the height of glory and renown. It was occupied by
Cyrus in 539 B.C., and decayed gradually, but was still a place of
importance in the time of Alexander the Great. The eponymous hero,
Ninus, is of course purely mythical. The results of modern research
will be found in the _Encycl. Brit._, 11th ed., 1910, in the articles
'Babylon' (Sayce), 'Babylonia and Assyria' (Sayce and Jastrow), and
'Nineveh' (Johns). See also, ibid., 'Cyrus' (Meyer).
6. Kanauj, now in the Farrukhâbâd district of the United Provinces,
was sacked by Mahmûd of Ghaznî in January, A.D. 1019. The name of
Mahmûd's capital may be spelled Ghaznih, Ghaznî, or Ghaznîn.
(Raverty, in _J.A.S.B._, Part I, vol. lxi (1892), p. 156, note.)
7. 'Pân', the well-known Indian condiment (_ante_, chapter 29, note
10). 'Opera girls' is a rather whimsical rendering of the more usual
phrase 'nâch (nautch) girls', or 'dancing girls'. The traditional
numbers cited must not be accepted as historical facts. See V. A.
Smith, 'The History of the City of Kanauj' (_J.R.A.S._, 1908, pp.
767-93).
8. This statement is too general. Benares, Allahabad (Prayâg), and
many other important Hindoo cities, were never deserted, and
continued to be populous through all vicissitudes. It is true that in
most places the principal temples were desecrated or destroyed, and
were frequently converted into mosques.
9. The statement is much exaggerated. The Hindoo Râjâs who paid
tribute to the Sultans of Delhi often maintained considerable courts
in populous towns.
10. This proposition, which is not true of Southern India at all,
applies only to secular buildings in Northern India. The temples of
Khajurâho, Mount Abû, and numberless other places, equal in
magnificence the architecture of the Muhammadans, or, indeed, that of
any people in the world.
11. The anthor's remarks seem likely to convey wrong notions. Very
few of the capitals of the Muhammadan viceroys and governors were new
foundations. Nearly all of them were ancient Hindoo towns adopted as
convenient official residences, and enlarged and beautified by the
new rulers, much of the old beauties being at the same time
destroyed. Fyzabad certainly was a new foundation of the Nawâb Wazîrs
of Oudh, but it lies so close to the extremely ancient city of
Ajodhya that it should rather be regarded as a Muhammadan extension
of that city. Lucknow occupies the site of a Hindoo city of great
antiquity.
12. It would be difficult to point out an example of a _Muhammadan_
standing camp which was first converted into an open, and then into a
fortified town.
13. This abstract of the history of the Deccan, or Southern India, is
not quite accurate. The Emperor, or Sultan, Muhammad bin Tughlak,
after A.D. 1325, reduced the Deccan to a certain extent to
submission, but the country revolted in A.D. 1347, when Hasan Gango
founded the Bâhmani dynasty of Gulbarga, afterwards known as that of
Bîdar. At the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth
century, the kingdom so founded broke up into five, not four,
separate states, namely, Bîjâpur, Ahmadnagar, Golconda, Berâr, and
Bîdar. The Berâr state had a separate existence for about eighty-five
years, and then became merged in the kingdom of Ahmadnagar.
CHAPTER 64
Murder of Mr. Fraser, and Execution of the Nawâb Shams-ud-dîn.
At Palwal Mr. Wilmot and Mr. Wright, who had come on business, and
Mr. Gubbins, breakfasted and dined with us. They complained sadly of
the solitude to which they were condemned, but admitted that they
should not be able to get through half so much business were they
placed at a large station, and exposed to all the temptations and
distractions of a gay and extensive circle, nor feel the same
interest in their duties, or sympathy with the people, as they do
when thrown among them in this manner. To give young men good
feelings towards the natives, the only good way is to throw them
among them at those out-stations in the early part of their career,
when all their feelings are fresh about them. This holds good as well
with the military as the civil officer, but more especially with the
latter. A young officer at an outpost with his corps, or part of it,
for the first season or two, commonly lays in a store of good feeling
towards his men that lasts him for life; and a young gentleman of the
Civil Service lays in, in the same manner, a good store of sympathy
and fellow feeling with the natives in general.[1]
Mr. Gubbins is the Magistrate and Collector of one of the three
districts into which the Delhi territories are divided, and he has
charge of Fîrôzpur, the resumed estate of the late Nawâb Shams-ud-
dîn, which yields a net revenue of about two hundred thousand rupees
a year.[2] I have already stated that this Nawâb took good care that
his Mewâtî plunderers should not rob within his own estate; but he
not only gave them free permission to rob over the surrounding
districts of our territory, but encouraged them to do so, that he
might share in their booty.[3] He was a handsome young man, and an
extremely agreeable companion; but a most unprincipled and licentious
character. No man who was reputed to have a handsome wife or daughter
was for a moment safe within his territories. The following account
of Mr. William Fraser's assassination by this Nawâb may, I think, be
relied upon.[4]
The Fîrôzpur Jâgîr was one of the principalities created under the
principle of Lord Cornwallis's second administration, which was to
make the security of the British dominions dependent upon the
divisions among the independent native chiefs upon their frontiers.
The person receiving the grant or confirmation of such principality
from the British Government 'pledged himself to relinquish all claims
to aid, and to maintain the peace in his own possessions.'[5]
Fîrôzpur was conferred by Lord Lake, in 1805, upon Ahmad Baksh, for
his diplomatic services, out of the territories acquired by us west
of the Jumna during the Marâthâ wars. He had been the agent on the
part of the Hindoo chiefs of Alwar in attendance upon Lord Lake
during the whole of that war. He was a great favourite, and his
lordship's personal regard for him was thought by those chiefs to
have been so favourable to their cause that they conferred upon him
the 'pargana' of Lohârû in hereditary rent-free tenure.
In 1822, Ahmad Baksh declared Shams-ud-dîn, his eldest son, his heir,
with the sanction of the British Government and the Râjâs of Alwar.
In February, 1825, Shams-ud-dîn, at the request of his father, by a
formal deed assigned over the pargana of Lohârû as a provision for
his younger brothers by another mother, Amîn-ud-dîn and Ziâ-ud-
dîn;[6] and in October 1826 he was finally invested by his father
with the management; and the circumstance was notified to the British
Government, through the Resident at Delhi, Sir Charles Metcalfe.
Ahmad Baksh died in October, 1827. Disputes soon after arose between
the brothers, and they expressed a desire to submit their claims to
the arbitration of Sir Edward Colebrooke,[7] who had succeeded Sir
Charles Metcalfe in the Residency of Delhi.[8] He referred the matter
to the Supreme Government; and by their instructions, under date 11th
of April, 1828, he was authorized to adjust the matter. He decided
that Shams-ud-dîn should make a complete and unencumbered cession to
his younger brothers of the pargana of Lohârû, without the
reservation of any right of interference in the management, or of any
condition of obedience to himself whatever; and that Amîn-ud-dîn
should, till his younger brother came of age, pay into the Delhi
treasury for him the annual sum of five thousand two hundred and ten
rupees, as his half share of the net proceeds, to be there held in
deposit for him; and that the estate should, from the time he came of
age, be divided between them in equal shares. This award was
confirmed by Government; but Sir Edward was recommended to alter it
for an annual money payment to the two younger brothers, if he could
do so with the consent of the parties.
The pargana was transferred, as the money payment could not be agreed
upon; and in September Mr. Martin, who had succeeded Sir E.
Colebrooke, proposed to Government that the pargana of Lohârû should
be restored to Shams-ud-dîn in lieu of a fixed sum of twenty-six
thousand rupees a year to be paid by him annually to his two younger
brothers. This proposal was made on the ground that Amîn-ud-dîn could
not collect the revenues from the refractory landholders (instigated,
no doubt, by the emissaries of Shams-ud-dîn), and consequently could
not pay his younger brother's revenue into the treasury. In
calculating the annual net revenue of 10,420 rupees, 15,000 of the
_gross_ revenue had been estimated as the annual expenses of the
mutual [_sic_] establishments of the two brothers. To the arrangement
proposed by Mr. Martin the younger brothers strongly objected; and
proposed in preference to make over the pargana to the British
Government, on condition of receiving the net revenue, whatever might
be the amount. Mr. Martin was desired by the Governor-General to
effect this arrangement, should Amîn-ud-dîn appear still to wish it;
but he preferred retaining the management of it in his own hands, in
the hope that circumstances would improve.
Shams-ud-dîn, however, pressed his claim to the restoration of the
pargana so often that it was at last, in September, 1833, insisted
upon by Government, on the ground that Amîn-ud-dîn had failed to
fulfil that article of the agreement which bound him to pay annually
into the Delhi treasury 5,210 rupees for his younger brother, though
that brother had never complained; on the contrary, lived with him on
the best possible terms, and was as averse as himself to the
retransfer of the pargana, on condition that they gave up their
claims to a large share of the movable property of their late father,
which had been already decided in their favour in the court of first
instance. Mr. W. Fraser, who had succeeded to the office of Governor-
General's representative in the Delhi Territories, remonstrated
strongly against this measure; and wished to bring it again under the
consideration of Government; on the grounds that Ziâ-ud-dîn had never
made any complaint against his brother Amîn-ud-dîn for want of
punctuality in the payment of his share of the net revenue after the
payment of their mutual establishments; that the two brothers would
be deprived by this measure of an hereditary estate to the value of
sixty thousand rupees a year in perpetuity, burthened with the
condition that they relinquished a suit already gained in the court
of first instance, and likely to be gained in appeal, involving a sum
that would of itself yield them that annual sum at the moderate
interest of 6 per cent. The grounds alleged by him were not
considered valid, and the pargana was made over to Shams-ud-dîn. The
pargana now yields 40,000 rupees a year, and under good management
may yield 70,000.
At Mr. Fraser's recommendation, Amîn-ud-dîn went himself to Calcutta,
and is said to have prevailed upon the Government to take his case
again into their consideration. Shams-ud-dîn had become a debauched
and licentious character; and having criminal jurisdiction within his
own estate, no one's wife or daughter was considered safe; for, when
other means failed him, he did not scruple to employ assassins to
effect his hated purposes, by removing the husband or father.[9] Mr.
Fraser became so disgusted with his conduct that he would not admit
him into his house when he came to Delhi, though he had, it may be
said, brought him up as a child of his own; indeed he had been as
fond of him as he could be of a child of his own; and the boy used to
spend the greater part of his time with him. One day after Mr. Fraser
had refused to admit the Nawâb to his house. Colonel Skinner, having
some apprehensions that by such slights he might be driven to seek
revenge by assassination, is said to have remonstrated with Mr.
Fraser as his oldest and most valued friend.[10] Mr. Fraser told him
that he considered the Nawâb to be still but a boy, and the only way
to improve him was to treat him as such. It was, however, more by
these slights than by any supposed injuries that Shams-ud-dîn was
exasperated; and from that day he determined to have Mr. Fraser
assassinated.[11]
Having prevailed upon a man, Karîm Khân, who was at once his servant
and boon companion, he sent him to Delhi with one of his carriages,
which he was to have sold through Mr. McPherson, a European merchant
of the city. He was ordered to stay there ostensibly for the purpose
of learning the process of extracting copper from the fossil
containing the ore, and purchasing dogs for the Nawâb. He was to
watch his opportunity and shoot Mr. Fraser whenever he might find him
out at night, attended by only one or two orderlies; to be in no
haste, but to wait till he found a favourable opportunity, though it
should be for several months. He had with him a groom named Rûplâ,
and a Mewâtî attendant named Aniâ, and they lodged in apartments of
the Nawâb's at Daryâoganj. He rode out morning and evening, attended
by Aniâ on foot, for three months, during which he often met Mr.
Fraser, but never under circumstances favourable to his purpose; and
at last, in despair, returned to Fîrôzpur. Aniâ, had importuned him
for leave to go home to see his children, who had been ill, and Karîm
Khân did not like to remain without him. The Nawâb was displeased
with him for returning without leave, and ordered him to return to
his post, and effect the object of his mission. Aniâ declined to
return, and the Nawâb recommended Karîm to take somebody else, but he
had, he said, explained all his designs to this man, and it would be
dangerous to entrust the secret to another; and he could, moreover,
rely entirely upon the courage of Aniâ on any trying occasion.
Twenty rupees were due to the treasury by Aniâ on account of the rent
of the little tenement he held under the Nawâb; and the treasurer
consented, at the request of Karîm Khân, to receive this by small
instalments, to be deducted out of the monthly wages he was to
receive from him. He was, moreover, assured that he should have
nothing to do but to cook and eat; and should share liberally with
Karîm in the one hundred rupees he was taking with him in money, and
the letter of credit upon the Nawâb's bankers at Delhi for one
thousand rupees more. The Nawâb himself came with them as far as the
village of Nagîna, where he used to hunt; and there Karîm requested
permission to change his groom, as he thought Rûplâ too shrewd a man
for such a purpose. He wanted, he said, a stupid, sleepy man, who
would neither ask nor understand anything; but the Nawâb told him
that Rûplâ was an old and quiet servant, upon whose fidelity he could
entirely rely; and Karîm consented to take him. Aniâ's little
tenement, upon which his wife and children resided, was only two
miles distant, and he went to give instructions about gathering in
the harvest, and to take leave of them. He told his wife that he was
going to the capital on a difficult and dangerous duty, but that his
companion Karîm would do it all, no doubt. Aniâ asked Karîm before
they left Nagîna what was to be his reward; and he told him that the
Nawâb had promised them five villages in rent-free tenure. Aniâ
wished to learn from the Nawâb himself what he might expect; and
being taken to him by Karîm, was assured that he and his family
should be provided for handsomely for the rest of their lives, if he
did his duty well on this occasion.
On reaching Delhi they took up their quarters near Colonel Skinner's
house, in the Bulvemar's Ward,[12] where they resided for two months.
The Nawâb had told Karîm to get a gun made for his purpose at Delhi,
or purchase one, stating that his guns had all been purchased through
Colonel Skinner, and would lead to suspicion if seen in his
possession. On reaching Delhi, Karîm purchased an old gun, and
desired Aniâ to go to a certain man in the Chândnî Chauk, and get it
made in the form of a short blunderbuss, with a peculiar stock, that
would admit of its being concealed under a cloak; and to say that he
was going to Gwâlior to seek service, if any one questioned him. The
barrel was cut, and the instrument made exactly as Karîm wished it to
be by the man whom he pointed out. They met Mr. Fraser every day, but
never at night; and Karîm expressed regret that the Nawâb should have
so strictly enjoined him not to shoot him in the daytime, which he
thought he might do without much risk. Aniâ got an attack of fever,
and urged Karîm to give up the attempt and return home, or at least
permit him to do so. Karîm himself became weary, and said he would do
so very soon if he could not succeed; but that he should certainly
shoot _some European gentleman_ before he set out, and tell his
master that he had taken him for Mr. Fraser--to save appearances.
Aniâ told him that this was a question between him and his master,
and no concern of his.
At the expiration of two months, a peon came to learn what they were
doing. Karîm wrote a letter by him to the Nawâb, saying that '_the
dog_ he wished was never to be seen without ten or twelve people
about him; and that he saw no chance whatever of finding him, except
in the midst of them; but that if he wished, he would purchase this
_dog_ in the midst of the crowd'. The Nawâb wrote a reply, which was
sent by a trooper, with orders that it should be opened in presence
of no one but Aniâ. The contents were: 'I command you not to purchase
_the dog_ in presence of many persons, as its price will be greatly
raised. You may purchase him before one person, or even two, but not
before more; I am in no hurry, the longer the time you take the
better; but do not return without purchasing _the dog_.'[13] That is,
without killing Mr. Fraser.
They went on every day to watch Mr. Fraser's movements. Leaving the
horse with the groom, sometimes in one old ruin of the city, and
sometimes in another, ready saddled for flight, with orders that he
should not be exposed to the view of passers-by, Karîm and Aniâ used
to pace the streets, and on several occasions fell in with him, but
always found him attended by too many followers of one kind or
another for their purpose. At last, on Sunday, the 13th of March,
1835, Karîm heard that Mr. Fraser was to attend a 'nâch' (dance),
given by Hindoo Râo, the brother of the Baiza Bâi,[14] who then
resided at Delhi; and determining to try whether he could not shoot
him from horseback, he sent away his groom as soon as he had
ascertained that Mr. Fraser was actually at the dance. Aniâ went in
and mixed among the assembly; and as soon as he saw Mr. Fraser rise
to depart, he gave intimation to Karîm, who ordered him to keep
behind, and make off as fast as he could, as soon as he should hear
the report of his gun.
A little way from Hindoo Rao's house the road branches off; that to
the left is straight, while that to the right is circuitous. Mr.
Fraser was known always to take the straight road, and upon that
Karîm posted himself, as the road up to the place where it branched
off was too public for his purpose. As it happened, Mr. Fraser, for
the first time, took the circuitous road to the right, and reached
his home without meeting Karîm. Aniâ placed himself at the cross way,
and waited there till Karîm came up to him. On hearing that he had
taken the right road, Karîm said that 'a man in Mr. Fraser's
situation must be a strange ('kâfir') unbeliever not to have such a
thing as a torch with him in a dark night. Had he had what he ought',
he said, 'I should not have lost him this time'.
They passed him on the road somewhere or other almost every afternoon
after this for seven days, but could never fall in with him after
dark. On the eighth day, Sunday, the 22nd of March, Karîm went, as
usual, in the forenoon to the great mosque to say his prayers; and on
his way back in the afternoon he purchased some plums which he was
eating when he came up to Aniâ, whom he found cooking his dinner. He
ordered his horse to be saddled immediately, and told Aniâ to make
haste and eat his dinner, as he had seen Mr. Fraser at a party given
by the Râjâ of Kishangarh. '_When his time is come_,' said Karîm, 'we
shall no doubt find an opportunity to kill him, if we watch him
carefully.' They left the groom at home that evening, and proceeded
to the 'dargâh' (church) near the canal. Seeing Aniâ with merely a
Stick in his hand, Karîm bid him go back and change it for a sword,
while he went in and said his evening prayers.
On being rejoined by Aniâ, they took the road to cantonments, which
passed by Mr. Fraser's house; and Aniâ observed that the risk was
hardly equal in this undertaking, he being on foot, while Karîm was
on horseback; that he should be sure to be taken, while the other
might have a fair chance of escape. It was now quite dark, and Karîm
bid him stand by sword in hand; and if anybody attempted to seize his
horse when he fired, cut him down, and be assured that while he had
life he would never suffer him, Aniâ, to be taken. Karîm continued to
patrol up and down on the high-road, that nobody might notice him,
while Aniâ stood by the road-side. At last, about eleven o'clock,
they heard Mr. Fraser approach, attended by one trooper, and two
'peons' on foot; and Karîm walked his horse slowly, as if he had been
going from the city to the cantonments, till Mr. Fraser came up
within a few paces of him, near the gate leading into his house.
Karîm Khân, on leaving his house, had put one large ball into his
short blunderbuss; and when confident that he should now have an
opportunity of shooting Mr. Fraser, he put in two more small ones. As
Mr. Fraser's horse was coming up on the left side, Karîm Khân tumed
round his, and, as he passed, presented his blunderbuss, fired, and
all three balls passed into Mr. Fraser's breast. All three horses
reared at the report and flash, and Mr. Fraser fell dead on the
ground. Karîm galloped off, followed at a short distance by the
trooper, and the two peons went off and gave information to Major Pew
and Cornet Robinson, who resided near the place. They came in all
haste to the spot, and had the body taken to the deceased's own
house; but no signs of life remained. They reported the murder to the
magistrate, and the city gates were closed, as the assassin had been
seen to enter the city by the trooper.
Aniâ ran home through the Kabul gate of the city, unperceived, while
Karîm entered by the Ajmêr gate, and passed first through the
encampment of Hindoo Rao, to efface the traces of his horse's feet.
When he reached their lodgings, he found Aniâ there before him; and
Rûplâ, the groom, seeing his horse in a sweat, told him that he had
had a narrow escape--that Mr. Fraser had been killed, and orders
given for the arrest of any horseman that might be found in or near
the city. He told him to hold his tongue, and take care of the horse;
and calling for a light, he and Aniâ tore up every letter he had
received from Fîrôzpur, and dipped the fragments in water, to efface
the ink from them. Aniâ asked him what he had done with the
blunderbuss, and was told that it had been thrown into a well. Aniâ
now concealed three flints that he kept about him in some sand in the
upper story they occupied, and threw an iron ramrod and two spare
bullets into a well near the mosque.
The next morning, when he heard that the city gates had been all shut
to prevent any one from going out till strict search should be made,
Karîm became a good deal alarmed, and went to seek counsel from
Moghal Beg, the friend of his master; but when in the evening he
heard that they had been again opened, he recovered his spirits; and
the next day he wrote a letter to the Nawâb, saying that he had
purchased the dogs that he wanted, and would soon return with them.
He then went to Mr. McPherson, and actually purchased from him for
the Nawâb some dogs and pictures, and the following day sent Rûplâ,
the groom, with them to Fîrôzpur, accompanied by two bearers. A
pilgrim lodged in the same place with these men, and was present when
Karîm came home from the murder, and gave his horse to Rûplâ. In the
evening, after the departure of Rûplâ with the dogs, four men of the
Gûjar caste came to the place, and Karîm sat down and smoked a pipe
with one of them,[15] who said that he had lost his bread by Mr.
Fraser's death, and should be glad to see the murderer punished--that
he was known to have worn a green vest, and he hoped he would soon be
discovered. The pilgrim came up to Karîm shortly after these four men
went away, and said that he had heard from some one that he, Karîm,
was himself suspected of the murder. He went again to Moghal Beg, who
told him not to be alarmed, that, happily, the Regulations were now
in force in the Delhi Territory, and that he had only to stick
steadily to one story to be safe.
He now desired Aniâ to return to Fîrôzpur with a letter to the Nawâb,
and to assure him that he would be stanch and stick to one story,
though they should seize him and confine him in prison for twelve
years. He had, he said, already sent off part of his clothes, and
Aniâ should now take away the rest, so that nothing suspicious should
be left near him.
The next morning Aniâ set out on foot, accompanied by Islâmullah, a
servant of Moghal Beg's, who was also the bearer of a letter to the
Nawâb. They hired two ponies when they became tired, but both flagged
before they reached Nagîna, whence Aniâ proceeded to Fîrôzpur, on a
mare belonging to the native collector, leaving Islâmullah behind. He
gave his letter to the Nawâb, who desired him to describe the affair
of the murder. He did so. The Nawâb seemed very much pleased, and
asked him whether Karîm appeared to be in any alarm. Aniâ told him
that he did not, and had resolved to stick to one story, though he
should be imprisoned for twelve years. 'Karîm Khân,' said the Nawâb,
turning to the brother-in-law of the former, Wâsil Khân, and Hasan
Alî, who stood near him--'Karîm Khân is a very brave man, whose
courage may be always relied on.' He gave Aniâ eighteen rupees, and
told him to change his name, and keep close to Wâsil Khân. They
retired together; but, while Wâsil Khân went to his house, Aniâ stood
on the road unperceived, but near enough to hear Hasan Alî urge the
Nawâb to have him put to death immediately, as the only chance of
keeping the fatal secret. He went off immediately to Wâsil Khân, and
prevailed upon him to give him leave to go home for that night to see
his family, promising to be back the next morning early.
He set out forthwith, but had not been long at home when he learned
that Hasan Alî, and another confidential servant of the Nawâb, were
come in search of him with some troopers. He concealed himself in the
roof of his house, and heard them ask his wife and children where he
was, saying they wanted his aid in getting out some hyaenas they had
traced into their dens in the neighbourhood. They were told that he
had gone back to Fîrôzpur, and returned; but were sent back by the
Nawâb to make a more careful search for him. Before they came,
however, he had gone off to his friends Kamruddîn and Joharî, two
brothers who resided in the Râo Râjâ's territory. To this place he
was followed by some Mewâtîs, whom the Nawâb had induced, under the
promise of a large reward, to undertake to kill him. One night he
went to two acquaintances, Makrâm and Shahâmat, in a neighbouring
village, and begged them to send to some English gentleman in Delhi,
and solicit for him a pardon, on condition of his disclosing all the
circumstances of Mr. Fraser's murder. They promised to get everything
done for him through a friend in the police at Delhi, and set out for
that purpose, while Aniâ returned and concealed himself in the hills.
In six days they came with a paper, purporting to be a promise of
pardon from the court of Delhi, and desired Kamr-ud-dîn to introduce
them to Aniâ. He told them to return to him in three days, and he
would do so; but he went off to Aniâ in the hills, and told him that
he did not think these men had really got the papers from the English
gentlemen--that they appeared to him to be in the service of the
Nawâb himself. Aniâ was, however, introduced to them when they came
back, and requested that the paper might be read to him. Seeing
through their designs, he again made off to the hills, while they
went out in search, they pretended, of a man to read it, but in
reality to get some people who were waiting in the neighbourhood to
assist in securing him, and taking him off to the Nawâb.
Finding on their return that Aniâ had escaped, they offered high
rewards to the two brothers if they would assist in tracing him out;
and Joharî was taken to the Nawâb, who offered him a very high reward
if he would bring Aniâ to him, or, at least, take measures to prevent
his going to the English gentlemen. This was communicated to Aniâ,
who went through Bharatpur to Bareilly, and from Bareilly to
Secunderabad, where he heard, in the beginning of July, that both
Karîm and the Nawâb were to be tried for the murder, and that the
judge, Mr. Colvin, had already arrived at Delhi to conduct the trial.
He now determined to go to Delhi and give himself up. On his way he
was met by Mr. Simon Fraser's man, who took him to Delhi, when he
confessed his share in the crime, became king's evidence at the
trial, and gave an interesting narrative of the whole affair.
Two water-carriers, in attempting to draw up the brass jug of a
carpenter, which had fallen into the well the morning after the
murder, pulled up the blunderbuss which Karîm Khân had thrown into
the same well. This was afterwards recognized by Aniâ, and the man
whom he pointed out as having made it for him. Two of the four
Gûjars, who were mentioned as having visited Karîm immediately after
the murder, went to Brigadier Fast, who commanded the troops at
Delhi, fearing that the native officers of the European civil
functionaries might be in the interest of the Nawâb, and get them
made away with. They told him that Karîm Khân seemed to answer the
description of the man named in the proclamation as the murderer of
Mr. Fraser; and he sent them with a note to the Commissioner, Mr.
Metcalfe, who sent them to the Magistrate, Mr. Fraser, who
accompanied them to the place, and secured Karîm, with some fragments
of important papers. The two Mewâtîs, who had been sent to
assassinate Aniâ, were found, and they confessed the fact: the
brother of Aniâ, Rahmat, was found and he described the difficulty
Aniâ had to escape from the Nawâb's people sent to murder him. Rûplâ,
the groom, deposed to all that he had seen during the time he was
employed as Karîm's groom at Delhi. Several men deposed to having met
Karîm, and heard him asking after Mr. Fraser a few days before the
murder. The two peons, who were with Mr. Fraser when he was shot,
deposed to the horse which he rode at the time, and which was found
with him.
Karîm Khân and the Nawâb were both convicted of the crime, sentenced
to death, and executed at Delhi, I should mention that suspicion had
immediately attached to Karîm Khân; he was known for some time to
have been lurking about Delhi, on the pretence of purchasing dogs;
and it was said that, had the Nawâb really wanted dogs, he would not
have sent to purchase them by a man whom he admitted to his table,
and treated on terms of equality. He was suspected of having been
employed on such occasions before--known to be a good shot, and a
good rider, who could fire and reload very quickly while his horse
was in full gallop, and called in consequence the 'Bharmârû.'[16] His
horse, which was found in the stable by the Gûjar spies, who had
before been in Mr. Fraser's service, answered the description given
of the murderer's horse by Mr. Fraser's attendants; and the Nawâb was
known to cherish feelings of bitter hatred against Mr. Fraser.
The Nawâb was executed some time after Karîm, on Thursday morning,
the 3rd of October, 1835, close outside the north, or Kashmir Gate,
leading to the cantonments. He prepared himself for the execution in
an extremely rich and beautiful dress of light green, the colour
which martyrs wear; but he was made to exchange this, and he then
chose one of simple white, and was too conscious of his guilt to urge
strongly his claim to wear what dress he liked on such an occasion.
The following corps were drawn up around the gallows, forming three
sides of a square: the 1st Regiment of Cavalry, the 20th, 39th, and
69th Regiments of Native Infantry, Major Pew's Light Field Battery,
and a strong party of police. On ascending the scaffold, the Nawâb
manifested symptoms of disgust at the approach to his person of the
sweeper, who was to put the rope round his neck;[17] but he soon
mastered his feelings, and submitted with a good grace to his fate.
Just as he expired his body made a last turn, and left his face
towards the _west_, or the _tomb of his Prophet_, which the
Muhammadans of Delhi considered a miracle, indicating that he was a
martyr--not as being innocent of the murder, but as being executed
for the murder of an unbeliever. Pilgrimages were for some time made
to the Nawâb's tomb,[18] but I believe they have long since ceased
with the short gleam of sympathy that his fate excited. The only
people that still recollect him with feelings of kindness are the
prostitutes and dancing women of the city of Delhi, among whom most
of his revenues were squandered[19] In the same manner was Wazîr Ali
recollected for many years by the prostitutes and dancing women of
Benares, after the massacre of Mr. Cherry and all the European
gentlemen of that station, save one, Mr. Davis, who bravely defended
himself, wife, and children against a host with a hog spear on the
top of his house. No European could pass Benares for twenty years
after Wazîr Alî's arrest and confinement in the garrison of Fort
William, without hearing from the Windows songs in his praise, and in
praise of the massacre.[20]
It is supposed that the Nawâb Faiz Muhammad Khan of Jhajjar was
deeply implicated in this murder, though no proof of it could be
found. He died soon after the execution of Shams-ud-dîn, and was
succeeded in his fief by his eldest son, Faiz Alî Khân.[21] This fief
was bestowed on the father of the deceased, whose name was Najâbat
Alî Khân, by Lord Lake, on the termination of the war in 1805, for
the aid he had given to the retreating army under Colonel Monson.[22]
One circumstance attending the execution of the Nawâb Shams-ud-dîn
seems worthy of remark. The magistrate, Mr. Frascott, desired his
crier to go through the city the evening before the execution, and
proclaim to the people that those who might wish to be present at the
execution were not to encroach upon the line of sentries that would
be formed to keep clear an allotted space round the gallows, nor to
carry with them any kind of arms; but the crier, seemingly retaining
in his recollection only the words _arms_ and _sentries_, gave out
after his 'Oyes, Oyes,'[23] that the sentries had orders to use their
arms, and shoot any man, woman, or child that should presume to go
outside the wall to look at the execution of the Nawâb. No person, in
consequence, ventured out till the execution was over, when they went
to see the Nawâb himself converted into smoke; as the general
impression was that as life should leave it, the body was to be blown
off into the air by a general discharge of musketry and artillery.
Moghal Bêg was acquitted for want of judicial proof of his guilty
participation in the crime.
Notes:
1. The author's remarks concerning military officers refer to
officers serving with native regiments, now known as the Indian Army.
Before the institution of the reformed police in 1861 the native
troops used to be much scattered in detachments, guarding treasuries,
and performing other duties since entrusted to the police.
Detachments are now rarely sent out, except on frontier service.
2. Fîrôzpur, the Fîrozpur-Jhirka of the _I.G._, is now the head-
quarters of a sub-collectorate in the Gurgâon district. The three
Districts of the Delhi Territories in Sleeman's time seem to have
been Delhi, Pânîpat (= Karnâl), and Rohtak, which were under the
jurisdiction of the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western
Provinces. In 1858, after the Mutiny, they were transferred to the
Panjâb. Since then, many administrative changes have occurred. The
latest took place on October 1, 1912, on the occasion of Delhi
becoming the official capital of India, instead of Calcutta. The city
of Delhi with a small surrounding area, 557 square miles in all, now
forms a tiny distinct province, ruled by a Chief Commissioner under
the direct orders of the Government of India. The Delhi Division has
ceased to exist, and six Districts, namely, Hissar, Rohtak, Karnâl,
Ambâla (Umballa), Gurgâon, and Simla, now constitute the
Commissioner's Division of Ambâla in the Panjâb.
3. _Ante_, chapter 31, text between [10] and [11]. Some great
landholders of the present day pursue the same policy.
4. The story of the murder of Fraser is told very differently in
Bosworth-Smith's _Life of Lord Lawrence_, where all the detective
credit is given to Lord L., apparently on his own authority. See also
an article in the _Quarterly Review_ for April 1883, by Sir H. Yule,
and another in _Blackwoods Magazine_ for January 1878.
Miniature medallion portraits of Nawâb Shams-ud-dîn and his servant
Karîm Khân are given on the frontispiece of Volume II in the original
edition.
5. The inglorious second administration of Lord Cornwallis lasted
only from 30th of July, 1805, the date on which he relieved the
Marquis Wellesley, to the 5th of October of the same year, the date
of his death at Ghâzîpur. 'The Marquis Cornwallis arrived in India,
prepared to abandon, as far as might be practicable, all the
advantages gained for the British Government by the wisdom, energy,
and perseverance of his predecessor; to relax the bands by which the
Marquis Wellesley had connected the greater portion of the states of
India with the British Government; and to reduce that Government from
the position of arbiter of the destinies of India to the rank of one
among many equals.' His policy was zealously carried out by Sir
George Barlow, who succeeded him, and held office till July, 1807.
That statesman was not ashamed to write that 'the British possessions
in the Doâb will derive additional security from the contests of the
neighbouring states'. (Thornton, _The History of the British Empire
in India_, chap. 21.) This fatuous policy produced twelve years of
anarchy, which were terminated by the Marquis of Hastings's great war
with the Marâthâs and Pindhârîs in 1817, so often referred to in this
book. Lord Lake addressed the most earnest remonstrances to Sir
George Barlow without avail.
6. Amîn-ud-dîn and Ziâ-ud-dîn's mother was the Bhâo Bêgam, or wife;
Shams-ud-dîn's the Bhâo Khânum, or mistress. [W. H. S.]
7. Sir James Edward, third baronet, who died November 5, 1838. He was
paternal uncle of Henry Thomas Colebrooke, F.R.S., the greatest of
Anglo-Indian Sanskritists. The fifth baronet, Edward Arthur, was
created Baron Colebrooke in 1906.
8. Sir Charles Metcalfe was for a time Assistant Resident at Delhi,
and was first appointed to the Residency at the extraordinarily early
age of twenty-six. He was then transferred to other posts. In 1824 he
returned to the Delhi Residency, superseding Sir David Ochterlony,
whose measures had been disapproved by the Government of India. He
left the Residency in 1827.
9. The editor once had occasion to deal with a similar case, which
resulted in the loss by the offending Râjâ of his rank and title. The
orders were passed by the Government of Lord Dufferin.
10. Colonel Skinner, who raised the famous troops known as Skinner's
Horse, died in 1841, and was buried in the church of St. James at
Delhi which he had built. The church still exists. The Colonel
erected opposite the church, as a memorial of his friend Fraser, a
fine inlaid marble cross, which was destroyed in the Mutiny (General
Hervey, _Some Records of Crime_, vol. i, p. 403).
11. According to General Hervey, the provocation was that Mr. Fraser
had inquired from the Nawâb about his sister by name (op. cit., p.
279).
12. I print this word 'Bulvemar's' as it stands in the original
edition, not knowing what it means.
13. The habits of Europeans have now changed, and to most people
escorts have become distasteful. High officials now constantly go
about unattended, and could be assassinated with little difficulty.
Happily crimes of the kind are rare, except on the Afghan frontier,
where special precautions are taken.
14. For the 'Bâiza Bai' see _ante_, chapter 50 note 4. Hindoo Râo's
house became famous in 1857 as the head-quarters of the British force
on the Ridge, during the siege of Delhi.
15. Many of the Gûjar caste are Muhammadans.
16. That is to say 'load and fire', or 'sharpshooter'.
17. No one but a member of one of the 'outcaste castes', if the
'bull' be allowable, will act as executioner.
18. This sinister incident shows clearly the real feeling of the
Muhammadan populace towards the ruling power. That feeling is
unchanged, and is not altogether confined to the Muslim populace. See
the following remark about the populace of Benares.
19. This remark was evidently written some time after the author's
first visit to Delhi, and probably was written in the year 1839.
20. On the death of Âsaf-ud-daula, Wazîr Alî was, in spite of doubts
as to his legitimacy, recognized by Sir John Shore (Lord Teignmouth)
as the Nawâb Wazîr of Oudh, in 1797. On reconsideration, the
Governor-General cancelled the recognition of Wazîr Alî, and
recognized his rival Saâdat Alî. Wazîr Alî was removed from Lucknow,
but injudiciously allowed to reside at Benares. The Marquis
Wellesley, then Earl of Mornington, took charge of the office of
Governor-General in 1798, and soon resolved that it was expedient to
remove Wazîr Alî to a greater distance from Lucknow. Mr. Cherry, the
Agent to the Governor-General, was accordingly instructed to remove
him from Benares to Calcutta. The outbreak alluded to in the text
occurred on January 14, 1799, and was the expression of Wazîr Ali's
resentment at these orders. It is described as follows by Thornton
(_History_, chap. xvii): 'A visit which Wazîr Alî made, accompanied
by his suite, to the British Agent, afforded the means of
accomplishing the meditated revenge. He had engaged himself to
breakfast with Mr. Cherry, and the parties met in apparent amity. The
usual compliments were exchanged. Wazîr Alî then began to expatiate
on his wrongs; and having pursued this subject for some time, he
suddenly rose with his attendants, and put to death Mr. Cherry and
Captain Conway, an English gentleman who happened to be present. The
assassins then rushed out, and meeting another Englishman named
Graham, they added him to the list of their victims. They thence
proceeded to the house of Mr. Davis, judge and magistrate, who had
just time to remove his family to an upper terrace, which could only
be reached by a very narrow staircase. At the top of this staircase,
Mr. Davis, armed with a spear, took his post, and so successfully did
he defend it, that the assailants, after several attempts to dislodge
him, were compelled to retire without effecting their object. The
benefit derived from the resistance of this intrepid man extended
beyond his own family: the delay thereby occasioned afforded to the
rest of the English inhabitants opportunity of escaping to the place
where the troops stationed for the protection of the city were
encamped. General Erskine, on learning what had occurred, dispatched
a party to the relief of Mr. Davis, and Wazîr Alî thereupon retired
to his own residence.' Wazîr Alî escaped, but was ultimately given up
by a chief with whom he had taken refuge, 'on condition that his life
should be spared, and that his limbs should not be disgraced by
chains'. Some of his accomplices were executed. 'He was confined at
Port William, in a sort of iron cage, where he died in May, 1817,
aged thirty-six, after an imprisonment of seventeen years and some
odd months.' (_Men whom India has Known_, 2nd ed., 1874, art. 'Vizier
Ali.') But Beale asserts that after many years' captivity in
Calcutta, the prisoner was removed to Vellore, where he died (_Or.
Biogr. Dict._, ed. Keene, 1894, p. 416). It will be observed that the
author was mistaken in supposing that 'all the European gentlemen,
except Mr. Davis and his family, were included in the massacre.'
21. These names stand in the original edition as 'Tyz Mahomed Khan,
of Ghujper,' and 'Tyz Alee Khan'. In 1857 the then Nawâb of Jhajjar
joined the rebels. He was accordingly hanged, and his estate was
confiscated. It is now included in the Rohtak District. See
Fanshawe's _Settlement Report_ of that District.
22. The disastrous retreat of Colonel Monson before Jeswant Râo
Holkâr during the rainy season of 1804 is one of the few serious
reverses which have interrupted the long series of British victories
in India. A considerable force under the command of Colonel Monson,
sent out by General Lake at the beginning of May in pursuit of
Holkâr, was withdrawn too far from its base, and was compelled to
retreat through Râjputâna, and fall back on Agra. During the retreat
the rains broke, and, under pressure caused by the difficulties of
the march and incessant attacks of the enemy, the Company's troops
became disorganized, and lost their guns and baggage. The shattered
remnants of the force straggled into Agra at the end of August. The
disgrace of this retreat was speedily avenged by the great victory of
Dîg.
23. This old Norman-French formula. Oyez, Oyez, meaning 'Hear!' is
still, or recently was, used at the Assizes in the High Court,
Calcutta. The formula would not now be heard at Delhi, or elsewhere
beyond the precincts of the High Court.
CHAPTER 65
Marriage of a Jât Chief.
ON the 19th[1] we came on to Balamgarh,[2] fifteen miles over a
plain, better cultivated and more studded with trees than that which
we had been coming over for many days before. The water was near the
surface, more of the field were irrigated, and those which were not
so looked better--[a] range of sandstone hills, ten miles off to the
west, running north and south. Balamgarh is held in rent-free tenure
by a young Jât chief, now about ten years of age. He resides in a mud
fort in a handsome palace built in the European fashion. In an
extensive orange garden, close outside the fort, he is building a
very handsome tomb over the spot where his father's elder brother was
buried. The whole is formed of white and black marble, and the firm
white sandstone of Rûpbâs, and so well conceived and executed as to
make it evident that demand is the only thing wanted to cover India
with works of art equal to any that were formed in the palmy days of
the Muhammadan empire.[3] The Râjâ's young sister had just been
married to the son of the Jât chief of Nâbhâ, who was accompanied in
his matrimonial visit (barât) by the chief of Ludhaura, and the son
of the Sikh chief of Patiâlâ,[4] with a _cortège_ of one hundred
elephants, and above fifteen thousand people.[5]
The young chief of Balamgarh mustered a _cortège_ of sixty elephants
and about ten thousand men to attend him out in the 'istikbâl', to
meet and welcome his guests. The bridegroom's party had to expend
about six hundred thousand rupees in this visit alone. They scattered
copper money all along the road from their homes to within seven
miles of Balamgarh. From this point to the gate of the fort they had
to scatter silver, and from this gate to the door of the palace they
scattered gold and jewels of all kinds. The son of the Patiâlâ chief,
a lad of about ten years of age, sat upon his elephant with a bag
containing six hundred gold mohurs of two guineas each, mixed up with
an infinite variety of gold earrings, pearls, and precious stones,
which he scattered in handfuls among the crowd. The scattering of the
copper and silver had been left to inferior hands. The costs of the
family of the bride are always much greater than that of the
bridegroom; they are obliged to entertain at their own expense all
the bridegroom's guests as well as their own, as long as they remain;
and over and above this, on the present occasion, the Râjâ gave a
rupee to every person that came, invited or uninvited. An immense
concourse of people had assembled to share in this donation, and to
scramble for the money scattered along the road; and ready money
enough was not found in the treasury. Before a further supply could
be got, thirty thousand more had collected, and every one got his
rupee. They have them all put into pens like sheep. When all are in,
the doors are opened at a signal given, and every person is paid his
rupee as he goes out. Some European gentlemen were standing upon the
top of the Râjâ's palace, looking at the procession as it entered the
fort, and passed underneath; and the young chief threw up some
handfuls of pearls, gold, and jewels among them. Not one of them
would of course condescend to stoop to take up any; but their
servants showed none of the same dignified forbearance.[6]
Notes:
1. January, 1836.
2. 'Balamgarh' is a mistake for Ballabgarh of _I. G._ (properly
Ballabhgarh), which is about twenty-four miles from Delhi. In 1857
the chief was hanged for rebellion. The estate was confiscated and
included in the Delhi District, under the Panjâb Government. From
October 1, 1912, that District ceased to exist. Part of the
Ballabhgarh sub-district has been included in the new Chief
Commissioner's Province of Delhi, and part in the Gurgâon District.
3. Few observers will accept this proposition without considerable
reservation.
4. Patiâlâ is the principal of the Cis-Satlaj Sikh Protected States.
Nâbhâ belongs to the same group. Both states are very loyal, and
supply Imperial Service troops. For a sketch of their history see
chapters 2 and 9 of Sir Lepel Griffin's _Ranjît Singh_.
5. The Sikh is a military nation formed out of the Jâts (who were
without a place among the castes of the Hindoos),[a] by that strong
bond of union, the love of conquest and plunder. Their religions and
civil codes are the Granths, books written by their reputed prophets,
the last of whom was Guru Govind,[b] in whose name Ranjît Singh
stamps his gold coins with this legend: 'The sword, the _pot_,
victory, and conquest were quickly found in the grace of Guru Govind
Singh,'[c] This prophet died insane in the end of the seventeenth
century. He was the son of a priest Têg Bahâdur, who was made a
martyr of by the bigoted Muhammadans of Patna in 1675. The son became
a Peter the Hermit, in the same manner as Hargovind before him, when
his father, Arjun Mal, was made a martyr by the fanaticism of the
same people. A few more such martyrdoms would have set the Sikhs up
for ever. They admit converts freely, and while they have a fair
prospect of conquest and plunder they will find them; but, when they
cease, they will be swallowed up in the great ocean of Hinduism,
since they have no chance of getting up an 'army of martyrs' while we
have the supreme power.[d] They detest us for the same reason that
the military followers of the other native chiefs detest us, because
we say 'Thus far shall you go, and no farther' in your career of
conquest and plunder.[e] As governors, they are even worse than the
Marâthâs--utterly detestable. They have not the slightest idea of a
duty towards the people from whose industry they are provided. Such a
thing was never dreamed of by a Sikh. They continue to receive in
marriage the daughters of Jâts, as in this case; but they will not
give their daughters to Jâts. [W. H. S.]
6. The Emperors of Delhi, from Jahângîr onwards, used to strike
special coins, generally of small size, bearing the word _nisâr_,
which means 'scattering', for the purpose of distribution among the
crowd on the occasion of a wedding, or other great festivity.
a. It has already been observed that the author was completely
mistaken in his estimate of the social position of Jâts. It is not
correct to say that they 'were without a place among the castes of
the Hindoos'. 'The Jât is in every respect the most important of the
Panjâb peoples. . . . The distinction between Jât and Râjpût is
social rather than ethnic. . . . Socially the Jât occupies a position
which is shared by the Rôr, the Gûjar, and the Ahîr; all four eating
and smoking together. Among the races of purely Hindoo origin I think
that the Jât stands next after the Brahman, the Râjpût, and the
Khatrî. . . . There are Jâts and Jâts. . . . His is the highest of
the castes practising widow marriage.' (Ibbetson, _Outlines of Panjâb
Ethnography_, Calcutta, 1883, pp. 220 sqq.) The Jâts in the United
Provinces occupy much the same relative position.
b. The Sikhs are mostly, but not all, Jâts. The organization is
essentially a religions one, and a few Brahmans and many members of
various other castes join it. Even sweepers are admitted with certain
limitations. The word Sikh means 'disciple'. Nânak Shâh, the founder,
was born in A.D. 1469. The _Âdi Granth_, the Sikh Bible, containing
compositions by Nânak, his next four successors, and other persons,
was completed in 1604. A second _Granth_ was compiled in 1734 by
Govind Singh, the tenth Guru. The only authoritative version of the
Sikh scriptures is the great work by Macauliffe, _The Sikh Religion_
(Oxford, 1909, 6 vols.).
The political power of the sect rested on the institutions of Guru
Govind, as framed between 1690 and 1708. In 1764 the Sikhs occupied
Lahore. Full details of their history will be found in Cunningham, _A
History of the Sikhs_ (1st ed., 2 vols. 8vo, London, 1849, suppressed
and scarce; 2nd ed. 1853); and more briefly in Sir Lepel Griffin's
excellent little book, _Ranjît Singh_ (Oxford, 'Rulers of India'
series, 1892).
c. See R. 0. Temple, 'The Coins of the Modern Chiefs of the Panjâb'
(_Ind. Ant._, vol. xviii (1889), pp. 321-41); and C. J. Rodgers, 'On
the Coins of the Sikhs' (_J.A.S.B._, vol. 1. Part I (1881), pp. 71-
93). The couplet is in Persian, which may be transliterated thus:--
Dêg, têgh, wa fath, wa nasrat bê darang
Yâft az Nânak Gûrû Govind Singh.
The word _dêg_, meaning pot or cauldron, is used as a symbol of
plenty. The correct rendering is:--
Plenty, the sword, victory, and help without delay,
Gûrû Govind Singh obtained from Nânak.
d. This prophecy has not been fulfilled. The annexation of the Panjâb
in 1849 put an end to Sikh hopes of 'conquest and plunder', and yet
the sect has not been 'swallowed up in the great ocean of Hinduism'.
At the census of 1881 its numbers were returned as 1,853,426, or
nearly two millions, for all India. The corresponding figure for 1891
is 1,907,833. At the time of the first British census of 1855 the
outside influences were depressing: the great Khâlsa army had fallen,
and Sikh fathers were slow to bring forward their sons for baptism
(_pâhul_). The Mutiny, in the suppression of which the Sikhs took so
great a part, worked a change. The Sikhs recovered their spirits and
self-respect, and found honourable careers open in the British army
and constabulary. 'Thus the creed received a new impulse, and many
sons of Sikhs, whose baptism had been deferred, received the _pâhul_,
while new candidates from among the Jâts and lower caste Hindoos
joined the faith.' Some reaction then, perhaps, took place, but, on
the whole, the numbers of the sect have been maintained or increased.
(Sir Lepel Griffin, _Ranjît Singh_, pp. 25-34.) For various reasons,
which I have not space to explain, the statistics of Sikhism are
untrustworthy. The returns for 1911 show an increase of 37 per cent.
in the Panjâb. We may, at least, be assured that the numbers are not
diminishing.
e. The Sikhs do not now detest us. They willingly furnish soldiers
and military police of the best class, equal to the Gôrkhâs, and fit
to fight in line with English soldiers. The Panjâb chieftains have
been among the foremost in offers of loyal assistance to the
Government of India in times of danger, and in organizing the
Imperial Service troops. The Sikh states are now sufficiently well
governed.
CHAPTER 66
Collegiate Endowment of Muhammadan Tombs and Mosques.
On the 20th[1] we came to Badarpur, twelve miles over a plain, with
the range of hills on our left approaching nearer and nearer the
road, and separating us from the old city of Delhi. We passed through
Farîdpur, once a large town, and called after its founder, Shaikh
Farîd, whose mosque is still in good order, though there is no person
to read or hear prayers in it.[2] We passed also two fine bridges,
one of three, and one of four arches, both over what were once
streams, but are now dry beds of sand.[3] The whole road shows signs
of having been once thickly peopled, and highly adorned with useful
and ornamental works when Delhi was in its glory.
Every handsome mausoleum among Muhammadans was provided with its
mosque, and endowed by the founder with the means of maintaining men
of learning to read their Korân over the grave of the deceased and in
his chapel; and, as long as the endowment lasted, the tomb continued
to be at the same time a college. They read the Korân morning and
evening over the grave, and prayers in the chapel at the stated
periods; and the rest of their time is commonly devoted to the
instruction of the youths of their neighbourhood, either gratis or
for a small consideration. Apartments in the tomb were usually set
aside for the purpose, and these tombs did ten times more for
education in Hindustan than all the colleges formed especially for
the purpose.[4] We might suppose that rulers who formed and endowed
such works all over the land must have had more of the respect and
the affections of the great mass of the people than we, who, as my
friend upon the Jumna has it, 'build nothing but private dwelling-
houses, factories, courts of justice, and jails', can ever have; but
this conclusion would not be altogether just.[5] Though every mosque
and mausoleum was a seat of learning, that learning, instead of being
a source of attraction and conciliation between the Muhammadans and
Hindoos, was, on the contrary, a source of perpetual repulsion and
enmity between them--it tended to keep alive in the breasts of the
Musalmâns a strong feeling of religions indignation against the
worshippers of idols; and of dread and hatred in those of the
Hindoos.
The Korân was the Book of books, spoken by God to the angel Gabriel
in parts as occasion required, and repeated by him to Muhammad; who,
unable to write himself, dictated them to any one who happened to be
present when he received the divine communications;[6] it contained
all that it was worth man's while to study or know--it was from the
Deity, but at the same time coeternal with Him--it was His divine
eternal spirit, inseparable from Him from the beginning, and
therefore, like Him, uncreated. This book, to read which was of
itself declared to be the highest of all species of worship, taught
war against the worshippers of idols to be of all merits the greatest
in the eye of God; and no man could well rise from the perusal
without the wish to serve God by some act of outrage against them.
These buildings were, therefore, looked upon by the Hindoos, who
composed the great mass of the people, as a kind of religions
volcanoes, always ready to explode and pour out their lava of
intolerance and outrage upon the innocent people of the surrounding
country.
If a Hindoo fancied himself injured or insulted by a Muhammadan he
was apt to revenge himself upon the Muhammadans generally, and insult
their religion by throwing swine's flesh, or swine's blood, into one
of their tombs or churches; and the latter either flew to arms at
once to revenge their God, or retaliated by throwing the flesh or the
blood of the cow into the first Hindoo temple at hand, which made the
Hindoos fly to arms. The guilty and the wicked commonly escaped,
while numbers of the weak, the innocent and the unoffending were
slaughtered. The magnificent buildings, therefore, instead of being
at the time bonds of union, were commonly sources of the greatest
discord among the whole community, and of the most painful
humiliation to the Hindoo population. During the bigoted reign of
Aurangzêb and his successors a Hindoo's presence was hardly tolerated
within sight of these tombs or churches; and had he been discovered
entering one of them, he would probably have been hunted down like a
mad dog. The recollection of such outrages, and the humiliation to
which they gave rise, associated as they always are in the minds of
the Hindoos with the sight of these buildings, are perhaps the
greatest source of our strength in India; because they at the same
time feel that it is to us alone they owe the protection which they
now enjoy from similar injuries. Many of my countrymen, full of
virtuous indignation at the outrages which often occur during the
processions of the Muharram, particularly when these happen to take
place at the same time with some religious procession of the Hindoos,
are very anxious that our Government should interpose its authority
to put down both. But these processions and occasional outrages are
really sources of great strength to us; they show at once the
necessity for the interposition of an impartial tribunal, and a
disposition on the part of the rulers to interpose impartially. The
Muhammadan festivals are regulated by the lunar, and those of the
Hindoos by the solar year, and they cross each other every thirty or
forty years, and furnish fair occasions for the local authorities to
interpose effectually.[7] People who receive or imagine insults or
injuries commonly postpone their revenge till these religious
festivals come round, when they hope to be able to settle their
accounts with impunity among the excited crowd. The mournful
procession of the Muharram, when the Muhammadans are inflamed to
madness by the recollection of the really affecting incidents of the
massacre of the grandchildren of their prophet, and by the images of
their tombs, and their sombre music,[8] crosses that of the Holî[9]
(in which the Hindoos are excited to tumultuous and licentious joy by
their bacchanalian songs and dances) every thirty-six years; and they
reign together for some four or five days, during which the scene in
every large town is really terrific. The processions are liable to
meet in the street, and the lees of the wine of the Hindoos, or the
red powder which is substituted for them, is liable to fall upon the
tombs of the others. Hindoos pass on, forgetting in their saturnalian
joy all distinctions of age, sex, or religion, their clothes and
persons besmeared with the red powder, which is moistened and thrown
from all kinds of machines over friend and foe; while meeting these
come the Muhammadans, clothed in their green mourning, with gloomy
downcast looks, beating their breasts, ready to kill themselves, and
too anxious for an excuse to kill anybody else. Let but one drop of
the lees of joy fall upon the image of the tomb as it passes, and a
hundred swords fly from their scabbards; many an innocent person
falls; and woe be to the town in which the magistrate is not at hand
with his police and military force. Proudly conscious of their power,
the magistrates refuse to prohibit one class from laughing because
the other happens to be weeping; and the Hindoos on such occasions
laugh the more heartily to let the world see that they are free to do
so.
A very learned Hindoo once told me in Central India that the oracle
of Mahâdêo had been at the same time consulted at three of his
greatest temples--one in the Deccan, one in Râjputâna, and one, I
think, in Bengal--as to the result of the government of India by
Europeans, who seemed determined to fill all the high offices of
administration with their own countrymen, to the exclusion of the
people of the country. A day was appointed for the answer; and when
the priest came to receive it they found Mahâdêo (Siva) himself with
a European complexion, and dressed in European clothes. He told them
that their European Government was in reality nothing more than a
multiplied incarnation of himself; and that he had come among them in
this shape to prevent their cutting each other's throats as they had
been doing for some centuries past; that these, his incarnations,
appeared to have no religion themselves in order that they might be
the more impartial arbitrators between the people of so many
different creeds and sects who now inhabited the country; that they
must be aware that they never had before been so impartially
governed, and that they must continue to obey these their governors,
without attempting to pry further into futurity or the will of the
gods. Mahâdêo performs a part in the great drama of the Râmâyana, or
the Rape of Sîta, and he is the only figure there that is represented
with a _white face_.[10]
I was one day praising the law of primogeniture among ourselves to a
Muhammadan gentleman of high rank, and defending it on the ground
that it prevented that rivalry and bitterness of feeling among
brothers which were always found among the Muhammadans, whose law
prescribes an equal division of property, real and personal, among
the sons, and the _choice of the wisest_ among them as successor to
the government.[11] 'This', said he, 'is no doubt the source of our
weakness, but why should you condemn a law which is to you a source
of so much strength? I, one day', said he, 'asked Mr. Seaton, the
Governor-General's representative at the court of Delhi, which of all
things he had seen in India he liked best. "You have", replied he,
smiling, "a small species of melon called 'phût' (disunion); this is
the thing we like best in your land." There was', continued my
Muhammadan friend, 'an infinite deal of sound political wisdom in
this one sentence. Mr. Seaton was a very good and a very wise man.
Our European governors of the present day are not at all the same
kind of thing. I asked Mr. B., a judge, the same question many years
afterwards, and he told me that he thought the rupees were the best
things he had found in India. I asked Mr. T., the Commissioner, and
he told me that he thought the tobacco which he smoked in his hookah
was the best thing. And pray, sir, what do you think the best thing?'
'Why, Nawâb Sâhib, I am always very well pleased when I am free from
pain, and can get my nostrils full of cool air, and my mouth full of
cold water in this hot land of yours; and I think most of my
countrymen are the same. Next to these, the thing we all admire most
in India, Nawâb Sâhib, is the entire exemption which you and I and
every other gentleman, native or European, enjoy from the taxes which
press so heavily upon them in other countries.[12] In Kâshmîr, no
midwife is allowed to attend a woman in her confinement till a heavy
tax has been paid to Ranjît Singh for the infant; and in England, a
man cannot let the light of heaven into his house till he has paid a
tax for the window.'[13]
'Nor keep a dog, nor shoot a partridge in the jungle, I am told,'
said the Nawâb.
