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Title: Eight Lectures on India
Author: Mackinder, Halford John
Language: English
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THE VISUAL INSTRUCTION COMMITTEE
OF THE COLONIAL OFFICE.
-------
EIGHT LECTURES ON INDIA.
-------
PREPARED FOR THE COMMITTEE
BY
H. J. MACKINDER,
Lately Director of the London School of Economics and Political
Science: Author of “Britain and the British Seas.”
-------
With Lantern Illustrations.
-------
ONE SHILLING NET.
WATERLOW & SONS LIMITED, PRINTERS, LONDON WALL.
---
1910.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
480 Slides, 60 for each Lecture, have been prepared in connection with
this book, and are sold on behalf of the Committee by Messrs. Newton &
Co., 3, Fleet Street, London, E.C., from whom the books of lectures can
also be obtained. The complete set of 480 Slides, in eight padded boxes,
may be had for £50, or the Slides to accompany the several Lectures will
be sold for Six Guineas each Lecture. Single Slides will not be sold.
The series consists for the most part of views taken by Mr. A. Hugh
Fisher, the artist who went to India for the purpose on behalf of the
Committee. Some of them are photographs coloured by hand from sketches
Sanger Shepherd process reproducing Mr. Fisher’s own sketches. There are
--------------
The slides of this series are copyright.
------------------------------------
ENTERED AT STATIONERS HALL.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE VISUAL INSTRUCTION COMMITTEE.
APPOINTED BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES.
----------------------------
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF MEATH, K.P., Chairman.
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR CECIL CLEMENTI SMITH, G.C.M.G.
SIR JOHN STRUTHERS, K.C.B., LL.D., Secretary to the Scotch Education
Department.
SIR PHILIP HUTCHINS, K.C.S.I., late Member of the Council of the
Secretary of State for India.
SIR CHARLES LUCAS, K.C.M.G., C.B., of the Colonial Office.
SIR CHARLES HOLROYD, Director of the National Gallery.
H. F. HEATH, Ph.D., Director of Special Inquiries and Reports, Board of
Education.
H. J. MACKINDER, M.P., late Director of the London School of Economics
and Political Science.
W. H. MERCER, C.M.G., Crown Agent for the Colonies.
R. D. ROBERTS, D.Sc., Secretary of the Gilchrist Educational Trust.
PROFESSOR MICHAEL E. SADLER, LL.D., Professor of Education in the
University of Manchester.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE
VISUAL INSTRUCTION COMMITTEE
OF THE COLONIAL OFFICE.
-------
The component parts of the British Empire are so remote and so different
from one another, that it is evident the Empire can only be held
together by sympathy and understanding, based on widely diffused
knowledge of its geography, history, resources, climates, and races. It
is obvious that if this knowledge is to be effective it must be imparted
to the coming generation. In other words it must be taught in the
Schools of the Empire.
In the Autumn of 1902, a Committee was appointed by the Secretary of
State for the Colonies to consider on what system such teaching might
best be developed. The Committee came to the conclusion that children in
any part of the Empire would never understand what the other parts were
like unless by some adequate means of visual instruction; and, further,
that as far as possible the teaching should be on the same lines in all
parts of the Empire. It was decided to make a beginning by an experiment
on a small scale, and for this purpose to invite the three Eastern
Colonies of Ceylon, the Straits Settlements, and Hong Kong to bear the
expense of a small book of Lantern Lectures on the United Kingdom for
use in the Schools in those Colonies. Other parts of the Empire were
afterwards invited to have editions which would be suited to their own
special requirements prepared at their own expense, and up to the
present date editions have been issued for the Eastern Colonies, for the
West Indies, for West Africa, for Mauritius, and for India. Editions are
now in preparation for Canada and for South Africa.
The Committee, however, have always had in mind the preparation of
illustrated lectures on the Colonies and India as well as on the United
Kingdom. Their experience convinced them that if this part of the work
were to be done as well as it could be done, it was advisable to have
the illustrations prepared on a uniform system by a highly skilled
artist or artists specially commissioned for the purpose. They were so
fortunate as to interest in their work Her Majesty the Queen (then Her
Royal Highness the Princess of Wales), and through her powerful and
gracious support, and that of Lady Dudley and a Committee of ladies who
were good enough to collect a sum of nearly £4,000 for the purpose, they
have been able to make a beginning of a work which will take some years
to complete. The Committee desire to record their warm gratitude to Her
Majesty, to Lady Dudley, and to the Committee of ladies for making this
part of the undertaking possible.
The lectures contained in the present little volume are the first
instalment of the work undertaken in connection with the Queen’s Fund.
The Committee’s artist, Mr. A. Hugh Fisher, has travelled through India
collecting material for the illustrative lantern slides. His sketches
and photographs have been reproduced partly by the ordinary process in
black and white, and partly by the Sanger Shepherd method in colour
photography. Some of the slides have been coloured by hand after Mr.
Fisher’s instructions. A series of maps has also been included, in order
that the lessons of the lectures may be driven home.
The text of the lectures has been prepared at the request of the
Committee by Mr. H. J. Mackinder, who has based his work on information
placed at his disposal from many sources. The Committee believe that he
has succeeded in presenting in their relative importance and proportion
all the chief facts essential to the popular understanding of His
Majesty’s Indian Dominions. It is, of course, obvious that no account
confined within the narrow limits of the present lectures, of so wide
and varied an Empire as that of India, can give a completely accurate
picture of all the many important facts and questions that are referred
to; but in order to reduce to a minimum the chance of giving misleading
impressions, Mr. Mackinder has had the advantage of suggestions from
several eminent authorities on the subject, and in this connection the
Committee desire especially to thank Sir Walter Lawrence, Sir William
Lee-Warner, Sir Theodore Morison, Sir Thomas Holdich, Sir William
Bisset, Sir Philip Hutchins, Mr. G. W. Forrest, C.I.E., and others.
MEATH,
Chairman of the Visual
Instruction Committee
LONDON,
August, 1910.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Publications of the Visual Instruction Committee, issued on
behalf of the Committee by Messrs. Waterlow & Sons Ltd.
=A.= Seven Lectures on the United Kingdom,
By Mr. H. J. MACKINDER.
In the following Editions:—
=1. Eastern Colonies Edition, Sept., 1905.=
In use in Ceylon, the Straits Settlements, and Hong Kong.
=2. Mauritius Edition, June, 1906.=
In use in Mauritius.
=3. West African Edition, Sept., 1906.=
In use in Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and Southern Nigeria.
=4. West India Edition, Sept., 1906.=
In use in Trinidad, British Guiana, and Jamaica.
=5. Indian Edition, March, 1907.=
In use in the following Provinces:—Madras, Bombay, Bengal, the
United Provinces, the Punjab, Burma, Eastern Bengal and
Assam, the Central Provinces, the North West Frontier
Province, and British Baluchistan.
=6. Indian Edition for use in the United Kingdom, Jan., 1909.= Price
One Shilling net.
=Canadian and South African Editions are being prepared by
direction of the Governments of the Dominion of Canada and of South
Africa.=
=B.=—Eight Lectures on India. August, 1910.
By Mr. H. J. MACKINDER.
Price One Shilling net.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS.
---
PAGE.
LECTURE I. —Madras—the Hindu Religion 1
LECTURE II. —Burma—the Buddhist Religion 19
LECTURE III. —Bengal—the Monsoons 35
LECTURE IV. —The United Provinces—the 51
Mutiny
LECTURE V. —Bombay—the Marathas 66
LECTURE VI. —Rajputana—the Feudatory 82
States
LECTURE VII. —Delhi-the Muhammadan Religion 95
LECTURE —The Northwest Frontier—the 114
VIII. Sikhs
------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE.—It is considered undesirable to overload this book
with footnotes, and, therefore, this general acknowledgment
is made of the indebtedness of the writer to various
standard authors of whose works use has been made and
quotations from which have in some cases been given.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LECTURE I.
---
=MADRAS.=
---
THE HINDU RELIGION.
India is an empire within an empire. There are four hundred million
people in the British Empire, and of these three hundred million are in
India. Though it is known by a single short name, India must not be
compared with countries such as France and Germany. As regards both area
and population it is the equal of half Europe, that half which includes
all the countries except Russia. It is a land of many languages, some of
them spoken by as many people as speak German or French. It is a land of
several religions, differing more deeply than the sects of Europe It is,
in short, a world in itself, of ancient civilisation, yet as the result
of a wonderful modern history there is to-day peace from end to end of
it, for though the systems of government are very different in different
parts, yet everywhere the rulers, whether British officials or native
princes, acknowledge the sovereignty or the suzerainty of His Imperial
Majesty King George the Fifth.
[Sidenote: 1.
Map of Journey, London to Colombo.] India lies one quarter way round the
globe, or ninety degrees eastward from Britain. It is placed wholly in
warmer latitudes than Europe, for the northernmost point of India is
almost precisely in the latitude of the southernmost point of Europe. It
occupies the same latitudes as the great western wing of Africa. If
lifted bodily northward and placed upon the map of Europe, it would
extend from Gibraltar, past Spain, France, and Britain to a point beyond
the Shetland Isles.
The British Empire in India was won, organised, and defended in the days
before steam. Access to it was possible only by sailing ship round the
Cape of Good Hope, by an ocean path, that is to say, more than ten
thousand miles long. The voyage took several months. To-day the British
official, and soldier, and merchant go from London to Bombay, and the
Indian student comes from Bombay to London in a fortnight. As we see on
the map, the route is by rail to Dover, across the Straits of Dover, and
by rail again through France to Marseilles. There the traveller joins
the steamer which has carried a cargo, probably of cottons and
machinery, through the Bay of Biscay. From Marseilles the track is
through the two Straits of Bonifacio and Messina to the entry of the
Suez Canal at Port Said. Here the mails are put on board, which have
come through the Italian peninsula to Brindisi, and thence by rapid
steamer. Thus it is only from Port Said through the Canal and the Red
Sea to Aden that the vessel carries her complete burden—mails and
passengers, and cargo. The redistribution commences at Aden. Our steamer
happens to be bound, not for Bombay, but for Colombo and Australia, and
the Indian mails and passengers are transferred at Aden to a local
steamer, which crosses to Bombay.
From London to Colombo and Bombay is the naval high street of the
British Empire. At Gibraltar, Malta, and Aden, where the waterways
narrow and enemies might obstruct, are British garrisons and naval
stations. Even the Suez Canal is partly owned by the British Government.
A generation ago shares in that great undertaking were purchased by the
United Kingdom for four million pounds sterling. To-day the British
shares in the Canal are valued at more than thirty millions sterling,
and each year a profit of more than a million pounds is paid into the
British Exchequer. There is a garrison of British troops also in Egypt.
Colombo is one of the chief centres of communication in the world. Some
day, when the Dominions beyond the seas have grown to be as rich and as
populous as Britain herself, the way through the Mediterranean, to-day
all important, will be reckoned as one of several equal threads of
imperial power. Other great streams of traffic, India-bound, will then
converge upon Colombo from the Cape in the southwest, from Australia in
the southeast, and by way of Singapore from Canada in the east.
[Sidenote: 2.
Map of the Indian Seas.] Colombo is, however, not in the technical sense
Indian. It is the chief city of the beautiful island of Ceylon, which is
about as large as Ireland. The Governor of Ceylon writes his despatches
home not to the Secretary of State for India but to the Secretary of
State for the Colonies, for Ceylon is a Crown Colony, not a Province of
the Indian Empire. We will, therefore, leave Ceylon to be studied at
some other opportunity, and will take the steamer which in a night
crosses the Gulf of Manar to Tuticorin, on the Indian coast opposite.
As we lie in our bunks that night, while the ship ploughs the water in
the dark, let us realize to what point on the vast surface of the globe
we have travelled. A hundred miles away to east of us are the mountains
of Ceylon, rising some eight thousand feet above the level of the ocean.
A hundred miles to west is Cape Comorin, the southernmost point of
India, lying eight degrees north of the Equator. Let us not be deceived
by the apparent smallness of space on the maps which we use—those eight
degrees are nearly equivalent to the length of Great Britain.
From Cape Comorin two coasts diverge, the one known as the Malabar Coast
northwestward for a thousand miles, the other known as the Coromandel
Coast northward and then northeastward for a like distance. The surf of
the Arabian Sea beats on the Malabar Coast, that of the Bay of Bengal on
the Coromandel Coast. Both the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal open
broadly southward to the Indian Ocean, for the great Indian Peninsula
narrows between them to a sharp point at Cape Comorin.
[Sidenote: 3.
Map of Southern India.] The interior of the Indian Peninsula is for the
most part a low plateau, known as the Deccan, whose western margin forms
a steep brink overlooking the Malabar Coast. From the top of this brink,
called the Western Ghats, the surface of the plateau falls gently
eastward to a second lower brink, which bears the name of Eastern Ghats.
Between the Eastern Ghats, however, and the Coromandel Coast there is a
broad belt of low-lying plain, the Carnatic. Thus India presents a lofty
front to the ship approaching from the west, but a featureless plain
along the Bay of Bengal, where the trees of the coastline appear to rise
out of a water-horizon when seen from a short distance seaward.
[Sidenote: 4.
Approaching Tuticorin.] We wake at the dawn of the equatorial day which
comes almost suddenly at six in the morning. There is bustle on board,
for the launch is alongside which is to carry us ashore. The ship is
riding in a yellow, turbid sea, and the land is distant some miles to
the west, a low dark line along the horizon. At one point are white
buildings, which gleam in the increasing light. We cross the broad
shoal, and gradually the detail of the coast separates into a rich
vegetation of trees, and a city whose most prominent object is a cotton
factory with tall chimneys—strange reminder at the very threshold of our
journey that we are entering a land which is in process of economic
change. The United Kingdom underwent such a change a century ago, when
spinning and weaving were removed from the cottage to the steam-driven
factory.
[Sidenote: 5.
Nearer approach to Tuticorin.] India is a land of cotton. The very name
calico is derived from Calicut, a town on the Malabar Coast, which was a
centre of trade when Europeans first came over the ocean. Lancashire now
sends cotton fabrics to India, and the Lancashire power-looms compete
seriously with the finer work of the hand looms of India. But India
manufactures great quantities of her own coarser cottons, and such a
mill as this at Tuticorin is doing more than Lancashire to change the
occupations of the Indian people. The beautiful silks, however, worn by
the better-to-do women of India are still manufactured by hand loom.
[Sidenote: 6.
Landing at Tuticorin.] [Sidenote: 7.
The Bazaar, Tuticorin.] [Sidenote: 8.
Spinning Mill at Tuticorin.] [Sidenote: 9.
Ducks at Tuticorin.] We land. Dark gesticulating figures surround us,
scantily clad in white cotton. The morning sun casts long shadows, but
there is a throng of people, for the work of India is done in the cool
of the morning. The express train to Madras is waiting, but we have a
short time for that first stroll, which leaves so deep an impression on
the traveller setting foot in a new land. Tuticorin is a remote
provincial city, a Dover or a Calais, on the passage from Ceylon. Here
is a picture of its little bazaar with dark people in flowing white
robes; there is a country cart in the street—ox-drawn. Next we have a
nearer view of the spinning mill with a half-naked workman in the
foreground. Under the shade of these leafy trees is a flock of ducks for
sale. At every turn we see something characteristic, and must ask
questions.
[Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 3.] We leave Tuticorin and travel for a
hundred miles across the plain. It is a barren-looking country and dry,
though at certain seasons there is plentiful rain, and crops enough are
produced to maintain a fairly dense population. Far down on the western
horizon, as we journey northward, are the mountains of the Malabar
Coast, for in this extremity of India the Western and Eastern Ghats have
come together and there is no plateau between them. The mountains rise
from the western sea and from the eastern plain into a ridge along the
west coast whose summits are about as high as the summits of Ceylon,
that is to say some 8,000 feet. A group of small hills, isolated on the
plain, marks the position of Madura, a hundred miles from Tuticorin.
Madura is the seat of one of the finest temples in the land.
[Sidenote: 10.
Plan of a South Indian Temple.] A Hindu temple in Southern India usually
consists of a square building rising through several stories which grow
gradually smaller. It is thus pyramidal in form, and is adorned with
tiers of thronged sculpture. Within is a cell containing the image. The
temple itself is surrounded by square and walled enclosures, one without
the other; the great gateways through the successive walls are the chief
glories of southern architecture. Though often larger than the central
shrine, they are not unlike it in general appearance, but rectangular in
plan, not square. They rise story above story to a summit ridge and are
rich with thousands of sculptured figures. These great gateways are
known as gopuras. In the courtyards enclosed between the successive
walls are the homes of the priests, and usually a large water tank and a
hall of a thousand columns. Some of these temples are very wealthy
foundations.
[Sidenote: 11.
The Tank of the Golden Lilies, The Temple, Madura.] [Sidenote: 12.
The Temple, Madura.] [Sidenote: 13.
A Gopura at Madura.] Here we have the tank of the Golden Lilies in the
Temple of Madura, surrounded by a colonnade, with gopuras rising from
beyond; and here another view in the same temple, and here a gopura
photographed from near.
Hinduism is in its essence a spiritual religion. Western thought
instinctively takes for granted the reality of outward things. Eastern
thought instinctively takes for granted the reality of the “soul” or
inward life. In the cosmology of the West there are two worlds, the
natural and the supernatural; in the East the soul is the only real
existence. The world-soul, or soul of Universal Nature, is God, and this
Divine Soul is the supreme and fundamental reality; by comparison with
it all outward things are shadows. Eternity is a vital aspect of
reality. The present existence of the soul is not more certain than its
pre-existence and its future existence. The present life is always brief
and fleeting, but the past began and the future will end in eternity.
Issuing from the Universal Soul and passing through æons of what may be
called prenatal existence, the soul at last becomes individualised and
enters on a career of conscious activity. Far from being dependent on
the body, the soul takes to itself the outward form which it needs and
deserves, and the body dies when it is deprived of the vitalising
presence that animated it. The destiny of the soul is determined by its
origin. It issued from the Universal Soul, and into the Universal Soul,
its source, it must eventually be re-absorbed, though it may pass
through innumerable lives on its way to the goal of spiritual maturity.
“As it nears the goal the chains of individuality relax their hold upon
it; and at last, with the final extinction of egoism, with the final
triumph of selflessness, with the expansion of consciousness till it has
become all-embracing—the sense of separateness entirely ceases, and the
soul finds its true self, or, in other words, becomes fully and clearly
conscious of its oneness with the living whole.” Such, in a few words,
is the inner faith of the East.
The religious books of India are written in Sanskrit, the tongue of
Aryan conquerors who came into India across the northwestern mountains
nearly two thousand years before Christ. The Aryans brought with them
the worship of the powers of nature, the “devas,” or bright ones. From
the Rig-Veda, or collection of hymns to various gods, which were
composed for the worship of the Aryans during the earliest centuries of
their dwelling in India, we learn something about these deities. Some
were simply forces of nature, such as Father Heaven, Mother Earth, the
Dawn Goddess, the Sun God, and the Wind God. With other deities new
trains of ideas became connected that tended to obscure their original
character. The Fire God, for instance, personified the fire of sacrifice
and domestic use, the atmospheric fire of lightning, and sometimes even
the sun. Thus he became the priest, mediating between man and the gods.