'Quite true, Nawâb Sâhib.'
'Hindustan, sir,' said he, 'is, after all, the best country in the
world; the only thing wanted is a little more (_rozgâr_) employment
for the educated classes under Government.'
'True, Nawâb Sâhib, we might, no doubt, greatly multiply this
employment to the advantage of those who got the places, but we
should have to multiply at the same time the taxes, to the great
disadvantage of those who did not get them.'
'True, very true, sir,' said my old friend.
Notes:
1. January, 1836.
2. Farîdpur is a mistake for Farîdâbâd, a small town sixteen miles
from Delhi, founded in 1607 by Shaikh Farîd, treasurer of Jahângîr,
to protect the high road between Agra and Delhi.
3. The beds are dry in the cold season, but the streams, which flow
from the hills to the south of Delhi, are torrents in the rainy
season.
4. But the education in such schools is of very little value, being
commonly confined to the committing of the Korân to memory by boys
ignorant of Arabic.
5. In modern India the British buildings are far more varied, and
many aspire to some architectural merit.
6. Muhammad is said to have received these communications in all
situations; sometimes when riding along the road on his camel, he
became suddenly red in the face, and greatly agitated; he made his
camel sit down immediately, and called for some one to write. His
rhapsodies were all written at the time on leaves and thrown into a
box. Gabriel is believed to have made him repeat over the whole once
every year during the month of Ramazân. In the year he died Muhammad
told his followers that the angel had made him repeat them over twice
that year, and that he was sure he would not live to receive another
visit. [W. H. S.]
7. The Muhammadan year consists of twelve lunar months of 30 and 29
days alternately. The common year, therefore, consists of only 354
days. But, when intercalary days in certain years are allowed for,
the mean year consists of 354 11/30 days. Inasmuch as a solar year
consists of about 365 1/4 days, the difference amounts to nearly 11
days, and any given month in the Muhammadan year consequently goes
the round of the seasons in course of time.
8. The Muharram celebration takes its name from the first month of
the Muhammadan year, during which it takes place. Alî, the cousin of
Muhammad, was married to the prophet's daughter Fatima, and,
according to the Shîa sect, must be regarded as the lawful successor
of Muhammad, who died in June, A.D. 632. But, as a matter of fact,
Omar, Abû Bakr, and Othmân (Usmân) in turn succeeded to the
Khalîfate, and Alî did not take possession of the office till A.D.
655. After five and a half years' reign he was assassinated in
January, A.D. 661, and his son Hasan, who for a few months had held
the vacant office, was poisoned in A.D. 670. Husain, the younger son
of Alî, strove to assert his rights by force of arms, but was slain
on the tenth day of the month Muharram (10th October, A.D. 680) in a
great battle fought at Karbalâ near the Euphrates. These events are
commemorated yearly by noisy funeral processions. Properly, the
proceedings ought to be altogether mournful, and confined to the Shîa
sect, but in practice, Sunnî Muhammadans, and even Hindoos, take part
in the ceremonies, which are regarded by many of the populace as no
more solemn than a Lord Mayor's show.
9. The disgusting festival of the Holî, celebrated with drunkenness
and obscenity, takes place in March, and is supposed to be the
festival of the vernal equinox (see _ante_, chapter 27 note 16). The
magistrates in India have no duty which requires more tact,
discretion, and firmness than the regulation of conflicting religions
processions. The general disarmament of the people has rendered
collisions less dangerous and sanguinary than they used to be, but,
in spite of all precautions, they still occur occasionally. The total
prohibition of processions likely to cause collisions is, of course,
impracticable.
10. Ante chapter 15 text at [9].
11. Muslim daughters also succeed, each taking half the share of a
son.
12. _Tempora mutantur_. The land revenue, in the author's time, fully
preserved its character of rent, and obviously was not a tax. Later
legislation has obscured its real nature, and made it look like a
tax. When the author wrote, the only taxes levied were indirect ones,
as that on salt, which was paid unconsciously. The modern income-tax,
local rates, municipal taxation, and gun licences were all unknown.
13. The window tax was levied at varying rates from 1697 to 1851.
CHAPTER 67
The Old City of Delhi.
On the 21st we went on eight miles to the Kutb Mînâr, across the
range of sandstone hills, which rise to the height of about two
hundred feet, and run north and south. The rocks are for the most
part naked, but here and there the soil between them is covered with
_famished_ grass, and a few stunted shrubs; anything more
unprepossessing can hardly be conceived than the aspect of these
hills, which seem to serve no other purpose than to store up heat for
the people of the great city of Delhi. We passed through a cut in
this range of hills, made apparently by the stream of the river Jumna
at some remote period, and about one hundred yards wide at the
entrance. This cut is crossed by an enormous stone wall running north
and south, and intended to shut in the waters, and form a lake in the
opening beyond it. Along the brow of the precipice, overlooking the
northern end of the wall, is the stupendous fort of Tughlakâbâd,
built by the Emperor Tughlak the First[1] of the sandstones of the
range of hills on which it stands, cut into enormous square
blocks.[2]
On the brow of the opposite side of the precipice, overlooking the
southern end of the wall, stands the fort of Muhammadâbâd, built by
this Emperor's son and successor, Muhammad, and resembling in all
things that built by his father.[3] These fortresses overlooked the
lake, with the old city of Delhi spread out on the opposite side of
it to the west. There is a third fortress upon an isolated hill, east
of the great barrier wall, said to have been built in honour of his
master by the Emperor Tughlak's _barber_.[4] The Emperor's tomb
stands upon an isolated rock in the middle of the once lake, now
plain, about a mile to the west of the barrier wall. The rock is
connected with the western extremity of the northern fortress by a
causeway of twenty-five arches, and about one hundred and fifty yards
long. This is a fine tomb, and contains in a square centre room the
remains of the Emperor Tughlak, his wife, and his son. The tomb is
built of red sandstone, and surmounted by a dome of white marble. The
three graves inside are built of brick covered with stucco work. The
outer sides of the tomb slope slightly inwards from the base, in the
form of a pyramid; but the inner walls are, of course,
perpendicular.[5]
The impression left on the mind after going over these stupendous
fortifications is that the arts which contribute to the comforts and
elegancies of life must have been in a very rude state when they were
raised. Domestic architecture must have been wretched in the extreme.
The buildings are all of stone, and almost all without cement, and
seem to have been raised by giants, and for giants, whose arms were
against everybody, and everybody's arm against them. This was indeed
the state of the Pathân sovereigns in India--they were the creatures
of their armies; and their armies were also employed against the
people, who feared and detested them all.[6]
The Emperor Tughlak, on his return at the head of the army, which he
had led into Bengal to chastise some rebellious subjects, was met at
Afghânpur by his eldest son, Jûnâ, whom he had left in the government
of the capital. The prince had in three days raised here a palace of
wood for a grand entertainment to do honour to his father's return;
and when the Emperor signified his wish to retire, all the courtiers
rushed out before him to be in attendance, and among the rest, Jûnâ
himself. Five attendants only remained when the Emperor rose from his
seat, and at that moment the building fell in and crushed them and
their master. Jûnâ had been sent at the head of an army into the
Deccan, where he collected immense wealth from the plunder of the
palaces of princes and the temples of their priests, the only places
in which much wealth was to be found in those days. This wealth he
tried to conceal from his father, whose death he probably thus
contrived, that he might the sooner have the free enjoyment of it
with unlimited power.[7]
Only thirty years before, Alâ-ud-dîn, returning in the same manner at
the head of an army from the Deccan loaded with wealth, murdered the
Emperor Fîrôz the Second, the father of his wife, and ascended the
throne.[8] Jûnâ ascended the throne under the name of Muhammad the
Third;[9] and, after the remains of his father had been deposited in
the tomb I have described, he passed in great pomp and splendour from
the fortress of Tughlakâbâd, which his father had just then
completed, to the city in which the Mînâr stands, with elephants
before and behind loaded with gold and silver coins, which were
scattered among the crowd, who everywhere hailed him with shouts of
joy. The roads were covered with flowers, the houses adorned with the
richest stuffs, and the streets resounded with music.
He was a man of great learning, and a great patron of learned men; he
was a great founder of churches, had prayers read in them at the
prescribed times, and always went to prayers five times a day
himself.[10] He was rigidly temperate himself in his habits, and
discouraged all intemperance in others. These things secured him
panegyrists throughout the empire during the twenty-seven years that
he reigned over it, though perhaps he was the most detestable tyrant
that ever filled a throne. He would take his armies out over the most
populous and peaceful districts, and hunt down the innocent and
unoffending people like wild beasts, and bring home their heads by
thousands to hang them on the city gates for his mere amusement. He
twice made the whole people of the city of Delhi emigrate with him to
Daulatâbâd in Southern India, which he wished to make the capital,
from some foolish fancy; and during the whole of his reign gave
evident signs of being in an unsound state of mind.[11] There was at
the time of his father's death a saint at Delhi named Nizâmuddîn
Aulia, or the Saint, who was supposed by supernatural means to have
driven from Delhi one night in a panic a large army of Moghals under
Tarmasharîn, who invaded India from Transoxiana in 1303, and laid
close siege to the city of Delhi, in which the Emperor Alâ-ud-dîn was
shut up without troops to defend himself, his armies being engaged in
Southern India.[12] It is very likely that he did strike this army
with a panic by getting some of their leaders assassinated in one
night. He was supposed to have the 'dast ul ghaib', or supernatural
purse' [literally, 'invisible hand'], as his private expenditure is
said to have been more lavish even than that of the Emperor himself,
while he had no ostensible source of income whatever. The Emperor was
either jealous of his influence and display, or suspected him of dark
crimes, and threatened to humble him when he returned to Delhi. As he
approached the city, the friends of the saint, knowing the resolute
spirit of the Emperor, urged him to quit the capital, as he had been
often heard to say, 'Let me but reach Delhi, and this proud priest
shall be humbled'.
The only reply that the saint would ever deign to give from the time
the imperial army left Bengal, till it was within one stage of the
capital, was '_Dihlî dûr ast_'; 'Delhi is still far off'. This is now
become a proverb over the East equivalent to our 'There is many a
slip between the cup and the lip'. It is probable that the saint had
some understanding with the son in his plans for the murder of his
father; it is possible that his numerous wandering disciples may in
reality have been murderers and robbers, and that he could at any
time have procured through them the assassination of the Emperor. The
Muhammadan Thugs, or assassins of India, certainly looked upon him as
one of the great founders of their system, and used to make
pilgrimages to his tomb as such; and, as he came originally from
Persia, and is considered by his greatest admirers to have been in
his youth a robber, it is not impossible that he may have been
originally one of the 'assassins', or disciples of the 'old man of
the mountains', and that he may have set up the system of Thuggee in
India and derived a great portion of his income from it.[13] Emperors
now prostrate themselves, and aspire to have their bones placed near
it [_scil._ the tomb]. While wandering about the ruins, I remarked to
one of the learned men of the place who attended us that it was
singular Tughlak's buildings should be so rude compared with those of
Iltutmish, who had reigned more than eighty years before him.[14]
'Not at all singular,' said he, 'was he not under the curse of the
holy saint Nizâm-ud-dîn?' 'And what had the Emperor done to merit the
holy man's curse?' 'He had taken by force to employ upon his palaces
several of the masons whom the holy man was employing upon a church,'
said he.
The Kutb Mînâr was, I think, more beyond my expectations than the
Tâj; first, because I had heard less of it; and secondly, because it
stands as it were alone in India--there is absolutely no other tower
in this Indian empire of ours.[15]
Large pillars have been cut out of single stones, and raised in
different parts of India to commemorate the conquests of Hindoo
princes, whose names no one was able to discover for several
centuries, till an unpretending English gentleman of surprising
talents and industry, Mr. James Prinsep, lately brought them to light
by mastering the obsolete characters in which they and their deeds
had been inscribed upon them.[16] These pillars would, however, be
utterly insignificant were they composed of many stones. The
knowledge that they are cut out of single stones, brought from a
distant mountain, and raised by the united efforts of multitudes when
the mechanical arts were in a rude state, makes us still view them
with admiration.[17] But the single majesty of this Mînâr of Kutb-ud-
dîn, so grandly conceived, so beautifully proportioned, so chastely
embellished, and so exquisitely finished, fills the mind of the
spectator with emotions of wonder and delight; without any such aid,
he feels that it is among the towers of the earth what the Tâj is
among the tombs--something unique of its kind that must ever stand
alone in his recollections.[18]
It is said to have taken forty-four years in building, and formed the
left of two 'mînârs' of a mosque. The other 'mînâr' was never
raised, but this has been preserved and repaired by the liberality of
the British Government.[19] It is only 242 feet high, and 106 feet in
circumference at the base. It is circular, and fluted vertically into
twenty-seven semicircular and angular divisions. There are four
balconies, supported upon large stone brackets, and surrounded with
battlements of richly cut stone, to enable people to walk round the
tower with safety. The first is ninety feet from the base, the second
fifty feet further up, the third forty further; and the fourth
twenty-four feet above the third. Up to the third balcony, the tower
is built of fine, but somewhat ferruginous sandstone, whose surface
has become red from exposure to the oxygen of the atmosphere. Up to
the first balcony, the flutings are alternately semicircular and
angular; in the second story they are all semicircular, and in the
third all angular. From the third balcony to the top, the building is
composed chiefly of white marble; and the surface is without the deep
flutings. Around the first story there are five horizontal belts of
passages from the Korân, engraved in bold relief, and in the Kufic
character. In the second story there are four, and in the third
three. The ascent is by a spiral staircase within, of three hundred
and eighty steps; and there are passages from this staircase to the
balconies, with others here and there for the admission of light and
air.[20]
A foolish notion has prevailed among some people, over-fond of
paradox, that this tower is in reality a Hindoo building, and not, as
commonly supposed, a Muhammadan one. Never was paradox supported upon
more frail, I might say absurd, foundations. They are these: 1st,
that there is only one Mînâr, whereas there ought to have been two--
had the unfinished one been intended as the second, it would not have
been, as it really is, larger than the first; 2nd, that other
Mînârs seen in the present day either do not slope inward from the
base up at all, or do not slope so much as this. I tried to trace the
origin of this paradox, and I think I found it in a silly old
'munshî' (clerk) in the service of the Emperor. He told me that he
believed it was built by a former Hindoo prince for his daughter, who
wished to worship the rising sun, and view the waters of the Jumna
from the top of it every morning.[21]
There is no other Hindoo building like, or of the same kind as
this;[22] the ribbons or belts of passages from the Korân are all in
relief; and had they not been originally inserted as they are, the
whole surface of the building must have been cut down to throw them
out in bold relief. The slope is the peculiar characteristic of all
the architecture of the Pathâns, by whom the church to which this
tower belongs was built.[23] Nearly all the arches of the church are
still standing in a more or less perfect state, and all correspond in
design, proportion, and execution to the tower. The ruins of the old
Hindoo temples about the place, and about every other place in India,
are totally different in all three; here they are all exceedingly
paltry and insignificant, compared with the church and its tower, and
it is evident that it was the intention of the founder to make them
appear so to future generations of the faithful, for he has taken
care to make his own great work support rather than destroy them,
that they might for ever tend to enhance its grandeur.[24] It is
sufficiently clear that the unfinished mînâr was commenced upon too
large a scale, and with too small a diminution of the circumference
from the base upwards. It is two-fifths larger than the finished
tower in circumference, and much more perpendicular. Finding these
errors when they had got some thirty feet from the foundation, the
founder, Shams-ud-dîn (Îltutmish), began to work anew, and had he
lived a little longer, there is no doubt that he would have raised
the second tower in its proper place, upon the same scale as the one
completed. His death was followed by several successive revolutions;
five sovereigns succeeded each other on the throne of Delhi in ten
years.[25] As usual on such occasions, works of peace were suspended,
and succeeding sovereigns sought renown in military enterprise rather
than in building churches. This church was entire, with the exception
of the second mînâr, when Tamerlane invaded India.[26] He took back a
model of it with him to Samarkand, together with all the masons he
could find at Delhi, and is said to have built a church upon the same
plan at that place, before he set out for the invasion of Syria.
The west face of the quadrangle, in which the tower stands, formed
the church, which consisted of eleven large arched alcoves, the
centre and largest of which contained the pulpit. In size and beauty
they seem to have corresponded with the Mînâr, but they are now all
in ruins.[27] In the front of the centre of these alcoves stands the
metal pillar of the old Hindoo sovereign of Delhi, Prithî Râj, across
whose temple all the great mosque, of which this tower forms a part,
was thrown in triumph. The ruins of these temples he scattered all
round the place, and consist of colonnades of stone pillars and
pedestals, richly enough carved with human figures, in attitudes
rudely and obscenely conceived. The small pillar is of bronze, or a
metal which resembles bronze, and is softer than brass, and of the
same form precisely as that of the stone pillar at Eran, on the Bînâ
river in Mâlwâ, upon which stands the figure of Krishna, with the
glory around his head.[28]
It is said that this metal pillar was put down through the earth, so
as to rest upon the very head of the snake that supports the world;
and that the sovereign who made it, and fixed it upon so firm a
basis, was told by his spiritual advisers that his dynasty should
last as long as the pillar remained where it was. Anxious to see that
the pillar was really where the priests supposed it to be, that his
posterity might be quite sure of their position, Prithî Râj had it
taken up, and he found the blood and some of the flesh of the snake's
head adhering to the bottom. By this means the charm was broken, and
the priests told him that he had destroyed all the hopes of his house
by his want of faith in their assurances. I have never met a Hindoo
that doubted either that the pillar was really upon this snake's
head, or that the king lost his crown by his want of faith in the
assurance of his priests. They all believe that the pillar is still
stuck into the head of the great snake, and that no human efforts of
the present day could remove it. On my way back to my tents, I asked
the old Hindoo officer of my guard, who had gone with me to see the
metal pillar, what he thought of the story of the pillar?
'What the people relate about the "kîlî" (pillar) having been stuck
into the head of the snake that supports the world, sir, is nothing
more than a simple _historical_ fact known to everybody. Is it not
so, my brothers?' turning to the Hindoo sipâhîs and followers around
us, who all declared that no fact could ever be better established.
'When the Râjâ,' continued the old soldier, 'had got the pillar fast
into the head of the snake, he was told by his chief priest that his
dynasty must now reign over Hindustan for ever. "But," said the Râjâ,
"as all seems to depend upon the pillar being on the head of the
snake, we had better see that it is so with our own eyes." He ordered
it to be taken up; the clergy tried to dissuade him, but all in vain.
Up it was taken--the flesh and blood of the snake were found upon it-
-the pillar was replaced; but a voice was heard saying: "Thy want of
faith hath destroyed thee--thy reign must soon end, and with it that
of thy race."'
I asked the old soldier from whence the voice came.
He said this was a point that had not, he believed, been quite
settled. Some thought it was from the serpent himself below the
earth, others that it came from the high priest or some of his
clergy. 'Wherever it came from,' said the old man, 'there is no doubt
that God decreed the Râjâ's fall for his want of faith; and fall he
did soon after.' All our followers concurred in this opinion, and the
old man seemed quite delighted to think that he had had an
opportunity of delivering his sentiments upon so great a question
before so respectable an audience.
The Emperor Shams-ud-dîn Îltutmish is said to have designed this
great Muhammadan church at the suggestion of Khwâja Kutb-ud-dîn, a
Muhammadan saint from Ûsh in Persia, who was his religious guide and
apostle, and died some sixteen years before him.[29] His tomb is
among the ruins of this old city. Pilgrims visit it from all parts of
India, and go away persuaded that they shall have all they have
asked, provided they have given or promised liberally in a pure
spirit of faith in his influence with the Deity. The tomb of the
saint is covered with gold brocade, and protected by an awning--those
of the Emperors around it he naked and exposed. Emperors and princes
lie all around him; and their tombs are entirely disregarded by the
hundreds that daily prostrate themselves before his, and have been
doing so for the last six hundred years.[30] Among the rest I saw
here the tomb of Mu'azzam, alias Bahâdur Shâh, the son and successor
of Aurangzêb, and that of the blind old Emperor Shâh Alam, from whom
the Honourable Company got their Dîwanî grant.[31] The grass grows
upon the slab that covers the remains of Mu'azzam, the most learned,
most pious, and most amiable, l believe, of the crowned descendants
of the great Akbar. These kings and princes all try to get a place as
near as they can to the remains of such old saints, believing that
the ground is more holy than any other, and that they may give them a
lift on the day of resurrection. The heir apparent to the throne of
Delhi visited the tomb the same day that I did. He was between sixty
and seventy years of age.[32]
I asked some of the attendants of the tomb, on my way back, what he
had come to pray for; and was told that no one knew, but every one
supposed it was for the death of the Emperor, his father, who was
only fifteen years older, and was busily engaged in promoting an
intrigue at the instigation of one of his wives, to oust him, and get
one of her sons, Mirza Salîm, acknowledged as his successor by the
British Government. It was the Hindoo festival of the Basant,[33] and
all the avenues to the tomb of this old saint were crowded when I
visited it. Why the Muhammadans crowded to the tomb on a Hindoo
holiday I could not ascertain.
The Emperor Îltutmish, who died A.D. 1235, is buried close behind one
end of the arched alcove, in a beautiful tomb without its cupola. He
built the tomb himself, and left orders that there should be no
'parda' (screen) between him and heaven; and no dome was thrown over
the building in consequence. Other great men have done the same, and
their tombs look as if their domes had fallen in; they think the way
should be left clear for a start on the day of resurrection.[34] The
church is stated to have been added to it by the Emperor Balban, and
the Mînâr finished.[35] About the end of the seventeenth century, it
was so shaken by an earthquake that the two upper stories fell down.
Our Government, when the country came into our possession, undertook
to repair these two stories, and entrusted the work to Captain Smith,
who built up one of stone, and the other of wood, and completed the
repairs in three years. The one was struck by lightning eight or nine
years after, and came down. If it was anything like the one that is
left, the lightning did well to remove it.[36]
About five years ago, while the Emperor was on a visit to the tomb
of Kutb-ud-dîn, a madman got into his private apartments. The
servants were ordered to turn him out. On passing the Mînâr he ran
in, ascended to the top, stood a few minutes on the verge, laughing
at those who were running after him, and made a spring that enabled
him to reach the bottom, without touching the sides. An eye-witness
told me that he kept his erect position till about half-way down,
when he turned over, and continued to turn till he got to the bottom,
when his fall made a report like a gun. He was of course dashed to
pieces. About five months ago another fell over by accident, and was
dashed to pieces against the sides. A new road has been here cut
through the tomb of the Emperor Alâ-ud-dîn, who murdered his father-
in-law-the first Muhammadan conqueror of Southern India, and his
remains have been scattered to the winds.[37]
A very pretty marble tomb, to the west of the alcoves, covers the
remains of Imâm Mashhadî, the religious guide of the Emperor Akbar;
and a magnificent tomb of freestone covers those of his four foster-
brothers. This was long occupied as a dwelling-house by the late Mr.
Blake, of the Bengal Civil Service, who was lately barbarously
murdered at Jaipur. To make room for his dining-tables he removed the
marble slab, which covered the remains of the dead, from the centre
of the building, against the urgent remonstrance of the people, and
threw it carelessly on one side against the wall, where it now lies.
The people appealed in vain, it is said, to Mr. Fraser, the Governor-
General's representative, who was soon after assassinated; and a good
many attribute the death of both to this outrage upon the remains of
the dead foster-brother of Akbar. Those of Alâ-ud-dîn were, no doubt,
older and less sensitive. Tombs equally magnificent cover the remains
of the other three foster-brothers of Akbar, but I did not enter
them.[38]
Notes:
1. The Sultan, called by the author 'the Emperor Tughlak the First',
as being the first of the Tughlak dynasty, was by birth a Karaunîah
Turk, named Ghâzî Bêg Tughlak. He assumed the style of Ghiyâs-ud-dîn
Tughlak Shâh when he seized the throne in A.D. 1320, and he reigned
till A.D. 1325.
2. This gigantic fortress is close to the village of Badarpur, about
four miles due east of the Kutb Mînâr, and ten or twelve miles south
of the modern city. The building of it occupied more than three
years, but the whole undertaking 'proved eminently futile, as his son
removed his Court to the old city within forty days after his
accession.' (Thomas, _Chronicles of the Pathân Kings of Delhi_, 1871,
p. 192.) The fort is described by Cunningham in _A.S.R._, vol. i, p.
212, whose description is copied in the guide-books. See also
Fanshawe, _Delhi Past and Present_ (John Murray, 1902), p. 288 and
plate. That work is cited as 'Fanshawe'.
3. Also called Adilâbâd. It is described in _A.S.R._, vol. i, p. 21;
Carr Stephen, _The Archaeology and Monumental Remains of Delhi_,
Ludhiana, 1876, p. 98; and Fanshawe, p. 291.
4. '_The Barber's House_. This lies to the right of the road from
Tughlâkâbad to Badarpur, and is close to the ruined city. It is said
to have been built for Tughlak Shâh's barber about A.D. 1323. It is
now a mere ruin.' (Harcourt, _The New Guide to Delhi_, Allahabad,
1866, p. 88.)
5. This fine tomb was built by Muhammad bin Tughlak (A.D. 1325-51).
It is described by Cunningham in _A.S.R._, vol. i, p. 213. See also
_Ann. Rep. A. S., India_, 1904-5, p. 19, fig. 11; _H.F.A._, p. 397,
fig. 234; and Fanshawe, p. 290, with plate. Thomas (_Chronicles_, p.
192) and Cunningham both say that the causeway, or viaduct, has
twenty-seven, not only twenty-five, arches, as stated in the text.
The causeway is 600 feet in length. The sloping walls are
characteristic of the period.
6. The blunder of calling the Sultâns of Delhi by the name Pathân,
due to the translators of Firishta's History, has been perpetuated by
Thomas's well-known work, _The Chronicles of the Pathân Kings of
Delhi_, and in countless other books. The name is quite wrong. The
only Pathân Sultâns were those of the Lodî dynasty, which immediately
preceded Bâbur, and those of the Sûr dynasty, the rivals of Bâbur's
son. 'He (_scil._ Ghiyâs-ud-dîn Balban) was a _Turk_ of the Ilbarî
tribe, but compilers of Indian Histories and Gazetteers, and
archaeological experts, turn him, like many Turks, Tâjzîks, Jâts, and
Sayyids, into _Pathâns_, which is synonymous with Afghan, it being
the vitiated Hindî equivalent of Pushtûn, the name by which the
people generally known as Afghans call themselves, in their own
language. . . . It is quite time to give up Dow and Briggs'
Ferishta.' (Raverty, in _J.A.S.B._, vol. lxi (1892), Part I, p. 164,
note.)
7. The murder of Ghiyâs-ud-dîn Tughlak by his son Fakhr-ud-dîn Jûnâ,
also called Ulugh Khân, occurred in the year A.H. 725, which began on
18th December, 1324 (o.s.). The testimony of the contemporary
traveller Ibn Batûtâ establishes the fact that the fall of the
pavilion was premeditated. (Thomas, _Chronicles_, pp. 187, 189.) The
murderer, on his accession to the throne (1325), assumed the style of
Muhammad bin Tughlak Shâh.
8. Jalâl-ud-dîn Fîrôz Shâh Khiljî was murdered by his son-in-law and
nephew Alâ-ud-dîn at Karrâ on the Ganges in July, A.D. 1296. The
murderer reigned until A.D. 1315 under the title of Alâ-ud-dîn
Muhammad Shâh, Sikandar Sânî.
9. As already noted, his proper style is Muhammad bin Tughlak Shâh.
The word _bin_ means 'son of'. The Sultan is never called 'Muhammad
the Third'.
10. A Muhammadan must, if he can, say his prayers with the prescribed
forms five times in the twenty-four hours; and on Friday, which is
their sabbath, he must, if he can, say three prayers in the church
_masjid_. On other days he may say them where he pleases. Every
prayer must begin with the first chapter of the Korân--this is the
grace to every prayer. This said, the person may put in what other
prayers of the Korân he pleases, and ask for that which he most
wants, as long as it does not injure other Musalmâns. This is the
first chapter of the Korân: 'Praise be to God the Lord of all
creatures--the most merciful--the King of the day of judgement. Thee
do we worship, and of Thee do we beg assistance. Direct us in the
right way--in the way of those to whom Thou hast been gracious; not
of those against whom Thou art incensed; nor of those who go astray.'
[W. H. S.] The quotation is from Sale's version. The last clause may
also be rendered, 'The way of those to whom Thou hast been gracious,
against whom Thou art not incensed, and who have not erred,' as Sale
points out in his note.
11. This mad tyrant, among other horrible deeds, flayed his nephew
alive. He attempted to invade China through the Himâlayas, and for
three years issued a forced currency of brass and copper, which he
vainly tried to make people take as equal in value to silver. Strange
to say, he was allowed to reign for nearly twenty-seven years, and to
die peacefully in his bed. The hunts of the 'innocent and unoffending
people' were organized rather to gain the benefit of 'sending
infidels to hell' than for 'mere amusement'. Daulatâbâd was the name
given by Muhammad bin Tughlak to the ancient fortress of Deogîr
(Deogiri, Deoghur), situated about ten miles from Aurangâbâd, in what
is now the Hyderabad State.
12. In the original edition the Moghal leader's name is printed as
'Turmachurn', the Tarmasharîn (with variations in spelling) of
Muhammadan authors (see E. and D., iii. 42, 450, 507; v. 485; vi.
222). The name Turghi is given by Thomas, who says he invested Delhi
in A.H. 703, corresponding to A.D. 1303-4; and refers to an article
in _J.A.S.B._, vol. xxxv (1866), Part I, pp. 199-218, entitled 'Notes
on the History and Topography of the Ancient Cities of Delhi', by O.
Campbell. (_Chronicles_, p. 175, note.) Campbell writes the leader's
name as Turghai Khân. Apparently Tarmasharîn was identical with
Turghi or Turghai Khân, but I am not sure that he was. The Moghals
made several raids during the reign of Alâ-ud-dîn Muhammad Shâh.
13. The tomb of Nizâm-ud-dîn is further noticed in the next chapter
of this work. It is situated in an enclosure which contains other
notable tombs. The following extract from the author's _Ramaseeana_
(p. 121) gives additional particulars concerning this saint of
questionable sanctity: '_Nizâm-ud-dîn Aulia_.--A saint of the Sunnî
sect of Muhammadans, said to have been a Thug of great note at some
period of his life, and his tomb near Delhi is to this day visited as
a place of pilgrimage by Thugs, who make votive offerings to it. He
is said to have been of the Barsot class, born in the month of Safar
[633], Hijrî, March A.D. 1236; died Rabî-ul-awwal, 725, October A.D.
1325. [The months as stated do not correspond.--_Ed_.] His tomb is
visited by Muhammadan pilgrims from all parts as a place of great
sanctity from containing the remains of so holy a man; but the Thugs,
both Hindoo and Muhammadan, visit it as containing the remains of the
most celebrated Thug of his day. He was of the Sunnî sect, and those
of the Shîa sect find no difficulty in believing that he was a Thug;
but those of his own sect will never credit it. There are perhaps no
sufficient grounds to pronounce him one of the fraternity; but there
are some to suspect that he was so at some period of his life. The
Thugs say he gave it up early in life, but kept others employed in it
till late, and derived an income from it; and the 'dast-ul-ghaib', or
supernatural purse, with which he was supposed to be endowed, gives a
colour to this. His lavish expenditure, so much beyond his ostensible
means, gave rise to the belief that he was supplied from above with
money.'
The 'old man of the mountains' with whom the author compares Nizâm-
ud-dîn (or at least the original 'old man of the mountains', Shaikh-
ul Jabal), was Hasan-ibn-Sabbâh (or, us-Sabbâh), who founded the sect
of so-called Assassins in the mountains on the shores of the Caspian,
and flourished from about A.D. 1089 to 1124. Hulâkû the Mongol broke
the power of the sect in A.D. 1256 (Thatcher, in _Encycl. Brit._,
11th ed., 1910, s. v. 'Assassin').
14. Shams-ud-dîn Îltutmish, who had been a slave, reigned from A.D.
1210 to 1235. His Turkish name is variously written as Yulteemush,
Altamsh, Alitmish, &c. The form Îltutmish is correct (_Z.D.M.G._,
1907, p. 192). His tomb is discussed _post_.
15. This is not quite accurate. A similar _mînâr_, or mosque tower,
built in the middle of the thirteenth century, formerly existed at
Koil in the Alîgarh district (_A.S.R._, i. 191), and two mosques at
Bayâna in the Bharatpur State, have each only one _mînâr_, placed
outside the courtyard (ibid., vol. iv, p. ix). Chitor in Rajputânâ
possesses two noble Hindoo towers, one about 80 feet high, erected in
connexion with Jain shrines, and the other, about 120 feet high,
erected by Kumbha Rânâ as a tower or pillar of victory. (Fergusson,
_Hist. of Indian and Eastern Architecture_, ed. 1910, vol. ii, pp.
57-61.)
16. The short life of James Prinsep extended only from August 20,
1799, to April 22, 1840, and practically terminated in 1838, when his
brain began to fail from the undue strain caused by incessant and
varied activity. His memorable discoveries in archaeology and
numismatics are recorded in the seven volumes of the _J.A.S.B._ for
the years 1832-8. His contributions to those volumes were edited by
B. Thomas, and republished in 1868 under the title of _Essays on
Indian Antiquities_. Sir Alexander Cunningham, who was one of
Prinsep's fellow workers, gives interesting details of the process by
which the discoveries were made, in the Introduction to the first
volume of the Reports of the Archaeological Survey. No adequate
account of James Prinsep's remarkable career has been published. He
was singularly modest and unassuming. A good summary of his life is
given in Higginbotham's _Men whom India has Known_, 2nd ed., Madras,
1874. See also the editor's paper, 'James Prinsep', in East and West,
Bombay, July, 1906.
17. The monolith pillars alluded to in the text are chiefly those of
the great Emperor Piyadasi, Beloved of the Gods, also known by the
name of Asoka. So far from being memorials of a time when 'the
mechanical arts were in a rude state', the Asoka columns exhibit the
arts of the stone-cutter and sculptor in perfection. They were
erected about 242 to 230 B.C., and the inscriptions on them contain a
code of moral and religions precepts. They do not commemorate
conquests, although the Asoka pillar at Allahabad has been utilized
by later sovereigns for the recording of magniloquent inscriptions in
praise of their grandeur. The best-known of the Asoka pillars are the
two at Delhi, and the one at Allahabad. Many scholars have devoted
themselves to the study of the inscriptions of Asoka, which may be
said to form the foundation of authentic Indian history. The reader
interested in the subject should consult Senart, _Les Inscriptions de
Piyadasi_, t. I and II, Paris, 1881, 1886; V. A. Smith, _Asoka, the
Buddhist Emperor of India_, 2nd ed.. Oxford, 1909; and 'The
Monolithic Pillars or Columns of Asoka' (_Z.D.M.G._, 1911, pp. 221-
10). See also _E.H.I._, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1914), chap. 6, 7, with
Bibliography. Certain of the Gupta emperors in the fifth century A.C.
also erected monolith pillars. Some of the pillars of the Gupta
period commemorate victories; others are merely religious monuments.
18. Fergusson thought the Kutb Mînâr superior to Giotto's campanile
at Florence in 'poetry of design and exquisite finish of detail'. He
also held it to excel its taller Egyptian rival, the minaret of the
mosque of Hasan at Cairo, in its nobler appearance, as well as in
design and finish. To sum up, he held the Delhi monument to surpass
any building of its class in the whole world. (_Hist. of Indian and
Eastern Architecture_, ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 206.)
19. Fergusson (ibid.) was mistaken in supposing that the Kutb Mînâr
was intended for anything else than a _mâzina_, or tower from which
the call to prayers should be proclaimed. It is that and nothing
else. Several examples of early mosques with only one _mînâr_ each
are known, at Koil and Bayâna, in India, as well as at Ghaznî and
Cairo. The unfinished _mînâr_ of Alâuddîn near the Kutb Mînâr was
intended for a distinct building, namely, his addition to the
original Kutb mosque. There was no 'other _mînâr_' connected with the
Kutb Mînâr.(Cunningham, _A.S.R._ iv (1874), p. ix.)
The current name of the Kutb Mînâr refers to the saint Khwâja Kutb-
ud-dîn of Ûsh, who lies near the tower, and not to Sultan Kutb-ud-dîn
Aibak or Îbak. The _mînâr_ was erected, about A.D. 1232, by Sultan
Shams-ud-dîn Îltutmish (V. A. Smith, 'Who Built the Kutb Mînâr?'
_East and West_, Bombay, Dec. 1907, pp. 1200-5; B. N. Munshi, _The
Kutb Mînâr, Delhi_, Bombay, 1911).
All the important monuments at or near Delhi are now carefully
conserved, Lord Curzon having organized effective arrangements for
the purpose.
20. The original edition gives a coloured plate of the Kutb Mînâr.
The total height stated in the text, 242 feet, is said by Fergusson
(p. 205, note) to be that ascertained in 1794; the present height of
the _mînâr_, since the modern pavilion on the top has been removed,
is 238 feet 1 inch, according to Cunningham. (_A.S.R._, vol. i, p.
196.) Originally the building was ten, or perhaps twenty, feet
higher. The deep flutings appear to have been suggested by the
_mînârs_ of Mahmûd at Ghaznî, 'which are star polygons in plan, with
deeply indented angles'. The Kutb Mînâr was built by Sultan Îltutmish
alone about A.D. 1232. The statement in most books, including
Fanshawe (pp. 265-8, with plates), that it was _begun_ by Sultan
Kutb-ud-dîn, is erroneous.
21. The notion of the Hindoo origin of the Kutb Mînâr, which the
author justly stigmatizes as 'foolish', was taken up by Sir Sayyid
Ahmad Khân, the author of an Urdû work on the antiquities of Delhi,
and by Sir A. Cunningham's assistant, Mr. Beglar, who wasted a great
part of volume iv of the _Archaeological Survey Reports_ in trying to
prove the paradox. His speculations on the subject were conclusively
refuted by his chief in the Preface (pp. v-x) of the same volume. The
mînâr was built by Hindoo masons, and, in consequence, some of the
details, notably its overlapping or corbelled arches, are Hindoo.
22. This is correct. The Hindoo 'towers of victory' are in a totally
different style.
23. On the misnomer 'Pathâns', see _ante_, previous note 6.
24. The Kutb mosque was constructed from the materials of twenty-
seven Hindoo temples. The colonnades retain much of their Hindoo
character. (Fanshawe, p. 259 and plate.)
25. The author's description of the unfinished tower is far from
accurate. The tower was begun, not by Shams-ud-dîn Îltutmish, but by
Alâ-ud-dîn Muhammad Shâh, in the year A.H. 711 (A.D. 1311). It is
about 82 feet in diameter, and when cased with marble, as was
intended, would have been at least 85 feet in diameter, or nearly
double that of the Kutb Mînâr, which is 48 feet 4 inches. The total
height of the column as it now stands is about 75 feet above the
plinth, or 87 feet above the ground level. (_A.S.R._, vol. i, p. 205;
vol. iv, p. 62, pl. vii; Thomas, _Chronicles_, p. 173, citing
original authorities.) Carr Stephen (p. 67) gives the circumference
as 254 feet, and the height as about 80 feet.
26. Alâ-ud-dîn's additions were never completed. The sack of Delhi by
Tîmûr Lang (Tamerlane) took place in December 1398. The Delhi sacked
by him was the city known as Fîrôzâbâd.
27. The glory of the mosque is . . . the great range of arches on the
western side, extending north and south for about 385 feet, and
consisting of three greater and eight smaller arches; the central one
22 feet wide, and 53 feet high; the larger side-arches, 24 feet 4
inches, and about the same height as the central arch; the smaller
arches, which are unfortunately much ruined, are about half these
dimensions.' The great arch 'has since been carefully restored by
Government under efficient superintendence, and is now as sound and
complete as when first erected. The two great side arches either were
never completed, or have fallen down in consequence of the false mode
of construction.' (Fergusson, _Hist. of I. and E. Archit._, ed. 1910,
vol. ii, pp. 203, 204). The centre arch bears an inscription dated in
A.H. 594, or A.D. 1198 (Thomas, _Chronicles_, p. 24).
28. Most of the description of the Iron Pillar in the text is
erroneous. The pillar has nothing to do with Prithî Râj, who was
slain by the Muhammadans in A.D. 1192 (A.H. 588). The earliest
inscription on it records the victories of a Râjâ Chandra, probably
Chandra-varman, chief of Pokharan in Râjputâna in the fourth century
A.C. (_E.H.I._, 3rd ed., 1914, p. 290, note). The pillar is by no
means 'small' when its material is considered; on the contrary, it is
very large. That material is not 'bronze, or a metal which resembles
bronze', but is pure malleable iron, as proved by analysis. It has
been suggested that this pillar must have been formed by gradually
welding pieces together; if so, it has been done very skilfully,
since no marks of such welding are to be seen. . . . The famous iron
pillar at the Kutb, near Delhi, indicates an amount of skill in the
manipulation of a large mass of wrought iron which has been the
marvel of all who have endeavoured to account for it. It is not many
years since the production of such a pillar would have been an
impossibility in the largest foundries of the world, and even now
there are comparatively few where a similar mass of metal could be
tumed out. . . . The total weight must exceed six tons.' (V. Ball,
_Economic Geology of India_, pp. 338, 339.) The metal is uninjured by
rust, and the inscription is perfect. An exact facsimile is set up in
the Indian Section of the Victoria and Albert Museum at South
Kensington, The pillar is shown, with the smaller arches of the
mosque, in _H.F.A._ fig. 232. See also Fanshawe, pp. 260, 264, and
plates. The inscription was edited by Fleet (_Gupta Inscriptions_,
1888, No. 32). The dimensions of the pillar are as follows: Height
above ground (total), 22 ft,; height below ground, 1 ft. 8 in.;
diameter at base, 16.4 in.; diameter at the capital, 12.05 in.;
height of capital, 3 1/2 ft. At a distance of a few inches below the
surface it expands in a bulbous form to a diameter of 2 ft. 4 in.,
and rests on a gridiron of iron bars, which are fastened with lead
into the stone pavement. (_A.S.R._, vol. iv, p. 28, pl. v.)
This last prosaic fact, established by actual excavation, destroys
the basis of all the current local legends and spurious traditions.
29. This name is printed Ouse in the author's text. The saint
referred to is the celebrated Kutb-ud-dîn Bakhtyâr Kâkî, commonly
called Kutb Shâh, who died on the 27th of November, A.D. 1235.
Îltutmish died in April, A.D. 1236 (Beale).
30. The royal tombs are in the village of Mihraulî, close to the
Kutb. See Carr Stephen, op. cit., pp. 180-4, and Fanshawe, pp. 280-4.
31. That is to say, the revenue administration of Bengal, Bihâr, and
Orissa in 1765.
32. He is now Emperor, having succeeded his father, Akbar Shâh, in
1837. [W. H. S.] He is known as Bahâdur Shâh II. In consequence of
his having joined the rebels in 1857, he was deposed and banished. He
died at Rangoon in 1862, and with him ended the line of Emperors of
Delhi. He was born on the 24th of October, 1775, and so was in his
sixty-first year when the author met him. His father was about
seventy-eight (eighty lunar) years of age at his death.
33. 'Basant' means the spring. The full name of this festival of the
spring time is the Basant Panchamî.
34. According to Harcourt (_The New Guide to Delhi_, 1866), the tomb
of Îltutmish was erected by his children, the Sultânas Rukn-ud-dîn
and Razîa, who reigned in succession after him for short periods,
that is to say, Rukn-ud-dîn Fîrôz Shâh for six months and twenty-
eight days, and the Empress Razîa for about three years, from A.D.
1236 to 1239. (See Carr Stephen, p. 73.) Îltutmish died in April,
A.D. 1236, not in 1235. Fergusson observes that this tomb is of
special interest as being the oldest Muhammadan tomb known to exist
in India. He also remarks (p. 509) that the effect at present is
injured by the want of a roof, which, 'judging from appearance, was
never completed, if ever commenced'. Harcourt (p. 120) states that
'Fîrôz Shâh, who reigned from A.D. 1351 to A.D. 1385 [_sic_, 1388],
is said to have placed a roof to the building, but it is doubtful if
there ever was one, as there are no traces of the same. Cunningham
and Carr Stephen (p. 74) both find sufficient evidence remaining to
satisfy them that a dome once existed. Fanshawe (p. 269) says 'that
the chamber was intended to be roofed is clear from the remains of
the lowest course of a dome on the top of the south wall; but, if it
was built for her father by Sultan Raziya, as seems probable, it is
quite possible that the dome was never completed'. The interior, a
square of 29 1/2 feet, is beautifully and elaborately decorated, and
in wonderful preservation considering its age and the exposure to
which it has been subjected. The walls are over seven feet thick, the
principal entrance being to the east. The tomb is built of red
sandstone and marble; the sarcophagus is in the centre, and is of
pale marble.
35. Sultan Ghiyâs-ud-dîn Balban reigned from February, A.D. 1266 to
1286. I cannot discover any authority for the statement that he
finished the Kutb Mînâr, and 'added the church'. It is not clear
which 'church', or mosque, the author refers to. For a notice of
Balban's tomb and buildings, see Carr Stephen, pp. 79-81, He
certainly did not finish the Kutb Mînâr.
36. See _A.S.R._, vol. i, p. 199. '_Top of the Kutb Mînâr_.--This
octagonal stone pavilion was put up in A.D. 1826 over the Mînâr by
Major Smith, of the Engineers, who had the superintendence of the
repairs of the Kutb, but it was taken down by the order of
Government' (Harcourt, _The New Guide to Delhi_, p. 123). This
'grotesque ornament' was removed in 1848 by order of Lord Hardinge,
and bereft of its wooden pavilion, which had carried a flag-staff
(Carr Stephen, p. 64; Fanshawe, p. 266). It has now been moved
farther and more out of sight.
37. This alleged outrage does not appear to have really occurred. The
author seems to have been misinformed about the position of Alâ-ud-
dîn's tomb, which still exits in the central room of a building, the
eastern wall of which is in part identical with the western wall of
the extension of the Kutb Mosque, built by Îltutmish (Carr Stephen,
op. cit., p. 88). Fanshawe agrees (p. 272).
38. The tomb desecrated by Mr. Blake is on the right of the road
leading from the Kutb Mînâr to the village of Mihraulî, and is either
that of Adham Khân, whom Akbar put to death in A.D. 1562 for the
murder of Shams-ud-dîn Muhammad Atgah Khân, one of the Emperor's
foster fathers, or the neighbouring 'family grave enclosure' of his
brothers, known as the _Chaunsath Khambhâ_, or Hall of Sixty-four
Pillars. Adham Khân's tomb is still, or was until recently, used as a
rest-house (Fanshawe, pp. 14, 228, 242, 256, 278; Carr Stephen, pp.
31, 200, pl. ii). The best-known of the 'kokahs', or foster-brothers,
of Akbar is Azîz, the son of Shams-ud-dîn above mentioned. Azîz
received the title of Khân-i-Azam (Von Noer, _The Emperor Akbar_,
transl. by Beveridge, vol. i, pp. 78, 95; and Blochmann, _Âîn-t-
Akbarî_, vol. i, pp. 321, 323, &c.). The young chief of Jaipur died
in 1834, and in the course of disturbances which followed, the
Political Agent was wounded, and Mr. Blake, his assistant, was killed
(D. Boulger, _Lord William Bentinck_, 'Rulers of India' series, p.
143). I cannot find mention in any authority of Imâm Mashhadî. Mr.
Fraser's murder has been fully described _ante_ chapter 64.
CHAPTER 68
New Delhi, or Shâhjahânâbâd.
On the 22nd of January, 1836, we went on twelve miles to the new city
of Delhi, built by the Emperor Shâhjahân, and called after him
Shâhjahânâbâd; and took up our quarters in the palace of the Bêgam
Samrû, a fine building, agreeably situated in a garden opening into
the great street, with a branch of the great canal running through
it, and as quiet as if it had been in a wilderness.[1] We had
obtained from the Bêgam permission to occupy this palace during our
stay. It was elegantly furnished, the servants were all exceedingly
attentive, and we were very happy.
The Kutb Mînâr stands upon the back of the sandstone range of low
hills, and the road descends over the north-eastern face of this
range for half a mile, and then passes over a level plain all the way
to the new city, which lies on the right bank of the river Jumna. The
whole plain is literally covered with the remains of splendid
Muhammadan mosques and mausoleums. These Muhammadans seem as if they
had always in their thoughts the saying of Christ which Akbar has
inscribed on the gateway at Fathpur Sîkrî: 'Life is a bridge which
you are to pass over, and not to build your dwellings upon.'[2] The
buildings which they have left behind them have almost all a
reference to a future state--they laid out their means in a church,
in which the Deity might be propitiated; in a tomb where leaned and
pious men might chant their Korân over their remains, and youth be
instructed in their duties; in a serai, a bridge, a canal built
gratuitously for the public good, that those who enjoyed these
advantages from generation to generation might pray for the repose of
their souls. How could it be otherwise where the land was the
property of Government, where capital was never concentrated or safe,
when the only aristocracy was that of office, while the Emperor was
the sole recognized heir of all his public officers?
The only thing that he could not inherit were his tombs, his temples,
his bridges, his canals, his caravanserais. I was acquainted with the
history of most of the great men whose tombs and temples I visited
along the road; but I asked in vain for a sight of the palaces they
occupied in their day of pride and power. They all had, no doubt,
good houses agreeably situated, like that of the Bêgam Samrû, in the
midst of well-watered gardens and shrubberies, delightful in their
season; but they cared less about them--they knew that the Emperor
was heir to every member of the great body to which they belonged,
the _aristocracy of office_; and might transfer all their wealth to
his treasury, and all their palaces to their successors, the moment
the breath should be out of their bodies.[3] If their sons got
office, it would neither be in the same grades nor in the same places
as those of their fathers.
How different it is in Europe, where our aristocracy is formed upon a
different basis; no one knows where to find the tombs in which the
remains of great men who have passed away repose; or the churches and
colleges they have founded; or the serâis, the bridges, the canals
they formed gratuitously for the public good; but everybody knows
where to find their 'proud palaces'; life is not to them 'a bridge
over which they are to pass, and not build their dwellings upon'. The
eldest sons enjoy all the patrimonial estates, and employ them as
best they may to get their younger brothers into situations in the
church, the army, the navy, and other public establishments, in which
they may be honourably and liberally provided for out of the public
purse.
About half-way between the great tower and the new city, on the left-
hand side of the road, stands the tomb of Mansûr Alî Khân, the great-
grandfather of the present King of Oudh. Of all the tombs to be seen
in this immense extent of splendid ruins, this is perhaps the only
one raised over a subject, the family of whose inmates are now in a
condition even to keep it in repair. It is a very beautiful
mausoleum, built after the model of the Tâj at Agra; with this
difference, that the external wall around the quadrangle of the Tâj
is here, as it were, thrown back, and closed in upon the tomb. The
beautiful gateway at the entrance of the gardens of the Tâj forms
each of the four sides of the tomb of Mansûr Alî Khân, with all its
chaste beauty of design, proportion, and ornament.[4] The quadrangle
in which this mausoleum stands is about three hundred and fifty yards
square, surrounded by a stone wall, with handsome gateways, and
filled in the same manner as that of the Tâj at Agra, with cisterns
and fruit-trees. Three kinds of stones are used--white marble, red
sandstone, and the fine white and flesh-coloured sandstone of Rupbâs.
The dome is of white marble, and exactly of the same form as that of
the Tâj; but it stands on a neck or base of sandstone with twelve
sides, and the marble is of a quality very inferior to that of the
Tâj. It is of coarse dolomite, and has become a good deal discoloured
by time, so as to give it the appearance, which Bishop Heber noticed,
of _potted meat_. The neck is not quite so long as that of the Tâj,
and is better covered by the marble cupolas that stand above each
face of the building. The four noble minarets are, however, wanting.
The apartments are all in number and form exactly like those of the
Tâj, but they are somewhat less in size. In the centre of the first
floor lies the beautiful marble slab that bears the date of this
small pillar of a _tottering state_, A.H. 1167;[5] and in a vault
underneath repose his remains by the side of those of one of his
grand-daughters. The graves that cover these remains are of plain
earth strewed with fresh flowers, and covered with plain cloth. About
two miles from this tomb to the east stands that of the father of
Akbar, Humâyûn, a large and magnificent building. As I rode towards
this building to see the slab that covers the head of poor Dârâ
Shikoh, I frequently cast a lingering look behind to view, as often
as I could, this very pretty imitation of the most beautiful of all
the tombs of the earth.[6]
On my way I turned in to see the tomb of the celebrated saint, Nizâm-
ud-dîn Auliâ, the defeater of the Transoxianian army under Tarmah
Shîrîn in 1303, to which pilgrimages are still made from all parts of
India.[7] It is a small building, surmounted by a white marble dome,
and kept very clean and neat.[8] By its side is that of the poet
Khusrû, his contemporary and friend, who moved about where he pleased
through the palace of the Emperor Tughlak Shâh the First, five
hundred years ago, and sang extempore to his lyre while the greatest
and the fairest watched his lips to catch the expressions as they
came warm from his soul. His popular songs are still the most
popular; and he is one of the favoured few who live through ages in
the every-day thoughts and feelings of many millions, while the
crowned heads that patronized them in their brief day of pomp and
power are forgotten, or remembered merely as they happened to be
connected with them. His tomb has also a dome, and the grave is
covered with rich brocade,[9] and attended with as much reverence and
devotion as that of the great saint himself, while those of the
emperors, kings, and princes that have been crowded around them are
entirely disregarded. A number of people are employed to read the
Korân over the grave of the old saint (_scil._ Nizâm-ud-dîn), who
died A.H. 725 [A.D. 1324-5], and are paid by contributions from the
present Emperor, and the members of his family, who occasionally come
in their hour of need to entreat his intercession with the Deity in
their favour, and by the humble pilgrims who flock from all parts for
the same purpose. A great many boys are here educated by those
readers of their sacred volume. All my attendants bowed their heads
to the dust before the shrine of the saint, but they seemed
especially indifferent to those of the royal family, which are all
open to the sky. Respect shown or neglect towards them could bring
neither good nor evil, while any slight to the tomb of the _crusty
old saint_ might be of serious consequence.
In an enclosure formed by marble screens beautifully carved is the
tomb of the favourite son of the present Emperor,[10] Mirzâ Jahângîr,
whom I knew intimately at Allahabad in 1816,[11] when he was killing
himself as fast as he could with Hoffman's cherry brandy. 'This ', he
would say to me, 'is really the only liquor that you Englishmen have
worth drinking, and its only fault is that it makes one drunk too
soon.' To prolong his pleasure, he used to limit himself to one large
glass every hour, till he got dead drunk. Two or three sets of
dancing women and musicians used to relieve each other in amusing him
during this interval. He died, of course, soon, and the poor old
Emperor was persuaded by his mother, the favourite sultana, that he
had fallen a victim to sighing and grief at the treatment of the
English, who would not permit him to remain at Delhi, where he was
continually employed in attempts to assassinate his eldest brother,
the heir apparent, and to stir up insurrections among the people. He
was not in confinement at Allahabad, but merely prohibited from
returning to Delhi. He had a splendid dwelling, a good income, and
all the honours due to his rank.[12]
In another enclosure of the same kind are the Emperor Muhammad
Shâh,[13]--who reigned when Nâdir Shâh invaded Delhi--his mother,
wife, and daughter; and in another close by is the tomb which
interested me most, that of Jahânârâ Bêgam, the favourite sister of
poor Dârâ Shikoh, and daughter of Shâh Jahân.[14] It stands in the
same enclosure, with the brother of the present Emperor on one side,
and his daughter on the other. Her remains are covered with a marble
slab hollow at the top, and exposed to the sky--the hollow is filled
with earth covered with green grass. Upon her tomb is the following
inscription, the three first lines of which are said to have been
written by herself:-
Let no rich canopy cover my grave.
This grass is the best covering for the tombs
of the poor in spirit.
The humble, the transitory Jahânârâ,
The disciple of the holy men of Chisht,
The daughter of the Emperor Shâh Jahân.'
I went over the magnificent tomb of Humâyûn, which was raised over
his remains by the Emperor Akbar. It stands in the centre of a
quadrangle of about four hundred yards square, with a cloistered wall
all round; but I must not describe any more tombs.[15] Here, under a
marble slab, lies the head of poor Dârâ Shikoh, who, but for a little
infirmity of temper, had perhaps changed the destinies of India, by
changing the character of education among the aristocracy of the
countries under his rule, and preventing the birth of the Marâthâ
powers by leaving untouched the independent kingdoms of the Deccan,
upon whose ruins, under his bigoted brother, the former rose. Secular
and religions education were always inseparably combined among the
Muhammadans, and invited to India from Persia by the public offices,
civil and military, which men of education and courtly manners could
alone obtain. These offices had long been exclusively filled by such
men, who flocked in crowds to India from Khorâsân and Persia. Every
man qualified by secular instruction to make his way at court and
fill such offices was disposed by his religions instruction to assert
the supremacy of his creed, and to exclude the followers of every
other from the employments over which he had any control. The
aristocracy of office was the ocean to which this stream of
Muhammadan education flowed from the west, and spread all over India;
and had Dârâ subdued his brothers and ascended the throne, he would
probably have arrested the flood by closing the public offices
against these Persian adventurers, and filling them with Christians
and Hindoos. This would have changed the character of the aristocracy
and the education of the people.[16]
While looking upon the slab under which his head reposes, I thought
of the slight 'accidents by flood and field', the still slighter
thought of the brain and feeling of the heart, on which the destinies
of nations and of empires often depend--on the discovery of the great
diamond in the mines of Golconda--on the accident which gave it into
the hands of an ambitions Persian adventurer--on the thought which
suggested the advantage of presenting it to Shâh Jahân--on the
feeling which made Dârâ get off, and Aurangzêb sit on his elephant at
the battle of Samûgarh, on which depended the fate of India, and
perhaps the advancement of the Christian religion and European
literature and science over India.[17] But for the accident which
gave Charles Martel the victory over the Saracens at Tours,[18]
Arabic and Persian had perhaps been the classical languages, and
Islamism the religion of Europe; and where we have cathedrals and
colleges we might have had mosques and mausoleums; and America and
the Cape, the compass and the press, the steam-engine, the telescope,
and the Copernican System, might have remained still undiscovered;
and but for the accident which turned Hannibal's face from Rome after
the battle of Cannae, or that which intercepted his brother
Asdrubal's letter, we might now all be speaking the languages of Tyre
and Sidon, and roasting our own children in offerings to Siva or
Saturn, instead of saving those of the Hindoos. Poor Dârâ! but for
thy little jealousy of thy father and thy son, thy desire to do all
thy work without their aid, and those occasional ebullitions of
passion which alienated from thee the most powerful of all the Hindoo
princes, whom it was so much thy wish and thy interest to cherish,
thy generous heart and enlightened mind had reigned over this vast
empire, and made it, perchance, the garden it deserves to be made.