Similarly Varuna, who at first apparently typified the open sky, whose
eye is the sun, subsequently grew into a mighty guardian of the laws of
nature and morality. This earliest age of Hinduism, the age to which the
Rig-Veda belongs, is known as the Vedic Age, and the gods of this age
were worshipped with sacrifice. In the Vedic period Aryan society
probably divided itself into the soldier-yeoman and the priest. The
soldier and yeoman, desirous of winning the goodwill and active
assistance of the gods of the sky and earth, would hire the priest, who
thus came to be regarded as the master of the rites which cajole or
constrain the invisible powers. As the Aryans extended their sway over
India, the influence of the Brahmans or priests increased, and in their
hands religion underwent a profound change. Personal worship gave way to
ecclesiastical ritualism. The idea of sacrifice as a means of compelling
the gods grew to an enormous degree, and the welfare of the world was
imagined to depend upon ritual, the key to which was in the hands of the
Brahmans.
There was, however, another side to this religious development. Even in
the Vedic Age, while the popular mind was imagining a deity in every
startling natural phenomenon, there were thinkers who discovered behind
all the “devas,” or gods, the one Supreme Power, the Creator, Ruler, and
Preserver of all things, the Divine Soul of which we spoke just now.
This Supreme Power, who became known as Brahma, is not only the real
self of the whole Universe, but also, as we have seen, the real self of
each individual soul. The one Supreme Power could, however, only be
discovered after a severe moral and intellectual discipline, and those
who had not yet discovered it were allowed to worship lower gods. In one
of the Hindu Scriptures the Supreme Lord is represented as saying: “Even
those who worship idols worship me.” No one can have any conception of
Hinduism unless he realises that throughout it there runs a wide
distinction between the popular faith and the philosophical faith which
underlies it. This distinction continues to this day. Countless gods are
still worshipped in India, but the few still hold and always have held
that all gods to whom worship is offered are but names or masks of the
Supreme Lord of the Universe.
The two principal gods of Modern Hinduism are Vishnu, the Preserver, and
Siva, the Destroyer and Recreator; but they are worshipped under many
different attributes. These two gods came into prominence after the
Vedic Age, and their cults have passed through many phases; but a large
number of Hindus still belong to sects which are called by their names.
The sect to which a Hindu belongs is indicated by a coloured mark,
erroneously described as a caste mark, made on the forehead. Brahma,
Vishnu, and Siva are sometimes regarded as three persons of a Trinity.
Animals are still sacrificed in certain parts of India, and in honour of
certain gods, but the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and the
teaching of various religious reformers, of whom Buddha is best known,
has tended in the direction of humanity to all creatures; and the great
majority of Hindus are unwilling to take life, and abstain from animal
food. The cow is to all Hindus an object of veneration.
An elaborate mythology is connected with the Hindu religion, and the
incidents of this mythology form the basis of Hindu sacred art,
especially of the rich sculpture of the temples. Siva rides Nandi the
Bull, and Vishnu rides Garuda the Eagle. Vishnu in some of his avatars,
or incarnations, takes the form of a fish or of a man-lion, or for vast
numbers of his followers he becomes Rama, the hero of the epic poem the
Ramayana, or he is Krishna—another hero-God. Siva has a wife Kali, who
is terrible, though at other times she is Parvati, the goddess of
beauty; and Siva has sons, of whom one is Ganesh, with a fat human body
and an elephant’s head.
[Sidenote: 14.
A Marriage Procession, Trichinopoly.] [Sidenote: 15.
A Group of Brahmans.] Religion goes deep into the life of the Indian. It
governs all his social relations. Here is a street at Trichinopoly, a
hundred miles north of Madura. There happens to be the spire of a
Christian church in the background. In the foreground is a temple
elephant, heading a marriage procession. In white paint on the
elephant’s head is the sect mark of the contracting parties. The Hindu
community is divided not only in sects but also into castes, which are
sternly separated, so that a man may not marry into another caste, or
even eat with those of a lower caste. The tradition is that originally
there were four castes; first the Brahmans, or priestly stock; then the
Kshattriyas, or soldiers, the royal stock; third, the Vaishiyas, or
merchants; and fourth, the Sudras, or artisans, labourers and
agriculturists. But all these castes became sub-divided, and there are
now more castes than callings.
[Sidenote: 16.
Processional Car, Trichinopoly.] A curious characteristic of Hinduism is
the mixture of the squalid and crude with the grandeur of an
architecture which in some respects is unsurpassed in the world. Not
merely are the maimed and the beggars importunate in the temple
passages, as in the church entries of Roman Catholic countries, but in
every vacant corner of the outer courts of the temples are established
little tradesmen. The properties of religious ceremony are often
decrepit and tawdry. Here, for instance, we have a wooden processional
car, rough roofed, awaiting the annual ceremony amid the live-stock of
the yard. These warm-natured Southern people have the child’s power of
making believe, and can worship the doll even when battered out of all
recognition. They easily let loose the imagination and give devotion to
the spirit embodied in a shapeless stone as sincerely as to that in the
most finished allegorical sculpture.
[Sidenote: 17.
Arch of Welcome to Prince of Wales, Trichinopoly.] It is this sense of
the spiritual and the allegorical in all things that makes the Indian so
ready for loyal devotion to the person of the ruler. Here at
Trichinopoly we have a triumphal gateway erected in honour of the visit
to India of the Prince and Princess of Wales, which still bears the
words “Glorious Welcome to our Future Emperor.” The Prince and Princess
are now the Emperor and Empress. With us the gateway would have been
demolished when it had served its immediate purpose. Here it remains, as
does the memory of the visit. Ceremony rises in India to the rank of an
historical event.
[Sidenote: 18.
The Main Bazaar Street, Trichinopoly.] [Sidenote: 19.
The Tank and the Rock, Trichinopoly.] [Sidenote: 20.
The Same—another view.] [Sidenote: 21.
The Rock temple, Trichinopoly.] In the distance through the archway is
the Rock of Trichinopoly which we approach nearer by the main bazaar of
the town, and then, nearer still, we come to the tank which lies beneath
the Rock. Amid the water is a pagoda or shrine. In the foot of the Rock
itself there is excavated a temple. Such rock temples are frequent in
India, perhaps because rock is less costly to carve where it lies
undisturbed than it is to quarry and to remove and to build and to
carve.
[Sidenote: 22.
Trichinopoly, looking east from the top of the Rock.] [Sidenote: 23.
Trichinopoly, looking south from the top of the Rock.] [Sidenote: 24.
The Bull Nandi, Tanjore.] [Sidenote: 25.
The Fort, Tanjore.] [Sidenote: 26.
The Temple, Tanjore.] [Sidenote: 27.
Police drilling on the Maidan, Tanjore.]
Here we have views from the summit of the Trichinopoly Rock, looking
eastward over the city, and then southward over the roof of the great
temple to the tank and the Christian Church. Bishop Heber died at
Trichinopoly. In each aspect we see the unbroken plain which surrounds
the City. Do you notice the Bull Nandi as an ornament along the edge of
the roof of the temple? Here we have him again carved from a great block
of granite at Tanjore, a place not far from Trichinopoly. Other scenes
at Tanjore follow. One shows us the wall of the Fort with the moat
outside, and the gopura of the Great Temple. Another is a vista within
the temple walls, and gives some idea of the great spaces which the
larger temples occupy. Then suddenly we become conscious of one of the
sharp contrasts which characterise the India of to-day. These are Police
drilling on the Maidan, or public place of Tanjore, and away on the
horizon are the semaphores of the railway.
In the plain of the Carnatic, which surrounds Madura, Trichinopoly, and
Tanjore, we are not merely in the midst of the Hindu religion and caste
system, but we are also near scenes rendered memorable by the struggle
for India, a hundred and fifty years ago, between the French and the
English. Two trading companies, the one seated in London and the other
in Paris, obtained leave from the local princes to establish trading
posts on the Coromandel Coast. They presently fortified these posts and
became ambitious rivals.
[Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 3.] At this time there was a disputed
succession in the Carnatic State, and the English supported one aspirant
for the throne of the Nawab, the French another. The Nawab of the
English party was besieged in the Fort of Trichinopoly by the French and
their Nawab. To effect a diversion, a young Captain, Robert Clive, in
the British company’s service, seized the Fort of Arcot, a hundred miles
to the north, and by a prolonged heroic resistance to the siege which
gathered round him, succeeded in relieving the pressure on Trichinopoly.
That Captain Clive became Lord Clive, Baron of Plassey, the founder of
the British Empire in India. He went out as a writer or clerk in the
service of the East India Company, and rose to be Governor of Bengal.
It must be remembered, however, that in the time of Clive, no less than
to-day, the number of the British in India was surprisingly small. As we
saw just now, the Police, a great force, are not British but Indian, and
the Indian army, though with British officers, is twice as numerous as
the British garrison. The British have organised the peace and unity of
India, rather than conquered it in the ordinary sense.
The life of the white man in India is governed by the seasons. Here in
the south the temperature is at all times high, though the heat is never
so great as in the hot season of northern India. On the other hand there
is no cool season comparable with that of the north. In most parts of
India, however, there are five cool months, October, November, December,
January, and February. March, April, and May are the hot season. The
remaining four months constitute the rainy season, when the temperature
is moderated by the presence of cloud, but the moisture is trying to the
European constitution.
[Sidenote: 28.
The Nilgiris, near Ootacamund.] In all parts of India the white
population seeks periodical relief by a visit to the hills. Here in the
south the favourite hill station is Ootacamund, in the Nilgiri Hills. It
is scattered over a wide space, with the bungalows in separate compounds
or enclosures.
[Sidenote: 29.
Ootacamund, The Bazaar.] [Sidenote: 30.
Ootacamund, General View.] [Sidenote: 31.
Ootacamund.] [Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 3.] “Ooty,” as it is familiarly
called, stands some seven thousand feet above the sea in the midst of a
country of rolling downs rising yet another thousand feet. This lofty
district forms the southern point of the Deccan plateau where the
Eastern and Western Ghats draw together. A deep passage, twenty miles
broad, known as the gap of Coimbatore or of Palghat, lies through the
Ghats, immediately south of the Nilgiri Hills, from the eastern plain to
the Malabar Coast. Other hills, equally high, lie southward of the gap
and extend to Cape Comorin. We saw these last hills to our left hand as
we travelled northward from Tuticorin to Madura.
[Sidenote: 32.
On the Railway to Ootacamund.] [Sidenote: 33.
The Same.] [Sidenote: 34.
The Same.] [Sidenote: 35.
The Same.] The railway from the east coast goes through the Gap of
Coimbatore to the Malabar cities of Cochin and Calicut, and from this
railway a mountain line has been constructed up into the Nilgiri
heights. We have here a succession of striking views on this mountain
line. It is a rack and pinion railway, up which the train is worked on
the central rail.
[Sidenote: 36.
The Drug in the Nilgiri Hills.] There are magnificent landscapes at the
edge of the Nilgiris, where the mountains descend abruptly to the
plains. This view was taken from a point called Lady Canning’s seat. It
shows the Drug, from the top of which prisoners of war used to be
thrown, in the days of the tyranny of Hyder Ali and Tippu Sultan, the
Mohammedan sovereigns of Mysore, of whom we shall hear more presently.
[Sidenote: 37.
Tea Plantation, Nilgiri Hills.] [Sidenote: 38.
The Same.] [Sidenote: 39.
Hill Tribe, Nilgiri Hills.] [Sidenote: 40.
Toda People, near Ootacamund.] The vegetation of the heights is
naturally different from that of the lowlands, and the cultivation of
the Nilgiris is chiefly tea and cinchona, from the latter of which crops
quinine is prepared. Amid the great forests of the slopes large game is
numerous, such as sambur, or Indian elk, and tiger. Here also tribes of
savage peoples have survived through all the centuries of history
practically untouched by the civilization of the plains. One of these
tribes, the smallest but the most interesting, are the Todas, who number
less than a thousand, but have their own strange, unwritten language.
[Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 3.] [Sidenote: 41.
Madras from the Sea.] [Sidenote: 42.
The High Court, Madras.] [Sidenote: 43.
St. Mary’s Church, Madras.] [Sidenote: 44.
The Law College, Madras.] [Sidenote: 45.
Y.M.C.A. Building, Madras.] Northward of the group of temple cities, and
eastward of the Nilgiris and of the plateau country of Mysore, on the
low coastal plain is the great city of Madras, four hundred miles from
our landing place at Tuticorin. Like the other seaports of modern India,
Madras has grown from the smallest beginning within the European period.
Its nucleus was Fort St. George, built to shelter the office and
warehouse of the East India Company, in the time when Charles I. was
king of England. To-day Madras has half a million people, and
magnificent buildings in the European style. We have here a view looking
northeastward over a corner of Fort St. George, and across the public
grounds, to the High Court of Justice, whose lofty tower serves the
purpose of a lighthouse for ships approaching the port. To the right of
the High Court in the distance are the buildings round the harbour. Next
we have St. Mary’s Church, standing within Fort St. George, the oldest
British church in India, though the present structure was erected to
replace an earlier church. And here we have the Law College, which
stands beside the High Court, and close to it the building of the Young
Men’s Christian Association. There are many Christians in southern India
among the natives, indeed more than in any other part of the Indian
Empire, although even here they are but a small minority. One Christian
community on the Malabar coast is of the Nestorian sect, who came to
India many centuries before the sea route was opened round the Cape.
[Sidenote: 46.
Madras Bank.] [Sidenote: 47.
The People’s Park, Madras.] [Sidenote: 48.
Banyan Tree.] [Sidenote: 49.
The Same.] Madras has a Corporation much after the European plan, and is
a clean, well drained city with many public amenities. Here, for
instance, is the electric tramway in front of the Madras Bank. Here we
have a view in the People’s Park, with a group of sambur within an
enclosure. One of the most remarkable and typical of ornamental trees in
India is the banyan, with drooping branches, whose suckers take root
when reach the ground, giving the effect of a grove, though in fact but
a single tree.
[Sidenote: 50.
Banyan Avenue.] Here is a banyan tree seen from without and from within,
and here a banyan avenue at Madras.
[Sidenote: 51.
Grain Sellers, Madras.] [Sidenote: 52.
Men ploughing, Madras.] [Sidenote: 53.
Covered Bullock Cart, Madras.] Before leaving Madras, let us look at
three scenes of native life. Here are grain sellers, and here, outside
the city, are men ploughing. Here we see the typical covered bullock
cart.
[Sidenote: 54.
Map of India, distinguishing Madras, Mysore, Cochin, and Travancore.]
[Sidenote: 55.
Coffee Planters, Coorg.] Lastly, let us consider the map, and learn what
part of India is ruled from Madras and Ootacamund. We have in the first
place, coloured red, the territory of the Presidency of Madras, which is
ruled directly by the Governor and his Council. In purple are shown the
important native state of Mysore, separated from both coasts by British
territory, and the two little native states of Travancore and Cochin
along the Malabar Coast southward to Cape Comorin. Mysore is directly
under the general supervision of the Government of India, but Travancore
and Cochin are under that of the Government of Madras. Beside Mysore is
the diminutive territory of Coorg, no larger than the County of Essex,
in England. But Coorg has a certain importance for the growth of coffee.
Here we have a group of native coffee planters.
[Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 3.] Then we look again at the map in which the
lowlands were shown green and the uplands brown. We see the plain from
Tuticorin to Madras city. We see the southern end of the Deccan plateau,
with the state of Mysore upon it, and the Nilgiri hills at its
extremity. We have the lowland passage of Coimbatore, to which we
referred in describing Ootacamund, and south of this afresh the hills
extending to Cape Comorin. The native states of Cochin and Travancore
are on the westward descent from these southernmost hills. Note again
how the railways take advantage of the lowland passages, especially the
line from Madras leading westward to the Malabar Coast.
The Cauvery flowing eastward over the plateau is the most considerable
river of Southern India. As it descends the Eastern Ghats it makes great
falls, and these have been harnessed, as the phrase is, and made to
supply power which is carried electrically for nearly a hundred miles to
the Kolar goldfield, within the Mysore boundary. The engineer who
superintended the construction of this work was a French Canadian
officer of the Royal Engineers—interesting evidence of the increasing
solidarity of the British Empire.
Bangalore is the chief military station of southern India. It is
connected by rail with Madras, but is situated on the plateau within
Mysore. From Bangalore the line runs on to Seringapatam on the Cauvery,
and to Mysore city beyond. These were the seats of the Muhammadan
Sultans, Hyder Ali and Tippu, father and son, who, a generation later
than the time when Clive fought at Arcot, held Madras in terror from
their highland fastness. The threat to the British position in India was
a real one. Hyder Ali leagued himself with the French, with whom we were
then at war, but he was defeated under the great Governor-General,
Warren Hastings. Tippu, Hyder’s son, was also an ally of the French. He
lived into the time of Napoleon, and made his chief attack on British
power when the French were in Egypt, but he was defeated and killed.
Colonel Wellesley, afterwards Duke of Wellington, first rose to notice
in this campaign. He was appointed to command “the troops above the
Ghats.” After the death of Tippu, the civil administration of Mysore was
also assigned to Wellesley, and splendid work he did as civil
administrator.
[Sidenote: 56.
Southern India, showing rainfall of S.W. Monsoon.] [Sidenote: 57.
Pykara Falls, Nilgiri Hills.] [Sidenote: 58.
Gairsoppa Falls.] A third map shows you the rainfall which is brought by
the west winds of the summer time to the Malabar Coast. These winds
strike the Western Ghats and the Nilgiri hills and drench them with
superabundant moisture, so that they are thickly forested. At this
season magnificent waterfalls leap down the westward ravines and feed
torrents which rush in short valleys to the ocean. One of the grandest
falls in the world is at Gairsoppa, in the northwestern corner of the
state of Mysore.
[Sidenote: 59.
Southern India, showing rainfall of N.E. Monsoon.] [Sidenote: 60.
Southern India, showing density of Population.] A fourth map indicates
the rainfall on the east coast brought by the Northeast Monsoon of the
winter season. Finally, a fifth map shows that the population is densest
down on the lowlands precisely in those regions, on the east coast and
on the west, which are best supplied with moisture. Throughout India the
supply of water for agricultural purposes is the key to the prosperity
of the country, for everywhere there is heat enough for luxuriant
vegetation. It is only drought which is in places the cause of
sterility. With all its vast population there are none the less great
spaces in India very sparsely peopled. Once more let us remember that
India is rather a continent than merely a country.
--------------
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LECTURE II.
---
=BURMA.=
---
THE BUDDHIST RELIGION.
[Sidenote: 1.
Map of India, distinguishing Burma.] In the last lecture we visited
Madras, the southernmost and oldest province of the Indian Empire. In
this lecture we will cross the Bay of Bengal from Madras to Burma, the
easternmost and newest of the provinces, if we except a recent
sub-division of an older unit. Politically, Burma is a part of India,
for it is ruled by the Viceroy, and commercially it is coming every day
into closer relation with the remainder of India. In most other
respects, however, Burma is rather the first land of the Far East than
the last of India, the Middle East. In race and language probably, in
religion and social customs certainly, it is nearer to China than to
India. Geographically, however, though placed in the Indo-Chinese
peninsula beyond the Bay of Bengal, Burma is in relation with the Indian
world, for it has a great navigable river which drains into the Indian
Ocean, and not into the Pacific as do the rivers of Siam and Annam, the
remaining countries of the southeastward promontory of Asia.
[Sidenote: 2.
The Shore, Madras.] [Sidenote: 3.
In Madras Harbour.] We embark from Madras on the steamer which is to
carry us to Rangoon. Formerly it was necessary to go out to the vessel
through the surf in specially constructed boats, for all the Coromandel
Coast is shoal, and there is not a single natural harbour. Often the
surf is very rough. Now, however, a harbour has been made at Madras. Two
piers have been built out into the sea at right angles to the shore.