I visited the celebrated mosque known by the name of Jâmi (Jumma)
Masjid, a fine building raised by Shâh Jahân, and finished in six
years, A.H. 1060, at a cost of ten lâkhs of rupees or one hundred
thousand pounds. Money compared to man's labour and subsistence is
still four times more valuable in India than in England; and a
similar building in England would cost at least four hundred thousand
pounds. It is, like all the buildings raised by this Emperor, in the
best taste and style.[19] I was attended by three well-dressed and
modest Hindoos, and a Muhammadan servant of the Emperor. My attention
was so much taken up with the edifice that I did not perceive, till I
was about to return, that the doorkeepers had stopped my three
Hindoos. I found that they had offered to leave their shoes behind,
and submit to anything to be permitted to follow me; but the porters
had, they said, strict orders to admit no worshippers of idols; for
their master was a man of the book, and had, therefore, got a little
of the truth in him, though unhappily not much, since his heart had
not been opened to that of the Korân. Nathû could have told him that
he also had a book, which he and some fourscore millions more thought
as good as his or better; but he was afraid to descant upon the
merits of his 'shâstras', and the miracles of Kishan Jî [Krishna],
among such fierce, cut-throat-looking people; he looked, however, as
if he could have eaten the porter, Korân and all, when I came to
their rescue. The only volumes which Muhammadans designate by the
name of the book are the Old and New Testaments, and the Korân.
I visited also the palace, which was built by the same Emperor. It
stands on the right bank of the Jumna, and occupies a quadrangle
surrounded by a high wall built of red sandstone, about one mile in
circumference; one side looks down into the clear stream of the
Jumna, while the others are surrounded by the streets of the
city.[20] The entrance is by a noble gateway to the west;[21] and
facing this gateway on the inside, a hundred and twenty yards
distant, is the Dîwân-î-Amm, or the common hall of audience. This is
a large hall, the roof of which is supported upon four colonnades of
pillars of red sandstone, now white-washed, but once covered with
stucco work and gilded. On one of these pillars is shown the mark of
the dagger of a Hindoo prince of Chitôr, who, in the presence of the
Emperor, stabbed to the heart one of the Muhammadan ministers who
made use of some disrespectful language towards him. On being asked
how he presumed to do this in the presence of his sovereign he
answered in the very words almost of Roderic Dhu,
I right my wrongs where they are given,
Though it were in the court of Heaven.[22]
The throne projects into the hall from the back in front of the large
central arch; it is raised ten feet above the floor, and is about ten
feet wide, and covered by a marble canopy, all beautifully inlaid
with mosaic work exquisitely finished, but now much dilapidated. The
room or recess in which the throne stands is open to the front, and
about fifteen feet wide and six deep. There is a door at the back by
which the Emperor entered from his private apartments, and one on his
left, from which his prime minister or chief officer of state
approached the throne by a flight of steps leading into the hall. In
front of the throne, and raised some three feet above the floor, is a
fine large slab of white marble, on which one of the secretaries
stood during the hours of audience to hand up to the throne any
petitions that were presented, and to receive and convey commands. As
the people approached over the intervening one hundred and twenty
yards between the gateway and the hall of audience they were made to
bow down lower and lower to the figure of the Emperor, as he sat upon
his throne, without deigning to show by any motion of limb or muscle
that he was really made of flesh and blood, and not cut out of the
marble he sat upon.
The marble walls on three sides of this recess are inlaid with
precious stones representing some of the most beautiful birds and
flowers of India, according to the boundaries of the country when
Shâh Jahân built this palace, which included Kâbul and Kâshmîr,
afterwards severed from it on the invasion of Nadir Shâh.[23]
On the upper part of the back wall is represented, in the same
precious stones, and in a graceful attitude, a European in a kind of
Spanish costume, playing upon his guitar, and in the character of
Orpheus charming the birds and beasts which he first taught the
people of India so well to represent in this manner. This I have no
doubt was intended by Austin de Bordeaux for himself. The man from
Shîrâz, Amânat Khân, who designed all the noble Tughra characters in
which the passages from the Korân are inscribed upon different parts
of the Tâj at Agra, was permitted to place his own name in the same
bold characters on the right-hand side as we enter the tomb of the
Emperor and his queen. It is inscribed after the date, thus, A.H.
1048 [A.D. 1638-9], 'The humble fakîr Amânat Khân of Shirâz.' Austin
was a still greater favourite than Amânat Khân; and the Emperor Shâh
Jahân, no doubt, readily acceded to his wishes to have himself
represented in what appeared to him and his courtiers so beautiful a
picture.[24]
The Dîwân-i-Khâs, or hall of private audience, is a much more
splendid building than the other from its richer materials, being all
built of white marble beautifully ornamented. The roof is supported
upon colonnades of marble pillars. The throne stands in the centre of
this hall, and is ascended by steps, and covered by a canopy, with
four artificial peacocks on the four corners.[25] Here, thought I, as
I entered this apartment, sat Aurangzêb when he ordered the
assassination of his brothers Dârâ and Murâd, and the imprisonment
and destruction by slow poison of his son Muhammad, who had so often
fought bravely by his side in battle. Here also, but a few months
before, sat the great Shâh Jahân to receive the insolent commands of
this same grandson Muhammad when flushed with victory, and to offer
him the throne, merely to disappoint the hopes of the youth's father,
Aurangzêb. Here stood in chains the graceful Sulaimân, to receive his
sentence of death by slow poison with his poor young brother Sipihr
Shikoh, who had shared all his father's toils and dangers, and
witnessed his brutal murder.[26] Here sat Muhammad Shâh, bandying
compliments with his ferocious conqueror, Nâdir Shâh, who had
destroyed his armies, plundered his treasury, stripped his throne,
and ordered the murder of a hundred thousand of the helpless
inhabitants of his capital, men, women, and children, in a general
massacre. The bodies of these people lay in the streets tainting the
air, while the two sovereigns sat here sipping their coffee, and
swearing to the most deliberate lies in the name of their God,
Prophet, and Korân;--all are now dust; that of the oppressor
undistinguishable from that of the oppressed.[27]
Within this apartment and over the side arches at one end is
inscribed in black letters the celebrated couplet, 'If there be a
paradise on the face of the earth, it is this--it is this--it is
this.[28] Anything more unlike paradise than this place now is can
hardly be conceived. Here are crowded together twelve hundred _kings_
and _queens_ (for all the descendants of the Emperors assume the
title of Salâtîn, the plural of Sultan) literally eating each other
up.[29]
Government, from motives of benevolence, has here attempted to
apportion out the pension they assign to the Emperor, to the
different members of his great family circle who are to be subsisted
upon it, instead of leaving it to his own discretion. This has
perhaps tended to prevent the family from throwing off its useless
members to mix with the common herd, and to make the population press
against the means of subsistence within these walls. Kings and queens
of the house of Tîmûr are to be found lying about in scores, like
broods of vermin, without food to eat or clothes to cover their
nakedness. It has been proposed by some to establish colleges for
them in the palace to fit them by education for high offices under
our Government. Were this done, this pensioned family, which never
can possibly feel well affected towards our Government or any
Government but their own, would alone send out men enough to fill all
the civil offices open to the natives of the country, to the
exclusion of the members of the humbler but better affected families
of Muhammadans and Hindoos. If they obtained the offices they would
be educated for, the evil to Government and to society would be very
great; and if they did not get them, the evil would be great to
themselves, since they would be encouraged to entertain hopes that
could not be realized. Better let them shift for themselves and
quietly sink among the crowd. They would only become rallying points
for the dissatisfaction and multiplied sources of disaffection;
everywhere doing mischief, and nowhere doing good. Let loose upon
society, they everywhere disgust people by their insolence and
knavery, against which we are every day required to protect the
people by our interference; the prestige of their name will by
degrees diminish, and they will sink by and by into utter
insignificance. During his stay at Jubbulpore, Kâmbaksh, the nephew
of the Emperor, whom I have already mentioned as the most sensible
member of the family,[30] did an infinite deal of good by cheating
almost all the tradesmen of the town. Till he came down among them
with all his ragamuffins from Delhi, men thought the Padshâhs and
their progeny must be something superhuman, something not to be
spoken of, much less approached, without reverence. During the latter
part of his stay my court was crowded with complaints; and no one has
ever since heard a scion of the house of Tîmûr spoken of but as a
thing to be avoided--a person more prone than others to take in his
neighbours. One of these _kings_, who has not more than ten shillings
a month to subsist himself and family upon, will, in writing to the
representative of the British Government, address him as 'Fidwî
Khâs', 'Your particular slave'; and be addressed in reply with 'Your
majesty's commands have been received by your slave.'[31]
I visited the college which is in the mausoleum of Ghâzî-ud-dîn, a
fine building, with its usual accompaniment of a mosque and a
college. The slab that covers the grave, and the marble screens that
surround the ground that contains it, are amongst the most richly cut
things that I have seen. The learned and pious Muhammadans in the
institution told me in my morning visit that there should always be a
small hollow in the top of marble slabs, like that on Jahânârâ's,
whenever any of them were placed over graves, in order to admit
water, earth, and grass; but that, strictly speaking, no slab should
be allowed to cover the grave, as it could not fail to be in the way
of the dead when summoned to get up by the trumpet of Azraîl on the
day of the resurrection.'[32] 'Earthly pride,' said they, 'has
violated this rule; and now everybody that can afford it gets a
marble slab put over his grave. But it is not only in this that men
have been falling off from the letter and spirit of the law; for we
now hear drums beating and trumpets sounding even among the tombs of
the saints, a thing that our forefathers would not have considered
possible. In former days it was only a prophet like Moses, Jesus, or
Muhammad, that was suffered to have a stone placed over his head.' I
asked them how it was that the people crowded to the tombs of their
saints, as I saw them at that of Kutb Shâh in old Delhi, on the
Basant, a Hindoo festival. 'It only shows,' said they 'that the end
of the world is approaching. Are we not divided into seventy-two
sects among ourselves, all falling off into Hinduism, and every day
committing greater and greater follies? These are the manifest signs
long ago pointed out by wise and holy men as indicating the approach
of the _last day_.'[33]
A man might make a curious book out of the indications of the end of
the world according to the notions of different people or different
individuals. The Hindoos have had many different worlds or ages; and
the change from the good to the bad, or the golden to the iron age,
is considered to have been indicated by a thousand curious
incidents.[34] I one day asked an old Hindoo priest, a very worthy
man, what made the five heroes of the Mahâbhârata, the demigod
brothers of Indian story, leave the plains and bury themselves no one
knew where, in the eternal snows of the Himâlaya mountains. 'Why,
sir,' said he, 'there is no question about that. Yudhisthira, the
eldest, who reigned quietly at Delhi after the long war, one day sat
down to dinner with his four brothers and their single wife,
Draupadî; for you know, sir, they had only one among them all. The
king said grace and the covers were removed, when, to their utter
consternation, a full-grown fly was seen seated upon the dish of rice
that stood before his majesty. Yudhisthira rose in consternation.
'When flies begin to blow upon men's dinners,' said his majesty, 'you
may be sure, my brothers, that the end of the world is near--the
golden age is gone--the iron one has commenced, and we must all be
off; the plains of India are no longer a fit abode for gentlemen.'
Without taking one morsel of food,' added the priest, 'they set out,
and were never after seen or heard of. They were, however, traced by
manifest supernatural signs up through the valley of the Ganges to
the snow tops of the Himâlaya, in which they no doubt left their
mortal coils.' They seem to feel a singular attachment for the
birthplace of their great progenitrix, for no place in the world is,
I suppose, more infested by them than Delhi, at present; and there a
dish of rice without a fly would, in the iron, be as rare a thing as
a dish with one in the golden, age.
Muhammadans in India sigh for the restoration of the old Muhammadan
regime, not from any particular attachment to the descendants of
Tîmûr, but with precisely the same feelings that Whigs and Tories
sigh for the return to power of their respective parties in England;
it would give them all the offices in a country where office is
everything. Among them, as among ourselves, every man is disposed to
rate his own abilities highly, and to have a good deal of confidence
in his own good luck; and all think that if the field were once
opened to them by such a change, they should very soon be able to
find good places for themselves and their children in it. Perhaps
there are few communities in the world among whom education is more
generally diffused than among Muhammadans in India. He who holds an
office worth twenty rupees a month commonly gives his sons an
education equal to that of a prime minister. They learn, through the
medium of the Arabic and Persian languages, what young men in our
colleges learn through those of the Greek and Latin--that is,
grammar, rhetoric, and logic. After his seven years of study, the
young Muhammadan binds his turban upon a head almost as well filled
with the things which appertain to these branches of knowledge as the
young man raw from Oxford--he will talk as fluently about Socrates
and Aristotle, Plato, and Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna: (_alias_
Sokrât, Aristotalis, Aflâtûn, Bokrât, Jâlînus, and Bû Alî Sena); and,
what is much to his advantage in India, the languages in which he has
learnt what he knows are those which he most requires through
life.[35] He therefore thinks himself as well fitted to fill the high
offices which are now filled exclusively by Europeans, and naturally
enough wishes the establishments of that power would open them to
him. On the faculties and operations of the human mind, on man's
passions and affections, and his duties in all relations of life, the
works of Imâm Muhammad Ghazâlî[36] and Nâsir-ud-dîn Tûsî[37] hardly
yield to those of Plato and Aristotle, or to those of any other
authors who have written on the same subjects in any country. These
works, the _Ihya-ul-ulûm_, epitomized into the _Kîmiâ-i-Saâdat_, and
the _Akhlâk-i-Nâsirî_, with the didactic poems of Sâdî,[38] are the
great 'Pierian spring' of moral instruction from which the Muhammadan
delights to 'drink deep' from infancy to old age; and a better spring
it would be difficult to find in the works of any other three men.
It is not only the desire for office that makes the educated
Muhammadans cherish the recollection of the old regime in Hîndustan:
they say, 'We pray every night for the Emperor and his family,
because our forefathers ate the salt of his forefathers'; that is,
our ancestors were in the service of his ancestors; and,
consequently, were the _aristocracy_ of the country. Whether they
really were so matters not; they persuade themselves or their
children that they were. This is a very common and a very innocent
sort of vanity. We often find Englishmen in India, and I suppose in
all the rest of our foreign settlements, sporting high Tory opinions
and feelings, merely with a view to have it supposed that their
families are, or at some time were, among the aristocracy of the
land. To express a wish for Conservative predominance is the same
thing with them as to express a wish for the promotion in the Army,
Navy, or Church of some of their near relations; and thus to indicate
that they are among the privileged class whose wishes the Tories
would be obliged to consult were they in power.[39]
Man is indeed 'fearfully and wonderfully made'; to be fitted himself
for action in the world, or for directing ably the actions of others,
it is indispensably necessary that he should mix freely from his
youth up with his fellow men. I have elsewhere mentioned that the
state of imbecility to which a man of naturally average powers of
intellect may be reduced when brought up with his mother in the
seraglio is inconceivable to those who have not had opportunities of
observing it.[40] The poor old Emperor of Delhi, to whom so many
millions look up, is an instance. A more venerable-looking man it is
difficult to conceive, and had he been educated and brought up with
his fellow men, he would no doubt have had a mind worthy of his
person.[41] As it is, he has never been anything but a baby. Râjâ
Jîvan Râm, an excellent portrait painter, and a very honest and
agreeable person, was lately employed to take the Emperor's portrait.
After the first few sittings, the portrait was taken into the
seraglio to the ladies. The next time he came, the Emperor requested
him to remove the great _blotch from under the nose_. 'May it please
your majesty, it is impossible to draw any person without _a shadow_;
and I hope many millions will long continue to repose under that of
your majesty.' 'True, Râjâ,' said his majesty, 'men must have
shadows; but there is surely no necessity for placing them
immediately under their noses. The ladies will not allow mine to be
put there; they say it looks as if I had been taking snuff all my
life, and it certainly has a most filthy appearance; besides, it is
all awry, as I told you when you began upon it.' The Râjâ was obliged
to remove from under the imperial, and certainly very noble, nose,
the shadow which he had thought worth all the rest of the picture.
Queen Elizabeth is said, by an edict, to have commanded all artists
who should paint her likeness, 'to place her in a garden with a full
light upon her, and the painter to put _any shadow_ in her face at
his peril'. The next time the Râjâ came, the Emperor took the
opportunity of consulting him upon a subject that had given him a
good deal of anxiety for many months, the dismissal of one of his
personal servants who had become negligent and disrespectful. He
first took care that no one should be within hearing, and then
whispered in the artist's ear that he wished to dismiss this man. The
Râjâ said carelessly, as he looked from the imperial head to the
canvas, 'Why does your majesty not discharge the man if he displeases
you?'
'Why do I not discharge him? I wish to do so, of course, and have
wished to do so for many months, but _kuchh tadbîr châhiye_, some
plan of operations must be devised.' 'If your majesty dislikes the
man, you have only to order him outside the gates of the palace, and
you are relieved from his presence at once.' 'True, man, I am
relieved from his presence, but his enchantments may still reach me;
it is them that I most dread--he keeps me in a continual state of
alarm; and I would give anything to get him away in a good humour.'
When the Râjâ return to Meerut, he received a visit from one of the
Emperor's sons or nephews, who wanted to see the place. His tents
were pitched upon the plain not far from the theatre; he arrived in
the evening, and there happened to be a play that night. Several
times during the night he got a message from the prince to say that
the ground near his tents was haunted by all manner of devils. The
Râjâ sent to assure him that this could not possibly be the case. At
last a man came about midnight to say that the prince could stand it
no longer, and had given orders to prepare for his immediate return
to Delhi; for the devils were increasing so rapidly that they must
all be inevitably devoured before daybreak if they remained. The Râjâ
now went to the prince's camp, here he found him and his followers in
a state of utter consternation, looking towards the theatre. The last
carriages were leaving the theatre, and going across the plain; and
these silly people had taken them all for devils.[42]
The present pensioned imperial family f Delhi are commonly considered
to be of the house of Tîmûr lang (the Lame), because Bâbur, the real
founder of the dynasty, was descended from him in the seventh
stage.[43] Tîmûr merely made a predatory inroad into India, to kill a
few million of unbelievers,[44] plunder the country of all the
movable valuables he and his soldiers could collect, and take back
into slavery all the best artificers of all kinds that they could lay
their hands upon. He left no one to represent him in India, he
claimed no sovereignty, and founded no dynasty there. There is no
doubt much in the prestige of a name; and though six generations had
passed away, the people of Northern India still trembled at that of
the lame monster. Bâbur wished to impress upon the minds of the
people the notion that he had at his back the same army of demons
that Tîmûr had commanded; and be boasted his descent from him for the
same motive that Alexander boasted his from the horned and cloven-
footed god of the Egyptian desert, as something to sanctify all
enterprises, justify the use of all means, and carry before him the
belief in his invincibility.
Bâbur was an admirable chief--a fit founder of a great dynasty--a
very proper object for the imagination of future generations to dwell
upon, though not quite so good as his grandson, the great Akbar.
Tîmûr was a ferocious monster, who knew how to organize and command
the set of demons who composed his army, and how best to direct them
for the destruction of the civilized portion of mankind and their
works; but who knew nothing else.[45] In his invasion of India he
caused the people of the towns and villages through which he passed
to be all massacred without regard to religion, age, or sex. If the
soldiers in the town resisted, the people were all murdered because
they did so; if they did not, the people were considered to have
forfeited their lives to the conquerors for being conquered; and told
to purchase them by the surrender of all their property, the value of
which was estimated by commissaries appointed for the purpose. The
price was always more than they could pay; and after torturing a
certain number to death in the attempt to screw the sum out of them,
the troops were let in to murder the rest; so that no city, town, or
village escaped; and the very grain collected for the army, over and
above what they could consume at any stage, was burned, lest it might
relieve some hungry infidel of the country who had escaped from the
general carnage.
All the soldiers, high and low, were murdered when taken prisoners,
as a matter of course; but the officers and soldiers of Tîmûr's army,
after taking all the valuable movables, thought they might be able to
find a market for the artificers by whom they were made, and for
their families; and they collected together an immense number of men,
women, and children. All who asked for mercy pretended to be able to
make something that these Tartars had taken a liking to. On coming
before Delhi, Tîmûr's army encamped on the opposite or left bank of
the river Jumna; and here he learned that his soldiers had collected
together above one hundred thousand of these artificers, besides
their women and children. There were no soldiers among them; but
Tîmûr thought it might be troublesome either to keep them or to turn
them away without their women and children; and still more so to make
his soldiers send away these women and children immediately. He asked
whether the prisoners were not for the most part unbelievers in his
prophet Muhammad; and being told that the majority were Hindoos, he
gave orders that every man should be put to death; and that any
officer or soldier who refused to kill or have killed all such men,
should suffer death. 'As soon as this order was made known,' says
Tîmûr's historian and great eulogist, 'the officers and soldiers
began to put it in execution; and, in less than one hour, one hundred
thousand prisoners, according to the smallest computation, were put
to death and their bodies thrown into the river Jumna. Among the
rest, Mulânâ Nasîr-ud-dîn Amr, one of the most venerable doctors of
the court, who would never consent so much as to kill a single sheep,
was constrained to order fifteen slaves, whom he had in his tents, to
be slain. Tîmûr then gave orders that one-tenth of his soldiers
should keep watch over the Indian women, children, and camels taken
in the pillage.'[46]
The city was soon after taken, and the people commanded, as usual, to
purchase their lives by the surrender of their property--troops were
sent in to take it--numbers were tortured to death--and then the
usual pillage and massacre of the whole people followed without
regard to religion, age, or sex; and about a hundred thousand more of
innocent and unoffending people were murdered. The troops next
massacred the inhabitants of the old city, which had become crowded
with fugitives from the new;[47] the last remnant took refuge in a
mosque, where two of Tîmûr's most distinguished generals rushed in
upon them at the head of five hundred soldiers; and, as the amiable
historian tells us, 'sent to the abyss of hell the souls of these
infidels, of whose heads they erected towers, and gave their bodies
for food to birds and beasts of prey'. Being at last tired of
slaughter, the soldiers made slaves of the survivors, and drove them
out in chains; and, as they passed, the officers were allowed to
select any they liked except the masons, whom Tîmûr required to build
for him at Samarkand a church similar to that of Îltutmish in old
Delhi.
He now set out to take Meerut, which was at that time a fortified
town of much note. The people determined to defend themselves, and
happened to say that Tarmah Shirîn, who invaded India at the head of
a similar body of Tartars a century before,[48] had been unable to
take the place. This so incensed Tîmûr that he brought all his forces
to bear on Meerut, took the place, and having had all the Hindoo men
found in it _skinned alive_, he distributed their wives and children
among his soldiers as slaves. He now sent out a division of his army
to murder unbelievers, and collect plunder, over the cultivated
plains between the Ganges and Jumna, while he led the main body on
the same _pious duty_ along the hills from Hardwâr[49] on the Ganges
to the west. Having massacred a few thousands of the hill people,
Tîmûr read the noon prayer, and returned thanks to God for the
victories he had gained, and the numbers he had murdered through his
goodness; and told his admiring army that a religions war like this
produced two great advantages: it secured eternal happiness in
heaven, and a good store of valuable spoils on earth--that his design
in all the fatigues and labours which he had undertaken was solely to
render himself _pleasing to God_, treasure up _good works_ for his
eternal happiness, and get riches to bestow upon his soldiers and the
poor. The historian makes a grave remark upon this invasion: The
Korân declares that the highest glory man can attain in this world is
unquestionably waging a successful war in person against the enemies
of his religion (no matter whether those against whom it is waged
happen ever to have heard of this religion or not). Muhammad
inculcated the same doctrine in his discourses with his friends; and,
in consequence, the great Tîmûr always strove to exterminate all the
unbelievers, with a view to acquire that glory, and to spread the
renown of his conquests. 'My name', said he, 'has spread terror
through the universe, and the least motion I make is capable of
shaking the whole earth.'
Tîmûr returned to his capital of Samarkand in Transoxiana in May,
1399. His army, besides other things which they brought from India,
had an immense number of men, women, and children, whom they had
reduced to slavery, and driven along like flocks of sheep to forage
for their subsistence in the countries through which they passed, or
perish. After the murder on the banks of the Jumna of part of the
multitude they had collected before taking the capital, amounting to
one hundred thousand men, Tîmûr was obliged to assign one-tenth of
his army to guard what were left, the women and children. 'After the
murder in the capital of Delhi,' says the historian, an eye-witness,
'there were some soldiers who had a hundred and fifty slaves, men,
women, and children, whom they drove out of the city before them; and
some soldiers' boys had twenty slaves to their own share.' On
reaching Samarkand, they employed these slaves as best they could;
and Tîmûr employed his, the masons, in raising his great church from
the quarries of the neighbouring hills.[50]
In October following, Tîmûr led this army of demons over the rich and
polished countries of Syria, Anatolia, and Georgia, levelling all the
cities, towns, and villages, and massacring the inhabitants without
any regard to age or sex, with the same _amiable view_ of correcting
the notions of people regarding his creed, propitiating the Deity,
and rewarding his soldiers. He sent to the Christian inhabitants of
Smyrna, then one of the first commercial cities in the world, to
request that they would at once embrace Muhammadanism, in the
_beauties_ of which the general and his soldiers had orders
generously and diligently to instruct them. They refused, and Tîmûr
repaired immediately to the spot, that he might 'share in the merit
of sending their souls to the abyss of hell'. Bajazet, the Turkish
emperor of Anatolia, had recently terminated an unavailing siege of
seven years. Tîmûr took the city in fourteen days, December,
1402;[51] had every man, woman, and child that he found in it
murdered; and caused some of the heads of the Christians to be thrown
by his balistas or catapultas into the ships that had come from
different European nations to their succour. All other Christian
communities found within the wide range of this dreadful tempest were
swept off in the same manner, nor did Muhammadan communities fare
better. After the taking of Baghdad, every Tartar soldier was ordered
to cut off and bring away the head of one or more prisoners, because
some of the Tartar soldiers had been killed in the attack; 'and they
spared', says the historian, 'neither old men of fourscore, nor young
children of eight years of age; no quarter was given either to rich
or poor, and the number of dead was so great that they could not be
counted; towers were made of their heads to serve as an example to
posterity.' Ninety thousand were murdered in cold blood, and one
hundred and twenty pyramids were made of the heads for trophies.
Damascus, Nice, Aleppo, Sebastê,[52] and all the other rich and
populous cities of Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, and Georgia, then
the most civilized region of the world, shared in the same fate; all
were reduced to ruins, and their people, without regard to religion,
age, or sex, barbarously and brutally murdered.
In the beginning of 1405, this man recollected that, among the many
millions of unbelieving Christians and Hindoos 'whose souls he had
sent to the abyss of hell', there were many Muhammadans, who had no
doubt whatever in the divine origin or co-eternal existence of the
Korân; and, as their death might, perhaps, not have been altogether
pleasing to his God and his prophet, he determined to appease them
both by undertaking the murder of some two hundred millions of
industrious and unoffending Chinese; among whom there was little
chance of finding one man who had ever even _heard of the Korân_--
much less believed in its divinity and co-eternity--or of its
interpreter, Muhammad. At the head of between two and three hundred
thousand well-mounted Tartars and their followers, he departed from
his capital of Samarkand on the 8th of January, 1405, and crossed the
Jaxartes[53] on the ice. In the words of his _judicious_ historian,
'he thus _generously_ undertook the conquest of China, which was
inhabited only by unbelievers that by so good a work he might atone
for what had been done amiss in other wars, in which the blood of so
many of the faithful had been shed'.
'As all my vast conquests', said Tîmûr himself,[54] 'have caused the
destruction of a good many of the faithful, I am resolved to perform
some good action, to atone for the crimes of my past life; and to
make war upon the infidels, and exterminate the idolaters of China,
which cannot be done without very great strength and power. It is
therefore fitting, my dear companions in arms, that those very
soldiers, who were the instruments whereby those my faults were
committed, should be the means by which I work out my repentance, and
that they should march into China, to acquire for themselves and
their Emperor the merit of that holy war, in demolishing the temples
of those unbelievers and erecting good Muhammadan mosques in their
places. By this means we shall obtain pardon for all our sins, for
the holy Korân assures us that good works efface the sins of this
world.' At the close of the Emperor's speech, the princes of the
blood and other officers of rank besought God to bless his generous
undertaking, unanimously applauding his sentiments, and loading him
with praises. 'Let the Emperor but display his standard, and we will
follow him to the end of the world.' Tîmûr died soon after crossing
the Jaxartes, on the 1st of April, 1406, and China was saved from
this dreadful scourge. But, as the _philosophical_ historian, Sharaf-
ud-dîn,[55] _profoundly_ observes, 'The Korân remarks that if any one
in his pilgrimage to Mecca should be surprised by death, the merit of
the good work is still written in heaven in his name, as surely as if
he had had the good fortune to accomplish it. It is the same with
regard to the "ghaza" (holy war), where an eternal merit is acquired
by troubles, fatigues, and dangers; and he who dies during the
enterprise, at whatever stage, is deemed to have completed his
design.' Thus Tîmûr the Lame had the merit, beyond all question of
doubt, of sending to the abyss of hell two hundred millions of men,
women, and children, for not believing in a certain book of which
they had never heard or read; for the Tartars had not become
Muhammadans when they conquered China in the beginning of the
thirteenth century. Indeed, the _amiable_ and _profound_ historian is
of opinion, after the most mature deliberation, that 'God himself
must have arranged all this in favour of so great and good a prince;
and knowing that his end was nigh, inspired him with the idea of
undertaking this enterprise, that he might have the merit of having
completed it; otherwise, how should he have thought of leading out
his army in the dead of winter to cross countries covered with ice
and snow?'
The heir to the throne, the Prince Pîr Muhammad, was absent when
Tîmûr died; but his wives, who had accompanied him, were all anxious
to share in the merit of the holy undertaking; and in a council of
the chiefs held after his death, the opinions of these amiable
princesses prevailed that the two hundred millions of Chinese ought
still to be sent to 'the abyss of hell', since it had been the
earnest wish of their deceased husband, and must undoubtedly have
been the will of God, to send them thither without delay. Fortunately
quarrels soon arose among his sons and grandsons about the
succession, and the army recrossed the Jaxartes, still over the ice,
in the beginning of April, and China was saved from this scourge.
Such was Timûr the Lame, the man whose greatness and goodness are to
live in the hearts of the people of India, nine-tenths of whom are
Hindoos, and to fill them with overflowing love and gratitude towards
his descendants.
In this brief sketch will perhaps be found the true history of the
origin of the gipsies, the tide of whose immigration began to flow
over all parts of Europe immediately after the return of Tîmûr from
India. The hundreds of thousands of slaves which his army brought
from India in men, women, and children, were cast away when they got
as many as they liked from the more beautiful and polished
inhabitants of the cities of Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, and
Georgia, which were all, one after the other, treated in the same
manner as Delhi had been. The Tartar soldiers had no time to settle
down and employ them as they intended for their convenience; they
were marched off to ravage Western Asia in October, 1399, about three
months after their return from India. Tîmûr reached Samarkand in the
middle of May, but he had gone on in advance of his army, which did
not arrive for some time after. Being cast off, the slaves from India
spread over those countries which were most likely to afford them the
means of subsistence as beggars; for they knew nothing of the
manners, the arts, or the language of those among whom they were
thrown; and as Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Anatolia, Georgia,
Circassia, and Russia, had been, or were being, desolated by the army
of this Tartar chief, they passed into Egypt and Bulgaria, whence
they spread over all other countries. Scattered over the face of
these countries, they found small parties of vagrants who were from
the same regions as themselves, who spoke the same language, and who
had in all probability been drawn away by the same means of armies
returning from the invasion of India. Chingîz Khân invaded India two
centuries before; his descendant, Tarmah Shirîn, invaded India in
1303, and must have taken back with him multitudes of captives. The
unhappy prisoners of Tîmûr the Lame gathered round these nuclei as
the only people who could understand or sympathize with them. From
his sixth expedition into India Mahmûd is said to have carried back
with him to Ghaznî two hundred thousand Hindoo captives in a state of
slavery, A.D. 1011. From his seventh expedition in 1017, his army of
one hundred and forty thousand fighting men returned 'laden with
Hindoo captives, who became so cheap, that a Hindoo slave was valued
at less than two rupees'. Mahmûd made several expeditions to the west
immediately after his return from India, in the same manner as Tîmûr
did after him, and he may in the same manner have scattered his
Indian captives. They adopted the habits of their new friends, which
are indeed those of all the vagrant tribes of India, and they have
continued to preserve them to the present day. I have compared their
vocabularies with those of India, and find so many of the words the
same that I think a native of India would, even in the present day,
be able without much difficulty to make himself understood by a gang
of gipsies in any part of Europe.[56]
A good Christian may not be able exactly to understand the nature of
the merit which Tamerlane expected to acquire from sending so many
unoffending Chinese to the abyss of hell. According to the Muhammadan
creed, God has vowed 'to fill hell chock full of men and genii'.
Hence his reasons for hardening their hearts against that faith in
the Korân which might send them to heaven, and which would, they
think, necessarily follow an impartial examination of the evidence of
its divinity and certainty. Tîmûr thought, no doubt, that it would be
very meritorious on his part to assist God in this his labour of
filling the great abyss by throwing into it all the existing
population of China: while he spread over their land in pastoral
tribes the goodly seed of Muhammadanism, which would give him a rich
supply of recruits for paradise.
The following dialogue took place one day between me and the 'muftî',
or head Muhammadan law officer, of one of our regulation courts.[57]
'Does it not seem to you strange, Muftî Sâhib, that your prophet,
who, according to your notions, must have been so well acquainted
with the universe and the laws that govern it, should not have
revealed to his followers some great truths hitherto unknown
regarding these laws, which might have commanded their belief, and
that of all future generations, in his divine mission?'
'Not at all,' said the Muftî; 'they would probably not have
understood him; and if they had, those who did not believe in what he
did actually reveal to them, would not have believed in him had he
revealed all the laws that govern the universe.'
'And why should they not have believed in him?'
'Because what he revealed was sufficient to convince all men whose
hearts had not been hardened in unbelief. God said, "As for the
unbelievers, it is the same with them whether you admonish them or do
not admonish them; they will not believe. God hath sealed up their
hearts, their ears, and their eyes; and a grievous punishment awaits
them."'[58]
'And why were the hearts of any men thus hardened to unbelief, when
by unbelief they were to incur such dreadful penalties?'
'Because they were otherwise wicked men.'
'But you think, of course, that there was really much of good in the
revelations of your prophet?'
'Of course we do.'
'And that those who believed in it were likely to become better men
for their faith?'
'Assuredly.'
'Then why harden the hearts of even bad men against a faith that
might make them good?'
'Has not God said, "If we had pleased, we had certainly given unto
every soul its direction; but the word which hath proceeded from me
must necessarily be fulfilled when I said, _Verily, I will fill hell
with men and genii altogether_ ".[59] And again, "Had it pleased the
Lord, he would have made all men of one religion; but they shall not
cease to differ among them, unless those on whom the Lord shall have
mercy; and unto this hath he created them; for the word of thy Lord
shall be fulfilled when he said, _Verily, I will fill hell altogether
with genii and men_".'[60]
'You all believe that the devil, like all the angels, was made of
fire?'
'Yes.'
'And that he was doomed to hell because he would not fall down and
worship Adam, who was made of clay?'
'Yes, God commanded him to bow down to Adam; and when he did not do
as he was bid, God said, "Why, Iblîs, what hindered thee from bowing
down to Adam as the other angels did?" He replied, "It is not fit
that I should worship man, whom thou hast formed of dried clay, or
black mud". God said, "Get thee, therefore, hence, for thou shalt be
pelted with stones; and a curse shall be upon thee till the day of
judgement". The devil said, "O Lord, give me respite unto the day of
resurrection". God said, "Verily, thou shalt be respited until the
appointed time ".'[61]
'And does it not appear to you, Mufti Sâhib, that in respiting the
devil Iblîs till the day of resurrection, some injustice was done to
the children of Adam?'
'How?'
'Because he replies, "O Lord, because thou hast seduced me, I will
surely tempt men to disobedience in the earth".'
'No, sir, because he could only tempt those who were _predestined_ to
go astray, for he adds, "I will seduce all, except such of them as
shall be _thy chosen servants_". God said, "This is the right way
with me. Verily, as to my servants, thou shalt have no power over
them; but over those only who shall be seduced, and who shall follow
thee; and hell is surely denounced to them all ".'[62]
'Then you think, Mufti Sâhib, that the devil could seduce only such
as were predestined to go astray, and who would have gone astray
whether he, the devil, had been respited or not?'
'Certainly I do.'
'Does it not then appear to you that it is as unjust to predestine
men to do that for which they are to be sent to hell, as it would be
to leave them all unguided to the temptations of the devil?'
'These are difficult questions,' replied the Muftî, 'which we cannot
venture to ask even ourselves. All that we can do is to endeavour to
understand what is written in the holy book, and act according to it.
God made us all, and he has the right to do what he pleases with what
he has made; the potter makes two vessels, he dashes the one on the
ground, but the other he sells to stand in the palaces of princes.'
'But a pot has no soul, Muftî Sâhib, to be roasted to all eternity in
hell!'
'True, sir; these are questions beyond the reach of human
understanding.'
'How often do you read over the Korân?'
'I read the whole over about three times a month,' replied the
Muftî.[63]
I mentioned this conversation one day to the Nawâb Alî-ud-dîn,[64] a
most estimable old gentleman of seventy years of age, who resides at
Murâdâbâd, and asked him whether he did not think it a singular
omission on the part of Muhammad, after his journey to heaven, not to
tell mankind some of the truths that have since been discovered
regarding the nature of the bodies that fill these heavens, and the
laws that govern their motions. Mankind could not, either from the
Korân, or from the traditions, perceive that he was at all aware of
the errors of the System of astronomy that prevailed in his day, and
among his people.'
'Not at all', replied the Nawâb; 'the prophets had, no doubt,
abundant opportunities of becoming acquainted with the heavenly
bodies, and the laws which govern them, particularly those who, like
Muhammad, had been up through the seven heavens; but their thoughts
were so entirely taken up with the Deity that they probably never
noticed the objects by which he was surrounded; and if they had
noticed them, they would not, perhaps, have thought it necessary to
say anything about them. Their object was to direct men's thoughts
towards God and his commandments, and to instruct them in their
duties towards him and towards each other.
'Suppose', continued the Nawâb, 'you were to be invited to see and
converse with even your earthly sovereign, would not your thoughts be
too much taken up with him to admit of your giving, on your return,
an account of the things you saw about him? I have been several times
to see you, and I declare that I have been so much taken up with the
conversations which have passed, that I have never noticed the many
articles I now see around me, nor could I have told any one on my
return home what I had seen in your room--the wall-shades, the
pictures, the sofas, the tables, the book-cases,' continued he,
casting his eyes round the room,' all escaped my notice, and might
have escaped it had my eyes been younger and stronger than they are.
What then must have been the state of mind of those great prophets,
who were admitted to see and converse with the great Creator of the
universe, and were sent by him to instruct mankind?
'I told my old friend that I thought his answer the best that could
be given; but still, that we could not help thinking that if Muhammad
had really been acquainted with the nature of the heavenly bodies,
and the laws which govern them, he would have taken advantage of his
knowledge to secure more firmly their faith in his mission, and have
explained to them the real state of the case, instead of talking
about the stars as merely made to be thrown at devils, to give light
to men upon this little globe of ours, and to guide them in their
wanderings upon it by sea and land.
'But what', said the Nawâb, 'are the great truths that you would have
had our holy prophet to teach mankind?'
'Why, Nawâb Sahib, I would have had him tell us, amongst other
things, of that law which makes this our globe and the other planets
revolve round the sun, and their moons around them. I would have had
him teach us something of the nature of the things we call comets, or
stars with large tails, and of that of the fixed stars, which we
suppose to be suns, like our sun, with planets revolving round them
like ours, since it is clear that they do not borrow their light from
our sun, nor from anything that we can discover in the heavens. I
would also have had him tell us the nature of that white belt which
crosses the sky, which you call the ovarious belt, "Khatt-i-abyâz",
and we the milky-way, and which we consider to be a collection of
self-lighted stars, while many orthodox but unlettered Musalmâns
think it the marks made in the sky by "Borak", the rough-shod donkey,
on which your prophet rode from Jerusalem to heaven. And you think,
Nawâb Sâhib, that there was quite evidence enough to satisfy any
person whose heart had not been hardened to unbelief? and that no
description of the heavenly bodies, or of the laws which govern their
motion, could have had any influence on the minds of such people?
'[65]
'Assuredly I do, sir! Has not God said, "If we should open a gate in
the heavens above them, and they should ascend thereto all the day
long, they would surely say, our eyes are only dazzled, or rather we
are a people deluded by enchantments."[66] Do you think, sir, that
anything which his majesty Moses could have said about the planets,
and the comets, and the milky way, would have tended so much to
persuade the children of Israel of his divine mission as did the
single stroke of his rod, which brought a river of delicious water
gushing from a dry rock when they were all dying from thirst? When
our holy prophet', continued the Nawâb (placing the points of the
four fingers of his right hand on the table), 'placed his blessed
hand thus on the ground, and caused four streams to gush out from the
dug plain, and supply with fresh water the whole army which was
perishing from thirst; and when out of only _five small dates_ he
afterwards feasted this immense army till they could eat no more, he
surely did more to convince his followers of his divine mission than
he could have done by any discourse about the planets, and the milky
way (Khatt-i-abyâz).'
'No doubt, Nawâb Sâhib, these were very powerful arguments for those
who saw them, or believed them to have been seen; and those who doubt
the divinity of your prophets mission are those who doubt their ever
having been seen.'
'The whole army saw and attested them, sir, and that is evidence
enough for us; and those who saw them, and were not satisfied, must
have had their hearts hardened to unbelief.'
'And you think, Nawâb Sâhib, that a man is not master of his own
belief or disbelief in religions matters; though he is rewarded by an
eternity of bliss in paradise for the one, and punished by an
eternity of scorching in hell for the other?
'I do, sir, faith is a matter of feeling; and over our feelings we
have no control. All that we can do is to prevent their influencing
our actions, when these actions would be mischievous. I have a desire
to stretch out this arm, and crush that fly on the table, I can
control the act, and do so; but the desire is not under my control.'
'True, Nawâb Sâhib; and in this life we punish men not for their
feelings, which are beyond their control, but for their acts, over
which they have no control; and we are apt to think that the Deity
will do the same.'
'There are, sir,' continued the Nawâb, 'three kinds of certainty--the
moral certainty, the mathematical, and the religious certainty, which
we hold to be the greatest of all--the one in which the mind feels
entire repose. This repose I feel in everything that is written in
the Korân, in the Bible, and, with the few known exceptions, in the
New Testament.[67] We do not believe that Christ was the son of God,
though we believe him to have been a great prophet sent down to
enlighten mankind; nor do we believe that he was crucified. We
believe that the wicked Jews got hold of a thief, and crucified him
in the belief that he was the Christ; but the real Christ was, we
think, taken up into heaven, and not suffered to be crucified.'
'But, Nawâb Sâhib, the Sikhs have their book, in which they have the
same faith.'
'True, sir, but the Sikhs are unlettered, ignorant brutes; and you do
not, I hope, call their "Granth" a book--a thing written only the
other day, and full of nonsense. No "book" has appeared since the
Korân came down from heaven; nor will any other come till the day of
judgement. And how', said the Nawâb, 'have people in modern days made
all the discoveries you speak of in astronomy?'
'Chiefly, Nawâb Sâhib, by means of the telescope, which is an
instrument of modern invention.'
'And do you suppose, sir, that I would put the evidence of your
"dûrbîns" (telescopes) in opposition to that of the holy prophet? No,
sir, depend upon it that there is much fallacy in a telescope--it is
not to be relied upon. I have conversed with many excellent European
gentlemen, and their great fault appears to me to be in the implicit
faith they put in these _telescopes_--they hold their evidence above
that of the prophets, Moses, Abraham, and Elijah. It is dreadful to
think how much mischief these telescopes may do. No, sir, let us hold
fast by the prophets; what they tell us is the truth, and the only
truth that we can entirely rely upon in this life. I would not hold
the evidence of all the telescopes in the world as anything against
one word uttered by the humblest of the prophets named in the Old or
New Testament, or the holy Korân. The prophets, sir, keep to the
prophets, and throw aside your telescopes--there is no truth in them;
some of them turn people upside down, and make them walk upon their
heads; and yet you put their evidence against that of the
prophets.'[68]
Nothing that I could say would, after this, convince the Nawâb that
there was any virtue in telescopes; his religions feeling had been
greatly excited against them; and had Galileo, Tycho Brahe, Kepler,
Newton, Laplace, and the Herschels, all been present to defend them,
they would not have altered his opinion of their demerits. The old
man has, I believe, a shrewd suspicion that they are inventions of
the devil to lead men from the right way; and were he told all that
these great men have discovered through their means, he would be very
much disposed to believe that they were incarnations of his satanic
majesty playing over again with 'dûrbîns' (telescopes) the same game
which the serpent played with the apple in the garden of Eden.
Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid;
Leave them to God above: him serve and fear;
Of other creatures, as him pleases best,
Wherever placed, let him dispose: joy thou
In what he gives to thee, this Paradise
And thy fair Eve: heaven is for thee too high
To know what passes there: be lowly wise:
Think only what concerns thee, and thy being:
Dream not of other worlds, what creatures there
Live, in what state, condition, or degree:
Contented that thus far hath been revealed,
Not of earth only, but of highest heaven.'[69]
Notes:
1. Chapter 75 _post_ is devoted to the history of the Bêgam Samrû
(Sumroo). The 'great street' is the celebrated Chândnî Chauk, a very
wide thoroughfare. The branch of the canal which runs down the middle
of it is now covered over. The Bêgam's house is now occupied by the
Delhi Bank (Fanshawe, p, 49).
2. _Ante_, chapter 54, note 14.
3. The Emperors were not in the least ashamed of this practice, and
robbed the families of rich merchants as well as those of officials.
In fact they levied in a rough way the high 'death duties' so much
admired by Radicals with small expectations. Some remarkable cases
are related in detail by Bernier (Bernier, _Travels_, ed. Constable,
and V. A. Smith (1914), pp. 163-7). When Aurangzêb heard of the death
of the Governor of Kâbul, he gave orders to seize the belongings of
the deceased, so that 'not even a piece of straw be left' (Bilimoria,
_Letters of Aurungzebe_, No. xcix).
4. The meaning of this sentence is obscure.
5. Corresponding to A.D. 1753-4. In the original edition the date is
misprinted A.D. 1167.
6. The tomb of Mansûr Alî Khân is better known as that of Safdar
Jang, which was the honorary title of the noble over whom the edifice
was raised. He was the wazîr, or chief minister, of the Emperor Ahmad
Shâh from 1748 to 1752, and was practically King of Oudh, where he
had succeeded to the power of his father-in-law, the well-known
Saâdat Khân: Safdar Jang died in A.D. 1754 and was succeeded in Oudh
by his son Shujâ-ud-daula.
The author's praise of the beauty of Safdar Jang's tomb will seem
extravagant to most critics. In the editor's judgement the building
is a very poor attempt to imitate the inimitable Tâj. Fergusson (ed.
1910, vol. ii, p. 324, pl. xxxiv) gives it the qualified praise that
'it looks grand and imposing at a distance, but it will not bear
close inspection'. See Fanshawe, p. 246 and plate. In the original
edition a coloured plate of this mausoleum is given.
7. Nizâm-ud-dîn was the disciple of Farîd-ud-dîn Ganj Shakar, so
called from his look being sufficient to convert _cods of earth into
lumps of sugar_. Farîd was the disciple of Kutb-ud-dîn of Old Delhi,
who was the disciple of Mûin-ud-dîn of Ajmêr, the greatest of all
their saints. [W. H. S.] Mûin-ud-dîn died A.D. 1236. For further
particulars of the three saints see Beale, _Oriental Biographical
Dictionary_, ed. Keene, 1894. Dr. Horn (_Ep. Ind._ ii, 145 n., 426
n.) gives information about the Persian biographies of Nizâm-ud-dîn
and other Chishtî saints.
8. For the personal history of Nizâm-ud-dîn see the last preceding
chapter, [13]. His tomb is situated in a kind of cemetery, which also
contains the tombs of the poet Khusrû, the Princess Jahânârâ, and the
Emperor Muhammad Shâh, which will be noticed presently. Fanshawe (p.
236) gives a plan of the enclosure. Nizâm-ud-dîn's tomb 'has a very
graceful appearance, and is surrounded by a verandah of white marble,
while a cut screen encloses the sarcophagus, which is always covered
with a cloth. Round the gravestone runs a carved wooden guard, and
from the four corners rise stone pillars draped with cloth, which
support an angular wooden frame-work, and which has something the
appearance of a canopy to a bed. Below this wooden canopy there is
stretched a cloth of green and red, much the worse for wear. The
interior of the tomb is covered with painted figures in Arabic, and
at the head of the grave is a stand with a Korân. The marble screen
is very richly cut, and the roof of the arcade-like verandah is
finely painted in a flower pattern. Altogether there is a quaint look
about the building which cannot fail to strike any one. A good deal
of money has at various times been spent on this tomb; the dome was
added to the roof in Akbar's time by Muhammad Imâm-ud-dîn Hasan, and
in the reign of Shâh Jahân (A.D. 1628 [_sic., leg._ 1627]-58) the
whole building was put into thorough repair. . . . The tomb is in the
village of Ghyâspur, and is reached after passing through the
'Chaunsath Khambhâ'. (Harcourt, _The New Guide to Delhi_ (1866), p.
107.)
In the original edition a small coloured illustration of this tomb,
from a miniature, is given on Plate 24. Carr Stephen (pp. 102-7)
gives a good and full account of Nizâm-ud-dîn and his tomb.
9. According to Harcourt (p. 108), the tomb of Khusrû was erected
about A.D. 1350, but this is a misprint for 1530. The poet, whose
proper name was Abûl Hasan, is often called Amîr Khusrû, and was of
Turkish origin. He was born A.D. 1253, and died in September, 1325.
His works are numerous. (Beale.) The grave, and wooden railing round
it, were built in A.H. 937 (A.D. 1530-1). . . . The present tomb was
built in A.H. 1014 (A.D. 1605-6) by Imâd-ud-dîn Hasan, in the reign
of Jahângîr, and this date occurs in an inscription under the dome
and over the red sandstone screens. (Carr Stephen, p. 115.) In the
original edition a small coloured illustration of this tomb, from a
miniature, is given on Plate 24. See Fanshawe, p. 241.
10. Akbar II, who died in 1837.
11. When the author was with his regiment, after the close of the
Nepalese war.
12. Harcourt (p. 109) truly observes that this tomb 'is a most
exquisite piece of workmanship. The tomb itself, raised some few feet
from the ground, is entered by steps, and is enclosed in a beautiful
cut marble screen, the sarcophagus being covered with a very artistic
representation of leaves and flowers carved in marble. Mirzâ Jahângîr
was the son of Akbar II, and the tomb was built in A.D. 1832 '.
'He was, in consequence of having fired a pistol at Mr. Seton, the
Resident at Delhi, sent as a State prisoner to Allahabad, where he
resided in the garden of Sultân Khusro for several years, and died
there in A.D. 1821 (A.H. 1236), aged thirty-one years; a salute of
thirty-one guns was fired from the ramparts of the fort of Allahabad
at the time of his burial. He was at first interred in the same
garden, and subsequently his remains were transferred to Delhi, and
buried in the courtyard of the mausoleum of Nizâm-ud-dîn Auliâ.'
(Beale, _Dictionary_.) The young man's 'overt act of rebellion'
occurred in 1808, and his body was removed to Delhi in 1832. The form
of the monument is that ordinarily used for a woman, 'but it was put
over the remains of the Prince on a dispensation being granted for
the purpose by Muhammadan lawyers'. (Carr Stephen, p. 111.)
13. Muhammad Shâh reigned feebly from September, 1719, to April,
1748. 'He is the last of the Mughals who enjoyed even the semblance
of power, and has been called "the seal of the house of Bâbar", for
"after his demise everything went to wreck".' (Lane-Poole, p.
xxxviii.) Nadir Shâh occupied Delhi in 1738, and is said to have
massacred 120,000 people. The tomb is described by Carr Stephen, p.
110.
14. Jahânârâ Bêgam, or the Bêgam Sâhib, was the elder daughter of
Shâhjahân, a very able intriguer, the partisan of Dârâ Shikoh and the
opponent of Aurangzêb during the struggle for the throne. She was
closely confined in Agra till her father's death in 1666. After that
event she was removed to Delhi, where she died in 1682. (Tavernier,
_Travels_, transl. Ball, vol. i, p. 345.) She built the Bêgam Sarâi
at Delhi. Her amours, real or supposed, furnished Bernier with some
scandalous and sensational stories. (Bernier, _Travels_, transl.
Constable, and V. A. Smith (1914), pp. 11-14.) Some writers credit
her with all the virtues, e.g., Beale in his _Oriental Biographical
Dictionary_. The author has omitted the last line of the inscription-
'May God illuminate his intentions. In the year 1093 ', corresponding
to A.D. 1682. The first line is, 'Let nothing but the green [grass]
conceal my grave.' (Carr Stephen, p. 109.)
15. The tomb of Humâyûn was erected by the Emperor's widow, Hâjî
Bêgam, or Bêgâ Bêgam, not by Akbar. She was the senior widow of
Humâyûn, entitled Hâjî or 'pilgrim ', because she performed the
pilgrimage to Mecca. Carr Stephen and other writers confound her with
Hamîda Bânû Bêgam, the mother of Akbar. For her true history see
Beveridge, _The History of Humâyûn by Gulbadan Begam_ (R.A.S., 1902).
Carr Stephen (p. 203) says that the mausoleum was completed in A.D.
1565, or, according to some, in A.D. 1569, at a coat of fifteen lâkhs
of rupees. The true date is A.D. 1570, late in A.H. 977 (Badûouî, tr.
Lowe, ii. 135). It is of special interest as being one of the
earliest specimens of the architecture of the Moghal dynasty, The
massive dome of white marble is a landmark for many miles round. The
body of the building is of red sandstone with marble decorations. It
stands on two noble terraces. Humâyûn rests in the central hall under
an elaborately carved marble sarcophagus. The head of Dârâ Shikoh and
the bodies of many members of the royal family are interred in the
side rooms. After the fall of Delhi in September, 1857, the rebel
princes took refuge in this mausoleum. The story of their execution
by Hodson on the road to Delhi is well known, and has been the
occasion of much controversy.
In the original edition a small coloured illustration of this tomb,
from a miniature, is given on Plate 24. See Fergusson, ed. 1910, pl.
xxxiii; _H.F.A._, fig. 240; Fanshawe, p. 230 and plate.
16. The tragic history of Dârâ Shikoh, the elder brother, and
unsuccessful rival, of Aurangzêb, is fully given by Bernier. The
notes in Constable's edition of that traveller's work and those to
Irvine's _Storia do Mogor_ (John Murray, 1907, 1908) give many
additional particulars. Dârâ Shikoh was executed by Aurangzêb in
1659, and it is alleged that with a horrid refinement of cruelty, the
emperor, acting on the advice of his sister, Roshanârâ Bêgam, caused
the head to be embalmed and sent packed in a box as a present to the
old ex-emperor, Shâh Jahân, the father of the three, in his prison at
Agra. The prince died invoking the aid of Jesus, and was favourably
disposed towards Christianity. He was also attracted by the doctrines
of Sûfism, or heretical Muhammadan mysticism, and by those of the
Hindoo Upanishads. In fact, his religions attitude seems to have much
resembled that of his great-grandfather Akbar. The 'Broad Church'
principles and practice of Akbar failed to leave any permanent mark
on Muhammadan institutions or the education of the people, and if
Dârâ Shikoh had been victorious in the contest for the throne, it is
not probable that he would have been able to effect lasting reforms
which were beyond the power of his illustrious ancestor. The name of
the unfortunate prince was Dârâ Shikoh ('in splendour like Darius'),
not merely Dârâ (Darius), as Bernier has it.
17. The 'great diamond' alluded to is the Kohinûr, presented by the
'Persian adventurer', Amîr Jumla, to Shâh Jahân, who was advised to
attack and conquer the country which produced such gems, (_Ante_,
Chapter 48.) The decisive battle between Dârâ Shikoh, on the one
aide, and Aurangzêb, supported by his brother and dupe, Murâd Baksh,
on the other, was fought on the 28th May, 1658 [O. S.], at the small
village of Samûgarh (Samogar), four miles from Agra. Dârâ Shikoh was
winning the battle, when a traitor persuaded him to come down from
his conspicuous seat on an elephant and mount a horse. The report
quickly spread that the prince had been killed. 'In a few minutes',
says Bernier, 'the army seemed disbanded, and (strange and sudden
reverse!) the conqueror became the vanquished. Aurangzêb remained
during a quarter of an hour steadily on his elephant, and was
rewarded with the crown of Hindustan; Dârâ left his own elephant a
few minutes too soon, and was hurled from the pinnacle of glory, to
be numbered among the most miserable of Princes; so short-sighted is
man, and so mighty are the consequences which sometimes flow from the
most trivial incident.'
According to another account the prince's change from the elephant to
the horse was due to want of personal courage, and not to treacherous
advice. (Bernier, _Travels_, ed. Constable, and V. A. Smith (1914),
p. 54.)
18. Battle fought between Tours and Poitiers, A.D. 732.
19. The principal mosque of every town is known as the Jâmi Masjid,
and is filled by large congregations on Fridays. The great mosque of
Delhi stands on a natural rocky eminence, completely covered by the
building, and approached on three sides by magnificent flights of
steps, which give it peculiar dignity. It is, perhaps, the finest
mosque in the world, and certainly has few rivals. It differs from
most mosques in that its exterior is more magnificent than its
interior. The two minarets are each about 130 feet high. The year
A.H. 1060 corresponds to A.D. 1650. The mosque was begun in that
year, and finished six years later. It is close to the palace, and
seems to have been designed to serve as the mosque for the palace, as
well as the city, for which reason no place of worship was included
in his residence by Shâh Jahân. The pretty little Motî Masjid in the
private apartments was added by Aurangzêb. Fergusson (ed. 1910, vol.
ii, p. 319) gives a view of the mosque. Carr Stephen (pp. 260-6)
gives approximate measurements, translations of the inscriptions, and
many details. See Fanshawe, pp. 44-8 and plates.
20. Since the Mutiny multitudes of houses between the palace and the
mosque have been cleared away.
21. 'Entering within its deeply recessed portal, you find yourself
beneath the vaulted hall, the sides of which are in two stories, and
with an octagonal break in the centre. This hall, which is 375 feet
in length over all, has very much the effect of the nave of a
gigantic Gothic cathedral, and forms the noblest entrance known to
belong to any existing palace' (Fergusson, ed. 1910, vol. ii, p.
309). This is the Lahore Gate.
22. What recked the Chieftain if he stood
On Highland heath, or Holy-rood?
He rights such wrong where it is given,
If it were in the court of heaven.'
--(Scott, _Lady of the Lake_, Canto V, stanza 6).
23. The foundation-stone of the palace was laid on the 12th of May,
1639 (N.S.--9 Muharrum, A.H. 1049). (E. & D., vii, p. 86), and the
work continued for nine years, three months, and some days. Nadir
Shâh's invasion took place in 1738. Kâshmîr was annexed by Akbar in
1587. Kâbul had been more or less closely united with the empire
since Bâbur's time.
24. 'In front, at the entrance, was the Naubat Khâna, or music hall,
beneath which the visitor entered the second or great court of the
palace, measuring 550 feet north and south, by 385 feet east and
west. In the centre of this stood the Dîwân-i-Amm, or great audience
hall of the palace, very similar in design to that at Agra, but more
magnificent. Its dimensions are about 200 feet by 100 feet over all.
In its centre is a highly ornamental niche, in which on a platform of
marble richly inlaid with previous stones, and directly facing the
entrance, once stood the celebrated peacock throne, the most gorgeous
example of its class that perhaps even the East could ever boast of.
Behind this again was a garden-court; on its eastern side was the
Rang Mahall, or painted hall, containing a bath and other apartments'
(Fergusson, ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 310).
The inlaid pictures were carried off, sold by the spoiler to
Government, set as table-tops, and deposited in the Indian Section of
the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington (_Hist. of Ind.
and E. Archit._, ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 311, note); but in November,
1902, the Orpheus mosaic, along with several other inlaid panels, was
returned to Delhi, where the panels were reset in due course. The
representation of Orpheus is 'a bad copy from Raphael's picture of
Orpheus charming the beasts'. Austin de Bordeaux has been already
noticed. Many of the mosaics in the panels which had not been
disturbed were renewed by Signor Menegatti of Florence during the
years 1906-9.
The peacock throne and the six other thrones in the palace are fully
described by Tavernier. (Transl. and ed. by V. Ball, vol. i, pp. 381-
7.) Further details will be found in Carr Stephen, _Archaeology of
Delhi_, pp. 220-7.
25. The throne here referred to was a makeshift arrangement used by
the later emperors. Nâdir Shâh in 1738 cleared the palace of the
peacock throne and almost everything portable of value. The little
that was left the Marâthâs took. Their chief prize was the silver
filagree ceiling of the Dîwân-i-Khâs. This hall was, 'if not the most
beautiful, certainly the most highly ornamented of all Shâh Jahân's
buildings. It is larger certainly, and far richer in ornament than
that of Agra, though hardly so elegant in design; but nothing can
exceed the beauty of the inlay of precious stones with which it is
adored, or the general poetry of the design, It is round the roof of
this hall that the famous inscription runs: "If there is a heaven on
earth, it is this, it is this ", which may safely be rendered into
the sober English assertion that no palace now existing in the world
possesses an apartment of such singular elegance as this' (Fergusson,
ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 311).
26. All the events alluded to are related in detail by Bernier and
Manucci. Sulaimân and Sipihr Shikoh were the sons of Dârâ Shikoh. The
author makes a slip in saying that Shâh Jahân sat in the palace at
Delhi to negotiate with his grandson. During that negotiation Shâh
Jahân was at Agra.
27. It is related that the coffee was delivered to the two sovereigns
in this room upon a gold salver by the most polished gentleman of the
court. His motions, as he entered the gorgeous apartment, amidst the
splendid train of the two Emperors, were watched with great anxiety;
if he presented the coffee first to his own master, the furious
conqueror, before whom the sovereign of India and all his courtiers
trembled, might order him to instant execution; if he presented it to
Nâdir first, he would insult his own sovereign out of fear of the
stranger. To the astonishment of all, he walked up with a steady step
direct to his own master. 'I cannot', said he, 'aspire to the honour
of presenting the cup to the king of kings, your majesty's honoured
guest, nor would your majesty wish that any hand but your own should
do so.' The Emperor took the cup from the golden salver, and
presented it to Nâdir Shâh, who said with a smile as he took it, 'Had
all your officers known and done their duty like this man, you had
never, my good cousin, seen me and my Kizil Bâshis at Delhi; take
care of him for your own sake, and get round you as many like him as
you can.' [W. H. S.]
28. The famous inscription of Saâd-Ullah Khân, supposed to be in the
handwriting of Rashîd, the greatest caligraphist of his time; _Agar
Firdaus bar rûe zamîn ast--hamîn ast, to hamîn ast, to hamîn ast_'
(Carr Stephen, p. 229; Fanshawe, p. 35 and plate).
29. All these people were cleared out by the events of 1867, and the
few beautiful fragments of the palace which have retained anything of
their original magnificence are now clean and in good order. The
elaborate decorations of the Dîwân-i-Khâs have been partially
restored, and the interior of this building is still extremely rich
and elegant.
'Of the public parts of the palace all that now remains is the
entrance hall, the Naubat Khâna, Dîwân-i-Amm and Khâs, and the Rang
Mahall--now used as a mess-room, and one or two small pavilions. They
are the gems of the palace it is true, but without the courts and
corridors connecting them they lose all their meaning and more than
half their beauty. Being now situated in the middle of a British
barrack-yard, they look like precious stones torn from their settings
in some exquisite piece of Oriental jeweller's work and set at random
in a bed of the commonest plaster' (Fergusson, ed. 1910, vol. ii, p.
312). Since Fergusson wrote an immense amount of work has been done
in restoration and conservation, but it is difficult to obtain a
general view of the result.
The books about Delhi are even more tantalising and unsatisfactory
than those which deal with Agra. Mr. Beglar's contribution to Vol. IV
of the _Archaeological Survey Reports_ is a little, but very little,
better than Mr. Carlleyle's disquisition on Agra in that volume. Sir
A. Cunningham's observations in the first and twentieth volumes of
the same series are of greater value, but are fragmentary and
imperfect, and scarcely notice at all the city of Shâhjahân.
Fergusson's criticisms, so far as they go, are of permanent
importance, though the scheme of his work did not allow him to treat
in detail of any particular section. Guide-books by Beresford Cooper,
Harcourt, and Keene, of which Keene's is the latest, and,
consequently, in some respects the best, are all extremely
unsatisfactory. Mr. H. C. Fanshawe's _Delhi Past and Present_ (John
Murray, 1902), a large, handsome work something between a guide-book
and a learned treatise, is not quite satisfying. The late Mr. Carr
Stephen, a resident of Delhi, wrote a valuable book on the
Archaeology of the city, but it has no illustrations, except a few
plans on a small scale. (8vo, Ludhiana, 1876.) A good critical,
comprehensive, well illustrated description of the remains of the
cities, said to number thirteen, all grouped together by European
writers under the name of Delhi, does not exist, and it seems
unlikely that the Panjâb Government will cause the blank to be
filled. No Government in India has such opportunities, or has done so
little, to elucidate the history of the country, as the Government of
the Panjâb. But it has shown greater interest in the matter of late.
The reorganized Archaeological Survey of India, under the capable
guidance of Sir J. H. Marshall, C.I.E., has not yet had time to do
much at Delhi beyond the work of conservation. A fourteenth Delhi is
now being built (1914).
30. _Ante_, chapter 53, [19].
31. These epistolary formulas mean no more than the similar official
phrases in English, 'Your most obedient humble servant', and the
like. The 'fortunate occurrence' of the Mutiny--for such it was, in
spite of all the blood and suffering--cut out many plague-spots from
the body politic of India. Among these the reeking palace swarm of
Delhi was not the least malignant.
32. Azraîl is the angel of death, whose duty it is to separate the
souls from the bodies of men. Isrâfîl is entrusted with the task of
blowing the last trump.
33. The resurrection, and the signs foretelling it, are described in
the _Mishkat-ul-Masâbih_, book xxiii, chapters 3 to 11. (Matthews,
vol. ii, pp. 556-620.)
34. The Hindoo 'ages' are (1) Krita, or Satya, (2) Treta, (3)
Dwâpara, (4) Kali, the present evil age. The long periods assigned to
these are merely the result of the calculations of astronomers, who
preferred integral to fractional numbers.
35. This kind of education does not now pay, and is, consequently,
going out of fashion. The Muhammadans are slowly, and rather
unwillingly, yielding to the pressure of necessity and beginning to
accept English education.
36. Imam Muhammad Ghazzâlî, who is also entitled Hujjat-ul-Islâm, is
the surname of Abu Hâmid Muhammad Zain-ud-dîn Tûsî, one of the
greatest and most celebrated Musalmân doctors, who was born A.D.
1058, and died A.D. 1111. (Beale, s.v. 'Ghazzâlî'.) The length of
these Muhammadan names is terrible. They are much mangled in the
original edition. See _ante_, chapter 53, note 10, and Blochmann
(Aîn) pp. 103, 182.
37. Khwâja Nâsir-ud-dîn Tûsî, the famous philosopher and astronomer,
the most universal scholar that Persia ever produced. Born A.D. 1201,
died A.D. 1274. (Beale.) See _ante_, loc. cit.
38. Especially the _Bûstân_ and _Gulistân_. Beale gives a list of
Sâdî's works. See _ante_, chapter 12, note 6.
39. This is a very cynical and inadequate explanation of the
prevalence of Conservative opinions among Englishmen in the East.
40. Ante, chapter 30, [6].
41. In the original edition the portrait of Akbar II is twice given,
namely, in the frontispiece of Volume I as a full-page plate, and
again as a miniature, dated 1836, in the frontispiece of Volume II.
42. The most secluded native prince of the present day could not be
guilty of this absurdity.
43. Bâbur was sixth in descent from Tîmûr, not seventh. Bâbur's
grandfather, Abu Sayyid, was great-grandson of Tîmûr. Bâbur, not
Bâbar, is the correct spelling.
44. This may be an exaggeration. The undoubted facts are sufficiently
horrible.
45. Tîmûr was a man of surpassing ability, and knew much 'else'. See
Malcolm, _History of Persia_, ed. 1859, chapter 11.
46. Tîmûr's 'historian and great eulogist' was Sharaf-ud-dîn (died
1446), whose _Zafarnâma_, or 'Book of Victories', was translated into
French by Petis de la Croix in 1722. That version was used by Gibbon
and rendered into English in 1723, Copious extracts from an
independent rendering are given in E. & D., iii, pp. 478-522. The
details do not always agree exactly with Sleeman's account.
47. The 'old city' was that of Kutb-ud-dîn and Îltutmish; the 'new
city' was that of Fîrôz Shâh, which partly coincided with the
existing city, and partly lay to the south, outside the Delhi gate.
48. In A.D. 1303.
49. Now in the Sahâranpur district.
50. This is a repetition of the statement made above. According to
_Encycl. Brit._, ed. 1910, Tîmûr returned to his capital in April not
May.
51. Bajazet, or more accurately Bayazîd I, was defeated by Tîmûr at
the battle of Angora in 1402, and died the following year. The story
of his confinement in an iron cage is discredited by modern critics,
though Gibbon (chapter 65) shows that it is supported by much good
evidence. Anatolia is a synonym for Asia Minor. It is a vague term,
the Greek equivalent of 'the Levant'.
52. Sebastê, also called Elaeusa or Ayash, was in Cilicia.
53. Otherwise called Sihôn, or Syr Daryâ.
54. Two autobiographical works, the _Malfûzât_ and the Tuzukât, are
attributed to Tîmûr and probably were composed under his direction.
The latter was translated by Major Davey (Oxford, 1783), and the
former, in part, by Major Stewart (Or. Transl. Fund, 1830). An
independent version of the portion of the _Malfûzât_ relating to
India will be found in E. & D., iii, pp. 389-477.
55. Alî Yazdî, commonly called Sharaf-ud-dîn, author of the
_Zafarnâma_ in Persian (see _ante_, chapter 68, note 46), Ibn
Arabshâh, in an Arabic work, describes Tîmûr from a hostile point of
view. (Encycl. Brit., 11th ed., s. v. 'Timûr').
56. It is impossible within the limits of a note to discuss the
problem of the origin of the gipsies. Much has been written about it,
though nothing quite satisfactory. The gipsy, or Romany, language
(_Romani chiv_, or 'tongue') certainly is closely related to, though
not derived from, the existing languages of Northern India. Some of
the forms are very archaic. A valuable English-Gipsy vocabulary
compiled by Mr. (Sir George) and Mrs. Grierson was published in _Ind.
Ant._, vols. xv, xvi (1886,1887). The author's theory does not tally
with the facts. Gipsies existed in Persia and Europe long before
Tîmûr's time. It is practically certain that they did not come
through Egypt. The article 'Gypsies' by F. H. Groome in Chambers's
_Encycl._ (1904) is good, and seems to the editor to be preferable to
Dr. Gaster's article 'Gipsies' in _Encycl. Brit._, 11th ed., 1910.
57. Before the Codes were passed (1859-1861) the criminal law
administered in India was, in the main, that of the Muhammadans, and
each judge's court had a Muhammadan law officer attached, who
pronounced a 'fatwa', or decision, intimating the law applicable to
the case, and the penalty which might be inflicted. Several examples
of these 'fatwas' will be found among the papers bound up with the
author's 'Ramaseeana'.
58. See Korân, chapter 2. [W. H. S.] The passage is the second
sentence in chapter 2. The wording, as quoted, differs slightly from
Sale's version.
59. See Korân, chapter 32. [W. H. S.]
60. Ibid., chapter 11. [W. H. S.] Sale's version, with trifling
verbal differences. The 'muftî's' reasoning has been heard in Europe.
61. See Korân, chapter 15. [W. H. S.] Sale's version, with
modifications.
62. 'This is a revelation of the most mighty, the merciful God; that
thou mayest warn a people whose fathers were not warned, and who live
in negligence. Our sentence hath justly been pronounced against the
greater part of them, wherefore they shall not believe. It shall be
equal unto them whether thou preach unto them, or do not preach unto
them; they shall not believe.' Korân, chapter 36. [W. H. S.] From
beginning of the chapter. Sale's version; a sentence being omitted
between 'believe' and 'It shall'.
63. I have never met another man so thoroughly master of the Korân as
the Muftî, and yet he had the reputation of being a very corrupt man
in his office. [W. H. S.]
64. Aleeoodeen; an unusual name; probably a misprint for Alâ-ud-dîn.
65. The 17th chapter of the Korân opens with the words, 'Praise be
unto him who transported his servant by night from the sacred temple
of Mecca to the farther temple of Jerusalem', 'from whence', as Sale
observes, 'he was carried through the seven heavens to the presence
of God, and brought back again to Mecca the same night'. The
commentators dispute whether the journey to heaven was corporeally
performed, or merely in a vision. 'But the received opinion is that
it was no vision, but that he was actually transported in the body to
his journey's end; and if any impossibility be objected, they think
it a sufficient answer to say that it might easily be effected by an
omnipotent agent.'
66. See Korân, chapter 15. [W. H. S.]
67. The Muhammadans believe that the Christians have tampered with
the Scriptures.
68. It would be difficult to give more vivid expression to the
eternal conflict between the theological and the scientific spirit.
Compare the remarks _ante_, chapter 26, note 11, on the attitude of
Hindoos towards modern science.
69. _Paradise Lost_, Book VIII. [W. H. S.] Line 167; from Raphael's
address to Adam.
CHAPTER 69
Indian Police--Its Defects--and their Cause and Remedy.
On the 26th[1] we crossed the river Jumna, over a bridge of boats,
kept up by the King of Oudh for the use of the public, though his
majesty is now connected with Delhi only by the tomb of his
ancestor;[2] and his territories are separated from the imperial city
by the two great rivers, Ganges and Jumna.
We proceeded to Farrukhnagar, about twelve miles over an execrable
road running over a flat but rugged surface of unproductive soil.[3]
India is, perhaps, the only civilized country in the world where a
great city could be approached by such a road from the largest
military Station in the empire,[4] not more than three stages
distant. After breakfast the head native police officer of the
division came to pay his respects. He talked of the dreadful murders
which used to be perpetrated in this neighbourhood by miscreants, who
found shelter in the territories of the Bêgam Samrû,[5] whither his
followers dared not hunt for them; and mentioned a case of nine
persons who had been murdered just within the boundary of our
territories about seven years before, and thrown into a dry well. He
was present at the inquest held on their bodies, and described their
appearance; and I found that they were the bodies of a news writer
from Lahore, who, with his eight companions, had been murdered by
Thugs on his way back to Rohilkhand. I had long before been made
acquainted with the circumstances of this murder and the perpetrators
had all been secured, but we wanted this link in the chain of
evidence. It had been described to me as having taken place within
the boundary of the Bêgam's territory, and I applied to her for a
report on the inquest. She declared that no bodies had been
discovered about the time mentioned; and I concluded that the
ignorance of the people of the neighbourhood was pretended, as usual
in such cases, with a view to avoid a summons to give evidence in our
courts. I referred forthwith to the magistrate of the district, and
found the report that I wanted, and thereby completed the chain of
evidence upon a very important case. The Thânadâr seemed much
surprised to find that I was so well acquainted with the
circumstances of this murder, but still more that the perpetrators
were not the poor old Bêgam's subjects, but our own.
The police officers employed on our borders find it very convenient
to trace the perpetrators of all murders and gang robberies into the
territories of native chiefs, whose subjects they accuse often when
they know that the crimes have been committed by our own. They are,
on the one hand, afraid to seize or accuse the real offenders, lest
they should avenge themselves by some personal violence, or by thefts
or robberies, which they often commit with a view to get them tumed
out of office as inefficient; and, on the other, they are tempted to
conceal the real offenders by a liberal share of the spoil, and a
promise of not offending again within their beat. Their tenure of
office is far too insecure, and their salaries are far too small.
They are often dismissed summarily by the magistrate if they send him
in no prisoners; and also if they send in to him prisoners who are
not ultimately convicted, because a magistrate's merits are too often
estimated by the proportion that his convictions bear to his
acquittals among the prisoners committed for trial to the sessions.
Men are often ultimately acquitted for want of judicial proof, when
there is abundance of that moral proof on which a police officer or
magistrate has to act in the discharge of his duties; and in a
country where gangs of professional and hereditary robbers and
murderers extend their depredations into very remote parts, and
seldom commit them in the districts in which they reside, the most
vigilant police officer must often fail to discover the perpetrators
of heavy crimes that take place within his range.[6]
When they cannot find them, the native officers either seize innocent
persons, and frighten them into confession, or else they try to
conceal the crime, and in this they are seconded by the sufferers in
the robbery, who will always avoid, if they can, a prosecution in our
courts, and by their neighbours, who dread being summoned to give
evidence as a serious calamity. The man who has been robbed, instead
of being an object of compassion among his neighbours, often incurs
their resentment for subjecting them to this calamity; and they not
only pay largely themselves, but make him pay largely, to have his
losses concealed from the magistrate. Formerly, when a district was
visited by a judge of circuit to hold his sessions only once or twice
a year, and men were constantly bound over to prosecute and appear as
evidence from sessions to sessions, till they were wearied and
worried to death, this evil was much greater than at present, when
every district is provided with its judge of sessions, who is, or
ought to be, always ready to take up the cases committed for trial by
the magistrate.[7] This was one of the best measures of Lord W.
Bentinck's admirable, though much abused, administration of the
government of India.[8] Still, however, the inconvenience and delay
of prosecution in our courts are so great, and the chance of the
ultimate conviction of great offenders is so small, that strong
temptations are held out to the police to conceal or misrepresent the
character of crimes; and they must have a great feeling of security
in their tenure of office, and more adequate salaries, better chances
of rising, and better supervision over them, before they will resist
such temptation. These Thânadârs, and all the public officers under
them, are all so very inadequately paid that corruption among them
excites no feeling of odium or indignation in the minds of those
among whom they live and serve. Such feelings are rather directed
against the government that places them in such situations of so much
labour and responsibility with salaries so inadequate; and thereby
confers upon them virtually a licence to pay themselves by preying
upon those whom they are employed ostensibly to protect. They know
that with such salaries they can never have the reputation of being
honest, however faithfully they may discharge their duties; and it is
too hard to expect that men will long submit to the necessity of
being thought corrupt, without reaping some of the advantages of
corruption. Let the Thânadârs have everywhere such salaries as will
enable them to maintain their families in comfort, and keep up that
appearance of respectability which their station in society demands;
and over every three or four Thânadârs' jurisdiction let there be an
officer appointed upon a higher scale of salary, to supervise and
control their proceedings, and armed with powers to decide minor
offences. To these higher stations the Thânadârs will be able to look
forward as their reward for a faithful and zealous discharge of their
duties.[9]
He who can suppose that men so inadequately paid, who have no
promotion to look forward to, and feel no security in their tenure of
office, and consequently no hope of a provision for old age,[10] will
be zealous and honest in the discharge of their duties, must be very
imperfectly acquainted with human nature, and with the motives by
which men are influenced in all quarters of the world; but we are
none of us so ignorant, for we all know that the same motives actuate
public servants in India as elsewhere. We have acted successfully
upon this knowledge in the scale of salaries and gradation of rank
assigned to European civil functionaries, and to all native
functionaries employed in the judicial and revenue branches of the
public service; and why not act upon it in that of the salaries
assigned to the native officers employed in the police? The
magistrate of a district gets a salary of from two thousand to two
thousand five hundred rupees a month.[11] The native officer next
under him is the Thânadâr, or head native police officer of a
subdivision of his district, containing many towns and villages, with
a population of a hundred thousand souls. This officer gets a salary
of twenty-five rupees a month. He cannot possibly do his duty unless
he keeps one or two horses; indeed, he is told by the magistrate that
he cannot; and that he must have one or two horses, or resign his
post. The people, seeing how much we expect from the Thânadâr, and
how little we give him, submit to his demands for contributions
without murmuring, and consider almost any demand trivial from a man
so employed and so paid. They are confounded at our inconsistency,
and say, 'We see you giving high salaries and high prospects of
advancement to men who have nothing to do but collect your rents, and
decide our disputes about pounds, shillings, and pence, which we used
to decide much better ourselves, when we had no other court but that
of our elders--while those who are to protect life and property, to
keep peace over the land, and enable the industrious to work in
security, maintain their families, and pay the government revenue,
are left with hardly any pay at all.'
There is really nothing in our rule in India which strikes the people
so much as this inconsistency, the evil effects of which are so great
and manifest; the only way to remedy the evil is to give a greater
feeling of security in the tenure of office, a higher rate of salary,
the hope of a provision for old age, and, above all, the gradation of
rank, by interposing the officers I speak of between the Thânadârs
and the magistrate.[12] This has all been done in the establishments
for the collection of the revenue, and administration of civil
justice.
Hobbes, in his _Leviathan_, says, 'And seeing that the end of
punishment is not revenge and discharge of choler, but correction,
either of the offender, or of others by his example, the severest
punishments are to be inflicted for those crimes that are of most
danger to the public; such as are those which proceed from malice to
the government established; those that spring from contempt of
justice; those that provoke indignation in the multitude; and those
which, unpunished, seem authorized, as when they are committed by
sons, servants, or favourites of men in authority.[13] For
indignation carrieth men, not only against the actors and authors of
injustice, but against all power that is likely to protect them; as
in the case of Tarquin, when, for the insolent act of one of his
sons, he was driven out of Rome, and the monarchy itself dissolved.'
(Para. 2, chapter 30.) Almost every one of our Thânadârs is, in his
way, a little Tarquin, exciting the indignation of the people against
his rulers; and no time should be lost in converting him into
something better.
By the obstacles which are still everywhere opposed to the conviction
of offenders, in the distance of our courts, the forms of procedure,
and other causes of 'the law's delay', we render the duties of our
police establishment everywhere 'more honoured in the breach than the
observance', by the mass of the people among whom they are placed. We
must, as I have before said, remove some of these obstacles to the
successful prosecution of offenders in our criminal courts, which
tend so much to deprive the government of all popular aid and support
in the administration of justice; and to convert all our police
establishments into instruments of oppression, instead of what they
should be, the efficient means of protection to the persons,
property, and character of the innocent. Crimes multiply from the
assurance the guilty are everywhere apt to feel of impunity to crime;
and the more crimes multiply, the greater is the aversion the people
everywhere feel to aid the government in the arrest and conviction of
criminals, because they see more and more the innocent punished by
attendance upon distant courts at great cost and inconvenience, to
give evidence upon points which seem to them unimportant, while the
guilty escape owing to technical difficulties which they can never
understand.[14]
The best way to remove these obstacles is to interpose officers
between the Thânadâr and the magistrate, and arm them with judicial
powers to try minor cases, leaving an appeal open to the magistrate,
and to extend the final jurisdiction of the magistrate to a greater
range of crimes, though it should involve the necessity of reducing
the measure of punishment annexed to them.[15] Beccaria has justly
observed that 'Crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty
than by the severity of punishment. The certainty of a small
punishment will make a stronger impression than the fear of one more
severe, if attended with the hope of escaping; for it is the nature
of mankind to be terrified at the approach of the smallest inevitable
evil; whilst hope, the best gift of Heaven, has the power of
dispelling the apprehensions of a greater, especially if supported by
examples of impunity, which weakness or avarice too frequently
affords.'
I ought to have mentioned that the police of a district, in our
Bengal territories, consists of a magistrate and his assistant, who
are European gentlemen of the Civil Service; and a certain number of
Thânadârs, from twelve to sixteen, who preside over the different
sub-divisions of the district in which they reside with their
establishments. These Thânadârs get twenty-five rupees a month, have
under them four or five Jemadârs upon eight rupees, and thirty or
forty Barkandâzes upon four rupees a month. The Jemadârs are, most of
them, placed in charge of 'nâkas', or sub-divisions of the Thânadâr's
jurisdiction, the rest are kept at their headquarters, ready to move
to any point where their services may be required. These are all paid
by government; but there is in each village one watchman, and in
larger villages more than one, who are appointed by the heads of
villages, and paid by the communities, and required daily or
periodically to report all the police matters of their villages to
the Thânadârs.[16]
The distance between the magistrates and Thânadârs is at present
immeasurable; and an infinite deal of mischief is done by the latter
and those under them, of which the magistrates know nothing whatever.
In the first place, they levy a fee of one rupee from every village
at the festival of the Holî in February, and another at that of the
Dasehra in October, and in each Thânadâr's jurisdiction there are
from one to two hundred villages. These and numerous other
unauthorized exactions they share with those under them, and with the
native officers about the person of the magistrate, who, if not
conciliated, can always manage to make them appear unfit for their
places.[17]
A robbery affords a rich harvest. Some article of stolen property is
found in one man's house, and by a little legerdemain it is conveyed
to that of another, both of whom are made to pay liberally; the man
robbed also pays, and all the members of the village community are
made to do the same. They are all called to the court of the Thânadâr
to give evidence as to what they have seen or heard regarding either
the fact or the persons in the remotest degree connected with it--as
to the arrests of the supposed offenders--the search of their house--
the character of their grandmothers and grandfathers--and they are
told that they are to be sent to the magistrate a hundred miles
distant, and then made to stand at the door among a hundred and fifty
pairs of shoes, till _his excellency_ the Nâzir, the under-sheriff of
the court, may be pleased to announce them to his highness the
magistrate, which, of course, he will not do without a
_consideration_. To escape all these threatened evils, they pay
handsomely and depart in peace. The Thânadâr reports that an attempt
to rob a house by persons unknown had been defeated by his exertions,
and the _good fortune_ of the magistrate; and sends a liberal share
of spoil to those who are to read his report to that functionary.[18]
This goes on more or less in every district, but more especially in
those where the magistrate happens to be a man of violent temper, who
is always surrounded by knaves, because men who have any regard for
their character will not approach him--or a weak, good-natured man,
easily made to believe anything, and managed by favourites--or one
too fond of field-sports, or of music, painting, European languages,
literature, and sciences, or lastly, of his own ease.[19] Some
magistrates think they can put down crime by dismissing the Thânadâr;
but this tends only to prevent crimes being reported to him; for in
such cases the feelings of the people are in exact accordance with
the interests of the Thânadârs; and crimes augment by the assurance
of impunity thereby given to criminals. The only remedy for all this
evil is to fill up the great gulf between the magistrate and Thânadâr
by officers who shall be to him what I have described the patrol
officers to be to the collectors of customs, at once the _tapis_ of
Prince Husain, and the _telescope_ of Prince Ali--a medium that will
enable him to be everywhere, and see everything.[20] And why is this
remedy not applied? Simply and solely because such appointments would
be given to the uncovenanted, and might tend indirectly to diminish
the appointments open to the covenanted servants of the company.
Young gentlemen of the Civil Service are supposed to be doing the
duties which would be assigned to such officers, while they are at
school as assistants to magistrates and collectors; and were this
great gulf filled up by efficient covenanted officers, they would
have no school to go to. There is no doubt some truth in this; but
the welfare of a whole people should not be sacrificed to keep this
school or play-ground open exclusively for them; let them act for a
time as they would unwillingly do with the uncovenanted, and they
will learn much more than if they occupied the ground exclusively and
acted alone--they will be always with people ready and willing to
tell them the real state of things; whereas, at present, they are
always with those who studiously conceal it from them.[21]
It is a common practice with Thânadârs all over the country to
connive at the residence within their jurisdiction of gangs of
robbers, on the condition that they shall not rob within those
limits, and shall give them a share of what they bring back from
their distant expeditions.
They [_scil._ the gangs] go out ostensibly in search of service, on
the termination of the rains of one season in October, and return
before the commencement of the next in June; but their vocation is
always well known to the police, and to all the people of their
neighbourhood, and very often to the magistrates themselves, who
could, if they would, secure them on their return with their booty;
but this would not secure their conviction unless the proprietors
could be discovered, which they scarcely ever could. Were the police
officers to seize them, they would be all finally acquitted and
released by the judges--the magistrate would get into disrepute with
his superiors, by the number of acquittals compared with convictions
exhibited in his monthly tables; and he would vent his spleen upon
the poor Thânadâr, who would at the same time have incurred the
resentment of the robbers; and between both, he would have no
possible chance of escape. He therefore consults his own interest and
his own case by leaving them to carry on their trade of robbery or
murder unmolested; and his master, the magistrate, is well pleased
not to be pestered with charges against men whom he has no chance of
getting ultimately convicted. It was in this way that so many hundred
families of assassins by profession were able for so many generations
to reside in the most cultivated and populous parts of our
territories, and extend their depredations into the remotest parts of
India, before our System of operations was brought to bear upon them
in 1830. Their profession was perfectly well known to the people of
the districts in which they resided, and to the greater part of the
police; they murdered not within their own district, and the police
of that district cared nothing about what they might do beyond
it.[22]
The most respectable native gentleman in the city and district told
me one day an amusing instance of the proceedings of a native officer
of that district, which occurred about five years ago. 'In a village
which he had purchased and let in farms, a shopkeeper was one day
superintending the cutting of some sugar-cane which he had purchased
from a cultivator as it stood. His name was Girdhârî, I think, and
the boy who was cutting it for him was the son of a poor man called
Madârî. Girdhârî wanted to have the cane cut down as near as he could
to the ground, while the boy, to save himself the trouble of
stooping, would persist in cutting it a good deal too high up. After
admonishing him several times, the shopkeeper gave him a smart clout
on the head. The boy, to prevent a repetition, called out, "Murder!
Girdhârî has killed me--Girdhârî has killed me!" His old father, who
was at work carrying away the cane at a little distance out of sight,
ran off to the village watchman, and, in his anger, told him that
Girdhârî had murdered his son. The watchman went as fast as he could
to the Thânadâr, or head police officer of the division, who resided
some miles distant. The Thânadâr ordered off his subordinate officer,
the Jemadâr, with half a dozen policemen, to arrange everything for
an inquest on the body, by the time he should reach the place, with
all due pomp. The Jemadâr went to the house of the murderer, and
dismounting, ordered all the shopkeepers of the village, who were
many and respectable, to be forthwith seized, and bound hand and
feet. "So", said the Jemadâr, "you have all been aiding and abetting
your friend in the murder of poor Madârî's only son." "May it please
your excellency, we have never heard of any murder." "Impudent
scoundrels," roared the Jemadâr, "does not the poor boy lie dead in
the sugar-cane field, and is not his highness the Thânadâr coming to
hold an inquest upon it? and do you take us for fools enough to
believe that any scoundrel among you would venture to commit a
deliberate murder without being aided and abetted by all the rest?"
The village watchman began to feel some apprehension that he had been
too precipitate; and entreated the Jemadâr to go first and see the
body of the boy. "What do you take us for," said the Jemadâr, "a
thing without a stomach? Do you suppose that government servants can
live and labour on air? Are we to go and examine bodies upon empty
stomachs? Let his father take care of the body, and let these
murdering shopkeepers provide us something to eat." Nine rupees'
worth of sweetmeats, and materials for a feast were forthwith
collected at the expense of the shopkeepers, who stood bound, and
waiting the arrival of his highness the Thânadâr, who was soon after
seen approaching majestically upon a richly caparisoned horse.
"What," said the Jemadâr, "is there nobody to go and receive his
highness in due form?" One of the shopkeepers was untied, and
presented with fifteen rupees by his family, and those of the other
shopkeepers. These he took up and presented to his highness, who
deigned to receive them through one of his train, and then dismounted
and partook of the feast that had been provided. "Now", said his
highness, "we will go and hold an inquest on the body of the poor
boy"; and off moved all the great functionaries of government to the
sugar-cane field, with the village watchman leading the way. The
father of the boy met them as they entered, and was pointed out by
the village watchman. "Where", said the Thânadâr, "is your poor boy?"
"There," said Madârî, "cutting the canes." "How, cutting the canes?
Was he not murdered by the shopkeepers?" "No," said Madârî, "he was
beaten by Girdhârî, and richly deserved it! I find." Girdhârî and the
boy were called up, and the little urchin said that he called out
murder merely to prevent Girdhârî from giving him another clout on
the side of the head. His father was then fined nine rupees for
giving a false alarm, and Girdhârî fifteen for so unmercifully
beating the boy; and they were made to pay on the instant, under the
penalty of all being sent off forty miles to the magistrate. Having
thus settled this very important affair, his highness the Thânadâr
walked back to the shop, ordered all the shopkeepers to be set at
liberty, smoked his pipe, mounted his horse, and rode home, followed
by all his police officers, and well pleased with his day's work.'
The farmer of the village soon after made his way to the city, and
communicated the circumstances to my old friend, who happened to be
on intimate terms with the magistrate.[23] He wrote a polite note to
the Thânadâr to say that he should never get any rents from his
estate if the occupants were liable to such fines as these, and that
he should take the earliest opportunity of mentioning them to his
friend the magistrate. The Thânadâr ascertained that he was really in
the habit of visiting the magistrate, and communicating with him
freely; and hushed up the matter by causing all, save the expenses of
the feast, to be paid back. These are things of daily occurrence in
all parts of our dominions, and the Thânadârs are not afraid to play
such 'fantastic tricks' because all those under and all those above
them share more or less in the spoil, and are bound in honour to
conceal them from the European magistrate, whom it is the interest of
all to keep in the dark. They know that the people will hardly ever
complain, from the great dislike they all have to appear in our
courts, particularly when it is against any of the officers of those
courts, or their friends and creatures in the district police.[24]
When our operations commenced, in 1830, these assassins [_scil._ the
Thugs] revelled over every road in India in gangs of hundreds,
without the fear of punishment from divine or human laws; but there
is not now, I believe, a road in India infested by them. That our
government has still defects, and great ones, must be obvious to
every one who has travelled much over India with the requisite
qualifications and disposition to observe; but I believe that in
spite of all the defects I have noticed above in our police System,
the life, property, and character of the innocent are now more
secure, and all their advantages more freely enjoyed, than they ever
were under any former government with whose history we are
acquainted, or than they now are under any native government in
India.[25]
Those who think they are not so almost always refer to the reign of
Shâh Jahân, when men like Tavernier travelled so securely all over
India with their bags of diamonds; but I would ask them whether they
think that the life, property, and character of the innocent could be
anywhere very secure, or their advantages very freely enjoyed, in a
country where a man could do openly with impunity what the traveller
describes to have been done by the Persian physician of the Governor
of Allahabad? This governor, being sickly, had in attendance upon him
_eleven physicians_, one of whom was a European gentleman of
education, Claudius Maille, of Bourges.[26] The chief favourite of
the eleven was, however, a Persian, 'who one day threw his wife from
the top of a battlement to the ground in a fit of jealousy. He
thought the fall would kill her, but she had only a few ribs broken;
whereupon the kindred of the woman came and demanded justice at the
feet of the governor. The governor, sending for the physician,
commanded him to be gone, resolving to retain him no longer in his
service. The physician obeyed; and putting his poor maimed wife in a
palankeen, he set forward upon the road with all his family. But he
had not gone above three or four days' journey from the city, when
the governor, finding himself worse than he was wont to be, sent to
recall him; which the physician perceiving, stabbed his wife, his
four children, and thirteen female slaves, and returned again to the
Governor, who said not a word to him, but entertained him again in
his service.' This occurred within Tavernier's own knowledge and
about the time he visited Allahabad; and is related as by no means a
very extraordinary circumstance.[27]
Notes:
1. January, 1836.
2. The tomb of Safdar Jang, or Mansûr Alî Khân, described _ante_,
chapter 68 [4]. The bridges over the Jumna are now, of course,
maintained by Government and the railway companies.
3. The main highways approaching Delhi are now excellent metalled
roads.
4. By the term 'the largest military station in the empire', the
author means Meerut. At present the largest military station in
Northern India is, I believe, Râwal Pindi, and the combined
cantonments of Secunderâbâd and Bolarum in the Nizam's dominions
constitute the largest military station in the empire.
5. Comprising parts of the Meerut and Muzaffarnagar districts of the
North-Western Provinces, now the Agra Province in the United
Provinces of Agra and Oudh. The Bêgam's history will be discussed in
chapter 75, _post_.
6. The members of the reformed police force, constituted under Act V
of 1861, generally on the model of the Royal Irish Constabulary, have
no reason to complain of insecurity of tenure. It is now very
difficult to obtain sanction to the dismissal of a corrupt or
inefficient officer, unless he has been judicially convicted of a
statutory offence.
7. Ordinarily there is for each district, or administrative unit, a
separate Sessions and District Judge, who tries both civil and
criminal cases of the more serious kind. Occasionally two or three
districts have only one judge between them, who is then usually in
arrear with his work. Sessions for the trial of grave criminal cases
are held monthly, bimonthly, or quarterly, according to
circumstances. In some districts, and for some classes of cases, the
jury system has been introduced, but, as a rule, in Northern India
the responsibility rests with the judge alone, who receives some
slight aid from assessors. Capital sentences passed by a Sessions
Judge must be confirmed by two Judges of a High Court, or equivalent
tribunal.
8. The historian Thornton (chapter 27) went so far as to declare that
Lord William Bentinck has 'done less for the interest of India, and
for his own reputation, than any who had occupied his place since the
commencement of the nineteenth century, with the single exception of
Sir George Barlow'. The abolition of widow-burning is the only act of
the Bentinck administration which this writer could praise. Such a
criticism is manifestly unjust, the outcome of contemporary anger and
prejudice. The inscription written by Macaulay, the friend and
coadjutor of Lord William, and placed on the statue of the reforming
Governor-General in Calcutta, does not give undeserved praise to the
much abused statesman. Sir William Sleeman so much admired Lord
William Bentinck, and formed such a favourable estimate of the merits
of his government, that it may be well to support his opinion by that
of Macaulay. The text of the inscription is:
TO
WILLIAM CAVENDISH BENTINCK,
who during seven years ruled India with eminent prudence,
integrity, and benevolence;
who, placed at the head of a great Empire, never laid aside
the simplicity and moderation of a private citizen;
who infused into Oriental despotism the spirit
of British freedom;
who never forgot that the end of Government is the happiness
of the governed;
who abolished cruel rites;
who effaced humiliating distinctions;
who gave liberty to the expression of public opinion;
whose constant study it was to elevate the intellectual and
moral character of the nation committed to his charge,
THIS MONUMENT
was erected by men
who, differing in race, in manners, in language and in religion,
cherish with equal veneration and gratitude
the memory of his wise, reforming, and paternal administration.
(_Lord William Bentinck_, by D. Boulger, p. 203; 'Rulers of India'
series.)
9. A European District Superintendent of Police, under the general
supervision of the Magistrate of the District, now commands the
police of each district, and sometimes has one or two European
Assistants. He is also aided by well-paid Inspectors, who are for the
most part natives of India. Measures have recently been taken,
especially in the United Provinces, to improve the pay, training, and
position of the police force, European and Indian.
10. Police officers and men now obtain pensions, like public servants
in other departments.
11. In some provinces the highest salaries of magistrates are much
lower than the rates stated by the author, which are the highest paid
to the most senior officers in certain provinces; and, in all
provinces, officiating incumbents, who form a large proportion of the
officers employed, draw only a part of the full salary. The fall in
exchange has enormously reduced the real value of all Indian
salaries.
12. Another popular view of this subject, and, I think, the one more
commonly taken, is expressed in the anecdote told _ante_, chapter 58
following [10]. Well-paid Inspectors of Police, drawing salaries of
150 to 200 rupees a month, are often extremely corrupt, and retire
with large fortunes, I knew many cases, but could never obtain
judicial proof of one.
13. When 'sons, servants, or favourites of men in authority', in
India, no longer oppress their fellows, the millennium will have
arrived.
14. It is some slight satisfaction to a zealous magistrate of the
present day, when he sees a great and influential criminal escape his
just doom, to think that even the best magistrates many years ago had
to submit to similar painful experiences. India cannot truly be
described as an uncivilized or barbarous country, but, side by side
with elements of the highest civilization, it contains many elements
of primitive and savage barbarism. The savagery of India cannot be
dealt with by barristers or moral text-books.
15. The number of subordinate magistrates, paid and unpaid, has of
late years been enormously increased, and courts are, consequently,
much more numerous than they used to be. The vast increase in
facility of communication has also diminished the inconveniences
which the author deplores. In Oudh, and certain other provinces,
which used to be called Non-Regulation, the chief Magistrate of the
District has power to try and adequately punish all offences, except
capital ones. The power is useful, when the district officer has time
to exercise it, which is not always the case.
16. There is a Superintendent of Police for the Province of Bengal;
but in the North-Western Provinces his duties are divided among the
Commissioners of Revenue. [W. H. S.] By 'Superintendent of Police'
the author means the high officer now called the Inspector-General of
Police, under the present System each Local Government or
Administration has one of these officers, who is aided by one or more
staff officers as Assistant-Inspectors-General. The Commissioners in
the United Provinces have been relieved of police duties. The
organization of police stations has been much modified since the
author's time. 'Our Bengal territories', as understood by the author,
included, in addition to Bengal, the 'North-Western Provinces', now
the Province, of Agra, the Saugor and Nerbudda Territories, now in
the Central Provinces, and the Delhi Territories. Oudh, of course,
was then independent; and the Panjâb was under the rule of Ranjit
Singh.
17. All these practices are still carried on; and experienced
magistrates are well aware of their existence, though powerless to
stop them. People will often give private information of
malpractices, but will hardly ever come into court, and speak out
openly. A magistrate cannot take action on statements which the
makers will not submit to cross-examination.
18. This is still a favourite trick. Every year Inspectors-General of
Police and Secretaries to Government make the same sarcastic remarks
about the wonderful number of 'attempts at burglary', and the
apparent contentment of the criminal classes with the small results
of their labours. But the Thânadâr is too much for even Inspectors-
General and Secretaries to Government. No amount of reorganization
changes him.
19. Mr. R., when appointed magistrate of the district of Fathpur on
the Ganges, had a wish to translate the 'Henriade', and, in order to
secure leisure, he issued a proclamation to all the Thânadârs of his
district to put down crime, declaring that he would hold them
responsible for what might be committed, and dismiss from his
situation every one who should suffer any to be committed within his
charge. This district, lying on the borders of Oudh, had been noted
for the number and atrocious character of its crimes. From that day
all the periodical returns went up to the superior court blank--not a
crime was reported. Astonished at this sudden result of the change of
magistrates, the superior court of Calcutta (the Sadr Nizâmat Adâlat)
requested one of the judges, who was about to pass through the
district on his way down, to inquire into the nature of the System
which seemed to work so well, with a view to its adoption in other
districts. He found crimes were more abundant than ever; and the
Thânadârs showed him the proclamation, which had been understood, as
all such proclamations are, not as enjoining vigilance in the
prosecution of crime, but as prohibiting all report of them, so as to
_save the magistrate trouble_, and get him a good name with his
superiors. [W. H. S.]
Great caution should always be used by local officers in making
comments on statistics. The subordinate cares nothing for the facts.
When a superior objects that the birth-rate is too low and the death-
rate too high in any police circle, the practical conclusion drawn by
the police is that the figures of the next return must be made more
palatable, and they are cooked accordingly. So, if burglaries are too
numerous, they cease to be reported, and so forth.
The old Superior Court was known as the Sadr Nizâmat Adâlat, on the
criminal, and as the Sadr Dîwânî Adâlat, on the civil side. These
courts have now been replaced by the High Courts, and equivalent
tribunals. In the author's time the High Court for the Agra Province
had not yet been established. Its seat is now at Allahabad, but was
formerly at Agra.
20. The gap has been filled up by numbers of Deputy Magistrates,
Tahsîldâr, &c., invested with magisterial powers, Honorary
Magistrates, District Superintendents, and Inspectors, and yet all
the old games still go on merrily. The reason is that the character
of the people has not changed. The police must have the power to
arrest, and that power, when wielded by unscrupulous hands, must
always be formidable.
21. A magistrate who can find in his district even one man, official
or unofficial, who will tell him 'the real state of things', and not
merely repeat scandal and malignant gossip, is unusually fortunate.
22. The Thugs were suppressed because a special organization was
devised and directed for the purpose, the English rules as to the
admissibility of evidence being judiciously relaxed. The ordinary law
and methods of procedure are of little effect against the secret
societies known as 'criminal tribes'. These criminal tribes number
hundreds of thousands of persona, and present a problem almost
unknown to European experience. The gipsies, who are largely of
Indian origin, are, perhaps, the only European example of an
hereditary criminal tribe. But they are not sheltered and abetted by
the landowners as their brethren in India are.
23. The magistrate, of course, was the author.
24. These motives all retain their full force, and are unaffected by
Police Commissions and reorganization schemes. Some people think that
the character of the police will be raised by the employment as
officers of young Indians of good family. I am sorry to say that I
found these young men to be the worst offenders. They are more daring
in their misdeeds than the ordinary policeman, and no better in their
morals.
25. This is quite true; and it is also true that our police
administration is the weakest part of our System. But the fault is
not entirely that of the police. In some provinces, especially in
Bengal, the action of the High Courts has almost paralysed the arm of
the Executive.
26. 'M. Claude Maille, of Bourges. As we shall see in Book I, chapter
18, a man of this name, who had escaped from the Dutch service, was,
in the year 1652, a not very successful amateur gun-founder for Mîr
Jumla; he had, after his escape, set up as a surgeon to the Nawâb,
with an equipment consisting of a case of instruments and a box of
ointments which he had stolen from M. Cheteur, the Dutch Ambassador
to Golconda. Tavernier throws no light upon his identity with this
physician.' (Tavernier, _Travels_, ed. Ball, vol. i, p. 116, note).
M. Maille befriended Manucci, who mentions him several times (Irvine,
_Storia do Mogor_, i, 92, &c.)
27. Ball's version of this horrible story (vol. i, p. 117) does not
differ materially from that quoted in the text. Tavernier does not
mention the name of the governor, though he observes that he was 'one
of the greatest nobles in India'. Tavernier visited Allahabad in
December, 1665, and then heard the story, the governor concerned
being at the time in the fort. I have no doubt that in the reign of
Shâh Jahân ordinary offences committed by ordinary criminals were
ruthlessly punished, and to some extent suppressed. But, under the
best Asiatic Governments, great men and their dependants have usually
been able to do pretty much what they pleased. The English Government
has the merit of refusing to give formal recognition to difference of
rank in criminals, and of often trying to punish influential
offenders, though seldom succeeding in the attempt. From time to time
a conspicuous example, like that of the Nawâb Shams-ud-dîn, is made,
and a few such examples, combined with the greater vigilance and more
complete organization of the English executive, prevent the
occurrence of atrocities so great as that described, without a word
of comment, by the French traveller. I have not the slightest doubt,
nor has any magistrate of long experience any doubt, that women are
frequently made away with quietly in the recesses of the 'zanâna'. I
have known several such cases, which were notorious, though incapable
of judicial proof. The amount of serious secret crime which occurs in
India, and never comes to light, is very considerable.
CHAPTER 70
Rent-free Tenures--Right of Government to Resume such Grants.
ON the 27th[1] we went on fifteen miles to Bêgamâbâd, over a sandy
and level country. All the peasantry along the roads were busy
watering their fields; and the singing of the man who stood at the
well to tell the other who guides the bullocks when to pull, after
the leather bucket had been filled at the bottom, and when to stop as
it reached the top, was extremely pleasing.[2] It is said that Tânsên
of Delhi, the most celebrated singer they have ever had in India,
used to spend a great part of his time in these fields, listening to
the simple melodies of these water-drawers, which he learned to
imitate and apply to his more finished vocal music. Popular belief
ascribes to Tânsên the power of stopping the river Jumna in its
course. His contemporary and rival, Birjû Baulâ, who, according to
popular belief, could split a rock with a single note, is said to
have learned his bass from the noise of the stone mills which the
women use in grinding the corn for their families.[3] Tânsên was a
Brahman from Patna, who entered the service of the Emperor Akbar,
became a Musalmân, and after the service of twenty-seven years,
during which he was much beloved by the Emperor and all his court, he
died at Gwâlior in the thirty-fourth year of the Emperor's reign. His
tomb is still to be seen at Gwâlior. All his descendants are said to
have a talent for music, and they have all Sên added to their
names.[4]
While Mâdhojî Sindhia, the Gwâlior chief, was prime minister, he made
the emperor assign to his daughter the Bâlâ Bâî in jâgîr, or rent-
free tenure, ninety-five villages, rated in the imperial 'sanads'
[deeds of grant] at three lâkhs of rupees a year. When the Emperor
had been released from the 'durance vile' in which he was kept by
Daulat Râo Sindhia, the adopted son of this chief,[5] by Lord Lake in
1803, and the countries, in which these villages were situated, taken
possession of, she was permitted to retain them on condition that
they were to escheat to us on her death. She died in 1834, and we
took possession of the villages, which now yield, it is said, four
lâkhs of rupees a year. Bêgamâbâd was one of them. It paid to the
Bâlâ Bâi only six hundred rupees a year, but it pays now to us six
hundred and twenty rupees; but the farmers and cultivators do not pay
a farthing more--the difference was taken by the favourite to whom
she assigned the duties of collection, and who always took as much as
he could get from them, and paid as little as he could to her.[6] The
tomb of the old collector stood near my tents, and his son, who came
to visit it, told me that he had heard from Gwâlior that a new
Governor-General was about to arrive,[7] who would probably order the
villages to be given back, when he should be made collector of the
village, as his father had been.
Had our Government acted by all the rent-free lands in our
territories on the same principle, they would have saved themselves a
vast deal of expense, trouble, and odium. The justice of declaring
all lands liable to resumption on the death of the present incumbents
when not given by competent authority for, and actually applied to,
the maintenance of religious, charitable, educational, or other
establishments of manifest public utility, would never have been for
a moment questioned by the people of India, because they would have
all known that it was in accordance with the customs of the country.
If, at the same time that we declared all land liable to resumption,
when not assigned by such authority for such purposes and actually
applied to them, we had declared that all grants by competent
authority registered in due form before the death of the present
incumbents should be liable on their death to the payment to
Government of only a quarter or half the rent arising from them, it
would have been universally hailed as an act of great liberality,
highly calculated to make our reign popular. As it is, we have
admitted the right of former rulers of all descriptions to alienate
in perpetuity the land, the principal source of the revenue of the
state, in favour of their relatives, friends, and favourites, leaving
upon the holders the burthen of proving, at a ruinous cost in fees
and bribes, through court after court, that these alienations had
been made by the authorities we declare competent, before the time
prescribed; and we have thus given rise to an infinite deal of fraud,
perjury, and forgery, and to the opinion, I fear, very generally
prevalent, that we are anxious to take advantage of unavoidable flaws
in the proof required, to trick them out of their lands by tedious
judicial proceedings, while we profess to be desirous that they
should retain them. In this we have done ourselves great
injustice.[8]
Though these lands were often held for many generations under former
Governments, and for the exclusive benefit of the holders, it was
almost always, when they were of any value, in collusion with the
local authorities, who concealed the circumstances from their
sovereign for a certain stipulated sum or share of the rents while
they held office. This of course the holders were always willing to
pay, knowing that no sovereign would hesitate much to resume their
lands, should the circumstance of their holding them for their
private use alone be ever brought to his notice. The local
authorities were, no doubt, always willing to take a moderate share
of the rent, knowing that they would get nothing should the lands be
resumed by the sovereign. Sometimes the lands granted were either at
the time the grant was made, or became soon after, waste and
depopulated, in consequence of invasion or internal disorders; and
remaining in this state for many generations, the intervening
sovereigns either knew nothing or cared nothing about the grants.
Under our rule they became by degrees again cultivated and peopled,
and in consequence valuable, not by the exertions of the rent-free
holders, for they were seldom known to do anything but collect the
rents, but by those of the farmers and cultivators who pay them.
When Saâdat Alî Khan, the sovereign of Oudh, ceded Rohilkhand and
other districts to the Honourable Company in lieu of tribute in 1801,
he resumed every inch of land held in rent-free tenure within the
territories that remained with him, without condescending to assign
any other reason than state necessity. The measure created a good
deal of distress, particularly among the educated classes; but not so
much as a similar measure would have created within our territories,
because all his revenues are expended in the maintenance of
establishments formed exclusively out of the members of Oudh
families, and retained within the country, while ours are sent to pay
establishments formed and maintained at a distance; and those whose
lands are resumed always find it exceedingly difficult to get
employment suitable to their condition.
The face of the country between Delhi and Meerut is sadly denuded of
its groves; not a grove or an avenue is to be seen anywhere, and but
few fine solitary trees.[9] I asked the people of the cause, and was
told by the old men of the village that they remembered well when the
Sikh chiefs who now bask under the sunshine of our protection used to
come over at the head of 'dalas' (bodies) of ten or twelve horse
each, and plunder and lay waste with fire and sword, at every
returning harvest, the fine country which I now saw covered with rich
sheets of cultivation, and which they had rendered a desolate waste,
'without a man to make, or a man to grant, a petition', when Lord
Lake came among them.[10] They were, they say, looking on at a
distance when he fought the battle of Delhi, and drove the Marâthâs,
who were almost as bad as the Sikhs, into the Jumna river, where ten
thousand of them were drowned. The people of all classes in Upper
India feel the same reverence as our native soldiery for the name of
this admirable soldier and most worthy man, who did so much to
promote our interests and sustain our reputation in this country.[11]
The most beautiful trees in India are the 'bar' (banyan), the
'pîpal', and the tamarind.[12] The two first are of the fig tribe,
and their greatest enemies are the elephants and camels of our public
establishments and public servants, who prey upon them wherever they
can find them when under the protection of their masters or keepers,
who, when appealed to, generally evince a very philosophical
disregard to the feeling of either property or piety involved in the
trespass. It is consequently in the driest and hottest parts of the
country, where the shade of these trees is most wanted, that it is
least to be found; because it is there that camels thrive best, and
are most kept, and it is most difficult to save such trees from their
depredations.
In the evening a trooper passed our tents on his way in great haste
from Meerut to Delhi, to announce the death of the poor old Bêgam
Samrû, which had taken place the day before at her little capital of
Sardhana. For five-and-twenty years had I been looking forward to the
opportunity of seeing this very extraordinary woman, whose history
had interested me more than that of any other character in India
during my time; and I was sadly disappointed to hear of her death
when within two or three stages of her capital.[13]
Notes:
1. January, 1836.
2. Mr. Fox Strangways gives specimens of songs sung at wells in his
learned and original book, _The Music of Hindostan_ (Oxford, 1914,
pp. 20, 21).
3. Brij Bowla in the original edition. The name is correctly written
Birjû Baulâ or Baurâ. A legend of the rivalry between him and Tânsên
is given in _Linguistic Survey of India_, vi, 47. His name is not
included in Abûl Fazl's list of eminent musicians, or in Blochmann's
notes to it (Âîn trans. i, 612), and I have not succeeded in
obtaining any trustworthy information about him. Marvellous legends
of the rival singers will be found in _N.I.N. & Qu._ vol. v, para.
207.
4. Abûl Fazl describes Tânsên as being of Gwâlior, adding that 'a
singer like him has not been in India for the last thousand years'.
Nos. 2-5 and several others in Abûl Fazl's list of eminent musicians
in Akbar's reign are all noted as belonging to Gwâlior, which
evidently was the most musical of cities (Blochmann, transl. Âîn, i,
612). Sleeman appears to have been mistaken in connecting Tânsên with
Patna. But the musician must really have become a Musalmân, because
his tomb stands close to the south-western corner of the sepulchre at
Gwâlior of Muhammad Ghaus, an eminent Muslim saint. No Hindu could
have been buried in such a spot (_A.S.R._, vol. ii, p. 370).