They may be seen in the distance in this view. At their extremities they
bend inward towards one another, so as to enclose a quadrangular space
within which the steamers lie. None the less there are times when the
mighty waves sweep through the open mouth, rendering the harbour unsafe,
so that the shipping must stand out to sea. There have been many
terrible disasters in the cyclones which from time to time strike the
east coast of India. When the Madras harbour was half completed the
works were overwhelmed by a storm and the undertaking had to be
recommenced.
[Sidenote: 4.
Coolies on Steamer.] Our vessel carries nearly two thousand coolies,
natives of Madras, going to Burma to work in the rice mills or on the
wharves, for Burma is a thinly peopled land. It has great natural
resources, which are being rapidly developed by British capital. The
coolies take passage as deck passengers for a few rupees, and each on
landing at Rangoon has to undergo a searching medical examination,
because the Plague is often carried from Madras to Burma. The disease
manifests itself first by swollen glands, especially under the arms. The
contagion, caused by a minute organism, is conveyed by rats. This
terrible sickness is one of the worst scourges of modern India. It first
broke out in Bombay in August, 1896. Since that date there have been
three years in each of which a million deaths were due to it. As time
goes on the mortality will probably decrease, for the first onslaught of
a new disease is generally deadly. We must beware, however, of
exaggerating its significance. There are three hundred million people in
the Indian Empire, and the death rate by plague, even at its maximum, is
therefore not very high. It is, indeed, low as compared with the death
rate by malarial fever.
[Sidenote: 5.
Chinese Junk in the Rangoon River.] After a probably rough passage, we
approach the low-lying shore of the great delta of the Irawaddy river,
and enter that branch of it which is known as the Rangoon river. A stray
Chinese junk reminds us of the fact that we are entering Indo-China, and
of the trade relations of Burma with Singapore and the regions of the
Far East. Burmese rice is sent to China, the Malay States, India, East
Africa, and Europe. Rangoon depends for her commerce mainly on the rice
harvest. In recent years, famines in India have been mitigated by rice
exported from Rangoon.
[Sidenote: 6.
Map of Burma.] As we steam up the river for some miles inland, let us
consider, with the help of a map, the main features of the geography of
the land which we are about to visit. In this map is shown nearly the
whole of the great southeastward peninsula of Asia. The areas which are
coloured green are lowland, those which are yellow are upland, and the
brown signifies highland and mountain. A ridge of highland, broken only
at two or three points, runs southward through the centre of the map,
separating Burma and the river basins of the Indian Ocean from Siam and
the river basins of the Pacific Ocean. This great divide of the drainage
is continued beyond the southern edge of the map through the Malay
Peninsula for some distance. It ends near Singapore in the southernmost
point of Asia, only one degree north of the Equator.
In Burma, parallel with the dividing range, are three other ridges,
striking southward side by side. These separate three valleys, through
which flow severally the Salween, Sittang, and Irawaddy rivers. The
valley of the Salween, as the yellow and brown colours upon the map
indicate, is less deeply trenched between its bounding ranges than are
the other two valleys. As we should therefore expect, the Salween river
has a steeply descending course broken by rapids, and is of small value
for navigation. At its mouth is the port of Moulmein. The valley of the
Sittang, which is a short river, prolongs the upper valley of the
Irawaddy, which latter river makes a great westward bend at Mandalay,
and passes by a transverse passage right through one of the parallel
mountain ridges. Beyond this passage it bends southward again, accepting
the direction of its tributary, the Chindwin river. The great port of
Rangoon is placed on a tidal channel at the eastern edge of the Irawaddy
delta. The railway from Rangoon to Mandalay runs through the Sittang
valley and does not follow the Irawaddy. There is navigation, however,
by the Irawaddy past Pagan and Mandalay northward to Bhamo, which is
close to the Chinese frontier. The coastal plain of Burma is known as
Arakan where it runs northward from the Irawaddy delta, and as
Tenasserim where it runs southward from that delta along a coast beset
with an archipelago of beautiful islands. The delta itself bears the
name of Pegu, or Lower Burma; while the region round Mandalay is Upper
Burma.
[Sidenote: 7.
Plan of Rangoon.] We are in the Rangoon river. A tall, pointed pagoda
appears on a hill to the right, and presently, as the channel bends to
the west, we approach the busy commercial front of Rangoon city,
surmounted by the golden spire of the great Shwe Dagon Pagoda.
[Sidenote: 8.
Shwe Dagon Pagoda, from across the Royal Lakes.] [Sidenote: 9.
The Shwe Dagon Pagoda, Rangoon.] [Sidenote: 10.
Images of the Sitting Buddha.] [Sidenote: 11.
Earning Merit at the Shwe Dagon Pagoda.] Rangoon, apart from its chief
Pagoda, is a modern city. Fifty years ago it was a village. To-day it
has a quarter of a million people. A wharf-fronted road, the Strand,
follows the shore of the main river for several miles. Up the Pegu
tributary to the east for several other miles are many rice mills with
tall chimneys throwing out black smoke. The harbour is busy with
shipping. There are great timber yards, and there are oil mills, for the
products of Burma are, first and foremost, rice, and then timber,
especially great logs of teak—harder than oak, and then petroleum. Back
from the Strand is a well kept town, with broad streets at right angles,
though as yet there are few really impressive buildings to compare with
the public buildings of Madras. There is a beautiful group of lakes, the
Royal Lakes, set in wooded public grounds, and across these is the
finest view of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, like a great hand-bell placed on a
low hill. This pagoda is said to be the most frequented in the Buddhist
world, for it has as relics eight hairs of Gautama, the founder of the
Buddhist religion. It began some two thousand years ago as a small
village fane. In successive ages the original structure has been encased
afresh and afresh, until as the result of work done in the days of Queen
Elizabeth, the great pagoda was completed which is now the glory of
Rangoon. It rises to a height of nearly 400 feet, and is solid, there
being no chamber within. The brickwork of which it is built makes a
series of steps or ledges, so that it would be possible to climb for
some distance up the spire. The whole is plated with gold-leaf, and the
gilding is constantly renewed by pious devotees, who thus earn merit.
The word “Shwe” in the name of this pagoda signifies golden. On the
summit is a “hti,” or umbrella, of exquisite workmanship and material.
It is said to have cost sixty thousand pounds. In the vane are 5,000
gems—diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. The base of the pagoda is
surrounded first by shrines of varying sizes, and then by a flagged
courtyard, which again is fringed with canopies and halls opening
towards the pagoda, with many carved screens and arches, and innumerable
shrines and altars, and images of Gautama. Flights of steps roofed over
with teak descend from the courtyard, and one of the lower entries is
guarded by great grotesque figures, partly lion and partly griffin, made
of plastered bricks. We see one of them in this view. Then we have two
very interesting pictures: the one represents three images of the
Sitting Buddha from one of the shrines on the flagged courtyard at the
foot of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, and the other shows a pilgrim “earning
merit” by putting gold leaf on to the pagoda itself.
[Sidenote: 12.
The Sule Pagoda, Rangoon.] There is another considerable pagoda in the
city, the Sule Pagoda. We have it here, with a corner of a building
adjacent of European architecture, the Municipal Offices. Observe the
watering of the streets by hand labour.
[Sidenote: 13.
A Typical Burman.] [Sidenote: 14.
Burmese Gambling, Rangoon.] The Burmese are a short, sturdy people,
merry and happy, and akin rather to the Japanese in temperament than to
the people of the Indian Peninsula. The features of their faces are
obviously Mongolian. They have the oblique eyes of the Chinaman. Here is
a typical Burman with a rose coloured wrap round his head. The Burmese
women, whose praises have been sung through the world, are dainty and,
according to a more or less Chinese standard, not infrequently
beautiful. They love to clothe themselves in silks of brilliant and
delicate hue. Excessive industry is certainly not a failing of the race,
yet there are no poor. We have here a group of Burmese gamblers at
Rangoon. The theatres play all night and the spectators go home by
daylight. The “pwe,” or show, consists invariably of three parts—a
prince, a princess, and a clown; it may be compared with our traditional
harlequinade. Both Indians and Chinese are migrating to Burma in great
numbers, but agricultural work is still chiefly in native hands.
[Sidenote: 15.
Elephants lifting Teak.] [Sidenote: 16.
Elephants Pushing Teak.] [Sidenote: 17.
Tusker Elephant.] [Sidenote: 18.
Tusker Elephant lifting Teak.] [Sidenote: 19.
The Same.] One of the most curious and typical sights of Rangoon is that
of elephants manipulating the great logs of teak wood in the timber
yards. The logs are cut in the forests of the north of Burma, and are
floated for hundreds of miles down the Irawaddy in large rafts, until
they are stranded at a creek near Rangoon, called Pazundaung. Elephants
are then employed for the purpose of moving and piling up the logs. The
male elephant is very powerful and has strong tusks, on which he carries
the logs, preventing them from falling with his trunk, but the female
elephants are not so strong, and do not as a rule lift the logs off the
ground, but merely drag them, or push them with the head. We have here
two cow elephants, the one forty years old and the other seventy. We
have them here again, one of them at the command of her rider pushing
the logs forward with her head. In the next scene is a male elephant
with tusks. He is fifty years old, and we realise his power in the next
two views, where we see him poising on his tusks a great tree trunk.
These huge animals are fed entirely on a grass which grows along the
banks of the Irawaddy not far from Rangoon. Machinery is now taking the
place of elephants in the timber yards, and Rangoon is, therefore,
likely to lose one of its most interesting sights.
[Sidenote: 20.
A Rice Mill, Rangoon.] [Sidenote: 21.
The Same.] While we are on the river front let us glance also at a rice
mill, where a process equivalent to thrashing is carried out, the grain
being separated from the husk. The black smoke is from the paddy husks
used to supply the motive power of the mill. Paddy, or unthrashed rice,
is mostly brought to Rangoon by water, though more than a million and a
half tons now come annually by rail. After the milling process is
complete, the rice is packed into bags for shipment all over the world.
[Sidenote: 22.
A Burmese Railway Train.] We will take train and run by the Burmese
Sittang Railway over the broad levels of the delta, passing through
fields from which the paddy has recently been cut. Only the ears are
lopped off, and the straw is burnt as it stands. The Burmans are mostly
yeomen, each owning his cattle and doing his own work in the field.
Beyond Pegu we follow the Sittang River, with hill ranges low on the
eastern and western horizons, until we come to Mandalay, once capital of
the independent kingdom of Upper Burma. This kingdom was annexed to
India in 1885 at the conclusion of the third Burmese war. Mandalay is
the last of three capitals a few miles apart, which at different times
in the past century have been the seat of the Burmese kings. Amarapura,
a few miles to the south, was the earliest, and Ava, a few miles to the
west, was the capital from 1822 to 1837.
[Sidenote: 23.
The 450 Pagodas from Mandalay Hill.] At Mandalay we are again on the
banks of the Irawaddy. There is a hill in the northern suburbs several
hundred feet in height, from which we may look over the city. The houses
are so buried in foliage that, seen from the height, the place appears
almost like a wood of green trees. The square Dufferin Fort, with walled
and moated boundary, and sides more than a mile in length, is
distinguishable in the centre, but for the rest there is none of the
ordinary panorama of a European city. One striking feature, however,
lies at our feet, a little to one side. It is a square group of 450
white pagodas, with a more considerable gilded pagoda in the centre.
Beside each of these pagodas there stands a large stone, and on these
stones are inscribed quotations from the sacred books of the Buddhists.
In the distance to the southeast are the hills inhabited by the Shan
tribes.
[Sidenote: 24.
The Moat, Fort Dufferin.] [Sidenote: 25.
King Thebaw’s Palace.] [Sidenote: 26.
The Aindaw Temple, Mandalay.] [Sidenote: 27.
Maker of Temple Htis, Mandalay.] The Dufferin Fort was built around the
Palace of King Thebaw, the last of the Burmese dynasty. It is enclosed
by a square of red walls pierced by three gates on each side, each gate
bearing a pointed pagoda-like super-structure. Without there is a broad
moat, a hundred yards wide, with lotus plants, floating in it like water
lilies. This moat is crossed by five wooden bridges. Inside the walls is
the King’s Palace, of which we have here the spire, surmounted by a
“hti” finial. This spire is called by the Burmese the “Centre of the
Universe,” since it is in the centre of Mandalay, which they claim as in
the centre of the world. A “hti” we may observe again at the summit of
the great Aindaw Temple in the south of Mandalay, and here we have one
before it has left the home of its maker.
[Sidenote: 28.
The Queen’s Palace.] [Sidenote: 29.
The Verandah of King Thebaw’s Palace.] [Sidenote: 30.
Entrance to the Arakan temple, Mandalay.] We return to the Fort, and to
the palaces within it. This is the Queen’s Palace, a very beautiful
building of gilded teak, exquisitely carved, and here is the verandah
where King Thebaw in 1885 surrendered to the British generals. He was
taken away to India, and there he still lives under surveillance on the
Malabar Coast. Here we have the entrance to the Arakan Temple, specially
venerated by Buddhists, for it contains a great image of Gautama, over
twelve feet high, made of brass. Pilgrims gain merit by placing gold
leaf upon this figure. This is the building which Kipling spoke of as
the Moulmein Pagoda; it is not, however, a pagoda, which is a solid
spire, but a temple.
[Sidenote: 31.
Sappers and Miners, Fort Dufferin.] [Sidenote: 32.
Crossing the Moat, Fort Dufferin.] [Sidenote: 33.
A Garrison Family.] Burma has been gradually annexed to India as the
result of three successive wars. The first ended in 1826, and then the
low-lying coastal strips known by the names of Tenasserim and Arakan
were taken, and also the great valley of the Brahmaputra, known as
Assam. In 1852 the country of Pegu, or Lower Burma, comprising the delta
of the Irawaddy, was annexed, but Upper Burma round Mandalay remained
independent. The last king of Mandalay was Thebaw, a notorious tyrant,
guilty of the most horrible atrocities. Being anxious to maintain his
independence, he intrigued with the French in the lands of Tonkin and
Annam to the east of Burma, and as a result brought upon himself the
conquest of his country in the time when Lord Dufferin was Viceroy of
India. It took fully ten years to reduce Burma to order, for the land
was infested with dacoits or robbers, as it is still in some of the
remoter districts. Every village in those days was defended by a
palisade. Here we have two views of a party of troops in Fort Dufferin,
with the King’s Palace in the background, and then a family scene in the
married quarters of the garrison. The Burman does not make a good
soldier, for he has very little sense of discipline. Even the police of
the province are for the most part Gurkhas, Sikhs, and Punjabi
Musulmans.
[Sidenote: 34.
The Bazaar, Mandalay.] [Sidenote: 35.
The Flower and Seed Market, Mandalay Bazaar.] The Bazaar or market of
Mandalay, as in every other Indian city, is the centre of public life.
Externally it is of little interest, having been constructed since the
conquest, but internally it is an epitome of the varied peoples who have
thronged of late into the growing centres of Burmese trade. Here is a
scene in the fruit market; but it is the silk market which delights the
Burmese lady, who will be seen there accompanied by her maid, making
purchases and enjoying the touch of more than she buys, as in similar
places in Europe. The most striking contrast which is presented by Burma
to one accustomed to Indian life is the freedom of the women, who move
about unveiled. In Burma, under the Buddhist religion, we have neither
seclusion of women nor the distinctions of caste. The city of Mandalay
has a population of about 190,000, so that it is now smaller than the
upstart Rangoon.
[Sidenote: 36.
Ferryshaw Siding, near Mandalay.] [Sidenote: 37.
Mora.] [Sidenote: 38.
Katha.] Let us make a voyage up the Irawaddy to the border of the
Chinese Empire. This is a river scene a short way above Mandalay, with a
group of white pagodas conspicuous on the bank, and here is a village
scene. There follows a view at Katha, a large straggling village on the
Irawaddy, remarkable for its many pagodas, most of them ruined. The
majority of the Burmese pagodas are thus dilapidated for the reason that
there is considered to be no merit in merely restoring an existing
Buddhist shrine. The wealthy devotee prefers therefore to erect a new
pagoda. The Shwe Dagon is an exception, for it contains sacred relics.
[Sidenote: 39.
Raft on the Irawaddy.] [Sidenote: 40.
On the Irawaddy.] [Sidenote: 41.
In the defile between Katha and Bhamo.] [Sidenote: 42.
The Same.] [Sidenote: 43.
Burmese Children.] [Sidenote: 44.
Cart with solid Wheels.] [Sidenote: 45.
Lacquer Workers.] Here we have a raft of bamboos and teak logs floating
down the river, and then a typical river craft with a great oar for a
rudder. Our steamer must progress with care, measuring the depths with
bamboo poles at either bow. None the less, navigation extends for more
than nine hundred miles from the sea. From Mandalay to Katha the bank of
the river is in most places low and sandy, but between Katha and Bhamo
there are striking defiles, where the ground rises with wooded fronts
from the water’s edge. There is population along the banks the whole
way, as is evidenced by the pagodas amid the vegetation. Here are three
little Burmese villagers, and then a rustic cart with solid wheels, and
here a picture showing the process of the famous lacquer work of Burma.
A “shell” is first made of very thin and finely plaited bamboo, and this
is covered with a pigment which, when dry, is softened on a primitive
lathe. Then red lacquer is put on by hand, and the bowl is dried in the
sun. When dry it is buried for some days in order that it may harden.
Finally it is engraved, and often inlaid with gold.
[Sidenote: 46.
Bhamo from the Irawaddy.] [Sidenote: 47.
China Street, Bhamo.] [Sidenote: 48.
Kachin Women, Bhamo.] [Sidenote: 49.
Houses at Bhamo.] We approach Bhamo, at the head of the Irawaddy
navigation, lying low along the bank of the river, twenty miles from the
Chinese frontier. There are naturally many Chinese at Bhamo. This is
China Street. Here, on the other hand, is a group of Kachin women,
heavy-faced, in picturesque costume. The Kachins are the hill tribes of
the northern frontier of Burma, as the Shans are of the eastern frontier
and the Chins of the western. Until quite recently the Kachins often
raided the caravans passing from Bhamo to China. They are now becoming
civilised under British rule. The Burmese people proper, of ancient
civilisation, are a relatively small population confined to the valley
and the delta. Here we see a row of houses at Bhamo, raised high upon
piles. The change which has come over Burma since the British occupation
may be appreciated from the fact that twenty years ago it was no
uncommon sight on the voyage up from Katha to Bhamo to see along the
river banks, and on rafts floating down the river, the dead bodies of
Kachins who had been tortured to death under the terrible rule of the
kings of Mandalay.
[Sidenote: 50.
The Gokteik Gorge and Bridge.] [Sidenote: 51.
Native House, Hsipaw.] [Sidenote: 52.
The Bazaar, Hsipaw.] From Mandalay a railway runs eastward into the Shan
country. At one point this line crosses a gorge by a steel bridge,
nearly half a mile long and over 800 feet above the water of the stream.
The bridge is so light in design that its great size and real solidity
are difficult to grasp. Beyond this bridge we come to the chief place of
the Shans, Hsipaw. Here are a couple of scenes in Hsipaw, the one of a
Shan house, the other of a Shan market.
[Sidenote: 53.
Pagan.] [Sidenote: 54.
The Ananda Temple, Pagan.] [Sidenote: 55.
The Ananda Temple, nearer view of the west side.] [Sidenote: 56.