According to one account Tânsên died in Lahore, his body being
removed to Gwâlior by order of Akbar (Forbes, _Oriental Memoirs_,
London, 1813, vol. iii, p. 32). The leaves of the tamarind-tree
overshadowing the tomb are believed to improve the voice marvellously
when chewed.
Mr. Fox Strangways notes that Hindu critics hold Tânsên 'principally
responsible for the deterioration of Hindu music. He is said to have
falsified the râgs, and two, Hindol and Megh, of the original six
have disappeared since his time' (op. cit., p. 84).
Akbar, in the seventh year of his reign (1562-3), compelled the Râjâ
of Rîwâ (Bhath) to give up Tânsên, who was in the Râjâ's service. The
emperor gave the musician Rs. 200,000. 'Most of his compositions are
written in Akbar's name, and his melodies are even nowadays
everywhere repeated by the people of Hindustân' (Blochmann, op. cit.,
p. 406). Tânsên died in A.D. 1588 (Beale).
5. Shâh Alam is the sovereign alluded to. Mâhâdajî (Mâdhojî or
Mâdhava Râo) Sindhia died in February, 1794. His successor, Daulat
Râo, was then a boy of fourteen or fifteen (Grant Duff, _History of
the Mahrattas_, ed. 1826, vol. iii, p. 86). The formal adoption of
Daulat Râo had not been completed (ibid., p. 91).
6. This observation is a good illustration of the tendency of
administrators in a country so poor as India to take note of the
infinitely little. In Europe no one would take the trouble to notice
the difference between £60 and £62 rental.
7. Lord Auckland, in March, 1836, relieved Sir Charles Metcalfe, who,
as temporary Governor-General, had succeeded Lord William Bentinck.
8. The resumption, that is to say, assessment, of revenue-free lands
was a burning question in the anthor's day. It has long since got
settled. The author was quite right in his opinion. All native
Governments freely exercised the right of resumption, and did not
care in the least what phrases were used in the deed of grant. The
old Hindoo deeds commonly directed that the grant should last 'as
long as the sun and moon shall endure', and invoked awful curses on
the head of the resumer. But this was only formal legal phraseology,
meaning nothing. No ruler was bound by his predecessor's acts.
9. This is not now the case.
10. 'It is difficult to realize that the dignified, sober, and
orderly men who now fill our regiments are of the same stock as the
savage freebooters whose name, a hundred years ago, was the terror of
Northern India. But the change has been wrought by strong and kindly
government and by strict military discipline under sympathetic
officers whom the troops love and respect.' (Sir Lepel Griffin,
_Ranjît Singh_, p. 37.)
11. Gerard Lake was born on the 27th July, 1744, and entered the army
before he was fourteen. He served in the Seven Years' War in Germany,
in the American War, in the French campaign of 1793, and against the
Irish rebels in 1798. In the year 1801 he became Commander-in-Chief
in India, and proceeded to Cawnpore, then our frontier station. Two
years later the second Marâthâ War began, and gave General Lake the
opportunity of winning a series of brilliant victories. In rapid
succession he defeated the enemy at Kôil, Alîgarh, Delhi (the battle
alluded to in the text), Agra, and Laswârî. Next year, 1804, the
glorious record was marred by the disaster to Colonel Monson's force,
but this was quickly avenged by the decisive victories of Dîg and
Farrukhâbâd, which shattered Holkâr's power. The year 1805 saw
General Lake's one personal failure, the unsuccessful siege of
Bharatpur. The Commander-in-Chief then resumed the pursuit of Holkâr,
and forced him to surrender. He sailed for England in February, 1807,
and on his arrival at home was created a Viscount. On the 21st
February, 1808, he died. (Pearse, _Memoir of the Life and Military
Services of Viscount Lake_. London, Blackwood, 1908.) The village of
Patparganj, nearly due east from Humâyûn's Tomb, marks the site of
the battle. Fanshawe (p. 70) gives a plan.
12. The banyan is the _Ficus indica_, or _Urostigma bengalense_; the
'pîpal' is _Ficus religiosa_, or _Urostigma religiosum_; and the
tamarind is the _Tamarindus indica_, or _occidentalis_, or
_officinalis_.
13. The history of the Bêgam is given in Chapter 76, _post_.
CHAPTER 71
The Station of Meerut--'Atâlîs' who Dance and Sing gratuitously for
the Benefit of the Poor.
On the 30th,[1] we went on twelve miles to Meerut, and encamped close
to the Sûraj Kund, so called after Sûraj-mal, the Jât chief of Dîg,
whose tomb I have described at Govardhan.[2] He built here a very
large tank, at the recommendation of the spirit of a Hindoo saint,
Manohar Nâth, whose remains had been burned here more than two
hundred years before, and whose spirit appeared to the Jât chief in a
dream, as he was encamped here with his army during one of his
_kingdom-taking_ expeditions. This is a noble work, with a fine sheet
of water, and flights of steps of 'pakkâ' masonry from the top to its
edge all round. The whole is kept in repair by our Government.[3]
About half a mile to the north-west of the tank stands the tomb of
Shâh Pîr, a Muhammadan saint, who is said to have descended from the
mountains with the Hindoo, and to have been his bosom friend up to
the day of his death. Both are said to have worked many wonderful
miracles among the people of the surrounding country, who used to see
them, according to popular belief, quietly taking their morning ride
together upon the backs of two enormous tigers who came every morning
at the appointed hour from the distant jungle. The Hindoo is said to
have been very fond of music; and though he has been now dead some
three centuries, a crowd of amateurs (atâlîs) assemble every Sunday
afternoon at his shrine, on the bank of the tank, and sing gratis,
and in a very pleasing style, to an immense concourse of people, who
assemble to hear them, and to solicit the spirit of the old saint,
softened by their melodies. At the tomb of the Muhammadan saint a
number of professional dancers and singers assemble every Thursday
afternoon, and dance, sing, and play gratis to a large concourse of
people, who make offerings of food to the poor, and implore the
intercession of the old man with the Deity in return.
The Muhammadan's tomb is large and handsome, and built of red
sandstone, inlaid with marble, but without any cupola, that there may
be no _curtain_ between him and heaven when he gets out of his 'last
long sleep' at the resurrection.[4] Not far from his tomb is another,
over the bones of a pilgrim they call Ganj-i-fann, or the granary of
science. Professional singers and dancers attend it every Friday
afternoon, and display their talents gratis to a large concourse, who
bestow what they can in charity to the poor, who assemble on all
these occasions to take what they can get. Another much frequented
tomb lies over a Muhammadan saint, who has not been dead more than
three years, named Gohar Sâh. He owes his canonization to a few
circumstances of recent occurrence, which are, however, universally
believed. Mr. Smith, an enterprising merchant of Meerut, who had
raised a large windmill for grinding corn in the Sadr Bâzâr, is said
to have abused the old man as he was one day passing by, and looked
with some contempt on his method of grinding, which was to take the
bread from the mouths of so many old widows. 'My child,' said the old
saint, 'amuse thyself with this toy of thine, for it has but a few
days to run.' In four days from that time the machine stopped. Poor
Mr. Smith could not afford to set it going again, and it went to
ruin. The whole native population of Meerut considered this a miracle
of Gohar Sâh. Just before his death the country round Meerut was
under water, and a great many houses fell from incessant rain. The
old man took up his residence during this time in a large sarâi in
the town, but finding his end approach, he desired those who had
taken shelter with him to have him taken to the jungle where he now
reposes. They did so, and the instant they left the building it fell
to the ground. Many who saw it told me they had no doubt that the
virtues of the old man had sustained it while he was there, and
prevented its crushing all who were in it. The tomb was built over
his remains by a Hindoo officer of the court, who had been long out
of employment and in great affliction. He had no sooner completed the
tomb, and implored the aid of the old man, than he got into excellent
service, and has been ever since a happy man. He makes regular
offerings to his shrine, as a grateful return for the saint's
kindness to him in his hour of need. Professional singers and dancers
display their talents here gratis, as at the other tombs, every
Wednesday afternoon.
The ground all round these tombs is becoming crowded with the graves
of people, who in their last moments request to be buried (zêr-sâya)
under the shadow of these saints, who in their lifetime are all said
to have despised the pomps and vanities of this life, and to have
taken nothing from their disciples and worshippers but what was
indispensably necessary to support existence--food being the only
thing offered and accepted, and that taken only when they happened to
be very hungry. Happy indeed was the man whose dish was put forward
when the saint's appetite happened to be sharp. The death of the poor
old Bêgam has, it is said, just canonized another saint, Shâkir Shâh,
who lies buried at Sardhana, but is claimed by the people of Meerut,
among whom he lived till about five years ago, when he desired to be
taken to Sardhana, where he found the old lady very dangerously ill
and not expected to live. He was himself very old and ill when he set
out from Meerut; and the journey is said to have shaken him so much
that he found his end approaching, and sent a messenger to the
princess in these words: 'Ayâ torê, chale ham'; that is, 'Death came
for thee, but I go in thy place'; and he told those around him that
she had precisely five years more to live. She is said to have caused
a tomb to be built over him, and is believed by the people to have
died that day five years.
All these things I learned as I wandered among the tombs of the old
saints the first few evenings after my arrival at Meerut. I was
interested in their history from the circumstance that amateur
singers and professional dancers and musicians should display their
talents at their shrines gratis, for the sake of getting alms for the
poor of the place, given in their name--a thing I had never before
heard of--though the custom prevails no doubt in other places; and
that Musalmâns and Hindoos should join promiscuously in their
devotions and charities at all these shrines. Manohar Nâth's shrine,
though he was a Hindoo, is attended by as many Musalmân as Hindoo
pilgrims. He is said to have 'taken the _samâdh_', that is, to have
buried himself alive in this place as an offering to the Deity. Men
who are afflicted with leprosy or any other incurable disease in
India often take the samâdh, that is, bury or drown themselves with
due ceremonies, by which they are considered as acceptable sacrifices
to the Deity. I once knew a Hindoo gentleman of great wealth and
respectability, and of high rank under the Government of Nâgpur, who
came to the river Nerbudda, two hundred miles, attended by a large
retinue, to _take the samâdh_ in due form, from a painful disease
which the doctors pronounced incurable. After taking an affectionate
leave of all his family and friends, he embarked on board the boat,
which took him into the deepest part of the river. He then loaded
himself with sand, as a sportsman who is required to carry weights in
a race loads himself with shot, and stepping into the water
disappeared. The funeral ceremonies were then performed, and his
family, friends, and followers returned to Nâgpur, conscious that
they had all done what they had been taught to consider their duty.
Many poor men do the same every year when afflicted by any painful
disease that they consider incurable.[5] The only way to prevent this
is to carry out the plan now in progress of giving to India in an
accessible shape the medical science of Europe--a plan first adopted
under Lord W. Bentinck, prosecuted by Lord Auckland, and
superintended by two able and excellent men, Doctors Goodeve and
O'Shaughnessy. It will be one of the greatest blessings that India
has ever received from England.[6]
Notes:
1. January, 1836. The date is misprinted 20th in the original
edition.
2. _Ante_, chapter 56 [13].
3. 'Amongst the remains of former times in and around Meerut may be
noticed the Sûraj kund, commonly called by Europeans 'the monkey
tank'. It was constructed by Jawâhir Mal, a wealthy merchant of
Lâwâr, in 1714. It was intended to keep it full of water from the Abû
Nâla but at present the tank is nearly dry in May and June. There are
numerous small temples, 'dharmsâlâs' [i.e. rest-houses], and 'satî'
pillars on its banks, but none of any note. The largest of the
temples is dedicated to Manohar Nâth, and is said to have been built
in the reign of Shâh Jahân. Lâwâr, a large village . . . is distant
twelve miles north of the civil station. . . . There is a fine house
here called Mahal Sarâi, built about A.D. 1700 by Jawâhir Singh,
Mahâjan, who constructed the Sûraj kund near Meerut' (_N.W.P.
Gazetteer_, 1st ed., vol. iii, pp. 406,400). This information,
supplied by the local officials, is more to be depended on than the
author's statement.
4. 'The "dargâh" [i.e. shrine] of Shâh Pîr is a fine structure of red
sandstone, erected about A.D. 1620 by Nûr Jahân, the wife of the
Emperor Jahângîr, in memory of a pious fakîr named Shâh Pîr. An
"urs", or religions assembly, is held here every year in the month of
Ramazân. The "dargâh" is supported from the proceeds of the revenue-
free village of Bhagwânpur' (ibid., vol. iii, p. 406). The text of
the original edition gives the pilgrim's name as 'Gungishun', which
has no meaning.
5. An interesting collection of modern cases of a similar kind is
given in Balfour, _Cyclopaedia_, 3rd ed., s.v. 'Samadhi'.
6. See _ante_, chapter 15, note l4. Dr. W. B. O'Shaughnessy
contributed many scientific papers to the _J.A.S.B._ (vols. viii, ix,
x, xii, and xvi).
CHAPTER 72
Subdivisions of Lands--Want of Gradations of Rank--Taxes.
The country between Delhi and Meerut is well cultivated and rich in
the latent power of its soil; but there is here, as everywhere else
in the Upper Provinces, a lamentable want of gradations in society,
from the eternal subdivision of property in land, and the want of
that concentration of capital in commerce and manufactures which
characterizes European--or I may take a wider range, and say
Christian societies.[1] Where, as in India, the landlords' share of
the annual returns from the soil has been always taken by the
Government as the most legitimate fund for the payment of its public
establishments; and the estates of the farmers, and the holdings of
the immediate cultivators of the soil, are liable to be subdivided in
equal shares among the sons in every succeeding generation, the land
can never aid much in giving to society that without which no society
can possibly be well organized--a gradation of rank. Were the
Government to alter the System, to give up all the rent of the lands,
and thereby convert all the farmers into proprietors of their
estates, the case would not be much altered, while the Hindoo and
Muhammadan law of inheritance remained the same; for the eternal
subdivision would still go on, and reduce all connected with the soil
to one common level; and the people would be harassed with a
multiplicity of taxes, from which they are now free, that would have
to be imposed to supply the place of the rent given up. The
agricultural capitalists who derived their incomes from the interest
of money advanced to the farmers and cultivators for subsistence and
the purchase of stock were commonly men of rank and influence in
society; but they were never a numerous class.[2] The mass of the
people in India are really not at present sensible that they pay any
taxes at all. The only necessary of life, whose price is at all
increased by taxes, is salt, and the consumer is hardly aware of this
increase. The natives never eat salted meat; and though they require
a great deal of salt, living, as they do, so much on vegetable food,
still they purchase it in such small quantities from day to day as
they require it, that they really never think of the tax that may
have been paid upon it in its progress.[3]
To understand the nature of taxation in India, an Englishman should
suppose that all the non-farming landholders of his native country
had, a century or two ago, consented to resign their property into
the hands of their sovereign, for the maintenance of his civil
functionaries, army, navy, church, and public creditors, and then
suddenly disappeared from the community, leaving to till the lands
merely the farmers and cultivators; and that their forty millions of
rent were just the sum that the Government now required to pay all
these four great establishments.[4]
To understand the nature of the public debt of England a man has only
to suppose one great national establishment, twice as large as those
of the civil functionaries, the Army, Navy, and the Church together,
and composed of members with fixed salaries, who purchased their
commissions from _the wisdom of our ancestors_, with liberty to sell
them to whom they please--who have no duty to perform for the
public,[5] and have, like Adam and Eve, the privilege of going to
'seek their place of rest' in what part of the world they please--a
privilege of which they will, of course, be found more and more
anxious to avail themselves as taxation presses on the one side, and
prohibition to the import of the necessaries of life diminishes the
means of paying them on the other.
The repeal of the Corn Laws may give a new lift to England; it may
greatly increase the foreign demand for the produce of its
manufacturing industry; it may invite back a large portion of those
who now spend their incomes in foreign countries, and prevent from
going abroad to reside a vast number who would otherwise go. These
laws must soon be repealed, or England must reduce one or other of
its great establishments--the National Debt, the Church, the Army, or
the Navy. The Corn Laws press upon England just in the same manner as
the discovery of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope
pressed upon Venice and the other states whose welfare depended upon
the transit of the produce of India by land. But the navigation of
the Cape benefited all other European nations at the same time that
it pressed upon these particular states, by giving them all the
produce of India at cheaper rates than they would otherwise have got
it, and by opening the markets of India to the produce of all other
European nations. The Corn Laws benefit only one small section of the
people of England, while they weigh, like an incubus, upon the vital
energies of all the rest; and at the same time injure all other
nations by preventing their getting the produce of manufacturing
industry so cheap as they would otherwise get it. They have not,
therefore, the merit of benefiting other nations, at the same time
that they crush their own.[6]
For some twenty or thirty years of our rule, too many of the
collectors of our land revenue in what we call the Western
Provinces,[7] sought the 'bubble reputation' in an increase of
assessment upon the lands of their district every five years when the
settlement was renewed. The more the assessment was increased, the
greater was the praise bestowed upon the collector by the revenue
boards, or the revenue secretary to Government, in the name of the
Governor-General of India.[8] These collectors found an easy mode of
acquiring this reputation--they left the settlements to their native
officers, and shut their ears to all complaints of grievances, till
they had reduced all the landholders of their districts to one common
level of beggary, without stock, character, or credit; and
transferred a great portion of their estates to the native officers
of their own courts through the medium of the auction sales that took
place for the arrears, or pretended arrears, of revenue. A better
feeling has for some years past prevailed, and collectors have sought
their reputation in a real knowledge of their duties, and real good
feeling towards the farmers and cultivators of their districts. For
this better tone of feeling the Western Provinces are, I believe,
chiefly indebted to Mr. R. M. Bird, of the Revenue Board, one of the
most able public officers now in India. A settlement for twenty years
is now in progress that will leave the farmers at least 35 per cent.
upon the gross collections from the immediate cultivators of the
soil; that is, the amount of the revenue demandable by Government
from the estate will be that less than what the farmer will, and
would, under any circumstances, levy from the cultivators in his
detailed settlement.[9]
The farmer lets all the land of his estate out to cultivators, and
takes in money this rate of profit for his expense, trouble, and
risk; or he lets out to the cultivators enough to pay the Government
demand, and tills the rest with his own stock, rent-free. When a
division takes place between his sons, they either divide the estate,
and become each responsible for his particular share, or they divide
the profits, and remain collectively responsible to Government for
the whole, leaving one member of the family registered as the lessee
and responsible head.[10]
In the Ryotwâr System of Southern India, Government officers,
removable at the pleasure of the Government collector, are
substituted for these farmers, or more properly proprietors, of
estates; and a System more prejudicial to the best interests of
society could not well be devised by the ingenuity of man.[11] It has
been supposed by some theorists, who are practically unacquainted
with agriculture in this or any other country, that all who have any
interest in land above the rank of cultivator or ploughman are mere
_drones_, or useless consumers of that rent which, under judicious
management, might be added to the revenues of Government--that all
which they get might, and ought to be, either left with the
cultivators or taken by the Government. At the head of these is the
justly celebrated historian, Mr. Mill. But men who understand the
subject practically know that the intermediate agency of a farmer,
who has a permanent interest in the estate, or an interest for a long
period, is a thousand times better both for the Government and the
people than that of a Government officer of any description, much
less that of one removable at the pleasure of the collector.
Government can always get more revenue from a village under the
management of the farmer; the character of the cultivators and
village community generally is much better; the tillage is much
better; and the produce, from more careful weeding and attention of
all kinds, sells much better in the market. The better character of
the cultivators enables them to get the loans they require to
purchase stock, and to pay the Government demand on more moderate
terms from the capitalists, who rely upon the farmer to aid in the
recovery of their outlays, without reference to civil courts, which
are ruinous media, as well in India as in other places. The farmer or
landlord finds in the same manner that he can get much more from
lands let out on lease to the cultivators or yeomen, who depend upon
their own character, credit, and stock, than he can from similar
lands cultivated with his own stock; and hired labourers can never be
got to labour either so long or so well. The labour of the Indian
cultivating lessee is always applied in the proper quantity, and at
the proper time and place--that of the hired field-labourer hardly
ever is. The skilful coachmaker always puts on the precise quantity
of iron required to make his coach strong, because he knows where it
is required; his coach is, at the same time, as light as it can be
with safety. The unskilful workman either puts on too much, and makes
his coach heavy; or he puts it in the wrong place, and leaves it
weak.
If government extends the twenty years' settlement now in progress to
fifty years or more, they will confer a great blessing upon the
people[12] and they might, perhaps, do it on the condition that the
incumbent consented to allow the lease to descend undivided to his
heirs by the laws of primogeniture. To this condition all classes
would readily agree, for I have heard Hindoo and Muhammadan
landholders all equally lament the evil effects of the laws by which
families are so quickly and inevitably broken up; and say that 'it is
the duty of government to take advantage of their power as the great
proprietor and leaser of all the lands to prevent the evil by
declaring leases indivisible. 'There would then', they say, 'be
always one head to assist in maintaining the widows and orphans of
deceased members, in educating his brothers and nephews; and by his
influence and respectability procuring employment for them.' In such
men, with feelings of permanent interest in their estates, and in the
stability of the government that secured them possession on such
favourable terms, and with the means of educating their children, we
should by and by find our best support, and society its best element.
The law of primogeniture at present prevails only where it is most
mischievous under our rule, among the feudal chiefs, whose ancestors
rose to distinction and acquired their possessions by rapine in times
of invasion and civil wars. This law among them tends to perpetuate
the desire to maintain those military establishments by which the
founders of their families arose, in the hope that the times of
invasion and civil wars may return and open for them a similar field
for exertion. It fosters a class of powerful men, essentially and
irredeemably opposed in feeling, not only to our rule, but to settled
government under any rule; and the sooner the Hindoo law of
inheritance is allowed by the paramount power to take its course
among these feudal chiefs, the better for society. There is always a
strong tendency to it in the desire of the younger brothers to share
in the loaves and fishes; and this tendency is checked only by the
injudicious interposition of our authority.[13]
To give India the advantage of free institutions, or all the
blessings of which she is capable under an enlightened paternal
government, nothing is more essential than the supersession of this
feudal aristocracy by one founded upon other bases, and, above all,
upon that of the concentration of capital in commerce and
manufactures. Nothing tends so much to prevent the accumulation and
concentration of capital over India as this feudal aristocracy which
tends everywhere to destroy that feeling of security without which
men will nowhere accumulate and concentrate it. They do so, not only
by the intrigues and combinations against the paramount power, which
keep alive the dread of internal wars and foreign invasion, but by
those gangs of robbers and murderers which they foster and locate
upon their estates to prey upon the more favoured or better governed
territories around them. From those gangs of freebooters who are to
be found upon the estate of almost every native chief, no
accumulation of movable property of any value is ever for a moment
considered safe, and those who happen to have any such are always in
dread of losing, not only their property, but their lives along with
it, for these gangs, secure in the protection of such chief, are
reckless in their attack, and kill all who happen to come in their
way.[14]
Notes:
1. This phrase is meant to include America.
2. Money-lenders naturally have flourished daring the long period of
internal peace since the Mutiny. They vary in wealth and position
from the humblest 'gombeen man' to the millionaire banker. Many of
these money-lenders are now among the largest owners of land in the
country. Under native rule interests in land were generally too
precarious to be saleable. The author did not foresee that the growth
of private property in land would carry with it the right and desire
of one party to sell and of another to buy, and would thus favour the
growth of large estates, and, to a considerable extent, counteract
the evils of subdivision. Of course, like everything else, the large
estates have their evils too. Much nonsense is written about sales of
land in India, as well as in Ireland. The two countries have more
than the initial letter in common.
3. Theorists declare that it is right that the tax-payers should know
what is taken from them, and that, therefore, direct taxes are best;
but practical men who have to govern ignorant and suspicious races,
resentful of direct taxation, know that indirect taxation is, for
such people, the best.
4. This illustration would give a very false idea of modern Indian
finance.
5. They have no duty to perform as creditors; but as citizens of an
enlightened nation they no doubt perform many of them, very important
ones. [W. H. S.] The author's whimsical comparison between
stockholders and Adam and Eve, and his notion that the creditors of
the nation may be regarded as officials without duties, only obscure
a simple matter. The emigration of owners of Consols never assumed
very alarming dimensions.
6. The Corn Laws were repealed in 1846, and the shilling duty which
was then left was abolished in 1869. Considering that the author
belonged to a land-owning family, his clear perception of the evils
caused by the Corn Laws is remarkable.
7. By the 'Western Provinces' the author means the region called
later the North-Western Provinces, and now known as the Agra Province
in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, with the Delhi Territories,
which latter are now partly under the Government of the Panjâb, and
partly in the new small Province, or Chief Commissionership of Delhi.
8. At the time referred to, the provincial Government had not been
constituted.
9. Fifty per cent. may be considered as the average rate left to the
lessees or proprietors of estates under this new settlement; and, if
they take on an average one-third of the gross produce, Government
takes two-ninths. But we may rate the Government share of the produce
actually taken at one-fifth as the maximum, and one-tenth as the
minimum. [W. H. S.]
It is unfortunately true that in the short-term settlements made
previous to 1833 many abuses of the kinds referred to in the text
occurred. The traditions of the people and the old records attest
numerous instances. The first serious attempt to reform the system of
revenue settlements was made by Regulation VII of 1822, but, owing to
an excessive elaboration of procedure, the attempt produced no
appreciable results. Regulation IX of 1833 established a workable
system, and provided for the appointment of Indian Deputy Collectors
with adequate powers. The settlements of the North-Western Provinces
made under this Regulation were, for the most part, reasonably fair,
and were generally confirmed for a period of thirty years. Mr. Robert
Mertins Bird, who entered the service in 1805, and died in 1853, took
a leading part in this great reform. When the next settlements were
made, between 1860 and 1880, the share of the profit rental claimed
by the State was reduced from two-thirds to one-half. Full details
will be found in the editor's _Settlement Officer's Manual for the N.
W. P._ (Allahabad, 1882), or in Baden Powell's big book, _Land
Systems of British India_ (Clarendon Press, 1892).
10. Since 1833 the people whom the author calls 'farmers' have
gradually become fall proprietors, subject to the Government lien on
the land and its produce for the land revenue. For many years past
the ancient custom of joint ownership and collective responsibility
has been losing ground. Partitions are now continually demanded, and
every year collective responsibility is becoming more unpopular and
more difficult to enforce.
11. This judgement, I need hardly say, would not be accepted in
Madras or Bombay. The issue raised is too large for discussion in
footnotes.
12. The advantages of very long terms of settlements are obvious; the
disadvantages, though equally real, are less obvious. Fluctuations in
prices, and above all, in the price of silver, are among the many
conditions which complicate the question. Except the Bengal
landowners, most people now admit that the Permanent Settlement of
Bengal in 1793 was a grievous mistake. It is also admitted that the
mistake is irrevocable.
13. These two suggestions of the author that the law of primogeniture
should be established to regulate the succession to ordinary estates,
and that it should be abolished in the case of chieftainships, where
it already prevails, are obviously open to criticism. It seems
sufficient to say that both recommendations are, for many reasons,
altogether impracticable. In passing, I may note that the term
'feudal' does not express with any approach to correctness the
relation of the Native States to the Government of India.
14. The evils described in this paragraph, though diminished, have
not disappeared. Nevertheless, no one would now seriously propose the
deliberate supersession of the existing aristocracy by rich merchants
and manufacturers. The proposal is too fanciful for discussion.
During the long period of peace merchants and manufacturers have
naturally risen to a position much more prominent than they occupied
in the author's time.
CHAPTER 73
Meerut--Anglo-Indian Society.
Meerut is a large station for military and civil establishments; it
is the residence of a civil commissioner, a judge, a magistrate, a
collector of land revenue, and all their assistants and
establishments. There are the Major-General commanding the division;
the Brigadier commanding the station; four troops of horse and a
company of foot artillery; one regiment of European cavalry, one of
European infantry, one of native cavalry, and three of native
infantry.[1] It is justly considered the healthiest station in India,
for both Europeans and natives,[2] and I visited it in the latter end
of the cold, which is the healthiest, season of the year; yet the
European ladies were looking as if they had all come out of their
graves, and talking of the necessity of going off to the mountains to
renovate, as soon as the hot weather should set in. They had
literally been fagging themselves to death with gaiety, at this the
gayest and most delightful of all Indian stations, during the cold
months when they ought to have been laying in a store of strength to
carry them through the trying seasons of the hot winds and rains. Up
every night and all night at balls and suppers, they could never go
out to breathe the fresh air of the morning; and were looking
wretchedly ill, while the European soldiers from the barracks seemed
as fresh as if they had never left their native land. There is no
doubt that sitting up late at night is extremely prejudicial to the
health of Europeans in India.[3] I have never seen the European, male
or female, that could stand it long, however temperate in habits; and
an old friend of mine once told me that if he went to bed a little
exhilarated every night at ten o'clock, and took his ride in the
morning, he found himself much better than if he sat up till twelve
or one o'clock without drinking, and lay abed in the mornings. Almost
all the gay pleasures of India are enjoyed at night, and as ladies
here, as everywhere else in Christian societies, are the life and
soul of all good parties, as of all good novels, they often to oblige
others sit up late, much against their own inclinations, and even
their judgements, aware as they are that they are gradually sinking
under the undue exertions.
When I first came to India there were a few ladies of the old school
still much looked up to in Calcutta, and among the rest the
grandmother of the Earl of Liverpool, the old Bêgam Johnstone, then
between seventy and eighty years of age.[4] All these old ladies
prided themselves upon keeping up old usages. They use to dine in the
afternoon at four or five o'clock--take their airing after dinner in
their carriages; and from the time they returned till ten at night
their houses were lit up in their best style and thrown open for the
reception of visitors. All who were on visiting terms came at this
time, with any strangers whom they wished to introduce, and enjoyed
each other's society; there were music and dancing for the young, and
cards for the old, when the party assembled happened to be large
enough; and a few who had been previously invited stayed supper. I
often visited the old Bêgam Johnstone at this hour, and met at her
house the first people in the country, for all people, including the
Governor-General himself, delighted to honour this old lady, the
widow of a Governor-General of India, and the mother-in-law of a
Prime Minister of England.[5] She was at Murshîdâbâd when Sirâj-ud-
daula marched from that place at the head of the army that took and
plundered Calcutta, and caused so many Europeans to perish in the
Black Hole; and she was herself saved from becoming a member of his
seraglio, or perishing with the lest, by the circumstance of her
being far gone in her pregnancy, which caused her to be made over to
a Dutch factory.[6]
She had been a very beautiful woman, and had been several times
married; the pictures of all her husbands being hung round her noble
drawing-room in Calcutta, covered during the day with crimson cloth
to save them from the dust, and uncovered at night only on particular
occasions. One evening Mrs. Crommelin, a friend of mine, pointing to
one of them, asked the old lady his name. 'Really, I cannot at this
moment tell you, my dear; my memory is very bad,' (striking her
forehead with her right hand, as she leaned with her left arm in Mrs.
Crommelin's,) 'but I shall recollect in a few minutes.' The old
lady's last husband was a clergyman, Mr. Johnstone, whom she found
too gay, and persuaded to go home upon an annuity of eight hundred a
year, which she settled upon him for life. The bulk of her fortune
went to Lord Liverpool; the rest to her grandchildren, the Ricketts,
Watts, and others.
Since those days the modes of intercourse in India have much altered.
Society at all the stations beyond the three capitals of Calcutta,
Madras, and Bombay, is confined almost exclusively to the members of
the civil and military services, who seldom remain long at the same
station--the military officers hardly ever more than three years, and
the civil hardly ever so long. At disagreeable stations the civil
servants seldom remain so many months. Every newcomer calls in the
forenoon upon all that are at the station when he arrives, and they
return his call at the same hour soon after. If he is a married man,
the married men upon whom he has called take their wives to call upon
his; and he takes his to return the call of theirs. These calls are
all indispensable; and being made in the forenoon, become very
disagreeable in the hot season; all complain of them, yet no one
forgoes his claim upon them; and till the claim is fulfilled, people
will not recognize each other as acquaintances.[7] Unmarried officers
generally dine in the evening, because it is a more convenient hour
for the mess; and married civil functionaries do the same, because it
is more convenient for their office work. If you invite those who
dine at that hour to spend the evening with you, you must invite them
to dinner, even in the hot weather; and if they invite you, it is to
dinner. This makes intercourse somewhat heavy at all times, but more
especially so in the hot season, when a table covered with animal
food is sickening to any person without a keen appetite, and
stupefying to those who have it. No one thinks of inviting people to
a dinner and ball--it would be vandalism; and when you invite them,
as is always the case, to come after dinner, the ball never begins
till late at night, and seldom ends till late in the morning. With
all its disadvantages, however, I think dining in the evening much
better for those who are in health, than dining in the afternoon,
provided people can avoid the intermediate meal of tiffin. No person
in India should eat animal food more than once a day; and people who
dine in the evening generally eat less than they would if they dined
in the afternoon. A light breakfast at nine; biscuit, or a slice of
toast with a glass of water, or soda-water, at two o'clock, and
dinner after the evening exercise, is the plan which I should
recommend every European to adopt as the most agreeable.[8] When
their digestive powers get out of order, people must do as the
doctors tell them.
There is, I believe, no society in which there is more real urbanity
of manners than in that of India--a more general disposition on the
part of its different members to sacrifice their own comforts and
conveniences to those of others, and to make those around them happy,
without letting them see that it costs them an effort to do so.[9]
There is assuredly no society where the members are more generally
free from those corroding cares and anxieties which 'weigh upon the
hearts' of men whose incomes are precarious, and position in the
world uncertain. They receive their salaries on a certain day every
month, whatever may be the state of the seasons or of trade; they pay
no taxes; they rise in the several services by rotation;[10]
religious feelings and opinions are by common consent left as a
question between man and his Maker; no one ever thinks of questioning
another about them, nor would he be tolerated if he did so. Most
people take it for granted that those which they got from their
parents were the right ones; and as such they cherish them. They
remember with feelings of filial piety the prayers which they in
their infancy offered to their Maker, while kneeling by the side of
their mothers; and they continue to offer them up through life, with
the same feelings and the same hopes.[11]
Differences of political opinion, which agitate society so much in
England and other countries where every man believes that his own
personal interests must always be more or less affected by the
predominance of one party over another, are no doubt a source of much
interest to people in India, but they scarcely ever excite any angry
passions among them. The tempests by which the political atmosphere
of the world is cleared and purged of all its morbid influences burst
not upon us--we see them at a distance--we know that they are working
for all mankind; and we feel for those who boldly expose themselves
to their 'pitiless peltings' as men feel for the sailors whom they
suppose to be exposed on the ocean to the storm, while they listen to
it from their beds or winter firesides.[12] We discuss all political
opinions, and all the great questions which they affect, with the
calmness of philosophers; not without emotion certainly, but without
passion; we have no share in returning members to parliament--we feel
no dread of those injuries, indignities, and calumnies to which those
who have are too often exposed; and we are free from the bitterness
of feelings which always attend them.[13]
How exalted, how glorious, has been the destiny of England, to spread
over so vast a portion of the globe her literature, her language, and
her free institutions! How ought the sense of this high destiny to
animate her sons in their efforts to perfect their institutions which
they have formed by slow degrees from feudal barbarism; to make them
in reality as perfect as they would have them appear to the world to
be in theory, that rising nations may love and honour the source
whence they derive theirs, and continue to look to it for
improvement.
We return to the society of our wives and children after the labours
of the day are over, with tempers unruffled by collision with
political and religious antagonists, by unfavourable changes in the
season and the markets, and the other circumstances which affect so
much the incomes and prospects of our friends at home. We must look
to them for the chief pleasures of our lives, and know that they must
look to us for theirs; and if anything has crossed us we try to
conceal it from them. There is in India a strong feeling of mutual
dependence which prevents little domestic misunderstandings between
man and wife from growing into quarrels so often as in other
countries, where this is less prevalent. Men have not here their
clubs, nor their wives their little coteries to fly to when disposed
to make serious matters out of trifles, and both are in consequence
much inclined to bear and forbear. There are, of course, on the other
hand, evils in India that people have not to contend with at home;
but, on the whole, those who are disposed to look on the fair, as
well as on the dark side of all around them, can enjoy life in India
very much, as long as they and those dear to them are free from
physical pain.[14] We everywhere find too many disposed to look upon
the dark side of all that is present, and the bright side of all that
is distant in time and place--always miserable themselves, be they
where they will, and making all around them miserable; this commonly
arises from indigestion, and the habit of eating and drinking in a
hot, as in a cold, climate; and giving their stomachs too much to do,
as if they were the only parts of the human frame whose energies were
unrelaxed by the temperature of tropical climates.
There is, however, one great defect in Anglo-Indian society; it is
composed too exclusively of the servants of government, civil,
military, and ecclesiastic, and wants much of the freshness, variety,
and intelligence of cultivated societies otherwise constituted. In
societies where capital is concentrated for employment in large
agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing establishments, those who
possess and employ it form a large portion of the middle and higher
classes. They require the application of the higher branches of
science to the efficient employment of their capital in almost every
purpose to which it can be applied; and they require, at the same
time, to show that they are not deficient in that conventional
learning of the schools and drawing-rooms to which the circles they
live and move in attach importance. In such societies we are,
therefore, always coming in contact with men whose scientific
knowledge is necessarily very precise, and at the same time very
extensive, while their manners and conversation are of the highest
polish. There is, perhaps, nothing which strikes a gentleman from
India so much on his entering a society differently constituted, as
the superior precision of men's information upon scientific subjects;
and more especially upon that of the sciences more immediately
applicable to the arts by which the physical enjoyments of men are
produced, prepared, and distributed all over the world. Almost all
men in India feel that too much of their time before they left
England was devoted to the acquisition of the dead languages; and too
little to the study of the elements of science. The time lost can
never be regained--at least they think so, which is much the same
thing. Had they been well grounded in the elements of physics,
physiology, and chemistry before they left their native land, they
would have gladly devoted their leisure to the improvement of their
knowledge; but to go back to elements, where elements can be learnt
only from books, is, unhappily, what so few can bring themselves to,
that no man feels ashamed of acknowledging that he has never studied
them at all till he returns to England, or enters a society
differently constituted, and finds that he has lost the support of
the great majority that always surrounded him in India.[15] It will,
perhaps, be said that the members of the official aristocracy of all
countries have more or less of the same defects, for certain it is
that they everywhere attach paramount or undue importance to the
conventional learning of the grammar-school and the drawing-room, and
the ignorant and the indolent have everywhere the support of a great
majority. Johnson has, however, observed:
'But the truth is that the knowledge of external nature and the
sciences, which that knowledge requires or includes, are not the
great or the frequent business of the human mind. Whether we provide
for action or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing,
the first requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and
wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and
with those examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove by
events the reasonableness of opinions.[16] Prudence and justice are
virtues and excellences of all times, and of all places--we are
perpetually moralists; but we are geometricians only by chance. Our
intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations
upon matter are voluntary and at leisure. Physiological learning is
of such rare emergence, that one may know another half his life,
without being able to estimate his skill in hydrostatics or
astromony; but his moral and prudential character immediately
appears. Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools that
supply most axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and
most materials for conversation; and these purposes are best served
by poets, orators, and historians' (_Life of Milton_).
Notes:
1. In India officers have much better opportunities in time of peace
to learn how to handle troops than in England, from having them more
concentrated in large stations, with fine open plains to exercise
upon. During the whole of the cold season, from the beginning of
November to the end of February, the troops are at large stations
exercised in brigades, and the artillery, cavalry, and infantry
together. [W. H. S.] The normal garrison of Meerut in recent years
has consisted of one British cavalry regiment, one battalion of
British infantry, one native cavalry regiment, and one battalion of
native infantry, with two batteries of horse and two of field
artillery. The cantonment was established in 1806, from which date
the town grew rapidly in size and population. The civil staff has
been largely increased since Sleeman's time by the addition of
numerous officers belonging to irrigation and other departmental
services which did not exist in his day. The offices of District
Magistrate and Collector have been united as a single person for many
years.
2. The cantonments suffered severely from typhoid fever for several
years in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
3. Few Anglo-Indians will dispute the truth of this dictum.
4. The late Earl of Liverpool, then Mr. Jenkinson, married this old
lady's daughter. He was always very attentive to her, and she used
with feelings of great pride and pleasure to display the contents of
the boxes of millinery which he used every year to send out to her.
[W. H. 8.] The author came out to India in 1809. Mr. Charles
Jenkinson was created Baron Hawkesbury in 1786, and Earl of Liverpool
in 1796. His first wife, who died in 1770, was Amelia, daughter of
Mr. William Watts, Governor of Fort William, and of the lady
described by the author. Their only son succeeded to the earldom in
1808, and died in 1828. The peerage became extinct on the death of
the third earl in 1851. (Burke's _Peerage_.) It was revived in 1905.
5. Lord Liverpool, the second earl, became Prime Minister in 1812,
after the murder of Perceval. Mrs. Johnson (not Johnstone) was not
'the widow of a Governor-General of India'. Her history is told in
detail on her tombstone in St. John's churchyard, Calcutta, and is
summarized in Buckland, _Dictionary of Indian Biography_ (1906). She
was born in 1725, and died in 1812. She had four husbands, namely (l)
Parry Purple Temple, whom she married when she was only thirteen
years of age; (2) James Altham, who died of smallpox a few days after
his marriage; (3) William Watts, Senior Member of Council, and for a
short time Governor or President of Fort William in 1758; (4) in 1774
Rev. William Johnson, who became principal chaplain of Fort William
in 1784, and left India in 1788. She was known as 'the old Begum ',
and her epitaph asserts that she was when she died 'the oldest
British resident in Bengal, universally beloved, respected, and
revered'. Mr. A. L. Paul kindly communicated the full text of the
inscription on her tomb, with some additional notes. The author met
her in 1810, when she was about eighty-five years of age.
6. The tragedy of the Black Hole occurred in June, 1756.
7. Of late years the rigour of the custom exacting midday calls has
been relaxed in some places.
8. Moat people would require some training before they could find
this very abstemious regimen 'the most agreeable'.
9. It will, I hope, be admitted that this observation still holds
good.
10. When the author wrote the rupee was worth more than two
shillings, the members of the Indian services were few in number, and
mostly well paid, while living was cheap. Now all is changed. The
rupee has an artificial value of 1_s_. 4_d_., the members of the
services are numerous and often ill paid, while living is dear. The
sharp fall in the value of silver, and consequently in the gold
equivalent of the rupee, began in 1874. 'Corroding cares and
anxieties' are now the lot of most people who serve in India. They
now have the privilege of paying taxes.
11. This perfect religious freedom, still generally characteristic of
Anglo-Indian society, is one of its greatest charms; and the charms
of the country do not increase.
12. The author probably had in his mind the famous lines of
Lucretius:-
Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis,
E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem;
Non quia vexari quemquam 'st jucunda voluptas,
Sed, quibus ipse malis careas, quia cernere suave 'st.
(Book II, line 1.)
13. This delightful philosophic calm is no longer an Anglo-Indian
possession; nor can the modern Indian official congratulate himself
on his immunity from 'injuries, indignities, and calumnies'.
14. There are now clubs everywhere, and coteries are said to be not
unknown. Few Anglo-Indians of the present day are able to share the
author's cheery optimism.
15. In this matter also time has wrought great changes. The
scientific branches of the Indian services, the medical, engineering,
forestry, geological survey, and others, have greatly developed, and
many officials, in India, whether of European or Indian race, now
occupy high places in the world of science.
16. Compare Bolingbroke's observation, already quoted, that 'history
is philosophy teaching by example'.
CHAPTER 74
Pilgrims of India.
There is nothing which strikes a European more in travelling over the
great roads in India than the vast number of pilgrims of all kinds
which he falls in with, particularly between the end of November
[_sic_], when all the autumn harvest has been gathered, and the seed
of the spring crops has been in the ground. They consist for the most
part of persons, male and female, carrying Ganges water from the
point at Hardwâr, where the sacred stream emerges from the hills, to
the different temples in all parts of India, dedicated to the gods
Vishnu and Siva. There the water is thrown upon the stones which
represent the gods, and when it falls upon these stones it is called
'Chandamirt', or holy water, and is frequently collected and reserved
to be drunk as a remedy 'for a mind diseased'[1]
This water is carried in small bottles, bearing the seals of the
presiding priest at the holy place whence it was brought. The bottles
are contained in covered baskets, fixed to the ends of a pole, which
is carried across the shoulder. The people who carry it are of three
kinds--those who carry it for themselves as a votive offering to some
shrine; those who are hired for the purpose by others as salaried
servants; and, thirdly, those who carry it for sale. In the interval
between the sowing and reaping of the spring crops, that is, between
November and March, a very large portion of the Hindoo landholders
and cultivators of India devote their leisure to this pious duty.
They take their baskets and poles with them from home, or purchase
them on the road; and having poured their libations on the head of
the god, and made him acquainted with their wants and wishes, return
home. From November to March three-fourths of the number of these
people one meets consist of this class. At other seasons more than
three-fourths consist of the other two classes--of persons hired for
the purpose as servants, and those who carry the water for sale.
One morning the old Jemadâr, the marriage of whose mango-grove with
the jasmine I have already described,[2] brought his two sons and a
nephew to pay their respects to me on their return to Jubbulpore from
a pilgrimage to Jagannâth.[3] The sickness of the youngest, a nice
boy of about six years of age, had caused this pilgrimage. The eldest
son was about twenty years of age, and the nephew about eighteen.
After the usual compliments, I addressed the eldest son: 'And so your
brother was really very ill when you set out?'
'Very ill, sir; hardly able to stand without assistance.'
'What was the matter with him?'
'It was what we call a drying-up, or withering of the System.'
'What were the symptoms?'
'Dysentery.'
'Good; and what cured him, as he now seems quite well?'
'Our mother and father vowed five pair of baskets of Ganges water to
Gajâdhar, an incarnation of the god Siva, at the temple of Baijnâth,
and a visit to the temple of Jagannâth.'
'And having fulfilled these vows, your brother recovered?'
'He had quite recovered, sir, before we had set out on our return
from Jagannâth.'
'And who carried the baskets?'
'My mother, wife, cousin, myself, and little brother, all carried one
pair each.'
'This little boy could not surely carry a pair of baskets all the
way?'
'No, sir, we had a pair of small baskets made especially for him; and
when within about three miles of the temple he got down from his
little pony, took up his baskets, and carried them to the god. Up to
within three miles of the temple the baskets were carried by a
Brahman servant, whom we had taken with us to cook our food. We had
with us another Brahman, to whom we had to pay only a trifle, as his
principal wages were made up of fees from families in the town of
Jubbulpore, who had made similar vows, and gave him so much a bottle
for the water he carried in their several names to the god.'
'Did you give all your water to the Baijnâth temple, or carry some
with you to Jagannâth?'
'No water is ever offered to Jagannâth, sir; he is an incarnation of
Vishnu.'[4]
'And does Vishnu never drink?'
'He drinks, sir, no doubt; but he gets nothing but offerings of food
and money.'
'From this to Bindâchal on the Ganges, two hundred and thirty miles;
thence to Baijnâth, a hundred and fifty miles; and thence to
Jagannâth, some four or five hundred miles more.'[5]
'And your mother and wife walked all the way with their baskets?'
'All the way, sir, except when either of them got sick, when she
mounted the pony with my little brother till she felt well again.'
Here were four members of a respectable family walking a pilgrimage
of between twelve and fourteen hundred miles, going and coming, and
carrying burthens on their shoulders for the recovery of the poor
sick boy; and millions of families are every year doing the same from
all parts of India. The change of air, and exercise, cured the boy,
and no doubt did them all a great deal of good; but no physician in
the world but a religions one could have persuaded them to undertake
such a journey for the same purpose.
The rest of the pilgrims we meet are for the most part of the two
monastic orders of Gosâins, or the followers of Siva, and Bairâgîs,
or followers of Vishnu, and Muhammadan Fakîrs. A Hindoo of any caste
may become a member of these monastic orders. They are all disciples
of the high priests of the temples of their respective gods; and in
their name they wander all over India, visiting the celebrated
temples which are dedicated to them. A part of the revenues of these
temples is devoted to subsisting these disciples as they pass; and
every one of them claims the right of a day's food and lodging, or
more, according to the rules of the temple. They make collections
along the roads; and when they return, commonly bring back some
surplus as an offering to their apostle, the high priest who has
adopted them. Almost every high priest has a good many such
disciples, as they are not costly; and from their returning
occasionally, and from the disciples of others passing, these high
priests learn everything of importance that is going on over India,
and are well acquainted with the state of feeling and opinion.
What these disciples get from secular people is given not only from
feelings of charity and compassion, but as a religions or
propitiatory offering: for they are all considered to be armed by
their apostle with a vicarious power of blessing or cursing; and as
being in themselves men of God whom it might be dangerous to
displease. They never condescend to feign disease or misery in order
to excite feelings of compassion, but demand what they want with a
bold front, as holy men who have a right to share liberally in the
superfluities which God has given to the rest of the Hindoo
community. They are in general exceedingly intelligent men of the
world, and very communicative. Among them will be found members of
all classes of Hindoo society, and of the most wealthy and
respectable families.[6] While I had charge of the Narsinghpur
district in 1822 a Bairâgî, or follower of Vishnu, came and settled
himself down on the border of a village near my residence. His mild
and paternal deportment pleased all the little community so much that
they carried him every day more food than he required. At last, the
proprietor of the village, a very respectable old gentleman, to whom
I was much attached, went out with all his family to ask a blessing
of the holy man. As they sat down before him, the tears were seen
stealing down his cheeks as he looked upon the old man's younger sons
and daughters. At last, the old man's wife burst into tears, ran up,
and fell upon the holy man's neck, exclaiming, 'My lost son, my lost
son!' He was indeed her eldest son. He had disappeared suddenly
twelve years before, became a disciple of the high priest of a
distant temple, and visited almost every celebrated temple in India,
from Kedârnâth in the eternal snows to Sîtâ Baldî Râmesar, opposite
the island of Ceylon.[7] He remained with the family for nearly a
year, delighting them and all the country around with his narratives.
At last, he seemed to lose his spirits, his usual rest and appetite;
and one night he again disappeared. He had been absent for some years
when I last saw the family, and I know not whether he ever returned.
The real members of these monastic orders are not generally bad men;
but there are a great many men of all kinds who put on their
disguises, and under their cloak commit all kinds of atrocities.[8]
The security and convenience which the real pilgrims enjoy upon our
roads, and the entire freedom from all taxation, both upon these
roads and at the different temples they visit, tend greatly to attach
them to our rule, and through that attachment, a tone of good feeling
towards it is generally disseminated over all India. They come from
the native states, and become acquainted with the superior advantages
the people under us enjoy, in the greater security of property, the
greater freedom with which it is enjoyed and displayed; the greater
exemption from taxation, and the odious right of search which it
involves, the greater facilities for travelling in good roads and
bridges; the greater respectability and integrity of public servants,
arising from the greater security in their tenure of office and more
adequate rate of avowed salaries; the entire freedom of the
navigation of our great rivers, on which thousands and tens of
thousands of laden vessels now pass from one end to the other without
any one to question whence they come or whither they go. These are
tangible proofs of good government, which all can appreciate; and as
the European gentleman, in his rambles along the great roads, passes
the lines of pilgrims with which the roads are crowded during the
cold season, he is sure to hear himself hailed with grateful shouts,
as one of those who secured for them and the people generally all the
blessings they now enjoy.[9]
One day my sporting friend, the Râjâ of Maihar, told me that he had
been purchasing some water from the Ganges at its source, to wash the
image of Vishnu which stood in one of his temples.[10] I asked him
whether he ever drank the water after the image had been washed in
it. 'Yes,' said he, 'we all occasionally drink the "chandamirt".'
'And do you in the same manner drink the water in which the god Siva
has been washed?' 'Never,' said the Râjâ. 'And why not?' 'Because his
wife, Devî, one day in a domestic quarrel cursed him and said, "The
water which falls from thy head shall no man henceforward drink."
From that day', said the Râjâ, 'no man has ever drunk of the water
that washes his image, lest Devî should punish him.' 'And how is it,
then, Râjâ Sahib, that mankind continue to drink the water of the
Ganges, which is supposed to flow from her husband Siva's top-knot?'
'Because', replied the Râjâ, 'this sacred river first flows from the
right foot of the god Vishnu, and thence passes over the head of
Siva. The three gods', continued the Râjâ, 'govern the world turn and
turn about, twenty years at a time. While Vishnu reigns, all goes on
well; rain descends in good season, the harvests are abundant, and
the cattle thrive. When Brahma reigns, there is little falling off in
these matters; but during the twenty years that Siva reigns, nothing
goes on well--we are all at cross purposes, our crops fail, our
cattle get the murrain, and mankind suffer from epidemic diseases.'
The Râjâ was a follower of Vishnu, as may be guessed.
Notes:
1. Tavernier notes that Ganges water is often given at weddings,
'each guest receiving a cup or two, according to the liberality of
the host'. 'There is sometimes', he says, '2,000 or 3,000 rupees'
worth of it consumed at a wedding.' (Tavernier, _Travels_, ed. Ball,
vol. ii, pp. 231, 254.)
2. _Ante_, Chapter 5, [3].
3. Jagannâth (corruptly Juggernaut, &c.), or Purî, on the coast of
Orissa, probably is the most venerated shrine in India. The principal
deity there worshipped is a form of Vishnu.
4. Water may not be offered to Jagannâth, but the facts stated in
this chapter show that it is offered in other temples of Vishnu.
5. Bindâchal is in the Mirzâpur district of the United Provinces.
Baijnâth is in the Santâl Parganas District of the Bhâgalpur Division
in the province of Bihâr and Orissa. The group of temples at Deogarh
dedicated to Siva is visited by pilgrims from all parts of India. The
principal temple is called Baijnâth or Baidyanâth. Deogarh is a small
town in the Santâl Parganas (_I.G._, 1908, s.v. Deogarh; _A.S.R._,
vol. viii (1878), pp. 137-45, Pl. ix, x; vol. xix (1885), pp. 29-35
(crude notes), Pl. x, xi).
6. Pandit Sâligrâm, who was Postmaster-General of the North-Western
Provinces some years ago, became one of these wandering friars, and
other similar cases are recorded.
7. Seet Buldee Ramesur in original edition. The temple alluded to is
that called Râmesvaram (Ramisseram) in the small island of Pâmban at
the entrance of Palk's Passage in the Straits of Manaar, which is
distinguished by its magnificent colonnade and corridors. (Fergusson,
_Hist. Ind. and Eastern Arch._, vol. i, pp. 380-3, ed. 1910.) The
island forms part of the so-called Adam's Bridge, a reef of
comparatively recent formation, which almost joins Ceylon with the
mainland. A railway now runs along the 'bridge', and the pilgrims
have an easy task.
The Kedârnâth temple is in the Himalayan District of Garhwâl (United
Provinces), at an elevation of nearly 12,000 feet.
8. The author's other works show that the Thugs frequently assumed
the guise of ascetics, and much of the secret crime of India is known
to be committed by men who adopt the garb of holiness. A man
disguised as a fakîr is often sent on by dacoits (gang-robbers) as a
spy and decoy. 'Three-fourths of these religions mendicants, whether
Hindoos or Muhammadans, rob and steal, and a very great portion of
them murder their victims before they rob them; but they have not any
of them as a class been found to follow the trade of murder so
exclusively as to be brought properly within the scope of our
operations. . . . There is hardly any species of crime that is not
throughout India perpetrated by men in the disguise of these
religious mendicants; and almost all such mendicants are really men
in disguise; for Hindoos of any caste can become Bairâgîs and
Gosâins; and Muhammadans of any grade can become Fakîrs.' (_A Report
on the System of Megpunnaism_, 1839, p. 11.) In the same little work
the author advises the compulsory registration of 'every disciple
belonging to every high priest, whether Hindoo or Muhammadan', and a
stringent Vagrant Act. His suggestions have not been acted on.
9. This incident still happens occasionally.
10. For the Râjâ, see _ante_, chapter 20, [6].
CHAPTER 75
The Bêgam Sumroo.
On the 7th of February [1836] I went out to Sardhana and visited the
church built and endowed by the late Bêgam Sombre, whose remains are
now deposited in it.[1] It was designed by an Italian gentleman, M.
Reglioni, and is a fine but not a striking building.[2] I met the
bishop, Julius Caesar, an Italian from Milan, whom I had known a
quarter of a century before, a happy and handsome young man--he is
still handsome, though old; but very miserable because the Bêgam did
not leave him so large a legacy as he expected. In the revenues of
her church he had, she thought, quite enough to live upon; and she
said that priests without wives or children to care about ought to be
satisfied with this; and left him only a few thousand rupees. She
made him the medium of conveying a donation to the See of Rome of one
hundred and fifty thousand rupees,[3] and thereby procured for him
the bishopric of Amartanta in the island of Cyprus; and got her
grandson, Dyce Sombre, made a chevalier of the Order of Christ, and
presented with a splint from the real cross, as a relic.
The Bêgam Sombre was by birth a Saiyadanî, or lineal descendant from
Muhammad, the founder of the Musalmân faith; and she was united to
Walter Reinhard, when very young, by all the forms considered
necessary by persons of her persuasion when married to men of
another.[4] Reinhard had been married to another woman of the
Musalmân faith, who still lives at Sardhana,[5] but she had become
insane, and has ever since remained so. By this first wife he had a
son, who got from the Emperor the title of Zafar Yâb Khân, at the
request of the Bêgam, his stepmother; but he was a man of weak
intellect, and so little thought of that he was not recognized even
as the nominal chief on the death of his father.
Walter Reinhard was a native of Salzburg. He enlisted as a private
soldier in the French service, and came to India, where he entered
the service of the East India Company, and rose to the rank of
sergeant.[6] Reinhard got the sobriquet of Sombre from his comrades
while in the French service from the sombre cast of his countenance
and temper.[7] An Armenian, by name Gregory, of a Calcutta family,
the virtual minister of Kâsim Alî Khân,[8] under the title of Gorgîn
Khân,[9] took him into his service when the war was about to commence
between his master and the English. Kâsim Alî was a native of
Kâshmîr, and not naturally a bad man; but he was goaded to madness by
the injuries and insults heaped upon him by the servants of the East
India Company, who were not then paid, as at present, in adequate
salaries, but in profits upon all kinds of monopolies; and they would
not suffer the recognized sovereign of the country in which they
traded to grant to his subjects the same exemption that they claimed
for themselves exclusively; and a war was the consequence.[10]
Mr. Ellis, one of these civil servants and chief of the factory at
Patna, whose opinions had more weight with the council in Calcutta
than all the wisdom of such men as Vansittart and Warren Hastings,
because they happened to be more consonant with the personal
interests of the majority, precipitately brought on the war, and
assumed the direction of all military operations, of which he knew
nothing, and for which he seems to have been totally unfitted by the
violence of his temper. All his enterprises failed--the city and
factory were captured by the enemy, and the European inhabitants
taken prisoners. The Nawâb, smarting under the reiterated wrongs he
had received, and which he attributed mainly to the counsels of Mr.