Buddha Image at Pagan.] To realise the antiquity and the splendour of
early Burmese civilisation, we must descend the Irawaddy below Mandalay
to a place called Pagan. There, for some ten miles beside the river, and
for three miles back from its bank, are the ruins of a great capital
which flourished about the time of the Norman Conquest of England. From
the centre of the ruined city it is impossible to point in any direction
in which a pagoda or a temple is not visible. We have here a general
view of the remains, and then the Ananda Temple, seen in the midst of a
bank of vegetation, from which at various points rise other smaller red
and white ruins. The Ananda Temple was built more than eight hundred
years ago by the Thatons, the original inhabitants of the country, who
were overcome by the invading Burmans. Some thirty thousand of these
Thatons were brought to Pagan as slaves, and set to build the pagodas
and temples, just as during the captivity in Egypt the Israelites were
employed in building the pyramids. Here is the Ananda Temple close at
hand, white and glittering in the sunshine, as though built of sugar. If
we enter the great portal—there are three other portals similar, for the
plan of the building is that of a cross—we find facing us a huge image
of the Buddha, over ten yards in height.
Buddhism was developed from Hinduism. It originated as a revolt from the
excessive ritualism of the Brahmans. We have seen that Hinduism became
an all-embracing system of religious ritual and social organisation, but
that alongside, as it were, of this process there was evolved a
philosophical system based upon two theories: the belief in a Universal
Soul as the centre of reality, and the belief in the ultimate identity
of the Individual and the Universal Soul. In the sixth century before
Christ India was seething and fermenting with spiritual thought. A great
teacher was called for, and such a one was given to the world in
Gautama, the Buddha, that is to say, the Enlightened or Awakened One.
Gautama was born on the frontiers of Nepal at the foot of the great
Himalaya range about the year 557 before Christ. He was the only son of
a chief or king. At the age of eighteen he was married to the daughter
of the chief of a neighbouring clan, and a son was born to him. But the
yearnings of a reformer were stirring within Gautama, and he could not
rest. So one night in secret he left his wife and infant and went out
into the world a wanderer in search of “that inward illumination on
‘great matters,’ which was the cherished dream of every thinker in that
memorable era.” He followed to no purpose the paths of metaphysical
speculation, of mental discipline, and of ascetic rigour, and at last on
one eventful night, as he sat under the Bodhi Tree at Gaya, in Behar,
“he reaped the fruit of his long spiritual effort, the truth of things
being of a sudden so clearly revealed to him that from henceforth he
never swerved for a moment from devotion to his creed and to the mission
that it imposed upon him.”
The truth which Buddha discovered and preached to humanity was that the
salvation of man lay not in sacrifices and ceremonial, nor in penances,
but in spiritual effort and a holy life, in charity, forgiveness, and
love. The sages of Hinduism had taught as a doctrine for the few that
the Universal Soul is the only reality, and is therefore the real self
of every man. Buddha gave to the world a system by which the truth of
this doctrine could be realised in the life of an ordinary man.
The four-fold truth on which Buddha’s whole scheme hinges may be
expressed as follows:—Life on earth is full of suffering; suffering is
generated by desire; the extinction of desire involves the extinction of
suffering; the extinction of desire, and therefore of suffering, is the
outcome of a righteous life. But how is desire with the suffering which
it generates to be extinguished? The answer of Buddhism is that the
eightfold path which leads to the extinction of suffering is by “Right
Belief, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Effort, Right
Means of Livelihood, Right Remembrance and Self-discipline, Right
Concentration of Thought.” In Buddha’s system, as he himself gave it to
the world, doctrines and beliefs are of secondary importance. Fully
alive to the truth that “what we do, besides being the outward and
visible sign of our inward and spiritual state, reacts naturally and
necessarily on what we are, and so moulds our character and controls our
destiny,” he formulated for his followers a simple system of moral
rules, obedience to which would set them on the path which leads to
salvation. On this path there are successive stages, and each of these
stages is marked by the breaking of some of the fetters which bind man
to earth and to self, and when all the fetters are at last broken then
the Holy One, as he is now called, has reached his goal. In other words,
he has attained to that state which Buddhists call Nirvana, a state of
“perfect knowledge, perfect love, perfect peace, and therefore of
perfect bliss.”
The Buddhist system emphasises the importance of education and
discipline. All over Burma there are schools conducted by Buddhist
monastic orders at which instruction is gratuitously given to boys in
the vernacular of the country, and one rarely finds a native of Burma
who cannot read and write his own language. It is also part of the
religious discipline of every Burman boy that he should become a novice
in a monastic order and live for a time the life of a monk. The aim of
this training is to teach obedience and self-control, and thus in these
days of change, when strange and disintegrating influences are at work
in the East, the Burman retains, to a certain extent at all events, his
simplicity and his kindly faith. To appreciate the influence of Buddhism
in Burma let us remember that a Buddhist priest is supported entirely by
gifts in kind, and never touches a coin.
For some centuries Buddhism made great progress in India, the land of
its birth; but in the end Hinduism re-asserted itself, and to-day there
are very few Buddhists in India proper, though in Burma nearly all the
people are of that faith. This is the chief cause of the difference in
almost every respect between Burma and India. In the Ananda Temple, as
we have seen, there are four images of Buddha, for it is the tradition
of the religion that before Gautama there were in former ages of the
world three other teachers who reached enlightenment and were therefore
called Buddha.
[Sidenote: 57.
The Wilderness of Bricks, Pagan.] [Sidenote: 58.
Gadawpalin Temple, Pagan.] [Sidenote: 59.
Vultures on a ruined Temple at Pagan.] [Sidenote: 60.
Cactus at Pagan.] [Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 6.] Here, still at Pagan, is
the so-called Wilderness of Bricks, with the Ananda Temple in the
distance to the right. Then we have the entry to one of the other
temples, and then yet another Pagan ruin with vultures on the summit.
Finally we have a scene of tall cactus growth, also at Pagan, for this
city stands in what is known as the Dry Belt of Burma. The map shows us
that two ranges of mountains extend northward, respectively to east and
west of the Irawaddy valley. The winds of summer and autumn blow from
the southwest, from the sea, bringing moisture which falls in heavy
rains on the west sides of the mountains and over the delta. At Rangoon
there is an annual rainfall of over one hundred inches, or more than
three times the rainfall of London. To the east of the western range,
however, as we leave the delta on our journey up the river, there is a
low-lying district near Pagan, which is screened from the sea winds by
the continuous mountain ridge, and here the rainfall is small, as little
as twenty inches in the year, but the climate is hot and evaporation is
rapid. In this district, therefore, cactus is the typical vegetation,
but elsewhere in Burma are rich crops or the most luxuriant forests of
leafy trees. These forests supply the teak wood, which is floated down
the river. They are full of game, and the haunt of poisonous snakes.
Wild peacocks come from the woods to feed on the rice when it is ripe,
and tigers are not unknown in the villages. Only a few years ago a tiger
was shot on one of the ledges of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda in the midst of
Rangoon.
Notwithstanding the age of some of its temples and pagodas, Burma is in
the main a new country, in which Nature is still masterful. It is the
largest of the provinces under the Government of India, but all told it
contains but ten million people—Burmese, Chinese, Hindus, and the Hill
Tribes.
--------------
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LECTURE III.
---
=BENGAL.=
---
THE MONSOONS.
[Sidenote: 1.
Map of Bengal.] From Burma we take steamer again and cross the sea to
Bengal, the Metropolitan Province of India. The heart of Bengal is one
of the largest deltas in the world, a great plain of moist silt brought
down by the rivers Ganges and Brahmaputra from the Himalaya mountains.
But along the borders of the Province, and especially to the west, much
hill country is included.
The map shows to the north the high tableland of Tibet, edged by the
Himalaya range, whose southern slopes descend steeply, but with many
foot hills, to the level, low-lying plains of the two great river
valleys. Eastward of Bengal there is a ridge, rising to heights of more
than six thousand feet, densely forested, which separates the Irawaddy
valley of Burma from the plains of India. This ridge throws out a spur
westward, which near its end rises a little into the Garo hills. The
deeply trenched narrow valley of the Brahmaputra, known as the Assam
Valley, lies between the Garo hills and the Himalayas. Away in the west
of Bengal is another hill spur, bearing the name of Rajmahal, which
forms the northeastern point of the plateau of Southern India. The
Ganges flows through the plain bounded southward by this plateau and
northward by the Himalayas. A broad lowland gateway is left between the
Garo and the Rajmahal hills, and through this, on either hand, the
Brahmaputra and Ganges rivers turn southward and converge gradually
until they join to form the vast Megna estuary. The country which lies
west of the Megna is the Ganges delta, traversed by many minor channels
which branch from the right bank of the river before it enters the
Megna. East of the Megna is another deltaic land whose silt is derived
in the main from the Garo hills. It is said that the highest rainfall in
the world occurs in these hills, when the monsoon sweeps northward from
the Bay of Bengal and blows against their southern face. The rainfall on
a single day in the rainy season is often as great as the whole annual
rainfall of London. Little wonder that there is abundance of silt for
the formation of the fertile plains below.
The approach to the coast, as may be concluded from this geographical
description, presents little of interest. As you enter the Hooghly
river, the westernmost of the deltaic channels, you see broad grey mud
banks, with here and there a palm tree. From time to time, as the ship
passes some more solid ground, there are villages of thatched huts
surrounded by banana plantations with tall broad green leaves.
[Sidenote: 2.
Approaching Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 3.
Coolie Emigrant Ship on the Hooghly.] [Sidenote: 4.
The Hooghly at Calcutta, showing the High Court.] [Sidenote: 5.
The Same.] Calcutta, the chief port and capital of India, is placed no
less than eighty miles up the Hooghly, on the eastern bank. As we
approach it we pass mills and factories with tall chimneys throwing out
black smoke. A steamer crosses us, outward bound, carrying, as we are
told, coolies going to work in South Africa; for the basin of the
Ganges, unlike Burma, is one of the most densely peopled lands in the
world, and sends forth annually some thousand emigrants. At last we find
ourselves amid a throng of shipping, and our steamer ties up to a buoy
in the turbid river, with the great city of Calcutta on the eastern
bank, and the large industrial town of Howrah on the western bank, and
not a hill in sight round all the horizon, only the great dome of the
Post Office rising white in the sunshine.
[Sidenote: 6.
Plan of Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 7.
Palm Avenue, Calcutta Botanical Gardens.] Let us examine the plan of
this mighty city with more than a million inhabitants, second in the
Empire in population, and one of the twelve largest towns in the world.
The Hooghly flows southward. On its eastern bank stands Fort William, a
fortress which with its outworks occupies a space of nearly a thousand
acres. Around, to the north, the east, and the south of the fort, is a
wide green plain, the Maidan, separating the fort from the city. From
north to south the Maidan extends for some two miles, and it is about a
mile broad from east to west. In its southern end is the racecourse,
where are held at Christmas time the races, the principal social event
of Calcutta life. To the east of the Maidan is the European quarter,
with its hotels, and clubs, and private houses. To the north, in a
garden, is Government House, the residence of the Viceroy of India.
Beside Government House, and also facing the Maidan, are the High Court
of Justice and the Town Hall. Behind Government House is Dalhousie
Square, occupied by a green, in the centre of which is a large tank.
Facing this square is the Bengal Government Secretariat, between which
and the river are the Post Office and the Customs House. Away to the
north is the great native city. One bridge only connects Calcutta with
the industrial town of Howrah, where are jute mills and great
engineering works. In Howrah also is the terminus of the East Indian
Railway. A hundred years ago Howrah was but a small village; to-day it
contains some 160,000 people. Finally to the south of Howrah on the west
bank of the river are the celebrated Botanical Gardens, containing many
great palms, and most notable of all a banyan tree whose circumference
measures nearly a thousand feet. North of Calcutta, and on the east bank
of the Hooghly, is Barrackpur, with the country house of the Viceroy of
India. There is a military cantonment at Barrackpur, and also a garrison
in Fort William.
[Sidenote: 8.
The Howrah Bridge, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 9.
Scene from the Howrah Bridge.] Nothing impresses the stranger in
Calcutta more than the density of life in this populous city, the focus
of a great and fertile province. At no spot is it more evident than on
the Howrah Bridge, where from morning to night a close throng crosses
and re-crosses. From the approach to the bridge we look down on a crowd
bathing in the muddy but sacred water. Cheek by jowl with the busy
commercial traffic of the bridge, we have here the religion of the East.
Purified by the bath, and clothed again, the bather sits in the crowd
while for a few pies, or say a farthing, his sect mark is painted afresh
on his forehead.
[Sidenote: 10.
Calcutta from Howrah across the Hooghly.] The buildings of Calcutta are
worthy of the capital rank of the city, but they are of European design,
for Calcutta is a modern city. Fort William was so named from King
William III., in whose reign, little more than two centuries ago, Job
Charnock, a factor or commercial representative of the East India
Company, bought the little village Kalikata, probably so named from a
local shrine of the goddess Kali. There he built, on the site of the
present Customs House, the first Fort William. Within ten years the
population had grown to some ten thousand, and it has never ceased
growing to this day, although at one time, in the middle of the
eighteenth century, there was an episode in the history of the place
which for a time somewhat checked its advance. Suraj-ud-Daulah, the
Nawab of Bengal, quarrelled with the English at Fort William, and
finally attacked them. Most of them escaped down the river, but a
hundred and forty-six were taken prisoners when Fort William fell, and
were confined for a night in a small cell measuring 22 feet by 14 feet,
and some 18 feet high. It was at the end of the hot season, and only
twenty-three of the prisoners came out alive the next morning. This
tragedy is known in history as the Black Hole of Calcutta. Soon
afterwards Colonel Clive, the same Clive who as a Captain defended Arcot
in the south of India, arrived with reinforcements and recaptured
Calcutta. Fort William was rebuilt on a larger scale, and in a position
a little south of the original site.
Suraj-ud-Daulah quarrelled with the East India Company again, and Clive
led an army against him into the north of Bengal, and defeated him and
his French allies in the famous battle of Plassey. The British force
amounted to only three thousand men, of whom but two hundred were
English, whereas the Nawab had an army of nearly forty thousand. In 1765
the whole of Bengal was annexed by the East India Company, and from 1772
was ruled from Calcutta. Suraj-ud-Daulah’s capital had been at a place
called Murshidabad, a hundred miles to the north of Calcutta.
[Sidenote: 11.
Black Hole Monument, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 12.
The Marble Pavement, Black Hole, Calcutta.] Here, at the corner of
Dalhousie Square, is the Black Hole Monument, erected by Lord Curzon
when Viceroy of India, in the year 1902, upon the site of the original
monument which was set up by one of the twenty-three survivors; and here
is a marble pavement marking the exact position of the Black Hole.
[Sidenote: 13.
Bengal Government Office, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 14.
The High Court, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 15.
Eastern Gateway, Government House, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 16.
Government House, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 17.
The Same.] [Sidenote: 18.
Imperial Museum, Calcutta.] We have next the great red brick building in
Dalhousie Square known as the Bengal Secretariat. Not far away are the
public offices of the Government of India, but most of the staff are
removed to Simla in the hills during the hot and rainy seasons. Here,
facing the Maidan, is the frontage of the Supreme Court of Justice, with
a fine tower nearly two hundred feet high, which we saw just now from
the Hooghly. Next is the eastern gateway to the grounds of Government
House, and here is Government House itself, with the Union Jack flying
above it, and Indian sentries on guard. It was built a little more than
a hundred years ago, and contains the throne of Tippu Sultan, the tyrant
of Mysore, of whom we heard in the first lecture. Opposite Government
House, on the Maidan, is the Jubilee Statue of Victoria, the
Queen-Empress of India, which was unveiled in the year 1902. Here we
have a more distant view of Government House, as seen from the Maidan,
with a statue of one of the Viceroys in the foreground. Next, in
Chowringhee road, is the Imperial Museum, a fine building with a
valuable Gallery of Antiquities.
[Sidenote: 19.
Musulmans at Prayer in the Maidan.] [Sidenote: 20.
Ochterlony Monument, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 21.
Calcutta from the Ochterlony Monument.] [Sidenote: 22.
Race Course, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 23.
St. Paul’s Cathedral, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 24.
Tiretta Bazaar Street, Calcutta.] Let us walk round the Maidan, and note
the curiously mingled life upon it. Here, for instance, are Musulmans at
prayer, an impressive sight that may be witnessed every evening. Here we
are at the foot of the Ochterlony monument, a column erected in honour
of Sir David Ochterlony, a successful general in the wars with Nepal.
From the top of it we have a fine view over the city. Notice Government
House and the High Court. At the other end of the Maidan is the
racecourse and polo ground, to which we have already referred, and here
amid the trees in the southeastern corner, beside the tank, is the spire
of the English Cathedral. Here, in contrast, is a view in the native
city. The streets are with a few exceptions very narrow, as in most
southern cities where the sunshine is dreaded and where shade is
essential to comfort.
[Sidenote: 25.
Jute Mills, Howrah.] [Sidenote: 26.
A Workshop in Iron Foundry at Howrah.] [Sidenote: 27.
The same, Plate Girders.] [Sidenote: 28.
Workpeople bathing at Howrah.] Now we cross to Howrah, to the great jute
mills, where the jute fibre grown up country is spun and woven in
competition with the jute manufacture of Dundee. In these mills you will
find that the machinery bears the names of Dundee and Leeds makers, for
the industry is relatively new in India, and has not yet reached the
stage of manufacturing its own machinery. Next we pass into the
engineering works of Messrs. Burn and Co., where some five thousand
natives and some sixty Europeans are employed in the steel industry.
Here are plate girders made in these works for railway bridge building,
and here in this same industrial town of Howrah are people bathing after
work in the jute mills.
Let us recount the essence of what we have seen—the Hooghly channel from
the ocean, bearing inward the European ships; the Shrine of the Goddess
Kali; the Fort which protected the factory of the East India Company;
the Monument of the Black Hole; Government House and the Secretariat,
whence the vast empire is ruled; the Cathedral and the Racecourse of the
white rulers; the Courts of Justice, which, more than any military
power, betoken the essence of British rule in India; the Native City
with its narrow ways and crowded life drawn from the surrounding
agricultural plain; the Howrah Bridge with the steel and jute mills
beyond, which imply a vast incoming change in the economic life of this
eastern land; and the Botanic Gardens with their wealth of vegetation
typifying the ultimate resources of India—the tropical sunshine and the
torrential rains.
[Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 1.] Now let us run northward by the East
Bengal Railway for some three hundred miles to Darjeeling, the hill
station of Calcutta, as Ootacamund is the hill station of Madras. We
traverse the dead level of the plain with its thickly set villages and
tropical vegetation. There are some seven hundred and fifty thousand
villages in India, and these village communities are the real India, for
only about ten per cent. of the total population is contained in the
cities. Yet Bengal in its present limits, which exclude Eastern Bengal,
has a population of more than fifty millions, on an area slightly
smaller than that of the United Kingdom. Now the total population of the
United Kingdom is only some forty-four millions, and of these forty-four
millions fully one-third inhabit some forty large cities. Britain is
therefore mainly industrial, whereas India is mainly agricultural,
nine-tenths of all the people in India being supported by occupations
connected with agriculture. From such statistics some idea may be gained
of the density of the agricultural population of Bengal, a Province with
one great city only, as greatness of cities is measured in our British
Islands.
The rule of these village-dotted plains is the main daily business of
the Indian Government. A great Province like Bengal is divided into
Districts, each of them about as large as the English county of
Lincolnshire or a little larger. On the average each of them contains
from half a million to a million and a half of population. There are
some 250 of such Districts in British India, that is to say in that
greater part of India which is administered directly by British
officials. In each District there is a chief executive officer, styled
the Collector or Deputy Commissioner. He is the head of the District
administration, and he is also the principal Magistrate in the District.
Under the Collector there is a staff of Executive Officers, British and
Indian, of whom the chief are the Assistant Collector, the Deputy
Collector, the Superintendent of Police, the Engineer, and the Civil
Surgeon. The Collector is so called because in the days of the old East
India Company his main function was to collect revenue. In his other
capacity of Magistrate, he is the head of the Magisterial Courts of the
District. The laws which he and his assistants administer are made by
the Viceroy in Council, and in a subordinate way by the
Lieutenant-Governors and their Councils in the various Provinces. The
Collector does not decide civil suits. These, as well as all serious
criminal cases, come before Civil Judges of different grades, who are
independent of the Collector.
Therefore we find in India that essential division of the Legislature,
Judicature, and Executive which is the chief security of freedom in all
British communities. Subject to the law and to the instructions of the
superior Provincial Officers, the District Collector is, however,
supreme, except in the Civil Courts of his District. He it is who alone
for the vast majority of the Indian population represents the Raj or
Rule of the King-Emperor. Between the Collectors and the
Lieutenant-Governors are intermediate controlling officers known as
Commissioners, who superintend Divisions or groups of several Districts.
The Higher Civil Service of India, recruited by competitive examination
in England, consists of some twelve hundred officials—the Commissioners,
the Collectors of the Districts, and some of the Assistant Collectors.
The seniors of the Civil Service man the Provincial and Supreme
Governments of India. Only the Governor-General and the Governors of
Madras and Bombay are selected from outside the Indian Civil Service and
sent out from Britain.
The Collector is constantly touring his District, in order that he may
know it from personal investigation. A good Collector may become very
popular, and may do much to make his District prosperous. It is a great
position which may thus be held by young Englishmen of, say, thirty
years of age. They are rulers of a million people at an age when their
brothers of the professional classes at home are struggling to establish
themselves as young barristers or doctors or clergymen.
It must not be thought, however, that the Government of India, either in
its Legislative, Judicial, or Executive capacities, is wholly British,
and alien from the subject population. The Legislative Councils of the
Governor-General and also of the Lieutenant-Governors in the Provinces
contain elected Indian representatives, both Hindu and Musulman. The
provincial Councils have, in fact, non-official majorities. Only in the
Council of the Governor-General is there an official majority. Many of
the Judges even of the High Courts are Indian, either Hindu or Musulman.
In the Executive some of the Collectors of Districts are Indian, and
also the great majority of the assistant officials, who in the aggregate
are an immense number.
[Sidenote: 29.
Darjeeling Railway, Chinbatti Loop.] [Sidenote: 30.
Darjeeling Railway, Loop No. 4.] [Sidenote: 31.
Darjeeling.] As we think over these things we are continuing our journey
northward. We must change from train to steamer as we cross the Ganges.
The passage of the river occupies about twenty minutes from one
low-lying bank to the other. Then, as we traverse the endless rice
fields with their clumps of graceful bamboo, the hills become visible
across the northern horizon. We run into a belt of jungle, and change to
the mountain railway, which carries us up the steep hill front with many
a turn and twist. There is tall forest on the lower slopes, of teak and
other great trees, hung thickly with creepers. Presently the wood
becomes smaller, and we enter the tea plantations with their trim rows
of green bushes. Far below us, at the foot of the steep forest, spreads
to the southern horizon the vast cultivated plain. Trees of the fir
tribe now take the place of leafy trees, and we rise to the ridge top on
which is placed Darjeeling, a settlement of detached villas in compounds
or enclosures, hanging on the steep hill slopes. Darjeeling is about
seven thousand feet above sea level, on a ridge overlooking northward
the gorge of the Rungeet River.
[Sidenote: 32.
Kinchinjunga, from Darjeeling.] [Sidenote: 33.
The Himalaya.] [Sidenote: 34.
Mount Everest.] In the early morning, if we are fortunate in the weather
and rise before the sun, we may see from Darjeeling, over the valley to
north of the hill ridge on which we stand, and over successive ridge
tops beyond, the mighty snow range of the Himalayas, fifty miles away,
with the peak of Kinchinjunga, more than five miles high, dominating the
landscape. Behind it, a little to the west, and visible from Tiger Hill
near Darjeeling, though not from Darjeeling itself, is Mount Everest,
the highest mountain in the world, five and half miles high. The
glittering wall of white mountains, visible across the vast chasm and
bare granite summits in the foreground, seems to hang in the sky as
though belonging to another world. The broad distance, and the sudden
leap to supreme height, give to this scene a mysterious and almost
visionary grandeur. It is, however, only occasionally that the
culminating peaks can be seen, for they are often veiled in cloud.
[Sidenote: 35.
Tibetan Woman.] [Sidenote: 36.
Nepali Ladies.] The people of Sikkim in the hills beyond Darjeeling are
Highlanders of Mongolian stock and not Indian. They are of Buddhist
religion like the Burmans, and not Hindu or Musulman like the
inhabitants of India. They are small, sturdy folk, with oblique cut
eyes, and a Chinese expression, and they have the easy-going humorous
character of the Burmans, though not the delicacy and civilization of
those inhabitants of the sunny lowland. They and the kindred and
neighbour Tibetans rarely wash, and the women anoint their faces with a
mixture of pigs’ blood, which gives them a dark and mottled appearance.
Here we have in colour a portrait of a Tibetan woman, and then a group
of Nepali ladies, with various head ornaments.
[Sidenote: 37.
Political Map of India, distinguishing Bengal, Eastern Bengal and Assam,
Nepal, and Bhutan.] It is an interesting fact that these hill people
should belong to the race which spreads over the vast Chinese Empire.
That race here advances to the last hill brinks which overlook the
Indian lowland. The political map of this portion of India illustrates a
parallel fact. While the plains are administered directly by British
officials, the mountain slopes descending to them are ruled by native
princes whose territories form a strip along the northern boundary of
India. North of Assam and Bengal we have in succession from east to
west, in the belt of hill country, the lands of Bhutan, Sikkim, and
Nepal. From Nepal are recruited the Gurkha Regiments of the Indian army,
the Gurkhas being a race of these same hill men, of small stature and
sturdy agility, of Hindu religion, but of more or less Mongolian stock,
and therefore intermediate between the Tibetans and the Hindus.
[Sidenote: 38.
The Bazaar, Darjeeling.] [Sidenote: 39.
The same—Nepali Vegetable Sellers.] [Sidenote: 40.
Man carrying Fodder, Darjeeling.] [Sidenote: 41.
Sikkim Peasants.] [Sidenote: 42.
Native Loom, Darjeeling.] [Sidenote: 43.
Village in Sikkim.] [Sidenote: 44.
The same.] Here we have a typical market scene in Darjeeling. Notice the
women doing coolie work. Next are vegetable sellers in the Darjeeling
Bazaar, and here is a man carrying fodder. The man with his back turned
is a Lepcha of Sikkim. Then we have a group of Sikkim peasants drinking
the native beer, made from marwa, a kind of millet. They draw it up
through straws from cups made of bamboo. Next we see a native working a
hand loom, and then a village in Sikkim. Here in the same village we see
a woman carrying baggage.
[Sidenote: 45.
Lama Monastery, near Darjeeling.] [Sidenote: 46.
The same—Devil Dancers.] [Sidenote: 47.
The same—interior.] [Sidenote: 48.
The Amban Dance, Darjeeling.] [Sidenote: 49.
The same—another view.] Near Darjeeling there is a small Buddhist
monastery, a two-storey building of which we have here a view. Notice
the semi-circle of tall poles, with linen flags, on which prayers are
inscribed. By the entrance are a number of prayer-wheels fastened to the
wall. Outside the monastery are men wearing the costumes of devil
dancers, such as are used in Buddhist religious ceremonies of these
parts. There are long trumpets placed against the door post. Let us
glance for a moment within this monastery, and see the hideous wooden
masks, and the silk dresses of the priestly dancers. Two scenes follow,
from Darjeeling itself, of an elaborate dance by Tibetan peasants called
the Amban dance. The lions and dragons are each made of two men, whose
bodies are hung with white yak hair and tails. They have grotesque
heads, with enormous eyes and gaping mouths, from which hang large
scarlet tongues. So we obtain some idea of the stage of barbarism in
which the hill tribes remain.
[Sidenote: 50.
North Bengal Mounted Rifles, Lebong.] [Sidenote: 51.
The same—Sword Pegging.] [Sidenote: 52.
Coolies at Darjeeling.] In contrast with these scenes are now two slides
illustrating the volunteer service of the white tea planters. Of these
the second shows tent-pegging on the Lebong parade ground, above the
Rungeet river. This form of tent-pegging is with a sword, and not with
the more usual lance. Here is a scene showing Darjeeling coolies
returned from work in the tea gardens.
[Sidenote: 53.
The Rungeet Gorge.] [Sidenote: 54.
The same.] [Sidenote: 55.
The Rungeet Bridge, Sikkim.] [Sidenote: 56.
A Himalayan Glacier.] [Sidenote: 57.
Glacier-fed Torrent in the Himalaya.] [Sidenote: 58.
Cane Bridge in the Himalaya.] Finally we have two views in the gorge of
the Rungeet river, between Darjeeling and Sikkim, with precipitous
sides, and then a glimpse of the Rungeet bridge. The Rungeet drains from
the hills of Darjeeling, and from the snow mountains beyond, into a
tributary of the Ganges. Several hundred such torrents burst in long
succession through deep portals in the Himalayan foot hills and feed the
great rivers of the plain, the Brahmaputra and the Ganges. They are
perennial rivers, for they originate in the melting of the glaciers, and
the Himalayan glaciers cover a vast area, being fed by the monsoon
snows. Nearly all the agricultural wealth of Northern India owes its
origin to the summer monsoon.
[Sidenote: 59.
Map of the Himalayan River System.] To understand the fundamental
conditions governing the Indian climate let us examine the two
concluding maps of this lecture. On the first of them all the country
with an elevation of more than fifteen hundred feet is coloured with a
dark brown, and that with a lower elevation is coloured a light brown. A
great angle of the Indian lowland is seen to project northward into the
Asiatic upland. For fifteen hundred miles the Himalaya limits the
lowland with a gracefully curving mountain edge, and from this edge
there flow the series of tributaries which gather to the rivers Indus,
Ganges, and Brahmaputra. Beyond, to the south, are seen in dark brown
the higher portions of the Deccan plateau.
[Sidenote: 60.
Map of South-West Monsoon.] Now compare with this the succeeding map,
which shows the winds of the summer time and the average rainfall. The
winds sweep in from the southwest, but as they cross Bengal they bend so
as to blow from the south and then from the southeast. The dark arrow
with the broken shaft striking northwestward through the heart of India
represents the usual track of the storms which prevail in the Central
Provinces during the summer season, producing the havoc along the Madras
coast and northward, of which we spoke in the second lecture. The
maximum rainfall, it will be seen, occurs in three regions—first on the
west face of the Western Ghats, and on the west face of the mountains of
Ceylon; secondly in the east of the Indian Peninsula near the track of
the storm centres; and thirdly along the south face of the Garo hills
and of the Himalayas north of Bengal, and on the west face of the
various mountain ranges of Burma. In other words, in the first and third
cases the rain is due to the winds striking the mountain ranges, and is
great only on the windward faces of those ranges. In the second case the
rainfall is mainly the result of the storms. On the other hand, there is
drought at this season under the lee of the mountains of Ceylon and of
the Western Ghats, and again in a comparatively small belt, near Pagan,
along the Irawaddy river, between the western and the eastern ridges of
Burma. Tibet, which is under the lee of the Himalayas, and northwestern
India, which is out of the track of the southwest winds, are wide
deserts. This map explains the exceptional fertility and density of
population of the Province of Bengal.
[Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 1.] India is so vast a country, and so varied,
that no traveller can hope to visit all parts of it. On our journey from
Calcutta to Darjeeling, we have left the province of Assam away to the
east of us. Assam is a through road nowhither, for high and difficult
mountains close the eastern end of its great valley. Moreover, though it
has vast natural resources, Assam is a country which throughout history
has lain for the most part outside Indian civilisation, and, even
to-day, has but a sparse population and a relatively small commercial
development. Let us, then, just remember in passing that this remote
province of India has a geography which, though simple, is built on a
very grand scale.
The San-po river rises high on the plateau of Tibet northward of
Lucknow. For more than 700 miles it flows eastward over the plateau in
rear of the Himalayan peaks; then it turns sharply southward and
descends steeply through a deep gorge little known, for it is tenanted
by hostile tribes. Where it emerges from the mountains the river has a
level not a thousand feet above the sea, and here, turning westward, it
forms the Brahmaputra—that is to say, the Son of Brahma, the Creator.
The Brahmaputra flows for 450 miles westward through the valley of
Assam, deeply trenched between the snowy wall of the Himalayas on the
one hand and the forested mountains of the Burmese border and the Khasia
and Garo hills on the other hand. The river “rolls down the valley in a
vast sheet of water,” depositing banks of silt at the smallest
obstruction, “so that islands form and re-form in constant succession.
Broad channels break away and rejoin the main river after wide
divergences, which are subjected to no control. The swamps on either
hand are flooded in the rainy season, till the lower reaches of the
valley are one vast shining sea, from which the hills slope up on either
side.” The traffic on the river is maintained chiefly by exports of tea
and timber, with imports of rice for the labourers on the tea estates.
Some day, when great sums of money are available for capital
expenditure, the Brahmaputra will be controlled, and Assam will become
the seat of teeming production and a dense population. The Indian Empire
contains some 300 million people; but, as we learn, it also contains
some of the chief virgin resources of the world.
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LECTURE IV.
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=THE UNITED PROVINCES.=
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THE MUTINY.
[Sidenote: 1.
Map of India, distinguishing the United Provinces.] Northwestward from
Bengal, over the great plain of the Ganges, we enter the next region of
India. The United Provinces of Agra and Oudh have an area almost equal
to that of Great Britain, and a population as dense. When we go from
Bengal to the United Provinces, it is as though we were crossing from
one to another of the great continental States of Europe, say from
Germany into France.
[Sidenote: 2.
Map of the United Provinces.] The Himalayan mountains lie to the north;
the hills of Central India to the south. The plain between them, raised
only a little above the sea, is two hundred miles across, measured from
the foot hills of the Himalayas to the first rise of the Central Indian
hills. Two great rivers, the Ganges and the Jumna, emerge from Himalayan
valleys, and traverse the plain southward, and presently southeastward,
leaving between them a tongue of land, known in Hindustani as the Doab,
or two waters. Mesopotamia, between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris in
the Nearer East, signifies the same in the Greek language. The Jumna
joins the Ganges near the southern limit of the plain, and in the angle
of the confluence is the large city of Allahabad, the capital and seat
of the Lieutenant-Governor of the United Provinces. Other great
tributaries flow to the Ganges from more eastern parts of the Himalayas,
and bending southeastward join the main river one after another.
Five considerable cities focus the great population of the United
Provinces—Allahabad, already mentioned, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Agra, and
Benares. A hundred miles above Allahabad, on the right or south bank of
the Ganges, is the city of Cawnpore, and on the opposite or northern
bank extends the old Kingdom of Oudh, with Lucknow for its capital,
situated some forty miles northeast of Cawnpore. Agra, which gives its
name to all that part of the United Provinces which did not formerly
belong to Oudh, is situated on the right or south bank of the Jumna, a
hundred and fifty miles west of Lucknow. Eighty miles below Allahabad,
on the north bank of the Ganges, is Benares, the most sacred city of the
Hindus. All these distances between the cities of Agra, Cawnpore,
Lucknow, Allahabad, and Benares, lie over the dead level of the plain,
dusty, and like a desert in the dry season, but green and fertile after
the rains. Scattered over the plain are innumerable villages, in which
dwell nineteen out of twenty of the inhabitants of the joint Provinces.
Lucknow is the largest of the cities, yet it has only a quarter of a
million inhabitants.
The United Provinces are the heart of India, the typical Indian land,
safe from invasion from the north by reason of the Himalayan barrier and
the desert plateau of Tibet; relatively inaccessible from the ocean, and
not conquered by Britain until long after Bengal had become a Province
of the East India Company; relatively safe also from northwestern
invasion. Its people remain dominantly Hindu in their religion and
customs, whereas the great province of the Punjab further northwestward
has a majority of Musulmans. Southward is the plateau of Central India,
comparatively thinly peopled.
The language of the United Provinces, and of considerable districts to
west, south, and east of them, is Hindi, the most direct derivative of
the ancient Sanskrit tongue, whose use was contemporary with that of
Latin and Greek. All three of these ancient tongues, as well as Old
Persian, belong to the family of the Indo-European languages. Sanskrit
was brought into India by a conquering people from the northwest. Hindi
is now spoken by a hundred million people in all the northern centre of
India. It is the language not only of the United Provinces but also of
the western part of Bengal which is known as Behar, of that part of the
Punjab which surrounds Delhi, and of a wide district in Central India
ruled by the great Maratha chiefs, Sindhia and Holkar. Other tongues of
similar origin are spoken in the regions around—Bengali in Bengal,
Marathi and Gujrati in the lands which lie east and north of Bombay, and
Punjabi in the Punjab. We must think of these various Indian languages
as differing from one another much as French and Spanish and Italian
differ, which are all derived from a common Latin source. The Hindi
language was picked up by the Musulman conquerors of India, and by
adding to it words of their own Persian speech they formed Urdu, the
language of the camp. This is the language of educated Musulmans all
over India to this day. Under the name of Hindustani it has become a
sort of _lingua franca_ throughout India, and is used by Europeans when
talking to their servants.
Away to the south, beyond the limit of the Sanskrit tongues, in the
province of Madras and neighbouring areas, are talked languages wholly
alien from Sanskrit, and differing from Hindi, Bengali, Marathi,
Gujrati, and Punjabi, much as the Turkish and Hungarian languages differ
from the group of allied Indo-European tongues spoken in Western Europe.
These southern Indian tongues are known as Dravidian. The most important
of them are Telugu, spoken by twenty millions, and Tamil, spoken by some
fifteen millions. The Hindu religion, however, is held by the great
majority both of the Dravidian south and of the Indo-European north and
centre.
If there be one part of India which we may think of as the shrine of
shrines in a land where religion rules all life, it is to be found in a
triangle of cities just contained within the map before us. There on the
Ganges we see Benares and Patna, and some fifty miles south of Patna the
smaller town of Gaya. Benares from prehistoric times has been the focus
of Hinduism. Patna was the capital of the chief Gangetic kingdom more
than two thousand years ago, when the Greek ambassador Megasthenes,
first of the Westerns, travelled thus far into the East. Gaya was the
spot where Buddha, seeking to reform Hinduism some six hundred years
before Christ, obtained enlightenment, and then migrated to teach at
Benares, or rather at Sarnath, now in ruin, some three or four miles
north of the present Benares. The peoples of all the vast Indian and
Chinese world, from Karachi to Pekin and Tokyo, look to this little
group of cities as the centre of holiness, whether they be followers of
Brahma or of Buddha.
[Sidenote: 3.
Buddhist Tope at Sarnath.] [Sidenote: 4.
Sculptures at Sarnath.] [Sidenote: 5.
Lion-capital at Sarnath.] Old Benares, whose ruins are now known as
Sarnath, was a few miles north of the existing city. We have here one of
the Buddhist topes of Sarnath, which was the spot to which Buddha
removed after he had received enlightenment at Gaya. Here he and his
disciples began to teach. We have another view at Sarnath, showing some
of the ancient sculptures, and a gigantic lion-capital recently
excavated. Its size can be appreciated by noticing the man behind.