Ellis, no sooner found the chief within his grasp, than he determined
to have him and all who were taken with him, save a Doctor Fullarton,
to whom he owed some personal obligations, put to death. His own
native officers were shocked at the proposal, and tried to dissuade
him from the purpose, but he was resolved, and not finding among them
any willing to carry it into execution he applied to Sumroo, who
readily undertook and, with some of his myrmidons, performed the
horrible duty in 1763.[11] At the suggestion of Gregory and Sombre,
Kâsim Alî now attempted to take the small principality of Nepâl, as a
kind of basis for his operations against the English. He had four
hundred excellent rifles with flint locks and screwed barrels made at
Monghyr (Mungêr) on the Ganges, so as to fit into small boxes. These
boxes were sent up on the backs of four hundred brave volunteers for
this forlorn hope. Gregory had got a passport for the boxes as rare
merchandise for the palace of the prince at Kathmandû, in whose
presence alone they were to be opened. On reaching the palace at
night, these volunteers were to open their boxes, screw up the
barrels, destroy all the inmates, and possess themselves of the
palace, where it is supposed Kâsim Ali had already secured many
friends. Twelve thousand soldiers had advanced to the foot of the
hills near Betiyâ, to support the attack, and the volunteers were in
the fort of Makwânpur, the only strong fort between the plain and the
capital. They had been treated with great consideration by the
garrison, and were to set out at daylight the next morning; but one
of the attendants, who had been let into the secret, got drunk, and
in a quarrel with one of the garrison, told him that he should see in
a few days who would be master of that garrison. This led to
suspicion; the boxes were broken open, the arms discovered, and the
whole of the party, except three or four, were instantly put to
death; the three or four who escaped gave intelligence to the army at
Betiyâ, and the whole retreated upon Monghyr. But for this drunken
man, Nepâl had perhaps been Kâsim Alî's.[12]
Kâsim Alî Khân was beaten in several actions by our gallant little
band of troops under their able leader, Colonel Adams; and at last
driven to seek shelter with the Nawâb Wazîr of Oudh, into whose
service Sumroo afterwards entered. This chief being in his turn
beaten, Sumroo went off and entered the service of the celebrated
chief of Rohilkhand, Hâfiz Rahmat Khân. This he soon quitted from
fear of the English. He raised two battalions in 1772, which he soon
afterwards increased to four; and let out always to the highest
bidder--first, to the Jât chiefs of Dîg, then to the chief of Jaipur,
then to Najaf Khân, the prime minister, and then to the Marâthâs. His
battalions were officered by Europeans, but Europeans of
respectability were unwilling to take service under a man so
precariously situated, however great their necessities; and he was
obliged to content himself for the most part with the very dross of
society--men who could neither read nor write, nor keep themselves
sober. The consequence was that the battalions were often in a state
of mutiny, committing every kind of outrage upon the persons of their
officers, and at all times in a state of insubordination bordering on
mutiny. These battalions seldom obtained their pay till they put
their commandant into confinement, and made him dig up his hidden
stores, if he had any, or borrow from bankers, if he had none. If the
troops felt pressed for time, and their commander was of the
necessary character, they put him astride upon a hot gun without his
trousers. When our battalion had got its pay out of him in this
manner, he was often handed over to another for the same purpose. The
poor old Bêgam had been often subjected to the starving stage of this
proceeding before she came under our protection; but had never, I
believe, been grilled upon a gun. It was a rule, it was said, with
Sombre, to enter the field of battle at the safest point, form line
facing the enemy, fire a few rounds in the direction where they
stood, without regard to the distance or effect, form square, and
await the course of events. If victory declared for the enemy, he
sold his unbroken force to him to great advantage; if for his
friends, he assisted them in collecting the plunder, and securing all
the advantages of the victory. To this prudent plan of action his
corps afterwards steadily adhered; and they never took or lost a gun
till they came in contact with our forces at Ajantâ and Assaye.[13]
Sombre died at Agra on the 4th of May, 1778, and his remains were at
first buried in his garden. They were afterwards removed to the
consecrated ground in the Agra churchyard by his widow the Bêgam,[14]
who was baptized, at the age of forty,[15] by a Roman Catholic
priest, under the name of Joanna,[16] on the 7th of May, 1781.
On the death of her husband she was requested to take command of the
force by all the Europeans and natives that composed it, as the only
possible mode of keeping them together, since the son was known to be
altogether unfit. She consented, and was regularly installed in the
charge by the Emperor Shâh Alam. Her chief officer was a Mr. Paoli, a
German, who soon after took an active part in providing the poor
imbecile old Emperor with a prime minister, and got himself
assassinated on the restoration, a few weeks after, of his rival.[17]
The troops continued in the same state of insubordination, and the
Bêgam was anxious for an opportunity to show that she was determined
to be obeyed.
While she was encamped with the army of the prime minister of the
time at Mathurâ,[18] news was one day brought to her that two slave
girls had set fire to her houses at Agra, in order that they might
make off with their paramours, two soldiers of the guard she had left
in charge. These houses had thatched roofs, and contained all her
valuables, and the widows, wives, and children of her principal
officers. The fire had been put out with much difficulty and great
loss of property; and the two slave girls were soon after discovered
in the bazaar at Agra, and brought out to the Bêgam's camp. She had
the affair investigated in the usual summary form; and their guilt
being proved to the satisfaction of all present, she had them flogged
till they were senseless, and then thrown into a pit dug in front of
her tent for the purpose, and buried alive. I had heard the story
related in different ways, and I now took pains to ascertain the
truth; and this short narrative may, I believe, be relied upon.[19]
An old Persian merchant, called the Agâ, still resided at Sardhana,
to whom I knew that one of the slave girls belonged. I visited him,
and he told me that his father had been on intimate terms with
Sombre, and when he died his mother went to live with his widow, the
Bêgam--that his slave girl was one of the two-that his mother at
first protested against her being taken off to the camp, but became
on inquiry satisfied of her guilt--and that the Bêgam's object was to
make a strong impression upon the turbulent spirit of her troops by a
severe example. 'In this object', said the old Agâ, 'she entirely
succeeded; and for some years after her orders were implicitly
obeyed; had she faltered on that occasion she must have lost the
command--she would have lost that respect, without which it would
have been impossible for her to retain it a month. I was then a boy;
but I remember well that there were, besides my mother and sisters,
many respectable females that would have rather perished in the
flames than come out to expose themselves to the crowd that assembled
to see the fires; and had the fires not been put out, a great many
lives must have been lost; besides, there were many old people and
young children who could not have escaped.' The old Agâ was going off
to take up his quarters at Delhi when this conversation took place;
and I am sure that he told me what he thought to be true. This
narrative corresponded exactly with that of several other old men
from whom I had heard the story. It should be recollected that among
natives there is no particular mode of execution prescribed for those
who are condemned to die; nor, in a camp like this, any court of
justice save that of the commander in which they could be tried, and,
supposing the guilt to have been established, as it is said to have
been to the satisfaction of the Bêgam and the principal officers, who
were all Europeans and Christians, perhaps the punishment was not
much greater than the crime deserved and the occasion demanded. But
it is possible that the slave girls may not have set fire to the
buildings, but merely availed themselves of the occasion of the fire
to run off; indeed, slave girls are under so little restraint in
India, that it would be hardly worth while for them to burn down a
house to get out. I am satisfied that the Bêgam believed them guilty,
and that the punishment, horrible as it was, was merited. It
certainly had the desired effect. My object has been to ascertain the
truth in this case, and to state it, and not to eulogize or defend
the old Bêgam.
After Paoli's death, the command of the troops under the Bêgam
devolved successively upon Baours, Evans, Dudrenec, who, after a
short time, all gave it up in disgust at the beastly habits of the
European subalterns, and the overbearing insolence to which they and
the want of regular pay gave rise among the soldiers. At last the
command devolved upon Monsieur Le Vaisseau, a French gentleman of
birth, education, gentlemanly deportment, and honourable
feelings.[20] The battalions had been increased to six, with their
due proportion of guns and cavalry; part resided at Sardhana, her
capital, and part at Delhi, in attendance upon the Emperor. A very
extraordinary man entered her service about the same time with Le
Vaisseau, George Thomas, who, from a quartermaster on board a ship,
raised himself to a principality in Northern India.[21] Thomas on one
occasion raised his mistress in the esteem of the Emperor and the
people by breaking through the old rule of central squares: gallantly
leading on his troops, and rescuing his majesty from a perilous
situation in one of his battles with a rebellious subject, Najaf Kulî
Khân, where the Bêgam was present in her palankeen, and reaped all
the laurels, being from that day called 'the most beloved daughter of
the Emperor'.[22] As his best chance of securing his ascendancy
against such a rival, Le Vaisseau proposed marriage to the Bêgam, and
was accepted. She was married to Le Vaisseau by Father Gregoris, a
Carmelite monk, in 1793, before Saleur and Bernier, two French
officers of great merit. George Thomas left her service, in
consequence, in 1793, and set up for himself; and was afterwards
crushed by the united armies of the Sikhs and Marâthâs, commanded by
European officers, after he had been recognized as a general officer
by the Governor-General of India. George Thomas had latterly twelve
small disciplined battalions officered by Europeans. He had good
artillery, cast his own guns, and was the first person that applied
iron calibres to brass cannon. He was unquestionably a man of very
extraordinary military genius, and his ferocity and recklessness as
to the means he used were quite in keeping with the times. His
revenues were derived from the Sikh states which he had rendered
tributary; and he would probably have been sovereign of them all in
the room of Ranjit Singh, had not the jealousy of Perron and other
French officers in the Marâthâ army interposed.[23]
The Bêgam tried in vain to persuade her husband to receive all the
European officers of the corps at his table as gentlemen, urging that
not only their domestic peace, but their safety among such a
turbulent set, required that the character of these officers should
be raised if possible, and their feelings conciliated. Nothing, he
declared, should ever induce him to sit at table with men of such
habits; and they at last determined that no man should command them
who would not condescend to do so. Their insolence and that of the
soldiers generally became at last unbearable, and the Bêgam
determined to go off with her husband, and seek an asylum in the
Honourable Company's territory with the little property she could
command, of one hundred thousand rupees in money, and her jewels,
amounting perhaps in value to one hundred thousand more. Le Vaisseau
did not understand English; but with the aid of a grammar and a
dictionary he was able to communicate her wishes to Colonel McGowan,
who commanded at that time (1795) an advanced post of our army at
Anûpshahr on the Ganges.[24] He proposed that the Colonel should
receive them in his cantonments, and assist them in their journey
thence to Farrukhâbâd, where they wished in future to reside, free
from the cares and anxieties of such a charge. The Colonel had some
scruples, under the impression that he might be censured for aiding
in the flight of a public officer of the Emperor. He now addressed
the Governor-General of India, Sir John Shore himself, April
1795,[25] who requested Major Palmer, our accredited agent with
Sindhia, who was then encamped near Delhi, and holding the seals of
prime minister of the empire, to interpose his good offices in favour
of the Bêgam and her husband. Sindhia demanded twelve lâkhs of rupees
as the price of the privilege she solicited to retire; and the Bêgam,
in her turn, demanded over and above the privilege of resigning the
command into his hands, the sum of four lâkhs of rupees as the price
of the arms and accoutrements which had been provided at her own cost
and that of her late husband. It was at last settled that she should
resign the command, and set out secretly with her husband; and that
Sindhia should confer the command of her troops upon one of his own
officers, who would pay the son of Sombre two thousand rupees a month
for life. Le Vaisseau was to be received into our territories,
treated as a prisoner of war upon parole, and permitted to reside
with his wife at the French settlement of Chandernagore. His last
letter to Sir John Shore is dated the 30th April, 1795. His last
letters describing this final arrangement are addressed to Mr. Even,
a French merchant at Mirzapore, and a Mr. Bernier, both personal
friends of his, and are dated 18th of May, 1795.[26]
The battalions on duty at Delhi got intimation of this
correspondence, made the son of Sombre declare himself their
legitimate chief, and march at their head to seize the Bêgam and her
husband. Le Vaisseau heard of their approach, and urged the Bêgam to
set out with him at midnight for Anûpshahr, declaring that he would
rather destroy himself than submit to the personal indignities which
he knew would be heaped upon him by the infuriated ruffians who were
coming to seize them. The Bêgam consented, declaring that she would
put an end to her life with her own hand should she be taken. She got
into her palankeen with a dagger in her hand, and as he had seen her
determined resolution and proud spirit before exerted on many trying
occasions, he doubted not that she would do what she declared she
would. He mounted his horse and rode by the side of her palankeen,
with a pair of pistols in his holsters, and a good sword by his side.
They had got as far as Kabrî, about three miles from Sardhana,[27] on
the road to Meerut, when they found the battalions from Sardhana, who
had got intimation of the flight, gaining fast upon the palankeen. Le
Vaisseau asked the Bêgam whether she remained firm in her resolve to
die rather than submit to the indignities that threatened them.
'Yes,' replied she, showing him the dagger firmly grasped in her
right hand. He drew a pistol from his holster without saying
anything, but urged on the bearers. He could have easily galloped
off, and saved himself, but he would not quit his wife's side. At
last the soldiers came up close behind them. The female attendants of
the Bêgam began to scream; and looking in, Le Vaisseau saw the white
cloth that covered the Bêgam's breast stained with blood. She had
stabbed herself, but the dagger had struck against one of the bones
of her chest, and she had not courage to repeat the blow. Her husband
put his pistol to his temple and fired. The bail passed through his
head, and he fell dead on the ground. One of the soldiers who saw him
told me that he sprang at least a foot off the saddle into the air as
the shot struck him. His body was treated with every kind of insult
by the European officers and their men;[28] and the Bêgam was taken
back into Sardhana, kept under a gun for seven days, deprived of all
kinds of food, save what she got by stealth from her female servants,
and subjected to all manner of insolent language.
At last the officers were advised by George Thomas, who had
instigated them to this violence out of pique against the Bêgam for
her preference of the Frenchman,[29] to set aside their puppet and
reseat the Bêgam in the command, as the only chance of keeping the
territory of Sardhana.[30] 'If', said he, 'the Bêgam should die under
the torture of mind and body to which you are subjecting her, the
minister will very soon resume the lands assigned for your payment,
and disband a force so disorderly, and so little likely to be of any
use to him or the Emperor.' A council of war was held--the Bêgam was
taken out from under the gun, and reseated on the 'masnad'. A paper
was drawn up by about thirty European officers, of whom only one,
Monsieur Saleur, could sign his own name, swearing in the name of God
and Jesus Christ,[31] that they would henceforward obey her with all
their hearts and souls, and recognize no other person whomsoever as
commander. They all affixed their seals to this _covenant_; but some
of them, to show their superior learning, put their initials, or what
they used as such, for some of these _learned Thebans_ knew only two
or three letters of the alphabet, which they put down, though they
happened not to be their real initials. An officer on the part of
Sindhia, who was to have commanded these troops, was present at this
reinstallation of the Bêgam, and glad to take, as a compensation for
his disappointment, the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand rupees,
which the Bêgam contrived to borrow for him.
The body of poor Le Vaisseau was brought back to camp, and there lay
several days unburied, and exposed to all kinds of indignities. The
supposition that this was the result of a plan formed by the Bêgam to
get rid of Le Vaisseau is, I believe, unfounded.[32] The Bêgam
herself gave some colour of truth to the report by retaining the name
of her first husband, Sombre, to the last, and never publicly or
formally declaring her marriage with Le Vaisseau after his death. The
troops in this mutiny pretended nothing more than a desire to
vindicate the honour of their old commander Sombre, which had, they
said, been compromised by the illicit intercourse between Le Vaisseau
and his widow. She had not dared to declare the marriage to them lest
they should mutiny on that ground, and deprive her of the command;
and for the same reason she retained the name of Sombre after her
restoration, and remained silent on the subject of her second
marriage. The marriage was known only to a few European officers. Sir
John Shore, Major Palmer, and the other gentlemen with whom Le
Vaisseau corresponded. Some grave old native gentlemen who were long
in her service have told me that they believed 'there really was too
much of truth in the story which excited the troops to mutiny on that
occasion--her too great intimacy with the gallant young Frenchman.
God forgive them for saying so of a lady whose salt they had eaten
for so many years'. Le Vaisseau made no mention of the marriage to
Colonel McGowan; and from the manner in which he mentions it to Sir
John Shore it is clear that he, or she, or both, were anxious to
conceal it from the troops and from Sindhia before their departure.
She stipulated in her will that her heir, Mr. Dyce, should take the
name of Sombre, as if she wished to have the little episode of her
second marriage forgotten.
After the death of Le Vaisseau, the command devolved on Monsieur
Saleur, a Frenchman, the only respectable officer who signed the
covenant; he had taken no active part in the mutiny; on the contrary,
he had done all he could to prevent it; and he was at last, with
George Thomas, the chief means of bringing his brother officers back
to a sense of their duty. Another battalion was added to the four in
1787, and another raised in 1798 and 1802; five of the six marched
under Colonel Saleur to the Deccan with Sindhia. They were in a state
of mutiny the whole way, and utterly useless as auxiliaries, as
Saleur himself declared in many of his letters written in French to
his mistress the Bêgam. At the battle of Assaye, four of these
battalions were left in charge of the Marâthâ camps. One was present
in the action and lost its four guns. Soon after the return of these
battalions, the Bêgam entered into an alliance with the British
Government; the force then consisted of these six battalions, a party
of artillery served chiefly by Europeans, and two hundred horse. She
had a good arsenal well stored, a foundry for cannon, both within the
walls of a small fortress, built near her dwelling at Sardhana. The
whole cost her about four lâkhs of rupees a year; her civil
establishments eighty thousand, and her household establishments and
expenses about the same; total six lâkhs of rupees a year. The
revenues of Sardhana, and the other lands assigned at different times
for the payment of the force had been at no time more than sufficient
to cover these expenses; but under the protection of our Government
they improved with the extension of tillage, and the improvements of
the surrounding markets for produce, and she was enabled to give
largely to the support of charitable institutions, and to provide
handsomely for the support of her family and pensioners after her
death.'[33]
Sombre's son, Zafaryâb Khân, had a daughter who was married to
Colonel Dyce, who had for some time the management of the Bêgam's
affairs; but he lost her favour long before her death by his violent
temper and overbearing manners, and was obliged to resign the
management to his son, who, on the Bêgam's death, came in for the
bulk of her fortune, or about sixty lâkhs of rupees. He has two
sisters who were brought up by the Bêgam, one married to Captain
Troup, an Englishman, and the other to Mr. Salaroli, an Italian, both
very worthy men. Their wives have been handsomely provided for by the
Bêgam, and by their brother, who trebled the fortunes left to them by
the Bêgam.[34] She built an excellent church at Sardhana, and
assigned the sum of 100,000 rupees as a fund to provide for its
service and repairs; 50,000 rupees as another [fund] for the poor of
the place; and 100,000 as a third, for a college in which Roman
Catholic priests might be educated for the benefit of India
generally. She sent to Rome 150,000 rupees to be employed as a
charity fund at the discretion of the Pope; and to the Archbishop of
Canterbury she sent 50,000 for the same purpose. She gave to the
Bishop of Calcutta 100,000 rupees to provide teachers for the poor of
the Protestant church in Calcutta. She sent to Calcutta for
distribution to the poor, and for the liberation of deserving
debtors, 50,000. To the Catholic missions at Calcutta, Bombay, and
Madras she gave 100,000; and to that of Agra 50,000. She built a
handsome chapel for the Roman Catholics at Meerut; and presented the
fund for its support with a donation of 12,000; and she built a
chapel for the Church Missionary at Meerut, the Reverend Mr.
Richards, at a cost of 10,000, to meet the wants of the native
Protestants.[35]
Among all who had opportunities of knowing her she bore the character
of a kind-hearted, benevolent, and good woman; and I have conversed
with men capable of judging, who had known her for more than fifty
years. She had uncommon sagacity and a masculine resolution; and the
Europeans and natives who were most intimate with her have told me
that though a woman and of small stature, her 'ru'b' (dignity, or
power of commanding personal respect) was greater than that of almost
any person they had ever seen.[36] From the time she put herself
under the protection of the British Government, in 1808, she by
degrees adopted the European modes of social intercourse, appearing
in public on an elephant, in a carriage, and occasionally on
horseback with her hat and veil, and dining at table with gentlemen.
She often entertained Governors-General and Commanders-in-Chief, with
all their retinues, and sat with them and their staff at table, and
for some years past kept an open house for the society of Meerut; but
in no situation did she lose sight of her dignity. She retained to
the last the grateful affections of the thousands who were supported
by her bounty, while she never ceased to inspire the most profound
respect in the minds of those who every day approached her, and were
on the most unreserved terms of intimacy.[37]
Lord William Bentinck was an excellent judge of character; and the
following letter will show how deeply his visit to that part of the
country had impressed him with a sense of her extensive usefulness:
'To Her Highness the Begum Sumroo.
'My esteemed Friend,--I cannot leave India without expressing the
sincere esteem I entertain for your highness's character. The
benevolence of disposition and extensive charity which have endeared
you to thousands, have excited in my mind sentiments of the warmest
admiration; and I trust that you may yet be preserved for many years,
the solace of the orphan and widow, and the sure resource of your
numerous dependants. To-morrow morning I embark for England; and my
prayers and best wishes attend you, and all others who, like you,
exert themselves for the benefit of the people of India.
'I remain,
'With much consideration,
'Your sincere friend,
(Signed) 'M. W. BENTINCK.[38]
'Calcutta, March 17th, 1835.'
Notes:
1. The reader will observe that the lady's name is spelt Sumroo in
the heading and Sombre in the text. The form Samrû, or Shamrû,
transliterates the Hindustâni spelling.
2. The author means General Regholini who was in the Bêgam's service
at the time of her death. (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, 1st ed., vol. iii, p.
295.) The church, or cathedral, was consecrated in 1822, and coat
400,000 rupees. A portrait of the General, from Sardhana, is now in
the Indian Institute, Oxford, which also possesses a portrait of the
Bishop.
The best account of Begum Sumroo is to be found in _A Tour through
the Upper Provinces of Hindustan_, 1804-14, by A. D. = Ann Deane
(1823). Walter Scott introduces more than one of the stories about
the Begum into _The Surgeon's Daughter_ (1827), e.g.: "But not to be
interred alive under your seat, like the Circassian of whom you were
jealous," said Middlemas, shuddering (vol. 48, Black's ed. of the
novels, p. 382).
3. The Bêgam's benefactions are detailed _post_.
4. 'This remarkable woman was the daughter, by a concubine, of Asad
Khân, a Musalmân of Arab decent settled in the town of Kutâna in the
Meerut district. She was born about the year A.D. 1753 [see _post_.]
On the death of her father, she and her mother became subject to ill-
treatment from her half-brother, the legitimate heir, and they
consequently removed to Delhi about 1760. There she entered the
service of Sumru, and accompanied him through all his campaigns.
Sumru, on retiring to Sardhana, found himself relieved of all the
cares and troubles of war, and gave himself entirely up to a life of
ease and pleasure, and so completely fell into the hands of the Bêgam
that she had no difficulty in inducing him to exchange the title of
mistress for that of wife.' (E. T. Atkinson in _N.W.P. Gazetteer_,
1st ed., vol. ii, p. 95. The authorities for the history of Bêgum
Samrû are very conflicting. Atkinson has examined them critically,
and his account probably is the best in existence.) An anonymous
pamphlet published apparently at Sardhana and sent to the editor
anonymously long ago, gives the name of the Bêgam's father as 'Lutf
Ali Khan, a decayed nobleman of Arabian descent' living at Kotana.
Some writers state that the Bêgam was a dancing girl, and was bought
by Sumroo. Her name was Zêb-un-nissa.
5. This first wife died at Sardhana during the rainy season of 1838.
She must have been above one hundred years of age; and a good many of
the Europeans that he buried in the Sardhana cemetery had lived above
a hundred years. [W. H. S.] She was a concubine, named Bahâ Bêgam.
(_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, vol. iii, p. 96.)
6. His name is spelt Reinhard on his tombstone, as in the text. It is
also spelt Renard. According to some authorities, his birthplace was
Trèves, not Salzburg. He is said to have been a butcher by trade, and
certainly deserted from both the French and the English services.
7. A more probable explanation is that the name is a corruption of an
alias, Summers, assumed by the deserter.
8. Kâsim Alî Khân is generally referred to in the histories under the
name of Mîr Kâsim (Meer Cossim). Mîr Jâfir was deposed in 1760, and
his son-in-law Mîr Kâsim was placed on the throne of Bengal in his
stead by the English. The history of Mîr Kâsim is told in detail by
Thornton in his sixth chapter, and also by Mill.
9. Probably 'Gorgîn' is a corruption of 'Gregory'. This name may be a
corruption of 'Georgian'.
10. Mill observes upon these transactions: 'The conduct of the
Company's servants upon this occasion furnishes one of the most
remarkable instances upon record of the power of self-interest to
extinguish all sense of justice and even of shame. They had hitherto
insisted, contrary to all right and all precedent, that the
government of the country should exempt all their goods from duty;
they now insisted that it should impose duties upon all other
traders, and accused it as guilty of a breach of the peace towards
the English nation, because it proposed to remit them.' [W. H. S.]
The quotation is from Book iv, chapter 5 (5th ed., 1858, vol. iii, p.
237).
11. The 3rd of October was the day of slaughter at Patna. The
Europeans at other places in Mîr Kâsim's power were also massacred;
and the total number slain, men, women, and children, amounted to
about two hundred. Sumroo personally butchered about one hundred and
fifty at Patna.
12. Our troops, under Sir David Ochterlony, took the fort of
Makwânpur in 1815, and might in five days have been before the
defenceless capital; but they were here arrested by the romantic
chivalry of the Marquis of Hastings. The country had been virtually
conquered; the prince, by his base treachery towards us and outrages
upon others, had justly forfeited his throne; but the Governor-
General, by perhaps a misplaced lenity, left it to him without any
other guarantee for his future good behaviour than the recollection
that he had been soundly beaten. Unfortunately he left him at the
same time a sufficient quantity of fertile land below the hills to
maintain the same army with which he had fought us, with better
knowledge how to employ them, to keep us out on a future occasion.
Between the attempt of Kâsim Alî and our attack upon Nepâl, the
Gôrkhâ masters of the country had, by a long series of successful
aggressions upon their neighbours, rendered themselves in their own
opinion and in that of their neighbours the beat soldiers of India.
They have, of course, a very natural feeling of hatred against our
government, which put a stop to the wild career of conquest, and
wrested from their grasp all the property and all the pretty women
from Kathmandû to Kashmîr. To these beautify regions they were what
the invading Huns were in former days to Europe, absolute fiends. Had
we even exacted a good road into their country with fortifications at
the proper places, it might have checked the hopes of one day
resuming the career of conquest that now keeps up the army and
military spirit, to threaten us with a renewal of war whenever we are
embarrassed on the plains. [W. H. S.]
The author's uneasiness concerning the attitude of Nepal was
justified. During the Afghan troubles of 1838-43 the Nepalese
Government was in constant communication with the enemies of the
Indian Government. The late Maharâja Sir Jang Bahâdur obtained power
in 1846, and, after his visit to England in 1850, decided to abide by
the English alliance. He did valuable service in 1857 and 1858, and
the two governments have ever since maintained an unbroken, though
reserved, friendship. The Gôrkhâ regiments in the English service are
recruited in Nepâl.
13. Aasaye (Assye, Asâi) is in the Nizâm's dominions. Here, on the
23rd of September, 1803, Sir Arthur Wellesley, afterwards Duke of
Wellington, with less than 5,000 men, defeated the Marâthâ host of at
least 32,000 men, including more than 10,000 under European leaders.
Ajantâ, or Ajantâ Ghât, is in the same region. (Owen, _Sel. from
Wellington Despatches_ (1880), pp. 301-9.)
14. His tombstone bears a Portuguese inscription:
'Aqui iaz Walter Reinhard, morreo aos 4 de Mayo no anno de 1778.'
(_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, vol. ii, p. 96.)
15. According to this statement she must have been born in or about
1741, not in 1753, as stated by Atkinson. If the earlier date were
correct, she would have been ninety-five when she died in 1836.
Higginbotham, referring to Bacon's work, says she died at the age of
eighty-nine, which places her birth in 1747. According to Beale, she
was aged eighty-eight lunar years when she died, on the 27th January,
1836, equivalent to about eighty-five solar years. This computation
places her birth in A.D. 1751, which may be taken as the correct
date. The date of her baptism is correctly stated in the text.
16. She added the name Nobilis, when she married Le Vaisseau.
(_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, vol. ii, p. 106, note.)
17. The author spells the German's name Pauly; I have followed
Atkinson's spelling. The man was assassinated in 1783.
18. This circumstance indicates that the execution of the slave girls
took place in 1782. (See _N.W.P. Gazetteer_, vol. ii, p. 91.)
19. The darker aide of the Bêgam's character is shown by the story of
the slave girl's murder. By some it is said that the girl's crime
consisted in her having attracted the favourable notice of one of the
Bêgam's husbands. Whatever may have been the offence, her barbarous
mistress visited it by causing the girl to be buried alive. The time
chosen for the execution was the evening, the place the tent of the
Bêgam; who caused her bed to be arranged immediately over the grave,
and occupied it until the morning, to prevent any attempt to rescue
the miserable girl beneath. By acts like this the Bêgam inspired such
terror that she was never afterwards troubled with domestic
dissensions.' (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, 1st ed., vol. ii, p. 110.) It will
be observed that this version mentions only one girl. According to
Higginbotham (_Men whom India has Known_, 2nd ed., s.v. 'Sumroo'),
this execution took place on the evening of the day on which Le
Vaisseau perished in 1795. (See _post._) He adds that 'it is said
that this act preyed upon her conscience in after life'. This account
professes to be based on Bacon's _First Impressions and Studies from
Nature in Hindustan_, which is said to be 'the most reliable, as the
author saw the Bêgam, attended and conversed with her at one of her
levées, and gained all his information at her Court'. But Bacon's
account of the Bêgam's history, as quoted by Higginbotham, is full of
gross errors; and Sir William Sleeman may be relied on as giving the
most accurate obtainable version of the horrid story. He had the beat
possible opportunities, as well as a desire, to ascertain the truth.
20. Atkinson (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, vol. ii, p. 106) uses the spelling
Le Vaisseau, which probably is correct, and observes that the name is
also written Le Vassont. The author writes Le Vassoult; and Francklin
(_Military Memoirs of Mr. George Thomas_, London, 8vo reprint
(Stockdale), p. 55) spells the name phonetically as Levasso. 'On
every occasion he was the declared and inveterate enemy of Mr.
Thomas.'
21. Thomas was an Irishman, born in the county of Tipperary. 'From
the best information we could procure, it appears that Mr. George
Thomas first came to India in a British ship of war, in 1781-2. His
situation in the fleet was humble, having served as a quarter-master,
or, as is affirmed by some, in the capacity of a common sailor. . . .
His first service was among the Polygars to the southward, where he
resided a few years. But at length setting out overland, he
spiritedly traversed the central part of the peninsula, and about the
year 1787 arrived at Delhi. Here he received a commission in the
service of the Bêgam Sumroo. . . . Soon after his arrival at Delhi,
the Bêgam, with her usual judgement and discrimination of character,
advanced him to a command in her army. From this period his military
career in the north-west of India may be said to have commenced.'
Owing to the rivalry of Le Vaisseau, Thomas 'quitted the Bêgam
Sumroo, and about 1792 betook himself to the frontier station of the
British army at the post of Anopshire (Anûpshâhr). . . . Here he
waited several months. . . . In the beginning of the year 1793, Mr.
Thomas, being at Anopshire, received letters from Appakandarow
(Apakanda Râo), a Mahratta chief, conveying offers of service, and
promises of a comfortable provision.' (Francklin, op. cit., p. 20.)
The author states that Thomas left the Bêgam's service in 1793, after
her marriage with Le Vaisseau in that year. Francklin (see also p.
55) was clearly under the impression that the marriage did not take
place till after Thomas had thrown up his command under the Bêgam. He
made peace with her in 1795. The capital of the principality which he
carved out for himself in 1798 was at Hânsî, eighty-nine miles north-
west of Delhi. He was driven out at the close of 1801, entered
British territory in January 1802, and died on the 22nd of August in
that year at Barhâmpur, being about forty-six years of age. A son of
his was an officer in the Bêgam's service at the time of her death in
1836. A great-granddaughter of George Thomas was, in 1867, the wife
of a writer on a humble salary in one of the Government offices at
Agra. (Beale.)
22. This incident happened in 1788. (See _N.W.P. Gazetteer_, vol. ii,
p. 99; _I.G._, 1908, vol. xii, p. 106.)
23. 'A more competent estimate may perhaps be formed of his abilities
if we reflect on the nature and extent of one of his plans, which he
detailed to the compiler of these memoirs during his residence at
Benares. When fixed in his residence at Hânsî, he first conceived,
and would, if unforeseen and untoward circumstances had not occurred,
have executed the bold design of extending his conquests to the
mouths of the Indus. This was to have been effected by a fleet of
boats, constructed from timber procured in the forests near the city
of Fîrôzpur, on the banks of the Satlaj river, proceeding down that
river with his army, and settling the countries he might subdue on
his route; a daring enterprise, and conceived in the true spirit of
an ancient Roman. On the conclusion of this design it was his
intention to turn his arms against the Panjâb, which he expected to
reduce in a couple of years; and which, considering the wealth he
would then have acquired, and the amazing resources he would have
possessed, these successes combined would doubtless have contributed
to establish his authority on a firm and solid basis.' He offered to
conquer the Panjâb on behalf of the Government of India, for the
welfare of his king and country. (Francklin, pp. 334-6.)
24. A small town in the Bulandshahr district of the North-Western
Provinces, seventy-three miles south-east of Delhi. Its fort used to
be considered strong and of strategical importance.
25. Afterwards Lord Teignmouth.
26. Major Bernier was killed at the storm of Hânsî in 1801. His
tombstone at Barsi village was found ninety years later (_Pioneer_,
Dec. 14, 1894). For epitaph of Joseph Even Bahâdur see _N.I.N. &
Qu._, vol. i, note 265.
27. Francklin says that the troops overtook the fugitives 'at the
village of Kerwah, in the begum's jaghire, four miles distant from
her capital', (p. 58.)
28. 'For three days it lay exposed to the insults of the rabble, and
was at length thrown into a ditch.' (Francklin, p. 60.)
29. According to George Thomas (whose version of the story is given
by his biographer), the Bêgam, when the mutiny broke out, was
actually preparing to attack Thomas. A German officer, known only as
the Liègeois, strenuously dissuaded the Bêgam from the proposed
hostilities, and was, in consequence, degraded by Le Vaisseau. The
troop then mutinied, and swore allegiance to Zafar Yâb Khân.
(Francklin, p. 37.)
30. Thomas says that the overtures came from the Bêgam. 'In a manner
the most abject and desponding, she addressed Mr. Thomas . . .
implored him to come to her assistance, and, finally, offered to pay
any sum of money the Marâthâs should require, on condition they would
reinstate her in the Jâgîr. On receipt of these letters, Mr. Thomas,
by an offer of 120,000 rupees, prevailed on Bâpû Sindhia to make a
movement towards Sardhana.' After negotiation, Thomas marched to
Khataulî, and 'publicly gave out that unless the Bêgam was reinstated
in her authority, those who resisted must expect no mercy; and to
give additional weight to this declaration, he apprised them that he
was acting under the orders of the Marâthâ chiefs.' After some
difficulty, 'she was finally reinstated in the full authority of her
Jâgîr'. This version of the affair, it will be noticed, does not
quite agree with that given more briefly by the author.
31. The paper was written by a Muhammadan, and he would not write
Christ _the Son of God_. It is written 'In the name of God, and his
Majesty Christ'. The Muhammadans look upon Christ as the greatest of
prophets before Muhammad; but the most binding article of their faith
is this from the Korân, which they repeat every day: 'I believe in
God, who was never begot, nor has ever begotten, nor will ever have
an equal,'--alluding to the Christians' belief in the Trinity. [W. H.
S.] For Mohammed's opinion of Jesus Christ see especially chapters 4
and 5 of the Korân.
32. To my mind the circumstances all tend to throw suspicion on the
Bêgam. The author evidently was disposed to form the beat possible
opinion of her character and acts.
33. After the Bêgam's death the revenue settlement of the estate was
made by Mr. Plowden, who writes in his report, as quoted in _N.W.P.
Gazetteer_, 1st ed., vol. iii, p. 432, 'The rule seems to have been
fully recognized and acted up to by the Bêgam which declared that,
according to Muhammadan law, "there shall be left for every man who
cultivates his lands as much as he requires for his own support, till
the next crop be reaped, and that of his family, and for seed. This
much shall be left to him; what remains is land-tax, and shall go to
the public treasury." For, considering her territory as a private
estate and her subjects as serfs, she appropriated the whole produce
of their labour, with the exception of what sufficed to keep body and
soul together. It was by these means . . . that a factitious state of
prosperity was induced and maintained, which, though it might, and I
believe did, deceive the Bêgam's neighbours into an impression that
her country was highly prosperous, could not delude the population
into content and happiness. Above the surface and to the eye all was
smiling and prosperous, but within was rottenness and misery. Under
these circumstances the smallness of the above arrear is no proof of
the fairness of the revenue. It rather shows that the collections
were as much as the Bêgam's ingenuity could extract, and this balance
being unrealizable, the demand was, by so much at least, too high.'
The statistics alluded to are:
Average demand of the portions of the Bêgam's Rs.
Territory in the Meerut district . . . . 5.86.650
Average collections . . . . . . 5.67.211
Balances . . . . . . . . 19.439
'Ruin was impending, when the Bêgam's death in January, 1836, and the
consequent lapse of the estate to the British, induced the
cultivators to return to their homes.'
Details of the Bêgam's military forces are given in _N.W.P.
Gazetteer_, vol. iii, p. 295. For the last thirty years of her life
the Bêgam had no need for the large force (3,371 officers and men,
with 44 guns) which she maintained. In her excessive expenditure on a
superfluous army, in her niggardly provision for civil
administration, and in her merciless rack-renting, she followed the
evil example of the ordinary native prince, and was superior only in
the unusual ability with which she worked an unsound and oppressive
System. She left £700,000. The population of Sardhana town has risen
from 3,313 in 1881 to 9,242 in 1911.
34 Zafaryâb Khân died in 1802 or 1803. His son-in-law, Colonel Dyce,
was employed in the Bêgam's service. 'The issue of this marriage was:
(l) David Ochterlony Dyce Sombre, who married Mary Anne, daughter of
Viscount St. Vincent, by whom he had no issue. He died in Paris in
July, 1851. In August, 1867, his body was conveyed to Sardhana and
buried in the cathedral. (2) A daughter, who married Captain Rose
Troup. (3) A daughter, who married Paul Salaroli, now Marquis of
Briona. The present owner of Sardhana is the Honourable Mary Anne
Forester, the widow of David Ochterlony Dyce Sombre, and the
successful claimant in the suit against Government which has recently
been decided in her favour.' (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, vol. iii (1875), p.
296.) This lady, in 1862, married George Cecil-Weld, third Baron
Forester, who died without issue in 1886. (Burke's _Peerage_.) Lady
Forester died on March 7, 1893.
35. In the original edition these statistics are given in words.
Figures have been used in this edition as being more readily grasped.
The amounts stated by the author are approximate round sums. More
accurate details are given in _N.W.P. Gazetteer_, vol. iii (1875), p.
295. The Bêgam also subscribed liberally to Hindoo and Muhammadan
institutions. Her contemporary, Colonel Skinner, was equally
impartial, and is said to have built a mosque and a temple, as well
as the church at Delhi.
The Cathedral at Sardhana was built in 1822. St. John's College is
intended to train Indians as priests, There are, or were recently,
about 250 native Christians at Sardhana, partly the descendants of
the converts who followed their mistress in change of faith. 'The
Roman Catholic priests work hard for their little colony, and are
greatly revered and respected. At St. John's College some of the boys
are instructed for the priesthood, and others taught to read and
write the Nâgarî and Urdû characters. The instruction for the
priesthood is peculiar. There are some twelve little native boys who
can quote whole chapters of the Latin Bible, and nearly all the
prayers of the Missal. Those who cannot sympathize with the system
mast admire the patience and devotion of the Italian priests who have
put themselves to the trouble of imparting such instruction. The
majority of the Christian population here are cultivators and
weavers, while many are the pensioned descendants of the European
servants of Bêgam Sumru, and still bear the appellation of Sâhib and
Mem Sâhib.' (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, vol. iii (1875), pp. 273, 430.)
The Bêgam's palace, built in 1834, was chiefly remarkable for a
collection of about twenty-five portraits of considerable interest.
They comprised likenesses of Sir David Ochterlony, Dyce Sombre, Lord
Combermere, and other notable personages. (_Calcutta Review_, vol.
lxx, p. 460; quoted in _North Indian N. & Q._, vol. ii, p. 179.) The
mansion and park were sold by auction in 1895. Some of the portraits
are now in the Indian Institute, Oxford, some in the Indian Museum,
Calcutta, and some in Government House, Allahabad. A long article by
H. N. on Sardhana and its owners appeared in the _Pioneer_
(Allahabad) on December 12,1894.
36. A miniature portrait of the Bêgam is given on the frontispiece to
volume ii of the original edition. Francklin, describing the events
of 1796, in his memoirs of George Thomas, first published in 1803,
describes her personal appearance as follows: 'Begum Sumroo is about
forty-five years of age, small in stature, but inclined to be plump.
Her complexion is very fair, her eyes black, large and animated; her
dress perfectly Hindustany, and of the most costly materials. She
speaks the Persian and Hindustany languages with fluency, and in her
conversation is engaging, sensible, and spirited.' (London ed., p.
92, note.) The liberal benefaction of her later years have secured
her ecclesiastical approval, and I should not be surprised to hear of
her beatification or canonization. Her earlier life certainly was not
that of a saint.
37. In her younger days she strictly maintained Hindustani etiquette.
'It has been the constant and invariable usage of this lady to exact
from her subjects and servants the most rigid attention to the
customs of Hindoostan. She is never seen out of doors or in her
public durbar unveiled.
'Her officers and others, who have business with her, present
themselves opposite the place where she sits. The front of her
apartment is furnished with _chicques_ or Indian screens, these being
let down from the roof. In this manner she gives audience and
transacts business of all kinds. She frequently admits to her table
the higher ranks of her European officers, but never admits the
natives to come within the enclosure,' (Francklin, p, 92.)
38. The Governor-General's name was William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck,
I do not understand the signature M. W. Bentinck, which may be a
misprint. The eulogium seems odd to a reader who remembers that the
recipient had been for fifteen years the mistress and wife of the
Butcher of Patna. But when it was written, the memory of the massacre
had been dimmed by the lapse of seventy-two years, and His Excellency
may not have been well versed in the lady's history.
Perhaps the author was mistaken, and the letter was sent by Lady
Bentinck, whose name was Mary.
CHAPTER 76
ON THE SPIRIT OF MILITARY DISCIPLINE IN THE NATIVE ARMY OF INDIA
Abolition of Corporal Punishment--Increase of Pay with Length of
Service--Promotion by Seniority.
The following observations on a very important and interesting
subject were not intended to form a portion of the present work.[1]
They serve to illustrate, however, many passages in the foregoing
chapters touching the character of the natives of India; and the
Afghan war having occurred since they were written, I cannot deny
myself the gratification of presenting them to the public, since the
courage and fidelity, which it was my object to show the British
Government had a right to expect from its native troops and might
always rely upon in the hour of need, have been so nobly displayed.
I had one morning (November 14th, 1838) a visit from the senior
native officer of my regiment, Shaikh Mahûb Alî, a very fine old
gentleman, who had recently attained the rank of 'Sardâr Bahâdur',
and been invested with the new Order of British India.[2] He entered
the service at the age of fifteen, and had served fifty-three years
with great credit to himself, and fought in many an honourable field.
He had come over to Jubbulpore as president of a native general
court-martial, and paid me several visits in company with another old
officer of my regiment who was a member of the same court. The
following is one of the many conversations I had with him, taken down
as soon as he left me.
'What do you think, Sardâr Bahâdur, of the order prohibiting corporal
punishment in the army; has it had a bad or a good effect?'
'It has had a very good effect.'
'What good has it produced?'
'It has reduced the number of courts martial to one-quarter of what
they were before, and thereby lightened the duties of the officers;
it has made the good men more careful, and the bad men more orderly
than they used to be.'
'How has it produced this effect?'
'A bad man formerly went on recklessly from small offences to great
ones in the hope of impunity; he knew that no regimental, cantonment,
or brigade court martial could sentence him to be dismissed the
service; and that they would not sentence him to be flogged, except
for great crimes, because it involved at the same time dismissal from
the service. If they sentenced him to be flogged, he still hoped that
the punishment would be remitted. The general or officer confirming
the sentence was generally unwilling to order it to be carried into
effect, because the man must, after being flogged, be tumed out of
the service, and the marks of the lash upon his back would prevent
his getting service anywhere else. Now he knows that these courts can
sentence him to be dismissed from the service--that he is liable to
lose his bread for ordinary transgressions, and be sentenced to work
on the roads for graver ones.[3] He is in consequence much more under
restraint than he used to be.'
'And how has it tended to make the well-disposed more careful?'
'They were formerly liable to be led into errors by the example of
the bad men, under the same hope of impunity; but they are now more
on their guard. They have all relations among the native officers,
who are continually impressing upon them the necessity of being on
their guard, lest they be sent back upon their families--their
mothers and fathers, wives and children, as beggars. To be dismissed
from a service like that of the Company is a very great punishment;
it subjects a man to the odium and indignation of all his family.
When in the Company's service, his friends know that a soldier gets
his pay regularly, and can afford to send home a very large portion
of it. They expect that he will do so; he feels that they will listen
to no excuse, and he contracts habits of sobriety and prudence. If a
man gets into the service of a native chief, his friends know that
his pay is precarious, and they continue to maintain his family for
many years without receiving a remittance from him, in the hope that
his circumstances may one day improve. He contracts bad habits, and
is not ashamed to make his appearance among them, knowing that his
excuses will be received as valid. If one of the Company's sepoys[4]
were not to send home remittances for six months, some members of the
family would be sent to know the reason why. If he could not explain,
they would appeal to the native officers of the regiment, who would
expostulate with him; and, if all failed, his wife and children would
be tumed out of his father's house, unless they knew that he was gone
to the wars; and he would be ashamed ever to show his face among them
again.'
'And the gradual increase of pay with length of service has tended to
increase the value of the service, has it not?'
'It has very much; there are in our regiment, out of eight hundred
men, more than one hundred and fifty sepoys who get the increase of
two rupees a month, and the same number that get the increase of one.
This they feel as an immense addition to the former seven rupees a
month.[5] A prudent sepoy lives upon two, or at the utmost three,
rupees a month in seasons of moderate plenty, and sends all the rest
to his family. A great number of the sepoys of our regiment live upon
the increase of two rupees, and send all their former seven to their
families. The dismissal of a man from such a service as this
distresses, not only him, but all his relations in the higher grades,
who know how much of the comfort and happiness of his family depend
upon his remaining and advancing in it; and they all try to make
their young friends behave as they ought to do.'
'Do you think that a great portion of the native officers of the army
have the same feelings and opinions on the subject as you have?'
'They have all the same; there is not, I believe, one in a hundred
that does not think as I do upon the subject. Flogging was an odious
thing. A man was disgraced, not only before his regiment, but before
the crowd that assembled to witness the punishment. Had he been
suffered to remain in the regiment he could never have hoped to rise
after having been flogged, or sentenced to be flogged; his hopes were
all destroyed, and his spirit broken, and the order directing him to
be dismissed was good; but, as I have said, he lost all hope of
getting into any other service, and dared not show his face among his
family at home.'
'You know who ordered the abolition of flogging?'
'Lord Bentinck.'[6]
'And you know that it was at his recommendation the Honourable
Company gave the increase of pay with length of service?'
'We have heard so; and we feel towards him as we felt towards Lord
Wellesley, Lord Hastings, and Lord Lake.'
'Do you think the army would serve again now with the same spirit as
they served under Lord Lake?'
'The army would go to any part of the world to serve such masters--no
army had ever masters that cared for them like ours. We never asked
to have flogging abolished; nor did we ever ask to have an increase
of pay with length of service; and yet both have been done for us by
the Company Bahâdur.'
The old Sardâr Bahâdur came again to visit me on the 1st of December,
with all the native officers who had come over from Sâgar to attend
the court, seven in number. There were three very smart, sensible men
among them; one of whom had been a volunteer at the capture of
Java,[7] and the other[s] at that of the Isle of France.[8] They all
told me that they considered the abolition of corporal punishment a
great blessing to the native army. 'Some bad men who had already lost
their character, and consequently all hope of promotion, might be in
less dread than before; but they were very few, and their regiments
would soon get rid of them under the new law that gave the power of
dismissal to regimental courts martial.'
'But I find the European officers are almost all of opinion that the
abolition of flogging has been, or will be, attended with bad
consequences.'
'They, sir, apprehend that there will not be sufficient restraint
upon the loose characters of the regiment; but now that the sepoys
have got an increase of pay in proportion to length of service there
will be no danger of that. Where can they ever hope to get such
another service if they forfeit that of the Company? If the dread of
losing such a service is not sufficient to keep the bad in order,
that of being put to work upon the roads in irons will. The good can
always be kept in order by lighter punishments, when they have so
much at stake as the loss of such a service by frequent offences.
Some gentlemen think that a soldier does not feel disgraced by being
flogged, unless the offence for which he has been flogged is in
itself disgraceful. There is no soldier, sir, that does not feel
disgraced by being tied up to the halberts and flogged in the face of
all his comrades and the crowd that may choose to come and look at
him; the sepoys are all of the same respectable families as
ourselves, and they all enter the service in the hope of rising in
time to the same stations as ourselves, if they conduct themselves
well; their families look forward with the same hope. A man who has
been tied up and flogged knows the disgrace that it will bring upon
his family, and will sometimes rather die than return to it; indeed,
as head of a family he could not be received at home.[9] But men do
not feel disgraced in being flogged with a rattan at drill. While at
the drill they consider themselves, and are considered by us all, as
in the relation of scholars to their schoolmasters. Doing away with
the rattan at drill had a very bad effect. Young men were formerly,
with the judicious use of the rattan, made fit to join the regiment
at furthest in six months; but since the abolition of the rattan it
takes twelve months to make them fit to be seen in the ranks. There
was much virtue in the rattan, and it should never have been given
up. We have all been flogged with the rattan at the drill, and never
felt ourselves disgraced by it-we were _shâgirds_ (scholars), and the
drill-sergeant, who had the rattan, was our _ustâd_ (schoolmaster);
but when we left the drill, and took our station in the ranks as
sepoys, the case was altered, and we should have felt disgraced by a
flogging, whatever might have been the nature of the offence we
committed. The drill will never get on so well as it used to do,
unless the rattan be called into use again; but we apprehend no evil
from the abolition of corporal punishment afterwards. People are apt
to attribute to this abolition offences that have nothing to do with
it; and for which ample punishments are still provided. If a man
fires at his officer, people are apt to say it is because flogging
has been done away with; but a man who deliberately fires at his
officer is prepared to undergo worse punishment than flogging.[10]
'Do you not think that the increase of pay with length of service to
the sepoys will have a good effect in tending to give to regiments
more active and intelligent native officers? Old sepoys who are not
so will now have less cause to complain if passed over, will they
not?'
'If the sepoys thought that the increase of pay was given with this
view, they would rather not have it at all. To pass over men merely
because they happen to have grown old, we consider very cruel and
unjust. They all enter the service young, and go on doing their duty
till they become old, in the hope that they shall get promotion when
it comes to their turn. If they are disappointed, and young men, or
greater favourites with their European officers, are put over their
heads, they become heart-broken. We all feel for them, and are always
sorry to see an old soldier passed over, unless he has been guilty of
any manifest crime, or neglect of duty. He has always some relations
among the native officers who know his family, for we all try to get
our relations into the same regiment with ourselves when they are
eligible. They know what that family will suffer when they learn that
he has no longer any hopes of rising in the service, and has become
miserable. Supersessions create distress and bad feelings throughout
a regiment, even when the best men are promoted, which cannot always
be the case; for the greatest favourites are not always the best men.
Many of our old European officers, like yourself, are absent on staff
or civil employments; and the command of companies often devolves
upon very young subalterns, who know little or nothing of the
character of their men. They recommend those whom they have found
most active and intelligent, and believe to be the best; but their
opportunities of learning the characters of the men have been few.
They have seen and observed the young, active, and forward; but they
often know nothing of the steady, unobtrusive old soldier, who has
done his duty ably in all situations, without placing himself
prominently forward in any. The commanding officers seldom remain
long with the same regiment, and, consequently, seldom know enough of
the men to be able to judge of the justice of the selections for
promotion. Where a man has been guilty of a crime, or neglected his
duty, we feel no sympathy for him, and are not ashamed to tell him
so, and put him down[11] when he complains.'
Here the old Sûbadâr, who had been at the taking of the Isle of
France, mentioned that when he was senior Jemadâr of his regiment,
and a vacancy had occurred to bring him in as Sûbadâr, he was sent
for by his commanding officer, and told that, by orders from
headquarters, he was to be passed over, on account of his advanced
age, and supposed infirmity. 'I felt,' said the old man, 'as if I had
been struck by lightning, and _fell down dead_. The colonel was a
good man, and had seen much service. He had me taken into the open
air; and when I recovered, he told me that he would write to the
Commander-in-Chief, and represent my case. He did so, and I was
promoted; and I have since done my duty as Sûbadâr for ten
years.'[12]
The Sardâr Bahâdur told me that only two men in our regiment had been
that year superseded, one for insolence, and the other for neglect of
duty; and that officers and sepoys were all happy in consequence--the
young, because they felt more secure of being promoted if they did
their duty; and the old, because, they felt an interest in their
young relations. 'In those regiments,' said he, 'where supersessions
have been more numerous, old and young are dispirited and unhappy.
They all feel that the _good old rule of right_ (_hakk_), as long as
a man does his duty well, can no longer be relied upon.'
When two companies of my regiment passed through Jubbulpore a few
days after this conversation on their way from Sâgar to Seoni, I rode
out a mile or two to meet them. They had not seen me for sixteen
years, but almost all the native commissioned and non-commissioned
officers were personally known to me. They were all very glad to see
me, and I rode along with them to their place of encampment, where I
had ready a feast of sweetmeats. They liked me as a young man, and
are, I believe, proud of me as an old one. Old and young spoke with
evident delight of the rigid adherence on the part of the present
commanding officer, Colonel Presgrave, to the good old rule of 'hakk'
(right) in the recent promotions to the vacancies occasioned by the
annual transfer to the invalid establishment. We might, no doubt,
have in every regiment a few smarter native officers by disregarding
this rule than by adhering to it; but we should, in the diminution of
the good feeling towards the European officers and the Government,
lose a thousand times more than we gained. They now go on from youth
to old age, from the drill to the retired pension, happy and
satisfied that there is no service on earth so good for them.[13]
With admirable _moral_, but little or no _literary_ education, the
native officers of our regiments never dream of aspiring to anything
more than is now held out to them, and the mass of the soldiers are
inspired with devotion to the service, and every feeling with which
we could wish to have them inspired, by the hope of becoming officers
in time, if they discharge their duties faithfully and zealously.
Deprive the mass of this hope, give the commissions to an _exclusive
class_ of natives, or to a favoured few, chosen often, if not
commonly, without reference to the feelings or qualifications we most
want in our native officers, and our native army will soon cease to
have the same feelings of devotion towards the Government, and of
attachment and respect towards their European officers that they now
have. The young, ambitions, and aspiring native officers will soon
try to teach the great mass that their interest and that of the
European officers and European Government are by no means one and the
same, as they have been hitherto led to suppose; and it is upon the
good feeling of this great mass that we have to depend for support.
To secure this good feeling, we can well afford to sacrifice a little
efficiency at the drill. It was unwise in one of the commanders-in-
chief to direct that no soldier in our Bengal native regiments should
be promoted unless he could read and write-it was to prohibit the
promotion of the best, and direct the promotion of the worst,
soldiers in the ranks. In India a military officer is rated as a
gentleman by his birth, that is _caste_, and by his deportment in all
his relations of life, not by his _knowledge of books_.
The Râjpût, the Brahman, and the proud Pathân who attains a
commission, and deports himself like an officer, never thinks
himself, or is thought by others, deficient in anything that
constitutes the gentleman, because he happens not to be at the same
time a clerk. He has from his childhood been taught to consider the
quill and the sword as two distinct professions, both useful and
honourable when honourably pursued; and having chosen the sword, he
thinks he does quite enough in learning how to use and support it
through all grades, and ought not to be expected to encroach on the
profession of the penman. This is a tone of feeling which it is
clearly the interest of Government rather to foster than discourage,
and the order which militated so much against it has happily been
either rescinded or disregarded.
Three-fourths of the recruits of our Bengal native infantry are drawn
from the Râjpût peasantry of the kingdom of Oudh, on the left bank of
the Ganges, where their affections have been linked to the soil for a
long series of generations.[14] The good feelings of the families
from which they are drawn continue through the whole period of their
service to exercise a salutary influence over their conduct as men
and as soldiers. Though they never take their families with them,
they visit them on furlough every two or three years, and always
return to them when the surgeon considers a change of air necessary
to their recovery from sickness. Their family circles are always
present to their imaginations; and the recollections of their last
visit, the hopes of the next, and the assurance that their conduct as
men and as soldiers in the interval will be reported to those circles
by their many comrades, who are annually returning on furlough to the
same parts of the country, tend to produce a general and uniform
propriety of conduct, that is hardly to be found among the soldiers
of any other army in the world, and which seems incomprehensible to
those unacquainted with its source--veneration for parents cherished
through life, and a never-impaired love of home, and of all the dear
objects by which it is constituted.