[Sidenote: 6.
Plan of Benares.] [Sidenote: 7.
View across the Ganges to the Southern Shore.] [Sidenote: 8.
Panchganga Ghat, Benares.] [Sidenote: 9.
The Same—another view.] [Sidenote: 10.
Palace of the Raja of Bhinga, Benares.] [Sidenote: 11.
The Same—another view.] Benares extends for four miles along the
northern bank of the Ganges. This bank is here higher than the southern,
and descends to the river edge with a steep brink. Down this brink are
many flights of steps, known as “ghats,” which we may translate by the
word “approaches.” We have already heard the word “ghat” applied to the
steep mountain-high brinks of the southern plateau of India, where the
upper ground breaks away to the shore of the Arabian Sea on the one
hand, and to the low-lying plain of the Carnatic on the other. The city
of Benares is situated on the plateau top above the ghats, and for four
miles the river front is crowned with palaces and temples, built of a
yellow sandstone. The opposite, the southern, shore lies low and without
buildings. Here is a view looking southward across the river from the
brink edge; it shows the low and non-sacred southern shore. Here are two
views of the brink itself, faced and crowned with buildings of yellow
sandstone. There follow two views of the palace of the Raja of Bhinga,
and in both we see the ghat steps descending to the water’s edge.
[Sidenote: 12.
Dasashwamedh Ghat, Benares.] [Sidenote: 13.
Manikarnika Ghat, Benares.] The population of Benares numbers some two
hundred thousand, of whom the great majority are of the Hindu faith, and
no fewer than thirty thousand are Brahmans, the priestly caste. It is
said that more than a million pilgrims visit the city every year. In the
early morning they descend the ghats to bathe in the river and to drink
the sacred water. Here we have the scene at one of these ghats, with the
conical towers of a temple, and the great sun umbrellas. Another scene
of a similar character follows at another ghat, the most sacred in
Benares.
[Sidenote: 14.
Burning Ghat, Benares.] [Sidenote: 15.
Another Burning Ghat, Benares.] Some of the ghats are used for the
burning of dead bodies. Wrapped in a white shroud, the corpse is dipped
into the river, then laid on a pile of faggots, and other faggots are
built around, and a light is set to the pile. The ashes are thrown into
the river. These rites are performed by the nearest relatives. We have
here the body of a woman of the poorer classes nearly consumed, and the
few relatives looking on. Here preparations are in progress for another
cremation. The corpse may be seen, with its feet in the water, resting
aslant at the foot of the ghat. The bodies of the higher castes are
burnt at the Raja Ghat on costly fires of sandal-wood. At night, from
the water, the city, with its thousands of lights and the tall flames at
the Burning Ghats, is deeply impressive.
[Sidenote: 16.
The Observatory, Benares.] [Sidenote: 17.
The Samrat Yantra in the Observatory.] [Sidenote: 18.
Eclipse Festival, Benares.] Perhaps the most interesting of all the
buildings at Benares is the Observatory, a lofty structure placed on the
river brink and commanding a wide view. Within are instruments of stone
on a great scale for the observation of the movements of the heavenly
bodies. This is the Samrat Yantra, used for observing the declination
and right ascension of the stars. Astronomy plays no inconsiderable part
in the rites of Benares. The pilgrimages are thronged at the time of
eclipse of the sun, and there are certain ghats of special resort during
the occurrence of eclipses.
[Sidenote: 19.
Roof of Golden Temple, Benares.] [Sidenote: 20 Vishnagi Temple,
Benares.] [Sidenote: 21.
Aurangzeb’s Mosque, Benares.] [Sidenote: 22.
The Same—another view.] Set a little back from the river front in a
small square is the chief temple of the Hindus. Europeans are not
permitted to go within, but only to peep through a hole in the wall, and
also from an upper balcony of a neighbouring house to look down upon the
gilded roof. Beside this temple there is another, half of which is in
ruin, and the remainder has been converted to the purpose of a Musulman
mosque. The old part is of yellow-grey sandstone, tawny with age, but
the mosque has been white-washed and shines brightly in the sunlight. We
have here a view of this temple-mosque, and then there follow two views,
showing the tall minarets of Aurangzeb’s Mosque, built on the site of
another Hindu temple which he destroyed. For two centuries until the
advent of British power the rulers of this Hindu land were of the
Musulman faith, conquerors from the northwest. The Musulmans destroyed
many of the ancient Hindu temples of Benares, so that most of the
buildings of the city are comparatively modern.
[Sidenote: 23.
A Fakir, Benares.] [Sidenote: 24.
Snake Charmers, Benares.] As in a Christian country, such a resort of
pilgrims brings together men from far distant and different lands, and
we have at Benares an epitome of all Hindu India. In the narrow
deep-shaded streets, and the sordid and tawdry purlieus of the temples
may be seen many a typical scene of Eastern life. Here, for instance,
close to Aurangzeb’s Mosque, is a Fakir or religious enthusiast, to whom
the alms of the faithful are due. He rests on this bed of spikes day and
night. Such Fakirs get much alms, which they are supposed by the envious
to bury underground. We have another characteristic scene here, two
snake charmers on one of the ghats, with a fine assortment of
reptiles—cobra, python, and other snakes, as well as scorpions. There is
always a ready crowd for them, as for jugglers of curious skill.
[Sidenote: 25.
Bullock Cart, Benares.] [Sidenote: 26.
A Camel, Benares.] [Sidenote: 27.
A Bridegroom, Benares.] The traffic in the streets is of the most
various kind. Here is an ox waggon, with cumbrous wooden wheels, laden
with rough stone for road making, and here a tall camel bringing in
tobacco from some outlying village. This is a bridegroom of the highest,
the Brahman caste, mounted on a white horse, and clothed in a golden
dress shot with pink. He is probably on his way to pay a ceremonial
call.
[Sidenote: 28.
Prince of Wales Hospital, Benares.] [Sidenote: 29.
Queen’s College, Benares.] [Sidenote: 30.
Central Hindu College, Benares.] Further inland, near the railway
station, is grouped the European quarter, with a Christian church, the
post office, the regimental barracks of the cantonment, missionary
colleges, villas of officials, and a few fine public buildings of recent
date. Here for instance, with a bullock cart passing it, and another
vehicle behind with a sun-hood, is the Prince of Wales Hospital. Here is
Queen’s College, where a modern education is given to some five hundred
students, and here finally is the Central Hindu College, opened in 1899,
“for the education of Hindu youth in their ancestral faith and in true
loyalty and patriotism.” This college contains about two hundred and
fifty students.
[Sidenote: 31.
Army Factory, Cawnpore—Native Cutters at work.] We now leave Benares,
noticing the great railway bridge over the Ganges, and travel by rail
over the grey monotony of the plains, varied by patches of cultivation,
herds of long-eared goats, long-legged pigs, large black vultures, and
here and there a string of camels. So we come to Cawnpore, the
Manchester of India. Cawnpore is the chief inland manufacturing city of
India, a great contrast in all its ways with Benares. Western capital,
Western ideas, and Western organisation are at work on a large scale.
There are mills and factories for the spinning and weaving of wool,
mostly Indian wool, but some Australian brought by way of Calcutta. One
of these mills seen by our artist had on hand at the time of his visit
an order for eleven thousand coats, and had just finished thirty-three
thousand for the police of the great native state of Hyderabad. This is
the mill in question. The cutters are shearing coats from a great piece
of khaki, on which the patterns to be cut have been chalked. Both the
spinning of the yarn and the weaving of khaki cloth have been
accomplished by native labour and British machinery at Cawnpore. Khaki
signifies the colour of khak, or dust.
[Sidenote: 32.
The Same—the Raw Hide Shed.] [Sidenote: 33.
The Same—unloading Bark.] [Sidenote: 34.
The Same—the Boot Shop.] [Sidenote: 35.
Well in Messrs. Cooper Allen’s Model Village, Cawnpore.] [Sidenote: 36.
Native Potters.] [Sidenote: 37.
The Same.] Here is a leather factory for making Government boots and
army equipment. This view shows the raw hides, mostly buffalo, gathered
by rail from all parts of India. The hides on the weighing machine have
been dried. This is bark being unloaded from the train for use in the
tannery. Then we see the boot shop itself, thronged with workmen. These
workmen are mostly Musulmans. As will be seen, the boots are hand-sewn.
One large firm, employing daily some three thousand five hundred hands,
has built a model village, of which we have here the well, the central
feature of every Indian village, whether of the new and garden type, or
of the old and traditional. What a contrast must all this be to the
inhabitants of the country districts, where village tradesmen still
follow their traditional crafts! Here, for example, are two views in a
pottery near Benares. The potters turn the wheel with their feet. Most
Hindu workmen use their feet a good deal, and of course the typical
squatting attitude makes it easier for them to do so.
Consider the revolution in all the social life of India, which is
involved in the steady displacement of these village-made wares by the
cheaper machine-made products of Cawnpore and other factory centres.
There is a change beginning throughout the length and breadth of this
vast land, not wholly unlike that which took place in Britain under the
name of the Industrial Revolution a century and a half ago. As higher
and more skilled industries are introduced, it seems likely ultimately
to result in a migration of workers from the villages to the cities, in
the growth of the size of the cities, and in the greater monotony of
life in the rustic villages. No doubt there will be some inevitable
suffering, especially on the part of those workers who cannot adapt
themselves to the new conditions. In the main, however, the factory
operatives have thus far been peasant proprietors who forsake their
villages only for a time.
[Sidenote: 38.
The Rumi Gate, Lucknow.] [Sidenote: 39.
The Same—from within.] [Sidenote: 40.
The Imambara, Lucknow.] [Sidenote: 41.
The Same—the Great Hall.] Lucknow is a city of modern temples and
palaces, many of them stucco buildings of debased architecture, which
appear beautiful only by moonlight and when artificially illuminated. We
have here the Rumi Gateway, and here the same gateway from within. Then
we have the Imambara, built under Asaf-ud-daulah, who also built the
Residency, as a relief work in a great famine in 1784. The most striking
feature is the successful construction of an enormous roof of coarse
concrete without ribs, beams, pillars, or visible support of any kind,
except that from the four surrounding walls. Here is the great hall,
beneath this roof. It is about a hundred and sixty feet long, fifty feet
wide, and some fifty feet high. On the floor is the tomb of
Asaf-ud-daulah, a slab of plain masonry surrounded by silver, and
covered with a canopy. The tomb is not in line with the sides of the
hall, but is a little askew in order that it be oriented in accordance
with the direction of Mecca. Near by can be seen a huge tazia, which is
carried through the streets on the Musulman anniversary of the Moharam.
[Sidenote: 42.
In the Chauk Bazaar, Lucknow.] [Sidenote: 43.
The Same.] [Sidenote: 44.
A Musulman Woman in a Burka.] [Sidenote: 45.
The Jama Masjid, Lucknow.] [Sidenote: 46.
The Husainabad Imambara, Lucknow.] [Sidenote: 47.
Karbala of Diana-ud-daula, Lucknow.] [Sidenote: 48.
The Kasmain, Lucknow.] Next we have two views in the Bazaar of Lucknow,
which forms one of the six wards of the city. In the bazaar are to be
found jewellers and silversmiths, together with brassworkers and
woodcarvers. Then we come to a very characteristic Indian scene, a
Musulman woman wearing a burka, that is to say, a veil with eye-slits.
All Musulman women of a higher class are veiled when they leave the
privacy of their houses, in accordance with the general feeling of
Islam, alike in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Here we see the Jama Masjid, a
three-domed mosque, with decorations painted in blue and purple upon its
walls. Within it is a curious ledge used by the Shiahs, one of the two
great sects of the Musulmans, for resting their foreheads at prayer
time. From the platform of this mosque, we have a view of one of the
largest Muhammadan buildings of the city, the Husainabad Imambara, built
in 1837, by Muhammad Ali Shah, as a burial place for himself and his
mother. It is almost entirely of painted stucco. Beyond its tallest
minaret can be seen in the distance the red brick Clock-Tower of the
city. Here we see the Karbala or burying place of Diana-ud-daula, of red
sandstone, with a gilded cupola, and close by is the Kasmain, whose
architecture is copied from that of a sacred place in Bagdad.
[Sidenote: 49.
The Chhattar Manzil, Lucknow.] [Sidenote: 50.
Women planting Tobacco Plants, Lucknow.] Next we see the Chhattar
Manzil, once the Palace of the Kings of Oudh, now transformed into the
United Service Club. Finally, in contrast, is a scene near the
Residency, showing women planting out young tobacco plants, with an
irrigation well in the background. Notice the oxen pulling at the rope
with a skin attached, which draws up the water.
Already the busy hive of industry at Cawnpore plays no mean part in the
economy of the Indian Empire, but for British ears Cawnpore and Lucknow
have a historical and deeper interest. These two cities were the focus
of those events in the tragic year 1857, which we speak of as the Indian
Mutiny. At that time British India was still ruled by the East India
Company, an Association founded at the close of Queen Elizabeth’s reign.
The British East India Company had at first purely mercantile aims, but,
as we have already heard in these lectures, was soon involved in native
intrigues and wars owing to the rivalry of the competing French Company.
Robert Clive went out to India as a writer or clerk in the employ of
“John Company,” as it was called, but he exchanged the pen for the
sword, and by his defence of Arcot brought about the defeat of the
French party in the Carnatic, and the supremacy of the British Company
in that state. So he established the Madras Province around Fort Saint
George on the southeastern coast. The great Colonel Clive, who
recaptured Calcutta and won the Province of Bengal by the decisive
victory at Plassey, was the same soldier grown a little older in the
service of the same great Company.
By successive stages in the next two or three generations the East India
Company was deprived of its trading monopolies. At the time of the
Mutiny it was in fact merely the Government of India, and was controlled
even in this function by the British Government. The Company maintained
a large army of sepoys or native soldiers, officered by Europeans, and
also a small force that was wholly British. In the years immediately
preceding the Mutiny, great changes had been made in India. In one way
or another several native governments had been overthrown, and among
these was the Kingdom of Oudh, whose capital was at Lucknow, which was
annexed because of its misrule. There was hence much unrest among some
of the Indian peoples, and the spirit of discontent spread to the native
army of Bengal, mostly recruited from Oudh. Then an unfortunate incident
occurred. A new form of cartridge was supplied to the troops, the end of
which had to be bitten off before the old fashioned gun of those times
could be loaded. Rumour got about that beef grease or pigs’ fat had been
employed in the manufacture of these cartridges. Now the Hindus regard
oxen as sacred, and the Musulmans look on the pig as unclean. The Hindus
use oxen as draught animals for their ploughs and their carts, but to
kill them or to eat their flesh is sinful. So it was that the agitators
were able to play on the superstitions and prejudices of the ignorant
soldiers. The mutinous troops murdered many of their white officers, and
gradually gathered into three armies, which attacked the small loyal
native forces and the white men and women who had collected at Delhi,
Cawnpore, and Lucknow. Of the fall of Delhi and its re-capture by the
British we will speak later when we come to describe in the seventh
lecture the northern part of India. Assistance came to that place, not
from Calcutta and the sea, but from the great newly acquired Province of
the Punjab, which remained loyal. Cawnpore and Lucknow lay, however, far
to the southeast of Delhi, and were inaccessible from that direction.
Sir Henry Lawrence was in command at Lucknow, and General Wheeler at
Cawnpore. In each case the native city was abandoned, and the small
loyal native force and white refugees were gathered into an area more
possible of defence. General Havelock led the first army of relief from
Calcutta and Allahabad towards Cawnpore, but before he arrived, the
little garrison, trusting to treacherous promises, had surrendered. They
marched down to the river to take boat for Allahabad, and there most of
them were slain—men, women, and children. A few were imprisoned at
Cawnpore and were massacred a fortnight later.
[Sidenote: 51.
Massacre Ghat, Cawnpore.] [Sidenote: 52.
The Same—another View.] We have here the ghat, now known as Massacre
Ghat, by which the English went down to the fatal shore, and here
another and wider view of the same scene. The road that leads down to
the ghat is shaded by some fine trees, behind which were hidden on the
27th June, 1857, the mutineers who carried out the massacre. In the
distance can be seen the red brick piers of the Oudh and Rohilkund
Railway bridge, built of course since the Mutiny.
Retribution soon came to the mutineers. General Havelock marched from
Allahabad with some two thousand men, and in a fierce battle defeated
the rebels under Nana Sahib, and entered Cawnpore. He then tried to
carry relief across the forty miles of plain northeastward to Lucknow.
Twice he failed, and was forced back, but at last he effected his entry
to that city, with a force so weak, however, that it was impossible to
keep open his communications, and the reinforced garrison at Lucknow was
subjected to a renewal of the siege. At last Sir Colin Campbell,
afterwards Lord Clyde, arrived with an army sent out from Britain. We
must remember that in those days there was no Suez Canal, and
communication with India was round the Cape of Good Hope. Fortunately an
expedition was on its way to China when the Mutiny broke out, and this
force was diverted to Calcutta, and supplied the first relief, which was
led, as we have seen, by General Havelock.
[Sidenote: 53.
The Residency, Lucknow.] [Sidenote: 54.
The Tower of the Residency.] [Sidenote: 55.
The Baillie Gate, Lucknow.] [Sidenote: 56.
The Ammunition Mosque in the Residency.] [Sidenote: 57.
The Monument outside the Residency.] The defence at Lucknow centered in
the Residency, the official home that is to say of the British Resident
at the court of the recently dethroned King of Oudh. The Residency is
now in ruins, as we see in the three slides which follow. Here is a view
taken from the direction of the Baillie Gate, and here is the Tower.
Here is the Baillie Gate itself, the scene of the most furious attacks
on the British position. The old man whom we note with his hat off and a
medal on his breast is the guardian of the place, a veteran of the
Mutiny, who as a boy took part in the defence of Lucknow. These Mutiny
veterans have now become but a very small band. Here in the Residency is
another ruin, the mosque in which the ammunition was kept during the
siege, and here is the Monument to the loyal native soldiers. It bears
the following inscription:—“To the memory of the native officers and
sepoys who died near this spot nobly performing their duty.” This
monument was erected in 1875 by Lord Northbrook, Viceroy and
Governor-General of India, and serves to remind us that the Indians who
fell in defence of our flag outnumbered the British. The Tower of the
Residency can be seen in the background.
[Sidenote: 58.
All Souls Memorial Church, Cawnpore.] [Sidenote: 59.
The Well Memorial, Cawnpore.] At Cawnpore, also, there are sad memorials
of massacre and defeat, not of ultimate victory as at Lucknow. We have
here All Souls Memorial church, containing monuments to those who fell
near by. The low evergreen hedge seen in the picture marks the line of
General Wheeler’s unfortunately chosen entrenchments. Here, at the east
end of the city, in the beautiful Memorial Gardens, over the well into
which the dead bodies were cast after the second massacre, is a figure
of the Angel of the Resurrection, sculptured by Marochetti in white
marble. In each hand is a palm, the emblem of peace. Around the circle
of the well is the following inscription:—
“Sacred to the perpetual memory of the great company of
Christian people, chiefly women and children, who near this spot
were cruelly murdered by the followers of the rebel Nana Dhundu
Pant of Bithur, and cast, the dying with the dead, into the well
below, on the 15th day of July, 1857.”
[Sidenote: 60.
The Queen’s Statue, Cawnpore.] Finally, we look at the bronze monument
of the Queen-Empress Victoria, whose direct government displaced that of
the East India Company after the quelling of the Mutiny in 1858. Hindu
gardeners are at work in the foreground. No Briton can visit Lucknow and
Cawnpore without being moved. We may well be proud of the heroic deeds
of those of our race who in 1857 suffered and fought and died to save
the British Raj in India.
--------------
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LECTURE V.
---
=BOMBAY.=
---
THE MARATHAS.
[Sidenote: 1.
Map of Indian Railway System.] Two new facts have of recent years
altered all the relations of India with the outer world, and have
vitally changed the conditions of internal government as compared with
those prevailing at the time of the Mutiny. The first of these facts was
the opening of the Suez Canal, and the second was the construction, and
as regards main lines the virtual completion of the Indian Railway
System. Formerly shipping came round the Cape of Good Hope, and it was
as easy to steer a course for Calcutta as for Bombay. To-day only bulky
cargo is taken from Suez and Aden round the southern point of India
through the Bay of Bengal to Calcutta. The fast mail boats run to
Bombay, and thence the railways diverge northward, northeastward, and
southeastward to all the frontiers of the Empire. Only the Burmese
railways remain for the present a detached system. But in regard to
tonnage of traffic Calcutta is still the first port of India, for the
country which lies in rear of it in Bengal and the United Provinces
contains a very large population.
From Bombay inland runs the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, or as it is
known everywhere in India, the G.I.P. This line branches a short
distance from the coast, striking on the one hand southeastward in the
direction of Madras, and on the other hand northeastward in the
direction of Allahabad. A second great railway system, the East Indian,
begins at Howrah on the shore of the Hooghly opposite to Calcutta, and
thence crossing the low Rajmahal spur of the central hills descends to
the bank of the Ganges at Patna, from which point it follows the river
to Allahabad, and there branches, one line continuing northwestward to
Delhi and beyond, the other striking southwestward through the hills to
Jubbulpore, where it meets the northeastward branch of the G.I.P. Each
week, four hours after the arrival of the mail steamer at Bombay, three
express trains leave the Victoria Station of that city. One of them is
bound southeastward for Madras. The second runs northeastward over the
G.I.P. and East Indian lines, by way of Jubbulpore and Allahabad, to the
Howrah Station at Calcutta. The third also runs northeastward by the
G.I.P. line, but diverges northward from the Calcutta route to Agra and
Delhi. When the Government of India is at Simla, the last mentioned
train continues northward beyond Delhi to the foot of the mountains. The
time taken to Madras is 26 hours, to Calcutta 36 hours, and to Delhi 27
hours.
Access to the great plains at the foot of the Himalayas was formerly by
the navigation of the Ganges and of its tributaries. Then the Grand
Trunk road was constructed from Calcutta northwestward through the
Gangetic plain to the northwest of India. It was by this road that
relief was brought during the Mutiny to the besieged garrisons of
Cawnpore and Lucknow. Finally, the East Indian Railway was built from
Bengal to the Punjab through the whole length of the densely peopled
belt which is enriched by the monsoon rains of the Himalayas.
Recently a more direct line from Bombay to Calcutta, which does not pass
through Allahabad, has been constructed through Nagpur, the capital of
the Central Provinces of India. This runs, however, through a hilly
country, much forested and relatively thinly peopled. There are now two
daily mails between Calcutta and Bombay, the one running via Nagpur and
the other _viâ_ Allahabad.
[Sidenote: 2.
Indian Railway Station.] We have here an Indian train standing at a
platform. Note the screens constructed to give shade in the heat of the
day.
[Sidenote: 3.
Bhor Ghat Reversing Station.] [Sidenote: 4.
The Same.] The two branches of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway
approach one another at an angle from Allahabad and the northeast and
from Madras and the southeast. They descend the steep mountain face
which edges the Deccan plateau by two passes, the Bhor Ghat and the Thal
Ghat. The lines are constructed downward, with remarkable skill of
engineering, by loops, and in places by blind ends on which the trains
are reversed. Here are two views of the Bhor Ghat Reversing Station, the
first taken from below, and the second from above. The Junction of the
two lines is in the narrow coastal plain at the foot of the descent.
Thence the rails are carried by a bridge over a sea strait into Sashti
Island, and by a second bridge over a second strait into Bombay Island,
and so to the great Victoria Terminus in the midst of the city.
[Sidenote: 5.
Map of Bombay District.] The island of Bombay is about twelve miles long
from north to south. The harbour, set with hilly islets, lies between
Bombay and the mainland, the entry being from the south round the long
Colaba Point. Westward of Colaba is Back Bay, formed by the Malabar
Point, on whose end, extended as it were to meet Europe, is the
residence of the Governor of the great Province of Bombay.
[Sidenote: 6.
Plan of Bombay City.] [Sidenote: 7.
Bombay, from top of Rajabaie Tower, looking South.] [Sidenote: 8.
The Same, looking Southeast.] [Sidenote: 9.
The Same, looking Northeast.] [Sidenote: 10.
The Same, looking Northwest.] [Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 1.] The most
conspicuous feature of the now magnificent city is a range of public
buildings, running north and south about mid-way between the harbour and
Back Bay. East of these buildings is the oldest quarter of the city,
known as the Fort. Westward, on the shore of Back Bay, is a broad
expanse of garden. The native town lies to the north, and beyond it is
Byculla, where are the mills and factories, and to the east of Byculla
on the harbour front is the dockyard of the Peninsular and Oriental
Steam Navigation Company. How fine a city is Bombay may be realised from
the top of the great tower of the University, some two hundred and fifty
feet high, the most conspicuous building in the place. It is the central
feature of the range of public buildings just referred to. We have here
in succession from south and southeast to northeast and northwest, four
views from the top of this tower. The first is to the south, and shows
the Union Jack flying from the Secretariat of the Government of Bombay,
and the entry to the harbour beyond. The edge of the garden belt towards
Back Bay is seen along the right hand edge of the view. In the
southeastward view we have the shipping and the islands of the harbour,
and the Government Dockyard with its long jetty. Notice the island fort
guarding the channel. In the northeastward view we look towards the
native city, and see the factories smoking in the distance. It will be
seen that there are practically no chimneys on the nearer buildings, and
no smoke in the air. Finally from our tower top we turn northwestward,
and look across the head of Back Bay towards Malabar Point. The building
on the shore of the Bay is the office of the Bombay and Baroda Railway,
which runs northward along the coast into a densely peopled lowland
round the head of the Gulf of Cambay. Away in the distance on that
Malabar Promontory, but not visible in this view, are the Towers of
Silence, where the Parsis dispose of their dead.
[Sidenote: 11.
Group of Parsis.] [Sidenote: 12.
Parsi Tower of Silence.] The Parsis (_i.e._ Persians) are a community,
chiefly of merchants, who came to Bombay in the Middle Ages, flying from
Persia when the Musulmans conquered that land. They hold the ancient
faith of Persia, and are commonly described as Fire Worshippers. They
regard the elements fire, water, and earth as sacred, and therefore
refuse to pollute them with the decay of dead bodies. They build round
towers, known as Towers of Silence, and these they place in large
grounds equivalent to our cemeteries. Each tower is hollow and exposed
to the sky within. There on stone ledges the dead bodies are laid, and
the vultures pick the flesh from the bones. The ash of the bones is
washed by the rain into a central pit at the bottom of the hollow tower,
where it slowly accumulates, so that, in accordance with one of the
tenets of their faith, the Parsis, rich and poor, meet in death. The
Parsis of Bombay are a wealthy and enterprising community, who do no
small part of the commerce of the city. One of their number recently sat
in the House of Commons at Westminster as the representative of a London
constituency. They have no caste prejudices like the Hindus, and no
seclusion of women like the Musulmans, so that their ways of life are
nearer to those of Europeans.
[Sidenote: 13.
The Rajabaie Tower, Bombay University.] [Sidenote: 14.
The Same, more distant view.] [Sidenote: 15.
P. & O. Offices, Bombay.] [Sidenote: 16.
Carmac Bund, Bombay.] [Sidenote: 17.
Victoria Terminus, G.I.P., Bombay.] [Sidenote: 18.
The Same: another view.] [Sidenote: 19.
Municipal Buildings, Bombay.] [Sidenote: 20.
Esplanade Road, Bombay.] [Sidenote: 21.
Fountain in Esplanade Road, Bombay.] [Sidenote: 22.
Statue of Queen Victoria.] Now let us walk through the city, and realise
its grandeur. Here we are down by the western façade of the University.
The great tower rises above us from which we just now obtained our
views. That tower is called the Rajabaie Tower, in memory of the mother
of the founder of the building. This is a rather more distant picture of
the same building. We have next the offices of the P. and O. Company,
and then a wharfside with steamers about to start for Goa, the old
Portuguese capital midway along the west coast of India southward of
Bombay. Here we have the great Victoria Terminus of the G.I.P. Railway,
with a central dome and an elaborately carved façade. Bombay claims that
it is the finest railway station in the world. This is another view of
the same building, with bullocks passing in front of it. Here are the
Municipal Buildings with another fine dome. They are a combination of
gothic with oriental architecture, and were opened about fifteen years
ago. Notice the electric tramway wires above. Then we see another fine
street, the Esplanade Road. The National Bank is to the left, and
further along is the Bombay Club. Here is a fountain in the Esplanade
Road, with a bullock passing in front of it, and here is the Statue of
the Queen-Empress Victoria, unveiled in 1872. On the canopy are the rose
of England and the lotus of India.
Bombay has a population only a little smaller than that of Calcutta,
and, like Calcutta and Madras, it is a new city, as time goes in the
Immemorial East. The island on which it stands was presented to King
Charles II. as part of the dower of his Portuguese Queen, and in order
to enable the British the better to co-operate with the Portuguese in
resisting the aggressions and encroachments of the Dutch. When handed
over by the Portuguese, there was but a small settlement on the island.
In 1668, however, Bombay was ceded to the East India Company, and the
Company transferred thither the centre of its trade on the west coast of
India, which had up to that time been at Surat, a hundred miles north of
Bombay. Gradually the commerce of the port increased, although for a
long time it was far outdistanced by Calcutta, whose great riverway
extends, as we have seen, through densely peopled plains for a thousand
miles inland. Eastward of Bombay, on the other hand, is the mountain
face of the Western Ghats, barring easy access to the interior. The
greatness of Bombay came only with the opening of the Suez Canal and of
the railway lines up the Bhor and Thal Ghats, northeastward and
southeastward into India.
[Sidenote: 23.
Exterior of Caves of Elephanta.] [Sidenote: 24.
Caves of Elephanta.] [Sidenote: 25.
The Same, showing the Trimurti.] [Sidenote: 26.
Villagers of Elephanta.] In Bombay Harbour there is a small island,
about six miles from the city, which is called Elephanta. It contains
carved rock temples whose antiquity contrasts strangely with the modern
city close by. We have here the entry to these temple caves, and here a
view within. This is another picture, showing a three-faced image. The
carving is some twenty feet high, and represents Brahma the Creator,
Siva the Destroyer, and Vishnu the Preserver. The nature of these gods
was described in the first of these lectures. Here we have a little
group of the villagers of Elephanta. The village has some seven hundred
inhabitants. It is known as Elephanta because there was formerly
conspicuous among the rock carvings of the temple a great elephant,
which, however, decayed and fell some fifty years ago. The native name
of the island means “the town of excavations.”
[Sidenote: 27.
Map of Bombay Presidency, Nizam’s Territory, and Maratha Country.]
[Sidenote: 28.
The Satara Hills, Maratha Country.] [Sidenote: 29.
Native Plough, Maratha Country.] Now let us journey inland, up the
Ghats, through their thick forests, and if it be the rainy season, past
rushing waterfalls, until surmounting the brink top we come out on to
the plain of the tableland, and into the relative drought of the upper
climate. This is the Maratha country, and here we have a typical view of
the open landscape which it presents. The hills in the distance are the
Satara hills, extending west and east through the heart of India. Here
is another view in this same Maratha Country. It shows a native plough
at work, and in the background one of the table-topped mountains, which
are studded over the surface of the generally level plateau, not unlike
the kopjes of South Africa. These steep-sided isolated mountain blocks
have often served as strongholds in warfare, and many of them are noted
in connection with the Maratha wars, waged in this part of India a
little more than a century ago under the lead of Sir Arthur Wellesley,
afterwards the great Duke of Wellington. At the foot of the mountain may
just be seen one of the Towers of Silence of the Parsis.
[Sidenote: 30.
Maratha Soldier.] [Sidenote: 31.
Map of the Maratha Dominions at their greatest extent.] The Marathas are
a people of Hindu religion and Marathi language, which is akin, as we
learned in the last lecture, to the Hindi of the United Provinces. Some
four generations ago they raided most of India from their home on this
high plateau of the Western Deccan, and the troops of the East India
Company had to wage three successive wars with them. Had it not been for
the British victory, there can be little doubt that the Marathas would
have established an Empire in India. Their homeland round the city of
Poona now forms the main portion of the Province of Bombay, but Maratha
princes still rule large conquered countries as feudatories of the
King-Emperor. This map shows us the dominion of the Marathas at its
greatest extent, near the end of the eighteenth century, when they were
the dominant warlike race of India. Their original home was not far from
Poona. As they spread, five principal officers of court and state took
the place of the dynasty of the Rajas, which became decrepit. These were
the Peshwa, the Gaikwar, Sindhia, Holkar, and the Bhonsla. These five
great chiefs conquered far and wide through all the heart of India.
Sindhia’s dominions extended northward to Delhi, and Bhonsla’s eastward
to Orissa on the east coast. The Peshwa was on the plateau round Poona.
Holkar was seated at Indore between the Peshwa and Sindhia, and the
Gaikwar at Baroda, in the fertile lowland round the head of the gulf of
Cambay. At times there was rivalry and war between them, but with the
exception of the Peshwa they were united by French intrigue in the time
of Napoleon, with the result that we had to fight between the years 1803
and 1805 the most widespread war which we have ever fought in India. Our
generals were Lake and Wellesley. The most brilliant victory was that of
Assaye, in the plateau country just north of Poona. There, with three
thousand troops, Wellesley defeated Sindhia’s army of twenty thousand
men, organised by French officers, and captured an artillery of a
hundred guns. Peace was made with the conquered Marathas about the time
when Trafalgar was fought, and it was stipulated that they were for the
future to allow no European influence in their States except the
British. There was a subsequent Maratha war, but the great war just
referred to was the most serious crisis through which the British rule
in India has had to pass, perhaps not even excepting the Mutiny of 1857.
The Marathas are of Hindu religion, but the caste system is not with
them carried to the extreme that prevails among other Hindus. They
present, in fact, the nearest approach to a national caste. As we shall
learn presently, Sindhia, Holkar, and the Gaikwar still rule great
territories as Feudatory Princes, but Nagpur, the Bhonsla’s capital, is
now the chief town of the Central Provinces of British India, and Poona,
the capital of the Peshwa, is the seat of the Bombay Government during
part of the year.
[Sidenote: 32.
Political Map of Bombay Province and Central India.] In contrast with
the last map, showing the extent of the former Maratha Dominions, we
have here a map of the central parts of India as they are to-day, with
the Province of Bombay ruled directly by the British Government marked
in red, and also the Central Provinces under direct British rule from
Nagpur, but in addition it will be seen that in blue colour there are
two patches of territory northeastward of Bombay, which bear the
inscription Central India, a term to be carefully distinguished from the
Central Provinces.
[Sidenote: 33.
Scene near Hyderabad.] [Sidenote: 34.
Street Scene, in Hyderabad.] [Sidenote: 35.
The Nizam’s Palace, Hyderabad.] Central India consists of Native
Feudatory States, which acknowledge the British suzerainty, but are
immediately ruled by their own Maharajas, of whom the two most important
are the Maratha princes Holkar at Indore, and Sindhia at Gwalior. There
is another larger patch of blue, southeastward of Bombay. This is the
State of Hyderabad, ruled under British suzerainty by the Nizam. This
great prince is however no Maratha, but a Musulman. His people for the
most part speak the Dravidian language Telugu, and are Hindu by
religion. Thus we see that none of these large states, each as important
as one of the smaller European kingdoms, has for its ruler a man of the
same race as the people. Sindhia and Holkar are Marathas ruling Hindi
populations; the Nizam is a Musulman ruling Telugu-speaking Hindus. The
Gaikwar of Baroda, it may be added, who governs a small but very rich
and populous territory, is a Maratha ruling a Gujrati population. We
have here a typical landscape in the Nizam’s territory, and see that it
is not very different from the Maratha landscapes. It is on the same
open Deccan plateau. This is a scene in Hyderabad itself, showing a
procession of elephants, and then we see the Nizam’s Palace.
[Sidenote: 36.
Golkonda Fort.] Next we have a view of Golkonda Fort, placed on one of
the usual flat-topped hills, and defended on one side by a large sheet
of water. Golkonda is in the neighbourhood of Hyderabad, the capital of
the Nizam’s dominions. Its name has become proverbial as indicative of
immense wealth. Formerly it was the great Indian centre of diamond
cutting and polishing, or in other words the Amsterdam of India. The
diamonds were not found in the immediate neighbourhood, but in the
extreme southeastern corner of the Nizam’s territory.
[Sidenote: 37.
The Same, nearer view.] [Sidenote: 38.
A Bastion at the top of Golkonda Fort.] [Sidenote: 39.
View from Golkonda Fort, looking Northeast.] [Sidenote: 40.
Hindu Temple, Golkonda Fort.] [Sidenote: 41.
Musulman Mosque, Golkonda Fort.] Here is a nearer view of Golkonda Fort,
and here a view over the plain, from the bastion at the top of the Fort,
from which can be seen the Tombs of the Kings about half a mile away.
These kings belonged to a great Musulman dynasty which ruled here during
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, until it was overthrown by
Aurangzeb. Next we have, near the summit of the Fort, the ruins of a
Hindu temple, and close by, shown in the following slide, the remains of
a Muhammadan mosque. The Fort, therefore, in its ruins, records the
essential history of the country, first the Hindu civilization, and then
two successive Musulman conquests.
[Sidenote: 42.
Mahbub College, Secunderabad.] [Sidenote: 43.
Ploughing at Agricultural School at Aurangabad.] [Sidenote: 44.
A Queen’s Boy at the same School.] Some of these Feudatory Native States
do not lag far behind the territories directly ruled by British
officials. Western civilization is permeating all India under the
British suzerainty. At Secunderabad and Aurangabad, places in the
Nizam’s Dominions, are, for instance, Agricultural and Industrial
Schools. Here is a group of students at the Mahbub College,
Secunderabad, and here a view taken at the Agricultural School at
Aurangabad, which shows some of the students ploughing. One of the
gentlemen in the foreground is the Director of Public Instruction in the
Nizam’s State, and by his side is the Superintendent of the School. Then
we see an orphan student, a “Queen’s boy.” He will probably settle down
in a year or two’s time, very likely marrying one of the “Queen’s
girls.” With a portion of his scholarship saved up for him, he will
purchase the necessary bullocks and plough. He came to the college from
the Victoria Memorial Orphanage, where each child is trained in his own
religion.
[Sidenote: 45.
Kinkob Loom, Secunderabad.] [Sidenote: 46.
Carpenters at Aurangabad.] In the midst, however, of this rapid advance
we still find the older methods. Here at Secunderabad is a Kinkob loom
of the old pattern. Kinkob work is made of gold and silver thread. The
boy sitting above is controlling the threads, and helps to make the
pattern by raising or lowering them in the warp. The boy sitting below
in the well is working the shuttles. This is a street scene in
Aurangabad showing natives of the carpenter caste sawing timber.