Our Indian native army is perhaps the only entirely voluntary
standing army that has been ever known, and it is, to all intents and
purposes, entirely voluntary, and as such must be treated.[15] We can
have no other native army in India, and without such an army we could
not maintain our dominion a day. Our best officers have always
understood this quite well; and they have never tried to flog and
harass men out of all that we find good in them for our purposes. Any
regiment in our service might lay down their arms and disperse to-
morrow, without our having a chance of apprehending one deserter
among them all.[16]
When Frederick the Great of Prussia reviewed his army of sixty
thousand men in Pomerania, previous to his invasion of Silesia, he
asked the Prince d'Anhalt, who accompanied him, what he most admired
in the scene before him.
'Sire,' replied the prince, 'I admire at once the fine appearance of
the men, and the regularity and perfection of their movements and
evolutions.'
'For my part,' said Frederick, 'this is not what excites my
astonishment, since with the advantage of money, time, and care,
these are easily attained. It is that you and I, my dear cousin,
should be in the midst of such an army as this in perfect safety.
Here are sixty thousand men who are all _irreconcilable enemies to
both you and myself_', not one among them that is not a man of more
strength and better armed than either, yet they all tremble at our
presence, while it would be folly on our part to tremble at theirs--
such is the wonderful effect of order, vigilance, and subordination.'
But a reasonable man might ask, what were the circumstances which
enabled Frederick to keep in a state of order and subordination an
army composed of soldiers who were 'irreconcilable enemies' of their
Prince and of their officers? He could have told the Prince d'Anhalt,
had he chose to do so; for Frederick was a man who thought deeply.
The chief circumstance favourable to his ambition was the imbecility
of the old French Government, then in its dotage, and unable to see
that an army of involuntary soldiers was no longer compatible with
the state of the nation. This Government had reduced its soldiers to
a condition worse than that of the common labourers upon the roads,
while it deprived them of all hope of rising, and all feeling of
pride in the profession.[17] Desertion became easy from the extension
of the French dominion and from the circumstance of so many
belligerent powers around requiring good soldiers; and no odium
attended desertion, where everything was done to degrade, and nothing
to exalt the soldier in his own esteem and that of society.
Instead of following the course of events and rendering the condition
of the soldier less odious by increasing his pay and hope of
promotion, and diminishing the labour and disgrace to which he was
liable, and thereby filling her regiments with voluntary soldiers
when involuntary ones could no longer be obtained, the Government of
France reduced the soldier's pay to one-half the rate of wages which
a common labourer got on the roads, and put them under restraints and
restrictions that made them feel every day, and every hour, that they
were slaves. To prevent desertions by severe examples under this
high-pressure System, they had recourse first to slitting the noses
and cutting off the ears of deserters, and, lastly, to shooting them
as fast as they could catch them.[18] But all was in vain; and
Frederick of Prussia alone got fifty thousand of the finest soldiers
in the world from the French regiments, who composed one-third of his
army, and enabled him to keep all the rest in that state of
discipline that improved so much its efficiency, in the same manner
as the deserters from the Roman legions, which took place under
similar circumstances, became the flower of the army of
Mithridates.[19]
Frederick was in position and disposition a despot. His territories
were small, while his ambition was boundless. He was unable to pay a
large army the rate of wages necessary to secure the services of
voluntary soldiers; and he availed himself of the happy imbecility of
the French Government to form an army of involuntary ones. He got
French soldiers at a cheap rate, because they dared not return to
their native country, whence they were hunted down and shot like
dogs, and these soldiers enabled him to retain his own subjects in
his ranks upon the same terms. Had the French Government retraced its
steps, improved the condition of its soldiers, and mitigated the
punishment for desertion during the long war, Frederick's army would
have fallen to pieces 'like the baseless fabric of a vision'.
'_Parmi nous,' says Montesquieu, 'les désertions sont fréquentes
parce que les soldats sont la plus vile partie de chaque nation, et
qu'il n'y en a aucun qui aie, ou qui croie avoir un certain avantage
sur les autres. Chez les Romains elles étaient plus rares--des
soldats tirés du sein d'un peuple si fier, si orgueilleux, si sûr de
commander aux autres, ne pouvaient guère penser â s' aviler jusqu'à
cesser d'être Romains_.'[20] But was it the poor soldiers who were to
blame if they were 'vile', and had 'no advantage over others', or the
Government that took them from the vilest classes, or made their
condition when they got them worse than that of the lowest class in
society? The Romans deserted under the same circumstances, and, as I
have stated, formed the _elite_ of the army of Mithridates and the
other enemies of Rome; but they respected their military oath of
allegiance long after perjury among senators had ceased to excite any
odium, since as a fashionable or political vice it had become common.
Did not our day of retribution come, though in a milder shape, to
teach us a great political and moral lesson, when so many of our
brave sailors deserted our ships for those of America, in which they
fought against us?[21] They deserted from our ships of war because
they were there treated like dogs, or from our merchant ships because
they were every hour liable to be seized like felons and put on board
the former. When 'England expected every man to do his duty' at
Trafalgar, had England done its duty to every man who was that day to
fight for her? Is not the intellectual stock which the sailor
acquires in scenes of peril 'upon the high and giddy mast' as much
his property as that which others acquire in scenes of peace at
schools and colleges? And have not our senators, morally and
religiously, as much right to authorize their sovereign to seize
clergymen, lawyers, and professors, for employment in his service,
upon the wages of ordinary uninstructed labour, as they have to
authorize him to seize able sailors to be so employed in her navy? A
feeling more base than that which authorized the able seaman to be
hunted down upon such conditions, torn from his wife and children,
and put like Uriah in front of those battles upon which our welfare
and honour depended, never disgraced any civilized nation with whose
history we are acquainted.[22]
Sir Matthew Decker, in a passage quoted by Mr. McCulloch, says, 'The
custom of impressment put a freeborn British sailor on the same
footing as a Turkish slave. The Grand Seignior cannot do a more
absolute act than to order a man to be dragged away from his family,
and against his will run his head against the mouth of a cannon; and
if such acts should be frequent in Turkey upon any one set of useful
men, would it not drive them away to other countries, and thin their
numbers yearly? And would not the remaining few double or triple
their wages, which is the case with our sailors in time of war, to
the great detriment of our commerce?' The Americans wisely
relinquished the barbarous and unwise practice of their parent land,
and, as McCulloch observes, 'While the wages of all labourers and
artisans are uniformly higher in the United States than in England,
those of sailors are generally lower,' as the natural consequence of
manning their navy by means of voluntary enlistment alone. At the
close of the last war, sixteen thousand British sailors were serving
on board of American ships; and the wages of our seamen rose from
forty or[23] fifty to a hundred or one hundred and twenty shillings a
month, as the natural consequence of our continuing to resort to
impressment after the Americans had given it up.[24]
Frederick's army consisted of about one hundred and fifty thousand
men. Fifty thousand of these were French deserters, and a
considerable portion of the remaining hundred thousand were deserters
from the Austrian army, in which desertion was punished in the same
manner with death. The dread of this punishment if they quitted his
ranks, enabled him to keep up that state of discipline that improved
so much the efficacy of his regiments, at the same time that it made
every individual soldier his 'irreconcilable enemy'. Not relying
entirely upon this dread on the part of deserters to quit his ranks
under his high-pressure system of discipline, and afraid that the
soldiers of his own soil might make off in spite of all their
vigilance, he kept his regiments in garrison towns till called on
actual service; and that they might not desert on their way from one
garrison to another during relief, he never had them relieved at all.
A trooper was flogged for falling from his horse, though he had
broken a limb in his fall; it was difficult, he said, to distinguish
an involuntary fault from one that originated in negligence, and to
prevent a man hoping that his negligence would be forgiven, all
blunders were punished, from whatever cause arising. No soldier was
suffered to quit his garrison till led out to fight; and when a
desertion took place, cannons were fired to announce it to the
surrounding country. Great rewards were given for apprehending, and
severe punishments inflicted for harbouring, the criminal; and he was
soon hunted down, and brought back. A soldier was, therefore, always
a prisoner and a slave.
Still, all this rigour of Prussian discipline, like that of our navy,
was insufficient to extinguish that ambition which is inherent in our
nature to obtain the esteem and applause of the circle in which we
move; and the soldier discharged his duty in the hour of danger, in
the hope of rendering his life more happy in the esteem of his
officers and comrades. 'Every tolerably good soldier feels ', says
Adam Smith, 'that he would become the scorn of his companions if he
should be supposed capable of shrinking from danger, or of hesitating
either to expose or to throw away his life, when the good of the
service required it.' So thought the philosopher-King of Prussia,
when he let his regiments out of garrison to go and face the enemy.
The officers were always treated with as much lenity in the Prussian
as any other service, because the king knew that the hope of
promotion would always be sufficient to bind them to their duties;
but the poor soldiers had no hope of this kind to animate them in
their toils and their dangers.
We took our System of drill from Frederick of Prussia; and there is
still many a martinet who would carry his high-pressure system of
discipline into every other service over which he had any control,
unable to appreciate the difference of circumstances under which they
may happen to be raised and maintained.[25]
The sepoys of the Bengal army, the only part of our native army with
which I am much acquainted, are educated as soldiers from their
infancy--they are brought up in that feeling of entire deference for
constituted authority which we require in soldiers, and which they
never lose through life. They are taken from the agricultural classes
of Indian society--almost all the sons of yeomen--cultivating
proprietors of the soil, whose families have increased beyond their
means of subsistence. One son is sent one after another to seek
service in our regiments as necessity presses at home, from whatever
cause--the increase of taxation, or the too great increase of numbers
in families.[26] No men can have a higher sense of the duty they owe
to the state that employs them, or whose 'salt they eat'; nor can any
men set less value on life when the service of that state requires
that it shall be risked or sacrificed. No persons are brought up with
more deference for parents. In no family from which we drew our
recruits is a son through infancy, boyhood, or youth, heard to utter
a disrespectful word to his parents--such a word from a son to his
parents would shock the feelings of the whole community in which the
family resides, and the offending member would be visited with their
highest indignation. When the father dies the eldest son takes his
place, and receives the same marks of respect, the same entire
confidence and deference as the father. If he be a soldier in a
distant land, and can afford to do so, he resigns the service, and
returns home to take his post as the head of the family. If he cannot
afford to resign, if the family still want the aid of his regular
monthly pay, he remains with his regiment, and denies himself many of
the personal comforts he has hitherto enjoyed, that he may increase
his contribution to the general stock.
The wives and children of his brothers, who are absent on service,
are confided to his care with the same confidence as to that of the
father. It is a rule to which I have through life found but few
exceptions that those who are most disposed to resist constituted
authority are those most disposed to abuse such authority when they
get it. The members of these families, disposed, as they always are,
to pay deference to such authority, are scarcely ever found to abuse
it when it devolves upon them; and the elder son, when he succeeds to
the place of his father, loses none of the affectionate attachment of
his younger brothers.
They never take their wives or children with them to their
regiments, or to the places where their regiments are stationed.[27]
They leave them with their fathers or elder brothers, and enjoy their
society only when they return on furlough. Three-fourths of their
incomes are sent home to provide for their comfort and subsistence,
and to embellish that home in which they hope to spend the winter of
their days. The knowledge that any neglect of the duty they owe their
distant families will be immediately visited by the odium of their
native officers and brother soldiers, and ultimately communicated to
the heads of their families, acts as a salutary check on their
conduct; and I believe that there is hardly a native regiment in the
Bengal army in which the twenty drummers who are Christians, and have
their families with the regiment, do not cause more trouble to the
officers than the whole eight hundred sepoys.
To secure the fidelity of such men all that is necessary is to make
them feel secure of three things--their regular pay, at the handsome
rate at which it has now been fixed; their retiring pensions upon the
scale hitherto enjoyed; and promotion by seniority, like their
European officers, unless they shall forfeit all claims to it by
misconduct or neglect of duty.[28] People talk about a demoralized
army, and discontented army! No army in the world was certainly ever
more moral or more contented than our native army; or more satisfied
that their masters merit all their devotion and attachment; and I
believe none was ever more devoted or attached to them.[29] I do not
speak of the European officers of the native army. They very
generally believe that they have had just cause of complaint, and
sufficient care has not always been taken to remove that impression.
In all the junior grades the Honourable Company's officers have
advantages over the Queen's in India. In the higher grades the
Queen's officers have advantages over those of the Honourable
Company. The reasons it does not behove me here to consider.[30]
In all armies composed of involuntary soldiers, that is, of soldiers
who are anxious to quit the ranks and return to peaceful occupations,
but cannot do so, much of the drill to which they are subjected is
adopted merely with a view to keep them from pondering too much upon
the miseries of their present condition, and from indulging in those
licentious habits to which a strong sense of these miseries, and the
recollection of the enjoyments of peaceful life which they have
sacrificed, are too apt to drive them. No portion of this is
necessary for the soldiers of our native army, who have no miseries
to ponder over, or superior enjoyments in peaceful life to look back
upon; and a very small quantity of drill is sufficient to make a
regiment go through its evolutions well, because they have all a
pride and pleasure in their duties, as long as they have a commanding
officer who understands them. Clarke, in his _Travels_, speaking of
the three thousand native infantry from India whom he saw paraded in
Egypt under their gallant leader, Sir David Baird, says, 'Troops in
such a state of military perfection, or better suited for active
service, were never seen--not even on the famous parade of the chosen
ten thousand belonging to Bonaparte's legions, which he was so vain
of displaying before the present war in the front of the Tuileries at
Paris. Not an unhealthy soldier was to be seen. The English, inured
to the climate of India, considered that of Egypt as temperate in its
effects, and the sipâhees seemed as fond of the Nile as the
Ganges.'[31]
It would be much better to devise more innocent amusements to lighten
the miseries of European soldiers in India than to be worrying them
every hour, night and day, with duties which are in themselves
considered to be of no importance whatever, and imposed merely with a
view to prevent their having time to ponder on these miseries.[32]
But all extra and useless duties to a soldier become odious, because
they are always associated in his mind with the ideas of the odious
and degrading punishment inflicted for the neglect of them. It is
lamentable to think how much of misery is often wantonly inflicted
upon the brave soldiers of our European regiments of India on the
pretence of a desire to preserve order and discipline.[33]
Sportsmen know that if they train their horses beyond a certain point
they 'train off'; that is, they lose the spirit and with it the
condition they require to support them in their hour of trial. It is
the same with soldiers; if drilled beyond a certain point, they
'drill off', and lose the spirit which they require to sustain them
in active service, and before the enemy. An over-drilled regiment
will seldom go through its evolutions well, even in ordinary review
before its own general. If it has all the mechanism, it wants all the
real spirit of military discipline--it becomes dogged, and is, in
fact, a body with but a soul. The martinet, who is seldom a man of
much intellect, is satisfied as long as the bodies of his men are
drilled to his liking; his narrow mind comprehends only one of the
principles which influence mankind--fear; and upon this he acts with
all the pertinacity of a slave-driver. If he does not disgrace
himself when he comes before the enemy, as he commonly does, by his
own incapacity, his men will perhaps try to disgrace him, even at the
sacrifice of what they hold dearer than their lives--their
reputation. The real soldier, who is generally a man of more
intellect, cares more about the feelings than the bodies of his men;
he wants to command their affections as well as their limbs, and he
inspires them with a feeling of enthusiasm that renders them
insensible to all danger--such men were Lord Lake, and Generals
Ochterlony, Malcolm, and Adams, and such are many others well known
in India.
Under the martinet the soldiers will never do more than what a due
regard for their own reputation demands from them before the enemy,
and will sometimes do less. Under the real soldier, they will always
do more than this; his reputation is dearer to them even than their
own, and they will do more to sustain it. The army of the consul,
Appius Claudius, exposed themselves to almost inevitable destruction
before the enemy to disgrace him in the eyes of his country, and the
few survivors were decimated on their return; he cared nothing for
the spirit of his men. The army of his colleague, Quintius, on the
contrary, though from the same people, and levied and led out at the
same time, covered him with glory because they loved him.[34] We had
an instance of this in the war with Nepâl in-1813, in which a king's
regiment played the part of the army of Appius.[35] There were other
martinets, king's and Company's, commanding divisions in that war,
and they all signally failed; not, however, except in the above one
instance, from backwardness on the part of their troops, but from
utter incapacity when the hour of trial came. Those who succeeded
were men always noted for caring something more about the hearts than
the whiskers and buttons of their men. That the officer who delights
in harassing his regiment in times of peace will fail with it in
times of war and scenes of peril seems to me to be a rule almost as
well established as that he, who in the junior ranks of the army
delights most to kick against authority, is always found the most
disposed to abuse it when he gets to the higher. In long intervals of
peace, the only prominent military characters are commonly such
martinets; and hence the failures so generally experienced in the
beginning of a war after such an interval. Whitelocks are chosen for
command, till Wolfes and Wellingtons find Chathams and Wellesleys to
climb up by.
To govern those whose mental and physical energies we require for our
subsistence and support by the lash alone is so easy, so simple a
mode of bending them to our will, and making them act strictly and
instantly in conformity to it, that it is not at all surprising to
find so many of those who have been accustomed to it, and are not
themselves liable to have the lash inflicted upon them, advocating
its free use. In China the Emperor has his generals flogged, and
finds the lash so efficacious in bending them to his will that
nothing would persuade him that it could ever be safely dispensed
with. In some parts of Germany they had the officers flogged, and
princes and generals found this so very efficacious in making those
act in conformity to their will that they found it difficult to
believe that any army could be well managed without it. In other
Christian armies the officers are exempted from the lash, but they
use it freely upon all under them; and it would be exceedingly
difficult to convince the greater part of these officers that the
free use of the lash is not indispensably necessary, nay, that the
men do not themselves like to be flogged, as eels like to be skinned,
when they once get used to it. Ask the slave-holders of the southern
states of America whether any society can be well constituted unless
the greater part of those upon the sweat of whose brow the community
depends for their subsistence are made by law liable to be bought,
sold, and driven to their daily labour with the lash; they will one
and all say No; and yet there are doubtless many very excellent and
amiable persons among these slave-holders. If our army, as at present
constituted, cannot do without the free use of the lash, let its
constitution be altered; for no nation with free institutions should
suffer its soldiers to be flogged. '_Laudabiliores tamen duces sunt,
quorum exercitum ad modestiam labor et usus instituit, quam illi,
quorum milites ad obedientiam suppliciorum formido compellit.'[36]
Though I reprobate that wanton severity of discipline in which the
substance is sacrificed to the form, in which unavoidable and trivial
offences are punished as deliberate and serious crimes, and the
spirit of the soldier is entirely disregarded, while the motion of
his limbs, cut of his whiskers, and the buttons of his coat are
scanned with microscopic eye, I must not be thought to advocate
idleness. If we find the sepoys of a native regiment, as we sometimes
do at a healthy and cheap station, become a little unruly like
schoolboys, and ask an old native officer the reason, he will
probably answer others as he has me by another question, '_Ghora ârâ
kyûn? Pânî sarâ kyûn?' 'Why does the horse become vicious? Why does
the water become putrid?'-For want of exercise. Without proper
attention to this exercise no regiment is ever kept in order; nor has
any commanding officer ever the respect or the affection of his men
unless they see that he understands well all the duties which his
Government entrusts to him, and is resolved to have them performed in
all situations and under all circumstances. There are always some bad
characters in a regiment, to take advantage of any laxity of
discipline, and lead astray the younger soldiers, whose spirits have
been rendered exuberant by good health and good feeding; and there is
hardly any crime to which they will not try to excite these young
men, under an officer careless about the discipline of his regiment,
or disinclined, from a mistaken _esprit de corps_, or any other
cause, to have those crimes traced home to them and punished.[37]
There can be no question that a good tone of feeling between the
European officers and their men is essential to the well-being of our
native army; and I think I have found this tone somewhat impaired
whenever our native regiments are concentrated at large stations. In
such places the European society is commonly large and gay; and the
officers of our native regiments become too much occupied in its
pleasures and ceremonies to attend to their native officers or
sepoys. In Europe there are separate classes of people who subsist by
catering for the amusements of the higher classes of society, in
theatres, operas, concerts, balls, &c., &c.; but in India this duty
devolves entirely upon the young civil and military officers of the
Government, and at large stations it really is a very laborious one,
which often takes up the whole of a young man's time. The ladies must
have amusement; and the officers must find it for them, because there
are no other persons to undertake the arduous duty. The consequence
is that they often become entirely alienated from their men, and
betray signs of the greatest impatience while they listen to the
necessary reports of their native officers, as they come on or go off
duty.[38]
It is different when regiments are concentrated for active service.
Nothing tends so much to improve the tone of feeling between the
European officers and their men, and between European soldiers and
sepoys, as the concentration of forces on actual service, where the
same hopes animate, and the same dangers unite them in common bonds
of sympathy and confidence. '_Utrique alteris freti, finitimos armis
aut metu sub imperium cogere, nomen gloriamque sibi addidere_.' After
the campaigns under Lord Lake, a native regiment passing Dinapore,
where the gallant King's 76th, with whom they had fought side by
side, was cantoned, invited the soldiers to a grand entertainment
provided for them by the sepoys. They consented to go on one
condition--that the sepoys should see them all back safe before
morning. Confiding in their sable friends, they all got gloriously
drunk, but found themselves lying every man upon his proper cot in
his own barracks in the morning. The sepoys had carried them all home
upon their shoulders. Another native regiment, passing within a few
miles of a hill on which they had buried one of their European
officers after that war, solicited permission to go and make their
'salâm' to the tomb, and all went who were off duty.[39] The system
which now keeps the greater part of our native infantry at small
stations of single regiments in times of peace tends to preserve this
good tone of feeling between officers and men, at the same time that
it promotes the general welfare of the country by giving confidence
everywhere to the peaceful and industrious classes.
I will not close this chapter without mentioning one thing which I
have no doubt every Company's officer in India will concur with me in
thinking desirable to improve the good feeling of the native
soldiery--that is, an increase in the pay of the Jemadârs. They are
commissioned officers, and seldom attain the rank in less than from
twenty-five to thirty years;[40] and they have to provide themselves
with clothes of the same costly description as those of the Sûbadâr;
to be as well mounted, and in all respects to keep the same
respectability of appearance, while their pay is only twenty-four
rupees and a half a month; that is, ten rupees a month only more than
they had been receiving in the grade of Havildârs, which is not
sufficient to meet the additional expenses to which they become
liable as commissioned officers. Their means of remittance to their
families are rather diminished than increased by promotion, and but
few of them can hope ever to reach the next grade of Sûbadâr. Our
Government, which has of late been so liberal to its native civil
officers, will, I hope, soon take into consideration the claims of
this class, who are universally admitted to be the worst paid class
of native public officers in India. Ten rupees a month addition to
their pay would be of great importance; it would enable them to
impart some of the advantages of promotion to their families, and
improve the good feeling of the circles around them towards the
Government they serve.[41]
Notes:
1. This chapter and the following one were printed as a separate
tract at Calcutta in 1841 (see Bibliography). That small volume
included an Introduction and two statistical tables which the author
did not reprint. He has utilized extracts from the Introduction in
various parts of the _Rambles and Recollections_. I am not sure that
the tract was ever published, though it was printed; for the author
says in his Introduction: 'They (_scil._ these two essays) may never
be published; but I cannot deny myself the gratification of printing
them.'
2. This order is confined to the Indian Army.
3. The punishment of working on the roads is long obsolete.
4. The author spells this word 'sipahee'. I have thought it better to
use throughout the now familiar corruption.
5. The ordinary infantry pay was raised from seven to nine rupees in
1895.
6. General Orders by the Commander-in-Chief of the 5th of January,
1797, declare that no sepoy or trooper of our native army shall be
dismissed from the service by the sentence of any but a general court
martial. General Orders by the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Combermere,
of the 19th of March, 1827, declare that his Excellency is of opinion
that the quiet and orderly habits of the native soldiers are such
that it can very seldom be necessary to have recourse to the
punishment of flogging, which might be almost entirely abolished with
great advantage to their character and feelings; and directs that no
native soldier shall in future be sentenced to corporal punishment
unless for the crime of _stealing, marauding, or gross
insubordination_, where the individuals are deemed unworthy to
continue in the ranks of the army. No such sentence by a regimental,
detachment, or brigade court martial was to be carried into effect
till confirmed by the general officer commanding the division. When
flogged the soldier was invariably to be discharged from the service.
A circular letter from the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Combermere, on
the 16th of June, 1827, directs that sentence to corporal punishment
is not to be restricted to the three crimes of _theft, marauding, or
gross insubordination_; but that it is not to be awarded except for
very serious offences against discipline, or actions of a disgraceful
or infamous nature, which show those who committed them to be unfit
for the service; that the officer who assembles the court may remit
the sentence of corporal punishment, and the dismissal involved in
it; but cannot carry it into effect till confirmed by the officer
commanding the division, except when an immediate example is
indispensably necessary, as in the case of plundering and violence on
the part of soldiers in the line of march. In all cases the soldier
who has been flogged must be dismissed.
A circular letter by the Commander-in-Chief, Sir E. Barnes, 2nd of
November, 1832, dispenses with the duty of submitting the sentence of
regimental, detachment, and brigade courts martial for confirmation
to the general officer commanding the division; and authorizes the
officer who assembles the court to carry the sentence into effect
without reference to higher authority; and to mitigate the punishment
awarded, or remit it altogether; and to order the dismissal of the
soldier who has been sentenced to corporal punishment, though he
should remit the flogging, 'for it may happen that a soldier may be
found guilty of an offence which renders it improper that he should
remain any longer in the service, although the general conduct of the
man has been such that an example is unnecessary; or he may have
relations in the regiment of excellent character, upon whom some part
of the disgrace would fall if he were flogged.' Still no court
martial but a general one could sentence a soldier to be simply
dismissed. To secure his dismissal they must first sentence him to be
flogged.
On the 24th of February, 1835, the Governor-General of India in
Council, Lord William Bentinck, directed that the practice of
punishing soldiers of the native army by the cat-o'-nine-tails, or
rattan, be discontinued at all the presidencies; and that henceforth
it shall be competent to any regimental, detachment, or brigade court
martial to sentence a soldier of the native army to dismissal from
the service for any offence for which such soldier might now be
punished by flogging, provided such sentence of dismissal shall not
be carried into effect unless confirmed by the general or other
officer commanding the division.'
For crimes involving higher penalties, soldiers were, as heretofore,
committed for trial before general courts martial.
By Act 23 of 1839, passed by the Legislative Council of India on the
23rd of September, it is made competent for courts martial to
sentence soldiers of the native army in the service of the East India
Company to the punishment of dismissal, and to be imprisoned, with or
without hard labour, for any period not exceeding two years, if the
sentence be pronounced by a general court martial; and not exceeding
one year, if by a garrison or line court martial; and not exceeding
six months, if by a regimental or district court martial.
Imprisonment for any period with hard labour, or for a term exceeding
six months without hard labour, to involve dismissal. Act 2 of 1840
provides for such sentences of imprisonment being carried into
execution by magistrates or other officers in charge of the gaols.
[W. H. S.]
This last paragraph has been brought up from the end of the volume
where it is printed in the original edition.
The army has been completely reorganized since the author's time, and
the regulations have been much modified.
In October, 1833, Lord William Bentinck had assumed the command of
the army, on the retirement of Sir Edward Barnes, and thus combined
the offices of Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief, as the
Marquis Cornwallis and the Marquis of Hastings had done before him.
7. Batavia was occupied by Sir Samuel Auchmuty in August, and the
whole island was taken possession of in September, 1811. But at the
general peace which followed the great war the island of Java, with
its dependencies, was restored to the Dutch.
8. The Isle of France, otherwise called the Mauritius, which is still
British territory, was gallantly taken at the end of November, 1810,
by Commodore Rowley and Major-General Abercrombie. Full details of
the Java and Mauritius expeditions are given in Thornton's twenty-
second chapter. The brilliant operations in both localities deserve
more attention than they usually receive from students of Indian
history.
9. The funeral obsequies which are everywhere offered up to the manes
of parents by the surviving head of the family during the last
fifteen days of the month Kuâr (September) were never considered as
acceptable from the hands of a soldier in our service who had been
tied up and flogged, whatever might have been the nature of the
offence for which he was punished; any head of a family so flogged
lost by that punishment the most important of his civil rights--that,
indeed, upon which all others hinged, for it is by presiding at the
funeral ceremonies that the head of the family secures and maintains
his recognition. [W. H. S.] I have invariably found that natives of
India, enjoying a good social position, who happen to be interested
in an offender, care nothing for the disgraceful nature of the
offender's crime, while they dread the disgrace of the punishment,
however just it may be.
10. The worst feature of this abolition measure is unquestionably the
odious distinction which it leaves in the punishments to which our
European and our native soldiers are liable, since the British
legislation does not consider that it can be safely abolished in the
British army. This odious distinction might be easily removed by an
enactment declaring that European soldiers in India should be liable
to corporal punishment for only two offences: first, mutiny, or gross
insubordination; second, plunder or violence while the regiment or
force to which the prisoner belongs is in the field or marching. The
same enactment might declare the soldiers of our native army liable
to the same punishments for the same offences. Such an enactment
would excite no discontent among our native soldiery; on the
contrary, it would be applauded as just and proper. [W. H. S.]
Subsequently, corporal punishment in the Indian or native army was
again legalized. The present law is thus stated by Sir Edwin Collen:
'A "summary court martial"... may pass any sentence allowed by the
articles of war, except . . . and may carry it out at once. Corporal
punishment not exceeding fifty lashes may be given for certain
offences, but is rarely awarded, and the amount of military crime is,
on the whole, very small in the native army. The native officers have
power to inflict minor punishments' [_I.G. (1908), vol. iv, p. 370].
Flogging in the British army in time of peace was prohibited in
April, 1868, by an amendment to the Mutiny Bill, and was completely
abolished by the Army Discipline Act of 1881.
11. The author also gives the Hindustani word as 'kaelkur-hin', which
seems to be intended for _qâil kareñ_, or in rustic form _karahiñ_,
meaning 'confute'.
12. No wonder that the native army, pampered in this sentimental
fashion, gradually became more and more inefficient, till it needed
the fires of the Mutiny to purge away its humours. No army could be
efficient when its subordinate officers on the active list were men
of sixty or seventy years of age.
13. The sepoys were quite right; no other service in the world was
managed on such principles. The illusion of the old Company's
officers about the gratitude and affection of the men generally was
rudely dispelled nineteen years after the conversations recorded in
the text. But, even in 1857. a noble minority remained faithful and
did devoted service.
14. The best troops now are the Sikhs, Gôrkhâs, and frontier
Muhammadans. Oudh men still enlist in large numbers, but do not enjoy
their old prestige. The army known to the author comprised no Sikhs,
Gôrkhâs, or frontier Muhammadans. The recruitment of Gôrkhâs only
began in 1838, and the other two classes of troops were obtained by
the annexation of the Panjâb in 1849.
15. Enlistment in the native army is absolutely voluntary, and does
not even require to be stimulated by a bounty. A subsequent passage
shows that the author refuses to describe the British army as an
'entirety voluntary' one, because a soldier when once enlisted is
bound to serve for a definite term; whereas the sepoy could resign
when he chose.
16. Desertions are frequent among the regiments recruited on the
Afghan frontier. These regiments did not exist in the author's day.
17. An ordinance issued in France so late as 1778 required that a man
should produce proof of four quarterings of nobility before he could
get a commission in the army. [W. H. S.]
18. '_Est et alia causa, cur attenuatae sint legiones_,' says
Vegetius. 'Magnus in illis labor est militandi, graviora arma, sera
munera, severior disciplila. Quod vitantes plerique, in auxiliis
festinant militiae sacramenta percipere, ubi et minor sudor, et
maturiora sunt premia.' Lib._ II. _cap._ 3. [W. H. S.] Vegetius,
according to Gibbon and his most recent editor (_recensuit Carolus
Lang. Editio altera. Lipsiae, Teubner_, 1885), flourished during the
reign of Valentinian III (A.D. 425-55). His 'Soldier's Pocket-book'
is entitled 'Flavi Vegeti Renati Epitoma Rei Militaris'.
'Montesquieu thought that 'the Government had better have stuck to
the old practice of slitting noses and cutting off ears, since the
French soldiers, like the Roman dandies under Pompey, must
necessarily have a greater dread of a disfigured face than of death.
It did not occur to him that France could retain her soldiers by
other and better motives. See _Spirit of Laws_, book vi, chap. 12.
See _Necker on the Finances_, vol. ii, chap. 5; vol. iii, chap. 34. A
day-labourer on the roads got fifteen sous a day; and a French
soldier only six, at the very time that the mortality of an army of
forty thousand men sent to the colonies was annually 13,333, or about
one in three. In our native army the sepoy gets about double the
wages of an ordinary day-labourer; and his duties, when well done,
involve just enough of exercise to keep him in health. The casualties
are perhaps about one in a hundred. [W. H. S.]
20. Just precisely what the French soldiers were after the revolution
had purged France of all 'the perilous stuff that weighed upon the
heart' of its people. Gibbon, in considering the chance of the
civilized nations of Europe ever being again overrun by the
barbarians from the North, as in the time of the Romans, says: 'If a
savage conqueror should issue from the deserts of Tartary, he must
repeatedly vanquish the robust peasantry of Russia, the numerous
armies of Germany, the gallant nobles of France, and the intrepid
free men of Britain.' Never was a more just, yet more unintended
satire upon the state of a country. Russia was to depend upon her
'robust peasantry'; Germany upon her 'numerous armies'; England upon
her 'intrepid free men'; and poor France upon her 'gallant nobles'
alone; because, unhappily, no other part of her vast population was
then ever thought of. When the hour of trial came, those pampered
nobles who had no feeling in common with the people were shaken off'
like dew-drops from the lion's mane'; and the hitherto spurned
peasantry of France, under the guidance and auspices of men who
understood and appreciated them, astonished the world with their
powers. [W. H. S.]
21. The allusion is to the now half-forgotten war with the United
States in the years 1812-14, during the course of which the English
captured the city of Washington, and the Americans gained some
unexpected naval victories.
22. The author has already denounced the practice of impressment,
_ante_, chapter 26, note 27.
23. 'to' in the original edition.
24. See McCulloch, _Pol. Econ._, p. 235, 1st ed., Edinburgh, 1825.
[W. H. S.]
25. Many German princes adopted the discipline of Frederick in their
little petty states, without exactly knowing why or wherefore. The
Prince of Darmstadt conceived a great passion for the military art;
and when the weather would not permit him to worry his little army of
five thousand men in the open air, he had them worried for his
amusement under sheds. But he was soon obliged to build a wall round
the town in which he drilled his soldiers for the sole purpose of
preventing their running away--round this wall he had a regular chain
of sentries to fire at the deserters. Mr. Moore thought that the
discontent in this little band was greater than in the Prussian army,
inasmuch as the soldiers saw no object but the prince's amusement. A
fight, or the prospect of a fight, would have been a feast to them.
[W. H. S.] It is hardly necessary to observe that the modern system
of drill is widely different.
26. Speaking of the question whether recruits drawn from the country
or the towns are best, Vegetius says: '_De qua parte numquam credo
potuisse dubitari, aptiorem armis rusticam plebem, quae sub divo et
in labore nutritur; solis patiens; umbrae negligens; balnearum
nescia; delictarurum ignara; simplicis animi; parvo contenta; duratis
ad omnem laborem membris; cui gestara ferrum, fossam ducere, onus
ferre, consuetudo de rare est.' (De Re Militari_, Lib. i, cap. 3.)
[W. H. S.] The passage quoted is disfigured by many misprints in the
original edition.
27. As the Madras sepoys do.
28. The writing of the bulk of this work was completed in 1839. These
concluding supplementary chapters on the Bengal army seem to have
been written a little later, perhaps in 1841, the year in which they
were first printed. The publication of the complete work took place
in 1844. The Mutiny broke out in 1857, and proved that the fidelity
of the sepoys could not be so easily assured as the author supposed.
29. I believe the native army to be better now than it ever was--
better in its disposition and in its organization. The men have now a
better feeling of assurance than they formerly had that all their
rights will be secured to them by their European officers that all
those officers are men of honour, though they have not all of them
the same fellow feeling that their officers had with them in former
days. This is because they have not the same opportunity of seeing
their courage and fidelity tried in the same scenes of common danger.
Go to Afghanistan and China, and you will find the feeling between
officers and men as fine as ever it was in days of yore, whatever it
may be at our large and gay stations, where they see so little of
each other. [W. H. S.] The author's reputation for sagacity and
discernment could not be made to rest upon the above remarks. His
judgement was led astray by his lifelong association with and
affection for the native troops. Lord William Bentinck took a far
juster view of the situation, and understood far better the real
nature of the ties which bind the native army to its masters. His
admirable minute dated 13th March, 1835, published for the first time
in Mr. D. Boulger's well-written little book (_Lord William
Bentinck_, 'Rulers of India', pp. 177-201), is still worthy of study.
As a corrective to the author's too effusive sentiment, some brief
passages from the Governor-General's minute may be quoted. 'In
considering the question of internal danger,' he observes, 'those
officers most conversant with Indian affairs who were examined before
the Parliamentary Committee apprehend no danger to our dominion as
long as we are assured of the fidelity of our native troops. To this
opinion I entirely subscribe. But others again view in the native
army itself the source of our greatest peril. In all ages the
military body has been often the prime cause, but generally the
instrument, of all revolutions; and proverbial almost as is the
fidelity of the native soldier to the chief whom he serves, more
especially when he is justly and kindly treated, still we cannot be
blind to the fact that many of those ties which bind other armies to
their allegiance are totally wanting in this. Here is no patriotism,
no community of feeling as to religion or birthplace, no influencing
attachment from high considerations, or great honours and rewards.
Our native army also is extremely ignorant, capable of the strongest
religions excitement, and very sensitive to disrespect to their
persona or infringement of their customs. . . . In the native army
alone rests our internal danger, and this danger may involve our
complete subversion. . . .
'All these facts and opinions seem to me to establish
incontrovertibly that a large proportion of European troops is
necessary for our security under all circumstances of peace and war.
. . .
'I believe the sepoys have never been so good as they were in the
earliest part of our career; none superior to those under De Boigne.
. . I fearlessly pronounce the Indian army to be the least efficient
and most expensive in the world.'
The events of 1857-9 proved the truth of Lord William Bentinck's wise
words. The native army is no longer inefficient as a whole, though
certain sections of it may still be so, but the less that is said
about the supposed affection of mercenary troops for a foreign
government, the better.
30. Of course, all the military forces, British and Indian, are now
alike the King's. Each service has its own rules and regulations.
31. 'General Baird had started from Bombay in the end of December
1800, but only arrived at Kossir, on the coast of Upper Egypt, on the
8th of June. In nine days, with a force of 6,400 British and native
troops, he traversed 140 miles of desert to the Nile, and reached
Cairo on 10th August with hardly any loss. The united force then
marched down on Alexandria, and on 31st August Menou capitulated, and
the whole French army evacuated Egypt.' (Balfour, _Cyclopaedia_, 3rd
ed., s.v. 'Egypt.') The Indian native army again did brilliant
service in the Egyptian campaign of 1882.
32. Great progress has been made in the task of lightening the
miseries of European soldiers in India by the provision of innocent
amusements. Lord Roberts, during his long tenure of the office of
Commander-in-Chief, pre-eminently showed himself to be the soldier's
friend.
33. Their commanding officers say, as Pharaoh said to the Israelites,
'Let there be more work laid upon them, that they may labour therein,
and not enter into vain discourses.' Life to such men becomes
intolerable; and they either destroy themselves, or commit murder,
that they may be taken to a distant court for trial. [W. H. S.] The
quotation is from Exodus v. 9. The Authorized Version is, 'Let there
be more work laid upon the men, that they may labour therein; and let
them not regard vain words.'
34. See Livy, lib. ii, cap. 59. The infantry under Fabius had refused
to conquer, that their general, whom they hated, might not triumph;
but the whole army under Claudius, whom they had more cause to
detest, not only refused to conquer, but determined to be conquered,
that he might be involved in their disgrace. All the abilities of
Lucullus, one of the ablest generals Rome ever had, were rendered
almost useless by his disregard to the feelings of his soldiers. He
could not perceive that the civil wars under Marius and Sylla had
rendered a different treatment of Roman soldiers necessary to success
in war. Pompey, his successor, a man of inferior military genius,
succeeded much better because he had the sagacity to see that he now
required not only the confidence but the affections of his soldiers.
Caesar to abilities even greater than those of Lucullus united the
conciliatory spirit of Pompey [W. H. S.]
35. This curious incident, which is not mentioned by Thornton in the
detailed account of the Nepalese War given in his twenty-fourth
chapter, may be the failure of the 53rd Regiment to support General
Gllespie in the attack on Kalanga, in 1814, not 1815 (Mill, Bk. II,
chap. 1; vol. viii, p. 19, ed. 1858). The war was notable for the
number of blunders and failures which marked its earlier stages.
36. Vegetius, _De Re Militari_, Lib. iii, cap. 4, If corporal
punishment be retained at all, it should be limited to the two
offences I have already mentioned; [W. H. S.] namely, (l) mutiny or
gross insubordination, (2) plunder or violence in the field or on the
march. (_Ante_, chapter 76, note 6.)
37. Polybius says that 'as the human body is apt to get out of order
under good feeding and little exercise, so are states and armies.'
(Bk. II, chap. 6.)--Wherever food is cheap, and the air good, native
regiments should be well exercised without being worried.
I must here take the liberty to give an extract from a letter from
one of the best and most estimable officers now in the Bengal army:
'As connected with the discipline of the native army, I may here
remark that I have for some years past observed on the part of many
otherwise excellent commanding officers a great want of attention to
the instruction of the young European officers on first joining their
regiments. I have had ample opportunities of seeing the great value
of a regular course of instruction drill for at least six months.
When I joined my first regiment, which was about forty years ago, I
had the good fortune to be under a commandant and adjutant who,
happily for me and many others, attached great importance to this
very necessary course of instruction, I then acquired a thorough
knowledge of my duties, which led to my being appointed an adjutant
very early in life. When I attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel I
had, however, opportunities of observing how very much this essential
duty had been neglected in certain regiments, and made it a rule in
all that I commanded to keep all young officers on first joining at
the instruction drill till thoroughly grounded in their duties. Since
I ceased to command a regiment, I have taken advantage of every
opportunity to express to those commanding officers with whom I have
been in correspondence my conviction of the great advantages of this
system to the rising generation. In going from one regiment to
another I found many curious instances of ignorance on the part of
young officers who had been many years with their corps. It was by no
means an easy task to convince them that they really knew nothing, or
at least had a great deal to learn; but when they were made sensible
of it, they many of them turned out excellent officers, and now, I
believe, bless the day they were first put under me.'
The advantages of the System here mentioned cannot be questioned; and
it is much to be regretted that it is not strictly enforced in every
regiment in the service. Young officers may find it irksome at first;
but they soon become sensible of the advantages, and learn to applaud
the commandant who has had the firmness to consult their permanent
interests more than their present inclinations. [W. H. S.]
38. Among the many changes produced in India by the development of
the railway system and by other causes one of the most striking is
the abolition of small military stations. Almost all these have
disappeared, and the troops are now massed in large cantonments,
where they can be handled much more effectively than in out-stations.
The discipline of small detached bodies of troops is generally liable
to deterioration.
39. Many instances of semi-religious honour paid by natives to the
tombs of Europeans have been noticed.
40. There are, I believe, many Jemadârs who still wear medals on
their breasts for their service in the taking of Java and the Isle of
France more than thirty years ago. Indeed, I suspect that some will
be found who accompanied Sir David Baird to Egypt. [W. H. S.] Such
old men must have been perfectly useless as officers. Sir David
Baird' s operations took place in 1801.
41. The rate of pay of Jemadârs in the Bengal Native Infantry now is
either forty or fifty rupees monthly. Half of the officers of this
rank in each regiment receive the higher rate. The grievance
complained of by the author has, therefore, been remedied. The pay of
a Havîldâr is still, or was recently, fourteen rupees a month.
CHAPTER 77
Invalid Establishment.
I have said nothing in the foregoing chapter of the invalid
establishment, which is probably the greatest of all bonds between
the Government and its native army, and consequently the greatest
element in the 'spirit of discipline'. Bonaparte, who was, perhaps,
with all his faults, 'the greatest man that ever floated on the tide
of time', said at Elba, 'There is not even a village that has not
brought forth a general, a colonel, a captain, or a prefect, who has
raised himself by his especial merit, and illustrated at once his
family and his country.' Now we know that the families and the
village communities in which our invalid pensioners reside never read
newspapers,[1] and feel but little interest in the victories in which
these pensioners may have shared. They feel that they have no share
in the _éclat_ or glory which attend them; but they everywhere admire
and respect the government which cherishes its faithful old servants,
and enables them to spend the 'winter of their days' in the bosoms of
their families; and they spurn the man who has failed in his duty
towards that government in the hour of need.
No sepoy taken from the Râjpût communities of Oudh or any other part
of the country can hope to conceal from his family circle or village
community any act of cowardice, or anything else which is considered
disgraceful to a soldier, or to escape the odium which it merits in
that circle and community.
In the year 1819 I was encamped near a village in marching through
Oudh, when the landlord, a very cheerful old man, came up to me with
his youngest son, a lad of eighteen years of age, and requested me to
allow him (the son) to show me the best shooting grounds in the
neighbourhood. I took my 'Joe Manton' and went out. The youth showed
me some very good ground, and I found him an agreeable companion, and
an excellent shot with his matchlock. On our return we found the old
man waiting for us. He told me that he had four sons, all by God's
blessing tall enough for the Company's service, in which one had
attained the rank of 'havîldâr' (sergeant), and two were still
sepoys. Their wives and children lived with him; and they sent home
every month two-thirds of their pay, which enabled him to pay all the
rent of the estate and appropriate the whole of the annual returns to
the subsistence and comfort of the numerous family. He was, he said,
now growing old, and wished his eldest son, the sergeant, to resign
the service and come home to take upon him the management of the
estate; that as soon as he could be prevailed upon to do so, his old
wife would permit my sporting companion, her youngest son, to enlist,
but not before.
I was on my way to visit Fyzabad, the old metropolis of Oudh,[2] and
on returning a month afterwards in the latter end of January, I found
that the wheat, which was all then in ear, had been destroyed by a
severe frost. The old man wept bitterly, and he and his old wife
yielded to the wishes of their youngest son to accompany me and
enlist in my regiment, which was then stationed at Partâbgarh.[3]
We set out, but were overtaken at the third stage by the poor old
man, who told me that his wife had not eaten or slept since the boy
left her, and that he must go back and wait for the return of his
eldest brother, or she certainly would not live. The lad obeyed the
call of his parents, and I never saw or heard of the family again.
There is hardly a village in the kingdom of Oudh without families
like this depending upon the good conduct and liberal pay of sepoys
in our infantry regiments, and revering the name of the government
they serve, or have served. Similar villages are to be found
scattered over the provinces of Bihâr and Benares, the districts
between the Ganges and Jumna, and other parts where Râjpûts and the
other classes from which we draw our recruits have been long
established as proprietors and cultivators of the soil.
These are the feelings on which the spirit of discipline in our
native army chiefly depends, and which we shall, I hope, continue to
cultivate, as we have always hitherto done, with care; and a
commander must take a great deal of pains to make his men miserable,
before he can render them, like the soldiers of Frederick, 'the
irreconcilable enemies of their officers and their government'.
In the year 1817 I was encamped in a grove on the right bank of the
Ganges below Monghyr,[4] when the Marquis of Hastings was proceeding
up the river in his fleet, to put himself at the head of the grand
division of the army then about to take the field against the
Pindhârîs and their patrons, the Marâthâ, chiefs. Here I found an old
native pensioner, above a hundred years of age. He had fought under
Lord Clive at the battle of Plassey, A.D. 1757, and was still a very
cheerful, talkative old gentleman, though he had long lost the use of
his eyes. One of his sons, a grey-headed old man, and a Sûbadâr
(captain) in a regiment of native infantry, had been at the taking of
Java,[5] and was now come home on leave to visit his father. Other
sons had risen to the rank of commissioned officers, and their
families formed the aristocracy of the neighbourhood. In the evening,
as the fleet approached, the old gentleman, dressed in his full
uniform of former days as a commissioned officer, had himself taken
out close to the bank of the river, that he might be once more during
his life within sight of a British Commander-in-Chief, though he
could no longer see one. There the old patriarch sat listening with
intense delight to the remarks of the host of his descendants around
him, as the Governor-General's magnificent fleet passed along,[6]
every one fancying that he had caught a glimpse of the great man, and
trying to describe him to the old gentleman, who in return told them
(no doubt for the thousandth time) what sort of a person the great
Lord Clive was. His son, the old Sûbadâr, now and then, with modest
deference, venturing to imagine a resemblance between one or the
other, and his _beau idéal_ of a great man, Lord Lake. Few things in
India have interested me more than scenes like these.
I have no means of ascertaining the number of military pensioners in
England or in any other European nation, and cannot, therefore, state
the proportion which they bear to the actual number of forces kept
up. The military pensioners in our Bengal establishment on the 1st of
May, 1841, were 22,381; and the family pensioners, or heirs of
soldiers killed in action, 1,730; total 24,111, out of an army of
82,027 men. I question whether the number of retired soldiers
maintained at the expense of government bears so large a proportion
to the number actually serving in any other nation on earth.[7] Not
one of the twenty-four thousand has been brought on, or retained
upon, the list from political interest or court favour; every one
receives his pension for long and faithful services, after he has
been pronounced by a board of European surgeons as no longer fit for
the active duties of his profession; or gets it for the death of a
father, husband, or son, who has been killed in the service of
government.
All are allowed to live with their families, and European officers
are stationed at central points in the different parts of the country
where they are most numerous to pay them their stipends every six
months. These officers are at-- 1st, Barrackpore; 2nd, Dinapore; 3rd,
Allahabad; 4th, Lucknow; 5th, Meerut. From these central points they
move twice a year to the several other points within their respective
circles of payment where the pensioners can most conveniently attend
to receive their money on certain days, so that none of them have to
go far, or to employ any expensive means to get it--it is, in fact,
brought home as near as possible to their doors by a considerate and
liberal government.[8]
Every soldier is entitled to a pension when pronounced by a board of
surgeons as no longer fit for the active duties of his profession,
after fifteen years' active service; but to be entitled to the
pension of his rank in the army, he must have served in such rank for
three years. Till he has done so he is entitled only to the pension
of that immediately below it. A sepoy gets four rupees a month, that
is, about one-fourth more than the ordinary wages of common
uninstructed labour throughout the country.[9] But it will be better
to give the rate of pay of the native officers and men of our native
infantry and that of their retired pensions in one table.
TABLE OF THE RATE OF PAY AND RETIRED PENSIONS OF THE NATIVE OFFICERS
AND SOLDIERS OF OUR NATIVE INFANTRY.
_Rank_ _Rate of Pay_ _Rate of_
_per_ _Pension per_
_Mensem._ _Mensem._
_Rupees._ _Rupees._
A Sepoy, or private soldier. (Note.--
After sixteen years' service eight
rupees a month, after twenty years
he gets nine rupees a month) . . 7.0 4.0
A Nâik, or corporal . . . . 12.0 7.0
A Havîldâr, or sergeant . . . . 14.0 7.0
A Jemadâr, subaltern commissioned officer 24.8 13.0
Sûbadâr, or Captain . . . . 67.0 25.0
Sûbadâr Major . . . . . 92.0 0.0[a]
A Sûbadâr, after forty years service . 0.0 50.0
A Sûbadâr Bahâdur of the Order of British
India, First Class, two rupees a day
extra; Second Class, one Rupee a day
extra. This extra allowance they
enjoy after they retire from the
service during life.[b]
a. I presume this means that no special rate of pension was fixed for
the rank of Sûbadâr Major.
b. The monthly rates of pay and pension now in force for native
officers and men of the Bengal army are as follows:
_Rank_ _Pay._ _Pension._
_Ordinary._ _Superior._ _Ordinary._ _Superior._
_Rs._ _Rs._ _Rs._ _Rs._
Sûbadâr 80 100[c] 30 50
Jemadâr 40 50[c] 15 25
Havîldâr 14 -- 7 12
Naick (nâik) 12 -- 7 12
Drummer or Bugler 7 -- 4 7
Sepoy 7 -- 4 7
c. Half of this rank in each regiment receive the higher rate of pay.
The circumstances which, in the estimation of the people, distinguish
the British from all other rulers in India, and make it grow more and
more upon their affections, are these: The security which public
servants enjoy in the tenure of their office; the prospect they have
of advancement by the gradation of rank; the regularity and liberal
scale of their pay; and the provision for old age, when they have
discharged the duties entrusted to them ably and faithfully.[l0] In a
native state almost every public officer knows that he has no chance
of retaining his office beyond the reign of the present minister or
favourite; and that no present minister or favourite can calculate
upon retaining his ascendancy over the mind of his chief for more
than a few months or years. Under us they see secretaries to
government, members of council, and Governors-General themselves
going out and coming into office without causing any change in the
position of their subordinates, or even the apprehension of any
change, as long as they discharge their duties ably and faithfully.
In a native state the new minister or favourite brings with him a
whole host of expectants who must be provided for as soon as he takes
the helm; and if all the favourites of his predecessor do not
voluntarily vacate their offices for them, he either turns them out
without ceremony, or his favourites very soon concoct charges against
them, which causes them to be tumed out in due form, and perhaps put
into jail till they have 'paid the uttermost farthing'. Under us the
Governors-General, members of council, the secretaries of state,[11]
the members of the judicial and revenue boards, all come into office
and take their seats unattended by a single expectant. No native
officer of the revenue or judicial department, who is conscious of
having done his duty ably and honestly, feels the slightest
uneasiness at the change. The consequence is a degree of integrity in
public officers never before known in India, and rarely to be found
in any other country. In the province where I now write,[12] which
consists of six districts, there are twenty-two native judicial
officers, Munsifs, Sadr Amîns, and Principal Sadr Amîns;[13] and in
the whole province I have never heard a suspicion breathed against
one of them; nor do I believe that the integrity of one of them is at
this time suspected. The only one suspected within the two and a half
years that I have been in the province was, I grieve to say, a
Christian; and he has been removed from office, to the great
satisfaction of the people, and is never to be employed again.[14]
The only department in which our native public servants do not enjoy
the same advantages of security in the tenure of their office,
prospect of rise in the gradation of rank, liberal scale of pay, and
provision for old age, is the police; and it is admitted on all hands
that there they are everywhere exceedingly corrupt. Not one of them,
indeed, ever thinks it possible that he can be supposed honest; and
those who really are so are looked upon as a kind of martyrs or
penitents, who are determined by long suffering to atone for past
crimes; and who, if they could not get into the police, would
probably go long pilgrimages on all fours, or with unboiled peas in
their shoes.[15]
He who can suppose that men so inadequately paid, who have no
promotion to look forward to, and feel no security in their tenure of
office, and consequently no hope of a provision for old age, will be
zealous and honest in the discharge of their duties, must be very
imperfectly acquainted with human nature--with the motives by which
men are influenced all over the world. Indeed, no man does in reality
suppose so; on the contrary, every man knows that the same motives
actuate public servants in India as elsewhere. We have acted
successfully upon this knowledge in all other branches of the public
service, and shall, I trust, at no distant period act upon the same
in that of the police; and then, and not till then, can it prove to
the people what we must all wish it to be, a blessing.
The European magistrate of a district has, perhaps, a million of
people to look after.[16] The native officers next under him are the
Thânadârs of the different subdivisions of the district, containing
each many towns and villages, with a population of perhaps one
hundred thousand people. These officers have no grade to look forward
to, and get a salary of _twenty-five rupees a month each_.[17]
They cannot possibly do their duties unless they keep each a couple
of horses or ponies, with servants to attend to them; indeed, they
are told so by every magistrate who cares about the peace of his
district. The people, seeing how much we expect from the Thânadâr,
and how little we give him, submit to his demands for contribution
without a murmur, and consider almost any demand venial from a man so
employed and paid. They are confounded at our inconsistency, and say,
where they dare to speak their minds, 'We see you giving high
salaries and high prospects of advancement to men who have nothing on
earth to do but to collect your revenues and to decide our disputes
about pounds, shillings, and pence, which we used to decide much
better among ourselves when we had no other court but that of our
elders to appeal to; while those who are to protect life and
property, to keep peace over the land, and enable the industrious to
work in security, maintain their families and pay the government
revenue, are left without any prospect of rising, and almost without
any pay at all.'
There is really nothing in our rule in India which strikes the people
so much as this glaring inconsistency, the evil effects of which are
so great and so manifest. The only way to remedy the evil is to give
the police what the other branches of the public service already
enjoy--a feeling of security in the tenure of office, a higher rate
of salary, and, above all, a gradation of rank which shall afford a
prospect of rising to those who discharge their duties ably and
honestly. For this purpose all that is required is the interposition
of an officer between the Thânadâr and the magistrate, in the same
way as the Sadr Amîn is now interposed between the Munsif and the
Judge.[18] On an average there are, perhaps, twelve Thânas, or police
subdivisions, in each district, and one such officer to every four
Thânas would be sufficient for all purposes. The Governor-General who
shall confer this boon on the people of India will assuredly be
hailed as one of their greatest benefactors.[19] I should, I believe,
speak within bounds when I say that the Thânadârs throughout the
country give at present more than all the money which they receive in
avowed salaries from government as a share of indirect perquisites to
the native officers of the magistrate's court, who have to send their
reports to them, and communicate their orders, and prepare the cases
of the prisoners they may send in for commitment to the Sessions
courts.[20] The intermediate officers here proposed would obviate all
this; they would be to the magistrate at once the _tapis_ of Prince
Husain and the telescope of Prince Ali--media that would enable them
to be everywhere and see everything.
I may here seem to be 'travelling beyond the record', but it is not
so. In treating on the spirit of military discipline in our native
army I advocate, as much as in me lies, the great general principle
upon which rests, I think, not only our _power_ in India, but what is
more, the _justification of that power_. It is our wish, as it is our
interest, to give to the Hindoos and Muhammadans a liberal share in
all the duties of administration, in all offices, civil and military,
and to show the people in general the incalculable advantages of a
strong and settled government, which can secure life, property, and
character, and the free enjoyment of all their blessings throughout
the land; and give to those who perform duties as public servants
ably and honestly a sure prospect of rising by gradation, a feeling
of security in their tenure of office, a liberal salary while they
serve, and a respectable provision for old age.
It is by a steady adherence to these principles that the Indian Civil
Service has been raised to its present high character for integrity
and ability; and the native army made what it really is, faithful and
devoted to its rulers, and ready to serve them in any quarter of the
world.[21] I deprecate any innovation upon these principles in the
branches of the public service to which they have already been
applied with such eminent success; and I advocate their extension to
all other branches as the surest means of making them what they ought
and what we must all most fervently wish them to be.
The native officers of our judicial and revenue establishments, or of
our native army, are everywhere a bond of union between the governing
and the governed.[22] Discharging everywhere honestly and ably their
duties to their employers, they tend everywhere to secure to them the
respect and affection of the people. His Highness Muhammad S'aîd
Khân, the reigning Nawâb of Râmpur, still talks with pride of the
days when he was one of our Deputy Collectors in the adjoining
district of Badâon, and of the useful knowledge he acquired in that
office.[23] He has still one brother a Sadr Amîn in the district of
Mainpurî, and another a Deputy Collector in the Hamîrpur District;
and neither would resign his situation under the Honourable Company
to take office in Râmpur at three times the rate of salary, when
invited to do so on the accession of the eldest brother to the
'masnad'. What they now enjoy they owe to their own industry and
integrity; and they are proud to serve a government which supplies
them with so many motives for honest exertion, and leaves them
nothing to fear, as long as they exert themselves honestly. To be in
a situation which it is generally understood that none but honest and
able men can fill[24] is of itself a source of pride, and the sons of
native princes and men of rank, both Hindoo and Muhammadan,
everywhere prefer taking office in our judicial and revenue
establishments to serving under native rulers, where everything
depends entirely upon the favour or frown of men in power, and
ability, industry, and integrity can secure nothing.[25]
Notes:
1. This can no longer be safely assumed as true. Newspapers now
penetrate to almost every village.
2. Fyzâbâd (Faizâbâd) was the capital for a short time of the Nawâb
Wazîrs of Oudh. In 1775 Âsaf-ud-daula moved his court to Lucknow. The
city of Ajodhya adjoining Fyzâbâd is of immense antiquity.
3. In. the south of Oudh. It is not now a military station.
4. Monghyr (Mungêr) is the chief town of the district of the same
name, which lies to the east of Patna.
5. August, 1811.
6. Such a spectacle is no longer to be seen in India. Four or five
inconspicuous railway carriages or motor-cars now take the place of
the 'magnificent fleet'.
7. The percentage is 29 1/2.
8. All these arrangements have been changed. Military pensioners are
now paid through the civil authorities of each district.
9. Wages are now generally higher.
10. This sentence might misled readers unacquainted with the details
of Indian administration. Every official who satisfies the formal
rules of the Accounts department gets his pension, as a matter of
course, in accordance with those rules, whether his service has been
able and faithful or not. The pension list is often the last refuge
of incompetent and dishonest officials, to which they are gladly
consigned by code-bound superiors, who cannot otherwise get rid of
them. Nor am I certain that British rule 'grows more and more upon
the affections' of those subject to it.
11. The author means secretaries to the Government of India or
provincial governments.
12. The Sâgar and Nerbudda (Narbadâ) Territories, now included in the
Central Provinces.
13. The designations Sadr Amîn and Principal Sadr Amîn have been
superseded by the title of Subordinate Judge. The officers referred
to have only civil jurisdiction, which does not include revenue and
rent causes in the United Provinces.
14. Most experienced officers will, I think, agree with me that the
author was exceptionally fortunate in his experience. So far as I can
make out, the standard of integrity among the higher Indian officials
has risen considerably during the last century, but is still a long
way from the perfection indicated by the author's remarks.
15. These observations on the police are merely a repetition of the
remarks in Chapter 69, which have been discussed in the notes to that
chapter.
16. The districts in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh are
usually much smaller than those in Bengal or Madras, but even in
Northern India a district with only a million of inhabitants is
considered to be rather a small one. Some districts have a population
of more than three millions each.
17. All has been changed. Many comparatively well paid officials of
Indian birth now intervene between the District Magistrate and the
small people on twenty-five rupees a month. Sometimes the District
Magistrate himself is an Indian.
18. The anthor's note to this passage repeats the quotation from
Hobbes's _Leviathan_, Part II, sect. 30, which has been already cited
in the text, chapter 69, following [12], and need not be repeated
here. The note continues: 'Almost every Thânadâr in our dominions is
a little Tarquin in his way, exciting the indignation of the people
against his master. When we give him the proper incentives to good,
we shall be able with better conscience to punish him severely for
bad conduct. The interposition of the officers I propose between him
and the magistrate will give him the required incentive to good
conduct, at the same time that it will deprive him of all hope of
concealing his "evil ways", should he continue in them.' [W. H. S.]
He still manages to continue in his evil ways, and generally to
conceal them.
19. This statement seems almost like sarcasm to a reader who knows
what manner of men well-paid Inspectors of Police commonly are, and
how they are regarded by the non-official population. They are not
usually reverenced as 'protectors of the poor'.
20. The reader who is not practically acquainted with the work of
administration in India will probably think that the magistrate who
allows such intrigues to go on must be very careless and inefficient.
But that thought, though very natural, would be unjust. The author
was one of the best possible district magistrates, and yet was unable
to suppress the evils which he describes, nor have the remedies which
he advocated, and which have been adopted, proved effectual. The
Thânadâr now has generally to pay the Inspector and the people in the
District Superintendent's office, in addition to 'the native officers
of the magistrate's court'.
21. We have already seen how mistaken the author was concerning the
army.
22. This statement requires to be guarded by many qualifications. The
author's following remarks only illustrate the well-known fact that
in India official rank is ardently desired by the classes eligible
for it, and carries with it great social advantages.
23. Râmpur is the small Rohilla state within the borders of the
Bareilly District, United Provinces.
24. This description of the class of officials alluded to is somewhat
idealized, though it applies to a considerable proportion of the
class.
25. These propositions were, doubtless, literally correct in the
author's time, but they are not at all fully applicable to the
existing state of affairs.
APPENDIX
THUGGEE, AND THE PART TAKEN IN ITS SUPPRESSION BY GENERAL SIR W. H.
SLEEMAN, K.C.B.
NOTE BY CAPTAIN J. L. SLEEMAN, ROYAL SUSSEX REGIMENT
The religion of murder known as 'Thuggee' was established in India
some centuries before the British Government first became aware of
its existence, It is remarkable that, after an intercourse with India
of nearly two centuries, and the exercise of sovereignty over a large
part of the country for no inconsiderable period, the English should
have been so ignorant of the existence and habits of a body so
dangerous to the public peace. The name 'Thug' signifies a
'Deceiver', and it will be generally admitted that this term was well
earned.[1] There is reason to believe that between 1799 and 1808 the
practice of 'Thuggee' (Thagî) reached its height and that thousands
of persons were annually destroyed by its disciples. It is
interesting to note the legendary origin of this strange and horrible
religion: In remote ages a demon infested the earth and devoured
mankind as soon as created. The world was thus left unpeopled, until
the goddess of the Thugs (Dêvî or Kâlî) came to the rescue. She
attacked the demon, and cut him down; but from every drop of his
blood another demon arose; and though the goddess continued to cut
down these rising demons, fresh broods of demons sprang from their
blood, as from that of their progenitors; and the diabolical race
consequently multiplied with fearful rapidity. At length, fatigued
and disheartened, the goddess found it necessary to change her
tactics. Accordingly, relinquishing all personal efforts for their
suppression, she formed two men from perspiration brushed from her
arms. To each of these men she gave a handkerchief, and with these
the two assistants of the goddess were commanded to put all the
demons to death without shedding a drop of blood. Her commands were
immediately obeyed; and the demons were all strangled. Having
strangled all the demons, the two men offered to return the
handkerchiefs; but the goddess desired that they should retain them,
not merely as memorials of their heroism, but as the implements of a
lucrative trade in which their descendants were to labour and thrive.
They were in fact commanded to strangle men as they had strangled
demons.
Several generations passed before Thuggee became practised as a
profession--probably for the same reason that a sportsman allows game
to accumulate--but in due time it was abundantly exercised. Thus,
according to the creed of the Thug, did their order arise, and thus
originated their mode of operation.
The profession of a Thug, like almost everything in India, became
hereditary, the fraternity, however, receiving occasional
reinforcements from strangers, but these were admitted with great
caution, and seldom after they had attained mature age. The Thugs
were usually men seemingly occupied in most respectable and often in
most responsible positions. Annually these outwardly respectable
citizens and tradesmen would take the road, and sacrifice a multitude
of victims for the sake of their religion and pecuniary gain. The
Thug bands would assemble at fixed places of rendezvous, and before
commencing their expeditions much strange ceremony had to be gone
through. A sacred pickaxe was the emblem of their faith: its
fashioning was wrought with quaint rites and its custody was a matter
of great moment. Its point was supposed to indicate the line of route
propitious to the disciples of the goddess, and it was credited with
other powers equally marvellous. The brute creation afforded a vast
fund of instruction upon every proceeding. The ass, jackal, wolf,
deer, hare, dog, cat, owl, kite, crow, partridge, jay, and lizard,
all served to furnish good or bad omens to a Thug on the war-path.
For the first week of the expedition fasting and general discomfort
were insisted on, unless the first murder took place within that
period. Women were never murdered unless their slaughter was
unavoidable (i.e. when they were thought to suspect the cause of the
disappearance of their men-folk). Children of the murdered were often
adopted by the Thugs, and the boys were initiated in due course in
the horrid rites of Thuggee. Men skilled in the practice of digging
and concealing graves were always attached to each Thug gang. These
were able to prepare graves in anticipation of a murder, and to
effectually conceal all trace of the crime after they were occupied.
To assist the grave-diggers in this duty all roads used by Thugs had
selected places upon them at which murders were always carried out if
possible. The Thugs would speak of such places with the same
affection and enthusiasm as other men would of the most delightful
scenes of their early life.
It was these people, versed in deceit and surrounded by a thousand
obstacles to conviction, that General Sir W. H. Sleeman so nobly set
out to exterminate. Within seven years of his first commencing the
suppression of Thuggee it had practically ceased to exist as a
religion; and he had the privilege of seeing it entirely suppressed
as such before giving up this work for the Residentship at Lucknow.
He was described when taking over the latter appointment as follows:
'He had served in India nearly forty years. His work had been of the
best. He had done more than any one to suppress 'Thuggee' finally,
and had a knowledge of the Indian character and language possessed by
very few. He was personally popular with all classes of Indians, and
respected, feared, and trusted by all.'
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES BY THE EDITOR
Captain J. L. Sleeman, who had intended to contribute an account in
some detail of his grandfather's operations for the suppression of
Thuggee, has been ordered on active service, and consequently has
been unable to write more than the short note printed above.
The editor thinks it desirable to supplement Captain Sleeman's
observations by certain additional remarks.
The earliest historical notice of Thuggee appears to be the statement
in the History of Fîrôz Shâh Tughlak (1351-88) by a contemporary
author that at some time or other in the reign of that sovereign
about one thousand Thugs were arrested in Delhi, on the denunciation
of an informer. The Sultan, with misplaced clemency, refused to
sanction the execution of any of the prisoners, whom he shipped off
to Lakhnauti or Gaur in Bengal, where they were let loose. (Elliot
and Dowson, _Hist. of India_, iii. 141.) That absurd proceeding may
well have been the origin of the system of river Thuggee in Bengal,
which possibly may be still practised.
The next mention of Thugs refers to the reign of Akbar (1556-1605).
Both Meadows Taylor and Balfour affirm that many Thugs were then
executed, and according to Balfour, they numbered five hundred and
belonged to the Etawah District, I have not succeeded in finding any
mention of the fact in the histories of Akbar--the memory of the
event may be preserved only by oral tradition. Etawah, between the
Ganges and Jumna, in the province of Agra, has always been notorious
for Thuggee and cognate crime.
In the year 1666, towards the close of Shahjahân's reign, the
traveller de Thevenot noted that the road between Delhi and Agra was
infested by Thugs. His words are:
'The cunningest Robbers in the World are in that Countrey. They use a
certain slip with a running-noose, which they can cast with so much
slight about a Man's Neck, when they are within reach of him, that
they never fail; so that they strangle him in a trice.' (English
transl., 1686, Part III, p. 41.)
After the capture of Seringapatam in 1799 the attention of the
Company's government was drawn to the prevalence of Thuggee. In 1810
the bodies of thirty victims were found in wells between the Ganges
and Jumna, and in 1816 Dr. Sherwood published a paper entitled 'On
the Murderers called Phânsigars', _sc._ 'stranglers', in the _Madras
Journal of Literature and Science_, which was reprinted in _Asiatic
Researches_, vol. xiii (1820). Various officers then made
unsystematic efforts to suppress the stranglers, but effectual
operations were deferred until 1829. During the years 1881 and 1832
the existence of the Thug organization became generally known, and
intense excitement was aroused throughout India. The Konkan, or
narrow strip of lowlands between the Western Ghâts and the sea, was
the only region in the empire not infested by the Thugs. (See H. H.
Wilson in supplement to Mill, _Hist. of British India_, ed. 1858,
vol. ix, p. 213; Balfour, _Cyclopaedia of India_, 3rd ed., 1885,
_s.v._ Thug; and Crooke, _Things Indian_, Murray, 1906, _s.v._
Thuggee.)
The records summarized above prove that the Thug organization existed
continuously on a large scale from the early part of the fourteenth
century until Sir William Sleeman's time, that is to say, for more
than five centuries. In all probability its origin was much more
ancient, but records are lacking. It is said that a sculpture
representing a Thug strangulation exists among the sculptures at
Ellora executed in the eighth century. No such sculpture, however, is
mentioned in the detailed account of the Ellora caves by Dr. Burgess.
The magnitude of the organization with which Sleeman grappled is
indicated by the following figures.
During the years 1831-7 3,266 Thugs were disposed of one way or
another, of whom 412 were hanged, and 483 were admitted as approvers.
Amîr Alî, whose confessions are recorded in Meadows Taylor's
fascinating book, _The Confessions of a Thug_, written in 1837 and
first published in 1839, proudly admitted having taken part in the
murders of 719 persons, and regretted that an interruption of his
career by twelve years' imprisonment in Oudh had prevented him from
completing a full thousand of victims. He regarded his profession as
affording sport of the most exciting kind possible.
V. A. S.
Notes:
1. Pronounced 'T'ug', a hard cerebral _t_, with some aspiration.
ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS
[Transcriber's note: These have been incorporated into the e-text.
The note numbers below correspond to the original text, not to the
renumbered notes of the e-text.]
When the printing of the book was almost completed, the following
additions and corrections were kindly communicated by Mr. J. S.
Cotton, editor of _I. G._, 1907, 1908.
Page 14, text, line 13. For 'leader', read 'barber'.
Page 57, note 4, line 2. After 'Baitûl', insert 'Mandlâ'.
Page 115, text, line 27. 'G----' appears to have been Robert Gregory,
C.B.
Page 115, note 2. Add, 'In 1911, Michael Filose of Gwâlior was
appointed K.C.I.E.'
Page 124, note 3. After '1860', insert 'and constitutes the District
called Pânch Mâhals in the Northern Division of the Bombay
Presidency. The vernacular word _pânch_, like the Persian _panj_,
means 'five'.
Page 124, note 3. Add at end, 'and is still used by Marâthâ nobles.'
Page 146, note 3. For 'may be' read 'is'. _Dele_. 'The name is
common.'
Page 241, note 1, line 2. _Dele_ 'in the Nizam's territories '.
Page 262, note 2. The author may possibly have referred to Agra and
Gwâlior, rather than to Lucknow and Udaipur.
Page 338, note 2. For the clause 'From 1765 . . . English',
substitute, 'From 1765 to 1771 he was the dependant of the English at
Allahabad. From 1771 to 1803 he was usually under the control of
Marâthâ chiefs, and from the time of Lord Lake's entry into Delhi, in
1803, he became simply a pensioner of the British Government. His
successors occupied the same position.'
Page 452, line 17. 'Southern' is in original edition, but 'Western'
would be more accurate.
Page 453, line 18. For 'its' read 'his own'.
Page 459. 'The story of the murder of Fraser is told very differently
in Bosworth-Smith's _Life of Lord Lawrence_, where all the detective
credit is given to Lord L., apparently on his own authority. See also
an article in the _Quarterly Review_ for April 1883, by Sir H. Yule,
and another in _Blackwoods Magazine_ for January 1878.'
Page 555, note, line 1. For 'Supreme' read Superior'.
Page 581, note, line 18. For 'James Watts', read 'William Watts'.
Page 584, note 2. For 'vexare' read 'vexari'.
Page 595, note 2. 'The best account of Begum Sumroo is to be found in
_A Tour through the Upper Provinces of Hindustan_, 1804-14, by A. D.
= Ann Deane (1823). Walter Scott introduces more than one of the
stories about the Begum into _The Surgeon's Daughter_ (1827), e.g.:
"But not to be interred alive under your seat, like the Circassian of
whom you were jealous," said Middlemas, shuddering' (vol. 48, Black's
ed. of the novels, p. 382).
Page 596, note 4. Probably 'Gorgîn' is a corruption of 'Gregory'.
Page 615, note l. Perhaps the author was mistaken, and the letter was
sent by Lady Bentinck, whose name was Mary.
INDEX
[Transcriber's note. Many of the spellings in this index differ from
the spelling used in the text and notes, especially in the use of the
diacritical mark.]
Abû-Alîsena, or Avicenna, 339, 524.
Abû Bakr, Khalîf, 199.
Abûl Fazl, 111 n., 355 n.; on music, 562 n.
Abûl Hasan = Amîr Khusrû, poet, 508 n.
_Acacia suma_, worshipped, 174 n.
Adam's Bridge, 692 n.
Adham Khân, tomb of, 503 n.
_Âdi Granth_, Sikh scripture, 477 n.
Adilâbâd, in Old Delhi, 487 n.
Adoption, 211 n.
Adultery, 198-201.
Afghan War, first, 291 n., 417; history, 288-91.
Ages, Hindu, 522 n.
Agra, Christians at. II, 335; buildings at, 312-24; date of fort at,
357 n.; books about, 358 n.
Ahmadnagar, kingdom, 458 n.
Ahmad Shâh, Durrânî, 289.
Ajmêr, 350.
Ajodhya, kingdom, 374; city, 457 n., 641.
Akbar (I), the Great, taxed marriages, 40 n.; had Abûl Fazl as
minister, 111 n.; officials of, 283 n.; tomb and bones of, 323, 325,
354 n.; character of, 356 n.; Maryam-uz-Zamânî, queen of, 348 n.;
sons of, 350; conquests of, 458; punished Thugs, 652. (II), titular
emperor, 309 n., 337, 501 n., 509 n., 525 n.
Âl dye, 228 n.
Alâ-ud-dîn Muhammad Shâh, 489, 490 n., 497 n., 503.
Alîgarh District, 435 n., 441 n.; battle of, 566 n.
Altamsh, _see_ Îltutmish. Sultan.
Amânat Khân, calligraphist, 316 n., 516.
Amarkantak, 14.
America, war with, 628.
Amîr Alî, Thug, 653.
Amîr Jumla, 513 n., 360 n.
Amîr Khân, Nawâb, 66 n., 130.
Ammonites, 121.
Angels, Muhammadan beliefs about, 40.
Angora, battle of, 531 n.
Anûpshahr, 605.
Anurshîrvân (Naushîrvân), 135 n.
_Apis dorsata_, bee, 4 n.
Arboriculture, 451 n.
Archaeological Survey, 520 n.
Architecture in India, 456.
Aristotle, 341,524.
Arjumand Bânô Bêgam, 315 n., 325.
Armenian tombs, 335 n.
Arms, license to carry, 246 n.
Army, value of native Indian, 632.
Arrian quoted, 285.
Arsenic, poisoning by, 86 n.
Art in India, 379.
Âsaf Khân (1), Akbar's general, 191 n.; (2) brother of Nûr Jahân,
328, 329, 332, 334.
Âsaf-ud-daula, of Oudh, 641.
Ascetics, 592 n.
Asîrgarh, 163 n.
Asoka, monolith pillars of, 493 n.
Assaye, battle of, 600.
Assassins, sect of, 491 n.
Attar of roses, 216.
Auchmuty, Sir Samuel, 619 n.
Auckland, Lord, 291 n., 347 n., 563 n., 571.
Aurangzêb, emperor, 273-6, 314, 335, 513.
Austin de Bordeaux, 319, 516.
_Avatâr_, 10, 45.
Avicenna, 339, 524.
Ayesha, story of, 198.
Azam, Prince, 274 n.
Azîm-ash-Shân, Prince, 275 n.
Azîz Koka, 504 n.
Bâbur, 527.
Babylon, history of, 452.
Badarpur, in Old Delhi, 486 n., 487 n.
Bagree dacoits, xxxiii.
Bahâdur Shâh (I), 275 n.; (II), 309 n., 501 n.
Bâhmani dynasty, 458 n.
_Baid_, defined, 107 n.
Baijnâth shrine, 590.
Bairâgîs, 300, 370, 591, 592 n.
Baird, Sir David, 634, 640 n.
Baitantî river, 209.
Baiza Bâî, 303,466.
Bajazet (Bâyazîd), Greek emperor, 531.
Bâjî Râo, I and II, Peshwâs, 381 n.
Bâjpai family, xxxii.
Bajranggarh, Râjâ of, 293.
_Bakshî_, or paymaster, 211.
Bâlâ Bâi, 563.
Balban, Sultan, 420 n., 488 n., 502.
Baldêo (Bâladeva), (1) brother of Krishna, 379; (2) Singh, defender
of Bharatpur, 360.
Bali Râjâ, a demon, 2, 33.
Ballabhgarh, 475.
Ballot Act, 399 n.
Bamboos, 311.
Bamhauri, in Orchhâ State, 124, 172.
_Bâna-linga_, 122 n., 141 n.
Bânda, town, 78.
_Baniyâ_, defined, 295 n.
Banjâra tribe, 100.
Bankers, Indian private, 409 n.
Banks, Presidency, 424 n.
Banyan tree, 385, 566 n.
_Bâolî_, defined, 442, 446.
Barber, as match-maker, 16.
Barlow, Sir George, 271 n.
Barnes, Sir B., C.-in-C-., 618 n., 619 n.
Baroda, Gaikwâr of, 286.
Barrackpore, mutiny at, 2.
Barwâ Sâgar, 207.
Basalt, 96-8, 113, 261, 268.
_Basant_ festival, 501.
Basrah (Bussorah), 199.
Batavia, capture of, 691 n.
Bathing, religions merit of, l.
Bâwarias of Muzaffarnagar, 235 n.
Beef, eating of, 194, 203.
Bees, at Marble Rocks, 4.
Bêgam Sarâi at Delhi, 510 n.
Belemnites, fossil, 121.
Benares, city, 25, 103 n.; province, 434 n.
Bengal, permanent settlement of, 64 n.; Islam in, 424 n.;
territories, defined, 553 n.; river thuggee in, 652.
Bentinck, Lord William, 109, 321 n., 341 n., 445, 547, 548, 571, 614,
618, 619 n., 632 n.
Berâr, kingdom, 156 n., 458 n.
Bernier, (1) François, on suttee, 26 n., 47 n.; historical work of,
273 n.; (2) Major, 606.
Betel leaf, 216 n.
Betiyâ (Bettia), Christian colony at. 11, 13 n.
_Bhâgavata Purâna_, 10 n.
_Bhagvân_ = Vishnu = God, 2.
Bharat, brother of Râma, 374, 382.
Bharatpur (Bhurtpore), sieges of, 116, 355, 359-62, 377, 562 n.
Bherâghât (-garh), 1, 6, 18, 54.
Bhîl tribes, 295.
Bhîlsâ, town, 264.
Bhôjpur, 146.
Bhonslâs of Nâgpur, 103 n., 286, 292, 381.
Bhopâl, 238.
_Bhrigu-pâtâ_ sacrifice, 103 n.
_Bhûmiâwat_, 245-52.
_Bhûmkâ_, 60 n.
Bhurtpore, see Bharatpur.
Biâs river, (1) = Hyphasis, in Panjâb, 3 n., 165 n.; (2) in Central
Provinces, 204, 290.
Bîdar kingdom, 458 n.
_Bîghâ_, defined, 453 n.
Bihârî Mall, Râjâ, 348 n.
Bîjâpur, great gun at, 241 n.; fall of, 286 n.; kingdom, 458 n.
Bindâchal, 590.
Bindrâban (Brindâban), 120.
Bird, Robert Merttins, 575 n.
Birjû Bâulâ, singer, 562.
Bîrsingh Dêo, Râjâ, 134, 164 n., 232, 237.
Black buck, 236 n.; Hole, 582.
Blake, Mr., murder of, 503, 504 n.
Blights, 193-8.
Boigne, General de, 271.
Bombay land System, 576.
Borak, Muhammad's donkey, 541.
Bow, use of, 80.
Brahmâ, god, 7, 9, 45 n., 376 n., 594.
Brahmans forbid marriage of widows, 26; sacrificed, 46.
Bruce, Captain, (1) brother of (2), 270; (2) James, traveller, 270 n.
Budha Gupta, king, 55 n.
Budhuk dacoits, xxxv.
Buffaloes, sacrificed, 46 n.
Bulâkî, Prince, 334.
_Buland Darwâza_, 352 n.
Bullocks, price of, 437.
Bundêla Râjpûts, 144 n., 185.
Bundêlkhand, 94 n., 111, 112, 149, 185, 207, 209 n., 227.
Bundêlkhandî dialects, 188 n.
Burial, alive, 570; customs, 218 n.
Burn, Lieut.-Col., 421 n.
Bussorah, see Basrah.
Buxar, battle of, 338 n.
Cairo, mosques at, 494 n.
Calcutta, commercial crisis of 1883 at, 422.
Canals, 158 n.
Cannibalism, 152.
Capital, foreign, 422.
Carpets made at Jhânsî, 217, 241.
Caste, 45-51.
Cattle-poisoning, 86 n.
Cawnpore, rise of, 445 n.
Ceded provinces, 434 n.
Census, 194 n.
Central India, 178.
Central Provinces, 57 n., 94 n.
Chambal river, 301, 303.
_Chambêlî_, or jasmine, 33.
Champat Râî, Bundêla, 190 n.
_Chandamirt_ (_chandan mirt_), 141, 588, 593.
Chand Bardâi, poet, 190 n.
Chandêl Râjpûts, 144 n., 178 n., 185, 189.
Chandêrî State, 193, 251, 293.
_Chândnî Chauk_, Delhi, 604 n.
Chandra, Râjâ, 498 n.
_Chaprâsî_, or orderly, 74 n.
_Cheonkal_ (_chhonkar_) tree, 174.
Cherry, Mr., murder of, 473.
Chhatarpur State, 192.
Chhatarsâl, Râjâ, 94, 193.
Chick-pea, or gram, 414 n.
Chiefs' colleges, 256 n.
China, land tenure in, 423; Tîmûr's designs on, 533.
Chingîz Khan, 535.
_Chîtal_, spotted deer, 244 n.
Chitôr, towers at, 493 n.
Chitragupta, secretary to Yamarâja, 9.
Chitrakôt, 95.
Cholera, beliefs about, 163, 232.
Christians, 11-13, 335, 424.
Chuhârî, Christian colony at, 13 n.
_Cicer arietinum_, gram, 150 n.
Cis-Sutlaj States, 476 n.
Cities, growth of, 455.
Civil Service of India, 426 n., 649.
Clerk, Sir George, 90 n.
Coal, 230, 231 n.
Codes, 65 n., 66 n.
Coins, of Nûrjahân, 333 n.; of Sikhs, 477 n.; largesse, 479 n.
Colebrooke, Sir B., 461.
Combermere, Lord, 355 n., 359, 618.
Concan, _see_ Konkan.
Conquered Provinces, 434 n.
Corn laws, 574.
Cornwallis, Lord, second administration of, 460 n.
Corporal punishment, _see_ Flogging.
Corruption, official, 403.
Cotton, soil, black, 94 n., 149 n., 258 n.; -tree, 385.
'Covenanted' service, 426 n.
Cow, veneration of, 163, 202.
Criminal tribes, 234 n., 557 n.; law, 305 n.
Crooke, Mr. William, xix; on veneration of the cow, 163 n.
Cubbon, Sir Mark, 90 n.
Customs, inland, 347 n.; hedge, 426 n.
Dacoits, Sleeman's books on, xxxiii, xxxv, 89.
_Daityas_, bad spirits, 10.
Dalhousie, Lord, xxv; annexation policy of, 187 n.
Damoh, town, 76.
Dâniyâl, Prince, 334.
Dârâ Shikoh, Prince, 272-4, 511-13 n.
Darbhanga, 51.
_Dargâh_, defined, 568 n.
Dasahara ceremonies, 175 n., 241 n., 293, 296.
Dasân river, 108.
Dasaratha, Râjâ, 382.
Datiyâ, Râjâ of, 193, 221, 226.
_Datûra_, poisoning, 82-6.
Daulatâbâd, 490.
Daulat Râo Sindhia, 563.
Davis, Mr., gallant defence by, 474 n.
Dâwar Baksh, Prince, 334.
De Boigne, _see_ Boigne, General de.
Deccan, geology of, 97 n., 114 n,; kingdoms of, 285; early history
of, 457.
Deeg, _see_ Dîg.
Delhi, territories, 420 n., 448, 459 n.; province, 459 n.; defended
by Burn, 421; old city of, 486-503; Sultans of, 488 n.; new city of,
504-30; Jâmi Masjid at, 514; Motî Masjid at, 514 n.; palace at, 515-
19; peacock throne at, 517; books about, 519 n.; taken by Tîmûr, 529.
Denudation, sub-aerial, 138 n.
Deorî, town, 124, 129.
De Thevenot, _see_ Thevenot, de.
_Devas_, good spirits, 10.
Devî, goddess, 7, 593.
Devil, Muhammadan myth of, 537.
Devils, 223 n.
Dhamonî, 110.
Dhandêla Râjpûts, 187.
_Dhanuk_ jag festival, 173.
_Dharmsâlâ_, defined, 568 n.
_Dhaû_ (_Lythrum fructuosum_) tree, 237.
Dhîmar caste, 76.
Dhôlpur State, 272, 302-10.
Diamonds, great, 290.
Dîg (Deeg), garden at, 364; battle at, 421, 566 n.
_Dînâî_, slow poison, 142.
Dinapore, 341.
Discipline, military, xxxiii, 615-40.
Diseases, Hindoo notions about, 168.
Districts, civil, size of, 646 n.
_Dîwân-i-Âmm_, at Delhi, 515.
_Dîwân-i-Khâs_, at Delhi, 517.
_Dîwanî_, grant of, 500.
_Doâb_ defined, 233 n.
Dost Muhammad, 291.
Drowning, suicide by, 219.
Dubois, _Hindu Manners_, xix.
Dudrenec, Monsieur, 603.
Durgâvatî, queen, 190.
Dutch factory at Agra, 335.
Dyce, Colonel, 611.
Dyce-Sombre, Mr., 595, 610.
Education, of young nobles, 256 n.; Muhammadan and English, 523, 524
n.
Egypt, expedition to, 634, 640 n.
Electricity, 311.
Elephant-drivers, 50.
Elichpur (Îlichpur), 156.
Ellis, Mr., at Patna, 597.
Ellora, 8 n.; 653.
Epidemics, 161-72.
Epilepsy, 221.
Eran, pillar at, 55.
_Erythrina arborescens_, or coral-tree, 74 n.
Etâwah, Thuggee in, 652.
Evil eye, 168.
Exogamy, 144 n.
Exorcisers, 168.
Fairs, 1.
Fakîrs, 370, 591, 592 n.
Famine, of 1833, 148; policy, 150; in Mâlwâ, 441 n.
Fanshawe, H. C., on Delhi, 520 n.
Farhad, poet, 136.
Farîdâbâd (Farîdpur), 479, 480 n.
Farîd-ud-dîn Ganj Shakar, saint, 507 n.
Faringia (Feringheea), Thug, 78.
Farrukhsîyar, emperor, 275 n.
Fathpur-Sîkrî, 351-8.
_Fatwa_, defined, 200 n., 536.
Fergusson, on Indian architecture, 359 n.
Fertility, diminution of, 413 n.,415.
Feudal System, 145, 578 n.
_Ficus religiosa_, pîpal tree, 205 n.
Filose, Jean Baptiste, 115 n., 293, 296.
Finch, traveller, quoted, 324 n.
Fîrôzâbâd at Delhi, 497 n.
Fîrôzpur, 420, 459.
Fîrôz Shâh Tughlak, deported Thugs, 652.
Fish, Persian order of, 135, 137; eating, 307.
Flattery, 243.
Flax plant, 195.
Flogging in army, 616-22, 637.
Fontenne, de, maiden name of Lady Sleeman, xxiii.
Forest department, 451 n.
Forester, Lady, 612 n.
Fortresses, insalubrity of, 111.
Fossils, 98, 121.
_Francolinus vulgaris_, black partridge, 44 n.
Fraser, Mr. C., xxiii, 89 n.; Mr. Hugh, xxiv; Major-General, 89 n.;
Mr. W., murder of, 420, 458-75.
Frederick the Great, 625, 629.
Fullerton, Dr., 597.
Funeral obsequies, 620 n.
Furse, Mrs., sister of author, xxv n., xxx.
Futtehpore Seekree, see Fathpur-Sîkrî.
Fyzâbâd, 457 n., 641.
Gabriel, angel, 37.
Gaîkwâr of Baroda, 286.
Galen, 339, 524.
Gandak river, 121 n.
Ganges river, 6, 17; water, 141 n., 588, 594.
Gardiner (Gardner), Colonel, 346.
Garhâ, Rânî of, 56, 73.
Garhâ Kota, 293.
Garhâ Mandla, xxxii, 190.
_Gârpagrî_, hail-charmer, 60 n,.
Gaur, 330 n.
Gaurî Sankar, 6, 54.
Geronimo Veroneo, 320 n.
Ghaznî, 454 n.
Ghiyâs-ud-dîn, Khwâja, 328.
Ghorapachhâr rivers, 298.
Ghosts, 221-6.
Ghulâm Kâdir, 338 n.
Gipsies, 535, 557 n.
God, ninety-nine names of, 323 n.
Gohad, Rânâ of, 270-2, 302.
Golconda, fall of, 286 n.; kingdom of, 458 n.
Gonds, xxxii, 68, 102, 128, 221, 384.
Gondwâna rocks, 231 n.
Gosâîns, 218, 370, 591, 592 n.
Govardhan, 337,371-83.
Gram, 197, 198 n., 227, 414 n.
Grasses, 124.
Groves, 260, 433-41, 444, 565.
Guinea-worm, 77.
Gûjar caste, 192, 469 n.
Gujarât, 149, 441.
_Gulistan_, quoted, 401.
Guns made in India, 241.
Gûrkhas (Gôrkhâs), 350, 625 n.
Guru Govind, 477 n.
Gwâlior State, 258-70, 292, 294, 299; city, 262; fortress, 266-71.
Hâfiz Rahmat Khân, 599.
Hâjî Bêgam, 511 n.
_Hakîm_ defined, 107 n.
Hamîda Bâno Bêgam, 511 n.
Hânsî, 604 n., 605 n.
Hanumân, monkey-god, 27, 300, 371, 374.
Hardaul, Lâlâ, legend of, 162-5, 232.
Hardinge, Lord (Viscount), letter to, xxix n.
Hasan, 483 n.
Hastings, Lord (Marquis of), 229, 292, 321, 381 n.
Haunted villages, 221-6.
Hawking, 237.
Hay in Bundêlkhand, 124.
Herbert, Sir Thomas, quoted, 332 n.
Hervey, _Some Records of Crime_, xxvi.
High Courts, 555 n.
Hiliyâ (Haliyâ) Pass, 444 n.
Himâlaya, v, xxiv.
Hinduism, 176.
Hippocrates, 339, 524.
Hirtius, nom de plume of author, xxxi.
Holî, festival, 204, 483 n.
Holkar dynasty, 286, 381.
Horal (Hodal), town, 426.
Hornets, 56.
Human sacrifice, 46 n., 101.
Humâyûn, emperor, tomb of, 511.
Husain. 483 n.
Hyderâbâd Contingent, 156 n.
Hyphasis (Biâs) river, 3, 165.
Iblîs, the devil, 538.
Ibn Batuta, traveller, 488 n.
Ibrâhîm Lodi, Sultan, 269.
_Id-ul-Bakr_ festival, 163 n.
Îltutmish, Sultan, 269; buildings of, 492, 494 n., 495 n., 497, 500;
tomb of, 501.
Imam Mashhadî, tomb of, 503.
Imâm-ud-dîn Ghazzâlî, 341 n., 524. Imperial Service Troops, 280 n.
Impressment, 184, 628.
India, people of, vi; population of, 38 n.
Indore State, 286, 292.
Indra, god, 2, 10, 33.
Industries, 159 n.
Infanticide, 28.
Inheritance, law of, 578.
Invalid establishment, 640.
Iron mines, 93, 230; pillar of Delhi, 498.
Islam in Lower Bengal, 424 n.
Isle of France (Mauritius), 311, 620 n., 622.
Itimâd-ud-daula, 326-9.
Jabalpur, _see_ Jubbulpore.
Jack-tree, 225.
Jagannâth, shrine of, 589.
_Jâgîrdârs_, 181.
Jahânârâ Bêgam, tomb of, 510.
Jahângîr, (1) emperor, 111 n., 333, 452, 568 n., mother of, 348 n.;
birth of, 351, 355; (2) Mirzâ, tomb of, 509.
Jain statues at Gwâlior, 267 n.
Jaipur State, xxxii, 503.
Jaitpur, Râj of, 193 n.
Jalâl-ud-dîn, Fîrôz Shâh Khiljî, 489.
Jâlaun State, 185, 193.
Jamâldehî Thugs, 82.
Jang Bahâdur, Sir, 598 n.
Jasmine, 33.
Jâts (Jats), 307, 380 n.; outrages of, 354 n.; and Râjpûts, 476 n.
Java, conquest of, 619, 640 n.
Jaxartes, river, 532.
Jesuit missionaries, 337 n.
Jesus, inscription quoting, 354, 504.
Jeswant Râo Holkar, 165, 421, 474 n.
Jhajjar, Nawâb of, 474.
Jhânsî State, 185, 193 n., 209-19.
_Jhirni_, Thug signal, 81.
Jodh Bâî, tomb of, 348.
Johilâ river, 14, 16.
Johnson (Johnstone), Bêgam, 580.
Jubbulpore (Jabalpur), xxiii, 1, 29, 58, 71.
Julius Caesar, Bishop, 594.
Kâbul, mission of Burnes to, 417 n.
Kailâs temple, 8 n.
_Kalas_ custom, 179.
_Kali_ age, 522 n.
Kâlî, goddess, 141 n.
_Kalpa Briksha_ tree, 74.
Kâm Baksh, Prince, 274 n.
Kanauj, ancient city, 454.
Kandêlî, Thug village, xxii.
Karaulî State, 293.
Karbalâ, battle of, 483 n.
Kârtikeya, god, 259 n.
Kâsim, Mîr (Kâsim Alî Khân), 596-9.
Katrâ Pass, 127, 445 n.
_Kaukabas_, 136.
Kedârnâth temple, 592 n.
Kerahi (Kerâi) Pass, 445 n.
Khajurâho, temples at, 193 n.
Khalîfate, the, 483 n.
Khân Azam, 333.
_Kharîtâ_ defined, 134 n.
_Kharwâ_ cloth, 228 n.
Khusrû, (1) Parvîz, King of Persia, 135; (2) Prince, son of Jahângîr,
333; (3) poet, tomb of, 507.
Khwâja Ghiâs-ud-dîn, 326.
Kohinûr diamond, 288-91, 513 n.
Kôil, battle of, 566 n.
Konkan (Concan), 225.
Korân, origin of, 481.
Kosî, 424.
_Kotwâl_ defined, 154 n.
Krishna, legends of. 11, 371-5.
Kumâra, god, 259 n.
Kunbî caste, 381 n.
Kurmî caste, 130.
Kutb Mînâr, 492-7, 504; mosque, 497.
Kutb-ud-dîn, (1) Khan, 330; (2) Sultan, 494n.; (3) Khwâja, saint of
Ûsh, 494 n., 500 n.
Lachhman, brother of Râma, 382.
Lachhmî Bâî, Rânî of Jhansî, 193 n., 220 n.
Lahar fort, 270 n.
Lake, Lord, 359, 377, 380, 421, 561, 643.
Lakes, artificial, 63, 178.
Land-revenue, 61 n., 63 n., 68 n.
Laswârî, battle of, 116, 566 n.
Laterite, 92.
_Lathyrus_, poisonous species of, 104.
Leprosy, 215 n.
Le Vaisseau, Monsieur, 603-10.
Linseed, 195.
Liverpool, Earl of, 580.
Lodhî caste, 130 n.
Looting shops, custom of, 294.
Lotus, 109 n.
Lowis, Captain, xxxiii.
Lucknow, author Resident at, xxv; an ancient city, 457 n.
Lûdiâna, 3, 290.
Macaulay, 341 n., 547 n.
Madras system of land settlement, 576.
_Mahâbhârata_, 5, 10, 103 n., 522.
Mâhâdajî (Mâdhojî) Sindhia, 271, 563.
Mahâdêo (Siva), god, 7, 8, 9, 45 n., 103 n., 141 n.; oracle of, 484;
sandstones, 102.
_Mahî Marâtib_, 135, 137 n.
Mahârâjpur, battle of, xxv, 271 n.
Mahmûd of Ghaznî, 454.
Mahoba, town, 189, 193 n.
Maihar, Râjâ of, 127, 593.
Maille, Claudius, 560.
Makwânpur, fort, 598.
Malcolm, Sir John, 229.
_Mâlguzârî_ tenure, 144.
Mâlwâ, province, 149, 238, 239 n., 451.
Mandêsar, Thug burying-place, xxii.
_Mansabdârs_, 283 n.
Mân Singh, (1) Râjâ of Gwâlior, 276 n.; (2) Râjâ of Jaipur (Ambêr),
333.
Mansûr Alî Khân, tomb of, 506, 544 n.
Manucci, on Akbar, 325 n., 354 n.
Manuscript works of author, xxxvii.
Marâthâs, 294; defeated, 421 n., 566 n.
Marble Rocks, 1; quarries, 318.
Marriage, of trees, 32, 122, 143; of Hindoos, 37-40.
Maryam-uz-Zamânî, queen of Akbar, 348 n.
Mashhad (Meshed), 288.
Material progress of India. 414 n.
Mathurâ (Muttra), 383.
Mau (Mhow), town, 247.
Mauritius, 311 n., 620 n.
_Mauza_ defined, 60 n.
Medicine, systems of, 107, 571.
Meerut, military and civil station, xxiv, 80, 544 n., 567-70, 579;
sacked by Tîmûr, 529.
Megpunnaism (Megpunnia Thugs), xxxii, 91, 593 n.
Metcalfe, Sir Charles, 347, 461, 563 n.
Meteors, 34-7.
Mewâtîs, 420.
Mihrauli, tombs at, 500 n.
Mihr-un-nisâ, 328 n.; _see_ Nûr Jahân.
Military discipline, xxxiii, 615-40.
_Mînârs_, 492 n.
Mîr Jumla, _see_ Amîr Jumla.
Miracles, 337.
Mirzâpur, 250, 445.
_Mishkât-ul-Masâbih_, 35.
Missionaries, Jesuit, 337 n.
Mogul (Moghal, Mughal), defined, 80 n.; raids, 490.
Molony, Report on Narsinghpur, xxxvii.
Monastic orders, 592.
Monghyr (Mungêr), 642.
Monkeys, 383.
Monson's retreat, 474, 566 n.
Months, Hindoo, l.
_Motî Masjid_ (mosque), 322.
Muazzam, Prince, 274 n.
Muhammad, Ghorî, Sultan, 269 n.; Shâh, 291 n., 518; tomb of, 510; son
of Îsâ, architect, 319 n.; bin Tughlak, Sultan, 457 n., 487 n.
Muhammadabad, in old Delhi, 487.
Muhammadan schools, 480; year, 482; prayers, 489.
Muharram celebrations, 482.
Mumtâz-i-Mahall, 315, 325.
_Music of Hindostan_, by Strangways, 561 n.
Nâbhâ, chief of, 476.
Nâdir, Shâh, 288, 510, 516.
Nâgaudh (Nâgod), 33 n.
Nâgpur (Nagpore), Bhonslâs of, 286, 292.
Nâhan, Râjâ of, 209 n.
Najaf Khân, 599.
Nânâ Sâhib, 381 n.
Narsinghpur, xxii, xxxvii, 167.
Nasîr-ud-din of Tûs, 341, 524.
Nepâl, war with, xxi, 122, 598, 636.
Nerbudda (Narbadâ) river, 2, 5, 14, 17, 18, 203.
Newspapers, 640.
News-writers, 249 n., 388 n.
_Nîlgâi_, a kind of antelope, 244.
Nineveh, history of, 452.
_nisâr_ coins, 479 n.
Nizâmuddîn Auliyâ, saint, 490-2, 507.
Noer, Count von, on Akbar, 324 n.
Norman-French formula, 475.
North-Western Provinces, 434 n.
Nûr Jahân, 325 n., 329, 332, 568 n.
Nûr Mahall, 325 n., 329, 332.
Oaths, 391.
Obsequies, funeral, 620 n.
Ochterlony, Sir David, 598 n., 635.
_Ocymum sanctum_, basil or _tulasî_ plant, 121 n.
Og (Ûj), King, legend of, 374.
O'Halloran, Major-General Sir Joseph, 344 n.
Omar ('Umar), Khalif, 199 n.
Omens, taken by Thugs and robbers, 297, 651.
Opium department, 324 n.
Oracle of Mahâdêo, 484.
Orchhâ, State and Râjâ of, 132, 139, 193 n., 251 n.
Orpheus, mosaic of, 516.
O'Shaughnessy, Dr. W. B., scientific publications of, 571 n.
Osman (Othman), Khalîf, a Sunnî, 48 n., 483 n.
Otaheite sugar-cane, 208.
Oudh (Oude), Sleeman's work in, xxiv-xxvii; _A Journey through_,
xxxvi; MS. history of reigning family of, xxxvii; infanticide in, 28
n.; Jamâldehî Thugs in, 82; recruits from, 146, 624; annexation of,
187 n.; disorder in, 248,252; Chief Commissioner of, 347 n.; Nawâb
Wazîrs of, 473 n.; magisterial powers in, 552 n.; capitals of, 641;
Thuggee in, 653.
Paintings, Indian, 379.
_Pakkâ_ defined, 435 n.
Palace at Delhi, 515.
Palwal, town, 452.
_Pân_, 216, 454.
Pândavas, 5.
Pânîpat, third battle of, 298 n.
Panjâb (Punjab), annexation of, 478 n., 625 n.
Panj (Pânch) Mahâl tract, 124 n. Panna State and Râjâ, 95 n., 250 n.
Panther, 115.
Paoli, Mr., 600.
Paralysis, caused by eating _Lathyrus sativus_, 104.
Parents, murder of indigent, xxxii; reverence for, 254.
Pariahs, 120.
Parihâr, Râjpûts, 143.
Parmâl, Chandêl Râjâ, 189 n.
Partâbgarh in Oudh, xxii, 248.
Partition, 278 n.
Partridge, black, 44, 118.
Pârvatî, goddess, 9, 141 n.
_Patêl_ defined, 221.
'Pathân', as a misnomer, 488 n.
Patharia, town, 91.
Patiâlâ, chief of, 476.
Patna, massacre of, 597.
Pawâr Râjpûts, 187, 189.
Pay of Indian army, 617, 622, 640.
Peacock throne, 517.
Peacocks, 259, 411.
Pensions of Indian army, 632, 640-4.
Perjury, 407, 412.
Permanent settlement, 64 n., 577 n.
Persian, order of the Fish, 135; wheel, 147.
Peshwâs, the, 192, 236, 381 n.
_Phânsîgars_ = Tugs, xxxi.
_Phoceus baya_, weaver bird, 117 n.
Pilgrims, 588-94.
Pillars, monolithic, 493.
Pindhârîs, 130 n., 292-4, 297.
_Pîpal_ tree, 205, 385, 442, 447, 566 n_.
Piper betel_, 216 n.
Pîr Muhammad, heir of Tîmûr, 534.
Plassey, battle of, 338 n.
Plato, 341, 524.
Poisoners, 82-6.
Police, Indian, 544-61, 647.
Political economy, 157, 160.
Popham, Major, 270.
Population of India, 38 n.
_Portax pictus, nîlgâi_ antelope, 244 n.
Portuguese at Agra, 336 n.
_Prâyaschit_ defined, 215.
Predestination, 511.
Press-gang, 184 n.
Primogeniture, 180, 277, 578.
Prinsep, James, discoveries of, 493.
Prithî Râj, 498-500.
Processions, 168.
Property in land, 449 n.
Proprietors of land, 576.
Public spirit of Hindoos, xxxiii, 442-51.
_Purânas_, the, 10, 338 n.
Puri town, 589 n.
_Purôhit_ defined, 140 n.
Purveyance system, 41-4.
Queen, river Nerbudda as a, 14.
Quinine, 107 n.
Raghugarh, Râjâ of, 293.
Rainbow myth, 35.
Râipur town, 72.
Râjpûts, 144.
Râma and Sîtâ, 10, 74, 174, 371, 376.
_Ramaseeana_, xxxi.
Râmâyana, 484.
Râmesvaram (Ramisseram), 592 n.
_Râmlîlâ_, 104.
Râmnagar, 25.
Râmpur, Nawâb of, 87, 649.
Ranjit Singh, (1) Maharaja of the Panjâb, 291, 297; (2) Râjâ of
Bharatpur (Bhurtpore), 377, 380.
Râvan, 377.
Râwalpindi, military station, 545 n.
Raziâ, Sultan ('empress'), 501 n.
Reglioni (properly Regholini), General (Monsieur), 594.
Regulations, VII of 1822 and IX of 1833, 575 n.
Reinhard, Walter (Sombre), 596.
Rent Acts, 62 n.
'Resumption' of revenue-free lands, 564,
River thuggee, xxxiii, 652.
Rîwâ (Rewah) State, 24,
Roads, 301.
Roe, Sir Thomas, ambassador, 351, 452.
Rupee, value of, 77 n., 342 n., 583 n.
Ryotwâr System, 576.
Saâdat Alî Khân of Oudh, 473 n., 565.
Sacrifice, human, 46 n., 101.
Sâdî (Sa'dî), Shaikh, poet, 75, 401, 410, 524.
Sadr Amîn, Subordinate Judge, 646 n.
Safdar Jang, tomb of, 507 n., 544 n.
Sâgar (Saugor), 41, 92, 100, 161; and Nerbudda Territories, 57 n., 94
n., 110 n., 112 n.
_Sâlagrâms_, ammonites, 121.
Saleur, Monsieur, 610.
Salîm, Prince, 350; Shaikh, 350, 362 n., 354.
Salt manufacture, 260, 347 n., 428 n.
_Samadh_ defined, 570.
Samarkand, 530.
Samrû (Sumroo), Bêgam, 504, 545; death of, 567; history of, 594-615;
character of, 613.
Samthar, Râjâ of, 191.
Sânsias, criminal tribe, 234 n.
Sarasvatî, consort of Brahmâ, 7 n.
Sardhana, 594-615.
Sassanians of Persia, 137.
Sâtârâ, Râjâ of, 286, 381.
Satî, _see_ Suttee.
Sâtpura, mountains, 52.
Scape-goat, 162-6.
Schools, Muhammadan, 480.
Science in India, 587.
Sebastê, city, 532.
Sects, Muhammadan, 49 n.
Secunderabad, military station, 545 n.
Seniority, promotion by, 622, 632.
'Settlements' of land revenue, 434 n., 575.
Shâh Âlam, 137 n., 338, 563 n.
Shahgarh, Râjâ of, 72, 114.
Shâh Jahân, emperor, 314, 316, 320, 504, 510, 513, 560, 561 n.; Thugs
in reign of, 652; sons of, 273.
Shâhjahânâbâd, or New Delhi, 504.
Shahryâr, Prince, 334.
Shams-ud-dîn, Nawâb, 420, 458-75.
Sharaf-ud-dîn, historian, 533.
Shêr Afgan, 329-31.
Shêr Khan (Shâh), 270.
Sherwood, Dr., early writer on Thuggee, 653.
Shîa sect, 48 n., 483 n.
Shihâb-ud-dîn, Sultan, 269 n.
Shîrîn, queen, 136.
Shore, F. J., 44 n., 90; Sir John, 473 n., 605, 609.
Sikandar Lodi, Sultan, 357 n.
Sikandara (Secundra), Akbar's tomb at, 323, 354 n., 358 n.
Sikh government, 381.
Sikhs, history of, 477 n.
Sîkrî, 351; _see_ Fathpur-Sîkrî.
Simla, trip to Gungoolee from, xxxvii.
Sindh river, 258.
Sindhia family, 271 n., 286, 294, 381.
Sindhia's territory, 258; _see_ Gwâlior State.
_Singhâra_, or water-nut, 76.
Sirâj-ud-daula, 581.
Sîtâ Baldî Râmesar, 592.
Siva, god, 6, 7 n., 9, 45 n., 103 n., 141 n., 376 n., 588, 591.
Sivâjî, 381.
Skanda, god, 259 n.
Skinner, Colonel, 463, 612 n.
Slavery in India, 282.
Sleeman, Captain J. L., xx, xxx, 652; Captain Philip, xxi; Lady
xxiii, xxxvi; Sir W. H., memoir of, xx-xxx; works of, xxxi-xxxvii, 89
n.; James, xxx; Henry Arthur, xxx; William Henry, xxx.
Small-pox, 169-72.
Smith, F. G., 90; B. W., on Akbar's tomb, 323 n.; on Fathpur Sîkrî,
351 n.
Society in India, 582.
Sombre, _see_ Samrû.
Sôn river, 14, 16.
Spotted deer, 244.
Spry, Dr., works of, 99 n.
Statistics, falsified, 554 n.
Stephen, Carr, on Delhi, 520 n.
Subdivision of property, 432.
Succession to crown, 239.
Sugar-mills, 207-9.
Suicide, vow of, 103.
Sulaimân Shikoh, Prince, 272.
Sultans of Delhi, 488 n.
Sumroo, _see_ Samrû.
Sunnî sect, 48 n.
Supreme (Superior) Court, 555 n.
Sûraj Mall, Râjâ, 364 n., 378, 567.
Survey myths, 201.
Suttee, 18-31, 47, 109.
Swallows, 353.
Sweepers, 45, 49.
Taboos, 134 n.
Tâj, the, 312-21.
Tamarind tree, 566.
Tamerlane, _see_ Tîmûr.
Tânda, town, 330.
Tânsên, singer, 561, 562 n.
Tarmasharîn, Moghal, 490, 507, 529, 535.
_Tasmabâz_ Thugs, 91.
Tavernier, traveller, 316, 320 n.
Taylor, Col. Meadows, _Confessions of a Thug_, 89 n., 653.
Taxation, indirect, 427; in England and India, 485.
Tehrî, town, 132, 143.
Teignmouth, Lord, 473 n.
Telescope, 543.
_Thagî_, _see_ Thuggee and Thugs.
_Thânadârs_, 547.
Thessalonica, massacre of, 402.
Thevenot, de, quoted, 335; described Thuggee, 652.
Thomas, George, adventurer, 603-8.
Thuggee, 77-91,650-3.
Thugs, venerate Nizâmuddîn, 491 n.; on the Bêgam's boundary, 545;
method of suppressing, 556 n.; disguised as ascetics, 592 n.
Tieffenthaler, Father, 336 n.
Tiger myths, 124-9.
Tîmûr, sack of Delhi by, 497 n.; history of, 527-34.
Tonk, Nawâb of, 66 n.
Tours, battle of, 513.
Trade, free, 160; Indian, 409 n.
Trap, Deccan, 97 n., 269 n.
Trees, marriage of, 32, 122, 143; sacred, 386 n.
Tughlak Shâh, 486.
Tughlakâbâd, 486, 489.
Tulasî Dâs, poet, 123 n.
_Tulsî_ (_tulasî_) plant, 121.
Tûs, or Mashhad, _q.v._, 341 n.
Uchahara State, 33, 148 n.
Ûj (Og), legend of, 374.
Ujjain (Ujain), 146 n.
Ulwar (Alwar) State, xxxii.
'Uncovenanted' service, 426.
United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, 434 n.
United States, war with, 628 n.
Universities, Indian, 256 n.
_Urs_, defined, 568 n.
Ûsh in Persia, 494 n., 500 n.
Usmân, _see_ Osman.
Vaccination, 171 n.
Vagrancy laws, 370.
Vaikuntha, heaven of Vishnu, 8.
Vegetius quoted, 626 n., &c. Venî-dânam, offering of hair, 56 n.
Veracity, 383-411.
Village communities, 394.
Villages, 60.
Vindhya mountains, 62.
Vindhyan sandstones, 62 n.
Vishnu, god, 2, 7 n., 9, 141 n., 376 n., 588, 591.
Warôrâ coalfield, 231 n.
Washermen, 45.
Water offerings, 141, 693.
Water-nut, or -chestnut, 76.
Watts, Governor, 581 n.
Wazîr Alî of Oudh, 473.
Weaver-bird, 173 n.
Wellesley, Marquis, 473 n.
Wells, 363, 435-41; songs sung at, 561 n.
Western Provinces, defined, 574 n.
Wheat, blight on, 195.
Widow-burning, _see_ Suttee.
Widows, sold by auction, xxii; remarriage of, 26.
Wife, a duty of, 132 n.
Wilkinson, (1) Mr. L., and (2) Major, 89 n.
Wilton, Mr. John, 341 n.
Window-tax, 485.
Witchcraft, 68-73.
Wolf-children, xxxv.
Women, dress of, 18; offering of hair by, 56 n.; form of tomb of
Muhammadan, 510 n.; secret murders of, 561 n.
Yamarâja (Jamrâj), 9.
Yudhisthira, 11, 522.
Zafaryâb Khân, son of Sombre, 611.
Zâlim Singh, freebooter, 129.
Zamân Shâh, 289.
Zamîndârî tenure, 144.
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