[Sidenote: 47.
The Tomb of the Saint, Roza.] [Sidenote: 48.
Roza Fair.] [Sidenote: 49.
The Same.] [Sidenote: 50.
Daulatabad, from the Road to Roza.] Another aspect of life in the Deccan
of India is shown in the next slide, where round the tomb of a saint at
a place called Roza is gathered the camp of a fair. A saint of great
renown among the Musulmans was buried here in the fourteenth century,
and deposited within the shrine are some hairs alleged to be from
Muhammad’s beard. There follow two slides showing the usual amusements
of the fair, in the latter of which we see a merry-go-round not at all
unlike those typical of the country fairs of England. Next we have a
view taken on the road from Roza, and in the distance can be seen the
hill fort of Daulatabad, built in the thirteenth century on a great
isolated mass of granite about five hundred feet high. In this fort was
imprisoned and died the last King of Golkonda, and it became the
favourite summer resort of his Mogul conqueror, Aurangzeb.
[Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 27.] The upland which fills most of the centre
of India and bears in its midst the Nizam’s Dominions is in most parts
of no great fertility. Over large areas it is fitted rather for the
pasture of horses and cattle than for the plough. Agriculture is
naturally best in the river valleys, but there is one large district
lying on the plateau top east of Bombay, and on the hill tops about the
Narbada valley east of Baroda, which is of a most singular fertility.
The usually granitic and schistose rocks of the plateau have here been
overlaid by great sheets of basaltic lava. Detached portions of these
lava beds form the table tops of the hills in the country rendered
famous by Wellesley’s Maratha campaigns. The lava disintegrates into a
tenacious black soil, which does not fall into dust during the dry
season, but cracks into great blocks, which remain moist. As the dry
season advances these blocks shrink, and the cracks grow broader, so
that finally it is dangerous for a horse to gallop over the plain lest
its hoof should be caught in one of these openings of the ground.
This remarkable earth is known as the Black Cotton Soil. The cotton
seeds are sown after the rains, and as the young plant grows a clod of
earth forms round its roots, which is separated from the next similar
clod by cracks. Wheat is grown on this soil in the same manner, being
sown after the rainy season and reaped in the beginning of the hot
season, so that from beginning to end the crop is produced without
exposure to rain, being drawn up by the brilliant sunshine and fed at
the root by the moisture preserved in the heavy soil.
Thus in the part of India which lies immediately east, northeast, and
north of Bombay the lowlands and the uplands are alike fertile—the
lowlands round Ahmadabad and Baroda and in the valleys of the Narbada
and Tapti Rivers because of their alluvial soil, and the uplands round
Poona and Indore because they are clothed with the volcanic cotton soil.
Just within the northwestern corner of the Nizam’s territory are the
famous rock temples of Ellora, perhaps the most magnificent of their
kind in the world. The sculpture is of Brahman, Buddhist, and Jain
dates, the monuments of various religions being thus as it were imposed
upon one another.
[Sidenote: 51.
Entry to Jain Caves, Ellora.] [Sidenote: 52.
Jain Caves, Ellora.] [Sidenote: 53.
The Juggernath Temple, Jain Caves, Ellora.] [Sidenote: 54.
The Same.] [Sidenote: 55.
The Kailas Caves, Ellora.] [Sidenote: 56.
The Same.] [Sidenote: 57.
Buddhist Temple, Ellora Caves.] [Sidenote: 58.
The Carpenter Cave, Ellora.] This is the entry to the Jain part of the
Ellora caves, and this is the interior of one of the Jain caves, story
above story. The niches are full of statues, many of them in perfect
condition. Here we have two views of the magnificent Juggernath Temple.
Next, in the dim light, we realize something of the internal structure
of the Brahman section of the caves. Notice the two men whose height
enables you to judge of the scale. These are among the finest of all the
monuments of antiquity in India. Here is a view taken on the floor of
the Buddhist Temple, with large figures of Buddha seated on a throne,
and there follows a view in another cave showing the beautifully carved
roof. It will be seen then that in these Ellora caves several religions
have contributed, the Jain no less than the Buddhist and the Hindu.
The Jains rose in the time of Buddha, five hundred years before Christ.
That was a time of religious stir in India, which resulted in various
revolts against the Brahmanical system. The Jain tenets are not unlike
those of the Buddhists. They believe in the universal soul, and in the
transmigration of souls, so that a man’s soul may pass into an animal.
Their regard for animal life, for this reason so general in India, is
carried to an extreme. The Jains were strongest in Western India, and
they are still present there, although now in a very small minority.
They probably total to-day not more than a million and a half, and are
perhaps most numerous at Ahmadabad. Of their great temples at Mount Abu
we shall hear presently.
[Sidenote: 59.
The Mecca Gate, Aurangabad.] [Sidenote: 60.
The Mausoleum of Rubia-ud-Daurani.] In order to complete the range of
the architectures of India, there follow two specimens of the Muhammadan
buildings of the state of Hyderabad. First we see the Mecca Gate at
Aurangabad, with the Mecca Bridge underneath it, and then we have the
Mausoleum of Rubia-ud-Daurani, the wife of Aurangzeb. The door of the
gateway is of brass and all the domes are of marble. The building has
recently been restored by the Government of the Nizam, and is now
probably second only to the Taj Mahal at Agra among the Muhammadan
buildings of India.
[Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 32.] Finally, we must note that a portion of
the Bombay Presidency lies far away to the northwest, detached from the
remainder. This is the province of Sind, for the most part a desert
area, but containing the delta of the river Indus, which is a second
Egypt in fertility, for there the alluvium brought down by the great
river from the distant Himalaya mountains is deposited, and water is
available by irrigation from the same distant source. Curiously, Sind
resembles Egypt in its human settlements. At the head of the delta where
the distributaries divide, and therefore at the lowest convenient
crossing place of the river, is situated the city of Hyderabad,
corresponding to Cairo, and on the sea front westward of the deltaic
mouths is Karachi, corresponding to Alexandria.
[Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 27.] Sind was conquered by Sir Charles Napier
in 1843. The Sindi population is for the most part Musulman, and engaged
in agriculture, but the significance of Sind has altered since it was
first added to the directly ruled British territories. At first
communication with the Punjab was relatively difficult, for the Indus is
not navigated with the same ease as is the Ganges. In the days before
railways it was therefore natural that the new province should be
administered from Bombay by means of sea communications. To-day,
however, with the construction of the North Western Railway from Karachi
up the river Indus, the commercial relations of Sind have come to be
with the Punjab, of which Karachi is now the great port, although it is
still subordinate to Bombay for purposes of government.
It is interesting and significant to observe that the coastline of all
India is now under direct British rule, except for the little States of
Cochin and Travancore, in the far south, near Cape Comorin, and the
peninsula of Kathiawar and the island of Cutch, which are divided among
a multitude of petty chieftains subordinate to the Government of Bombay.
Thus the larger Native States, being isolated from the sea, there is
little fear of foreign intrigue in India such as we had to contend with
during the French wars. There are a few diminutive scraps of territory
belonging to the French and Portuguese Governments, but these are too
insignificant to break the general rule, and moreover they are engirt
landward by directly ruled British territory. The largest of them is at
Goa, on the west coast, south of Bombay, the last remnant of the great
Portuguese dominion in the Indies.
--------------
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LECTURE VI.
---
=RAJPUTANA.=
---
THE FEUDATORY STATES.
[Sidenote: 1.
Map of India, Distinguishing Rajputana.] In the centre of northwestern
India is a group of large native States known as Rajputana, of the
greatest historical interest. These States are inhabited by ancient
Hindu Aryan tribes, collectively known as Rajputs, which literally means
“of princely descent.” They represent the purest and most ancient Indian
stock, and here, almost alone of the larger native States, the Chiefs
belong to the same race as their people. Rajputana suffered much from
the Musulmans, but was never completely conquered by them, a fact in
part due to the physical character of the country.
[Sidenote: 2.
Map of Northwestern India.] Through the centre of Rajputana, diagonally
from the southwest northeastward, there runs the range of the Aravalli
hills for a distance of fully three hundred miles, its northern
extremity being the Ridge at Delhi on the Jumna River. At the southern
end of the Aravallis, but separated from the main range by a hollow, is
the isolated Mount Abu, the highest point in Rajputana, standing up
conspicuously above the surrounding plains to a height of some five
thousand feet. The top is a rugged plateau measuring fourteen miles by
four. On this little upland, are the signs both of the antiquity and
modernity of Rajputana—on the one hand, the world-famed ruins of Jain
temples, and on the other, round the beautiful Gem Lake, the residences
of the Agent of the Governor-General and his staff, who maintain the
suzerainty of the King-Emperor in Rajputana. East of the Aravalli hills,
in the basin of the Chambal tributary of the Jumna-Ganges, is the more
fertile part of Rajputana, with the cities of Jaipur, Ajmer, Udaipur,
and the old fortress of Chitor. Beyond the Chambal River itself, but
within its basin, may be seen on the map the positions of Indore and
Gwalior, the seats of the Maratha princes Holkar and Sindhia. Indore and
Gwalior, however, belong to the Central Indian Agency and not to
Rajputana. West of the Aravalli hills is the great Indian Desert,
prolonged seaward by the salt and partly tidal marsh known as the Rann
of Cutch. In oases of this desert are some of the smaller Rajput
capitals, notably Bikaner. Beyond the desert flows the great Indus
river, through a dry although not wholly desert land, in the midst of
which, from Hyderabad to the sea, is the delta of Sind, as was said in
the last lecture, a second Egypt, fertile and thickly peopled. South of
Mount Abu, where the rivers descend from the end of the Aravalli hills
to the Gulf of Cambay is another fertile lowland, with the beautiful
city of Ahmadabad in the centre of it, but this city is in British
territory, being in the Province of Bombay, and therefore outside the
Tributary States of Rajputana. Ajmer, beside the Aravalli hills, is in
an island of directly ruled British territory completely surrounded by
Feudatory Rajputana.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance to India of the
existence of the great Indian Desert of Rajputana. The ocean to the
southeast and the southwest of the Peninsula was an ample protection
against overseas invasion until the Europeans rounded the Cape of Good
Hope. The vast length of the Himalaya, backed by the desert plateau of
Tibet, was an equal defence on a third side. Only to the northwest does
India lie relatively open to the incursions of the warlike peoples of
Western and Central Asia. It is precisely in that direction, as a great
barrier extending northeastward from the Rann of Cutch, that we find the
Indian Desert, and in rear of the Desert the minor bulwark constituted
by the Aravalli range. Only between the northeastern extremity of the
desert and the foot of the Himalayas below Simla is there an easy
gateway into India. No river traverses this gateway, which is on the
divide between the systems of the Indus and the Jumna-Ganges. Delhi
stands on the west bank of the Jumna at the northern extremity of the
Aravallis, just where the invading forces from the northwest came
through to the navigable waters of the Jumna, which flow southeastward
through Hindustan to Bengal.
Aided by such powerful natural conditions, the Rajputs have ever been
the defenders of India. Unable to prevent the entry of invaders by the
direct way to Delhi, they have maintained themselves on the southern
flank of the advance, and to-day their princely families proudly trace
their lineage back in unbroken descent from ancestors before the
Christian era. In the gateway itself, between the desert and the
Himalayas, beyond the limits of Rajputana, dwell another people of
warlike disposition, the famous Sikhs. Here are still preserved as
Feudatory States the Sikh Principalities of Patiala, Nabha, and Jhind.
[Sidenote: 3.
Jama Masjid, Ahmadabad.] [Sidenote: 4.
Rani Sipri’s Tomb, Ahmadabad.] [Sidenote: 5.
Mohafiz Khan’s Mosque, Ahmadabad.] [Sidenote: 6.
Hathi Singh’s Temple, Ahmadabad.] Let us first visit Ahmadabad, in the
midst of the fertile lowland at the head of the Gulf of Cambay. The
territories of this part of the Bombay Presidency are much mixed with
those of the Gaikwar of Baroda, so that the map of the plains round the
two cities of Ahmadabad and Baroda almost resembles that part of
Scotland which is labelled Ross and Cromarty. Ahmadabad was once the
most important Mohammedan city of Western India, and contains many fine
architectural monuments, surpassed only by those of the great Mogul
capitals, Delhi and Agra. It is reached from Bombay by the Bombay and
Baroda Railway along the coast northward. We have here the Jama Masjid
or Great Mosque of the city, still one of the most beautiful in India,
though it was damaged by an earthquake about a century ago. Then we have
another fine building, Rani Sipri’s Tomb. There follows a view of
Mohafiz Khan’s Mosque, whose fine minarets remind one of the Citadel at
Cairo. Finally, just outside Ahmadabad, is the comparatively modern
Temple of Hathi Singh, built of white marble in the Jain style, with
many domes.
[Sidenote: 7.
The Lake, Mount Abu.] From Ahmadabad the Baroda Railway is continued
northward and westward across the southern end of the Rajput Desert to
Hyderabad, in Sind, but we will go on our journey by the narrow gauge
railway through Rajputana to Mount Abu, which rises like an island of
granite from amid the sandy desert. Here is the Gem Lake on the summit
of the mountain, a most beautiful sheet of water, set with rocky islets
and overhung with great masses of rock, with the Residency or house of
the representative of the British Government on its shore, for Mount Abu
is the centre from which Rajputana is controlled, as far as is
necessary, by the advice of the Viceroy. It is, as we have already said,
about 5,000 feet or a mile above the sea level, and the climate is
therefore suitable for a hill station. It is used as a sanatorium for
British troops and as a hot season resort.
[Sidenote: 8.
The Dilwarra Temples, Mount Abu.] [Sidenote: 9.
The Same, nearer view.] [Sidenote: 10.
Door of the Adinat, Mount Abu.] [Sidenote: 11.
Sava Munda, Mount Abu.] [Sidenote: 12.
The Same, another view.] [Sidenote: 13.
Paras Wanath Temple, Mount Abu.] Mount Abu is famous for its Dilwarra
temples, probably the most ancient of the Jain temples of India. We
heard of the Jains at the close of the last lecture. This is a distant
view of the Dilwarra temples among the palm trees. We see that the
surface of the plateau is very rugged. Here is a nearer view of the
temples, and here a doorway of the most ancient of them, built probably
about the time of the Norman Conquest of England. Next we have two views
of another temple, erected some two hundred years later. The carving of
the small domes and vaults is most delicate, and stands almost
unrivalled even in India, a land essentially of painstaking labour in
small details. Finally, we have a view of yet another temple, said to
have been built by the workmen in their spare time during the erection
of the greater temples we have just seen. In spite of the dilapidation
of many centuries, and of unskilled restoration in places, these ruins
are still extremely beautiful amid the rugged scenery of the Mount. The
British Station on Mount Abu was attacked during the Mutiny, but the
attack was beaten off.
[Sidenote: 14.
Sir Pratab Singh.] [Sidenote: 15.
Dolat Singh.] [Sidenote: 16.
Himat Singh.] One of the most progressive of the Rajput States, and the
oldest, is Jodhpur, whose Prime Minister was, until lately, the
distinguished officer Sir Pratab Singh, now Maharaja of his own little
State of Idar, in the plain at the foot of Mount Abu. We have his
portrait here, and those of his son and grandson.
[Sidenote: 17.
H.H. The Maharana of Udaipur.] [Sidenote: 18.
The Palace, Udaipur.] [Sidenote: 19.
The Same.] [Sidenote: 20.
Udaipur, from the Jag Mandar.] [Sidenote: 21.
Jag Mandar, Udaipur.] [Sidenote: 22.
Jag Newas, Udaipur.] Udaipur is the capital of another of the greater
Rajput States, Mewar, which was founded in the Roman times of European
chronology. This is a portrait of the Maharana of Udaipur, who is the
highest in esteem of all the Rajput princes. Udaipur is one of the most
beautiful cities in India, with its palaces and ghats reflected in the
clear waters of a lake. Here are two views of the palace of the
Maharana, built of granite and marble, rising to a hundred feet above
the surface of the lake. Here we have the city seen across the lake, and
then there follow two views showing the temples and terraces by the
water’s edge.
[Sidenote: 23.
The Ganesh Gate, Chitor.] [Sidenote: 24.
The Tower of Victory, Chitor.] East of Udaipur city, but in the same
State, is the rock fortress of Chitor, anciently the capital, a most
conspicuous object, standing high and isolated above the surrounding
country. The slopes of the hill are covered with a thick jungle, and the
summit is crowned with ruins of palaces and temples. The road which
leads up to the top is about a mile in length, and on it at intervals
are seven gateways. We have here a view of one of them, the Ganesh Gate.
This roadway was the scene of a terrible struggle in the middle of the
16th century, when the invading Musulmans under Akbar attacked the
Rajput stronghold. The citadel was at length taken, but the Rajputs sold
their freedom dearly, nearly ten thousand of them falling in the battle.
The old city of Chitor is now decayed and reduced to a mere village, but
it still contains interesting ruins, notably the two Jain Towers of
Victory and Fame. The Tower of Fame is the older, built in the time of
our King Alfred. This is a view of the Tower of Victory, built in the
early 15th century. It has nine stories. A stairway in the centre leads
to the top. The dome has recently been restored, having been wrecked by
lightning.
[Sidenote: 25.
The Durga, Ajmer.] [Sidenote: 26.
The Same, The Tomb of Chisti.] [Sidenote: 27.
The Arhai-Din-Ka-Jhompra, Ajmer.] [Sidenote: 28.
The Lake, Ajmer.] [Sidenote: 29.
The Durga Bazaar, Ajmer.] [Sidenote: 30.
Mayo College, Ajmer.] Ajmer, now under direct British rule, is another
ancient and beautiful spot, set in a hollow among low hills, and
surrounded by a wall. It was the scene of many struggles between the
Musulmans and the Rajputs, and was finally taken by Akbar in the middle
of the 16th century. One of the principal buildings is the Durga,
venerated both by Hindus and by Musulmans. We have here a view of the
courtyard of the Durga. Notice to the right hand the huge metal cauldron
set in stone. It is used for the cooking of rice given in charity, which
is divided between poor pilgrims and the attendants at the shrine. Here
is the Tomb of Chisti in the Durga. Next is a Muhammadan Mosque, called
the Arhai-Din-Ka-Jhompra, which, tradition says, was built with divine
assistance in two and a half days. Then we have a view of the lake at
Ajmer. On the bank are a number of marble pavilions. This is one of
them. Close by, on a small hill overlooking the lake, is the house of
the Chief Commissioner of Ajmer, and Agent to the Governor-General for
Rajputana. Here we have a street in Ajmer. And here is the Mayo College,
for the education of the sons of the Rajput chiefs, an institution of
the greatest importance, as it were the loyal Eton of India, for the
Rajput Maharajas have the deepest instinct of personal loyalty to the
Suzerain Lord, a result at once of their feudal pride, their religion,
and their intelligence as rulers. The College was opened in 1875, and
contains about a hundred students. The main building, seen in this view,
is of white marble.
[Sidenote: 31.
Chand Pol Gate, Jaipur.] [Sidenote: 32.
A Street in Jaipur.] [Sidenote: 33.
Chand Pol Bazaar, Jaipur.] [Sidenote: 34.
A Wool Cart, Jaipur.] Next we visit Jaipur, a walled city surrounded by
rocky hills crowned with forts, the capital and residence of the
Maharaja of Jaipur State, the best governed of all the Rajput States.
This is one of the entrance gates, and through the archway may be seen
the crenellated wall of the city, with thatched huts built against it.
Here is a street within the city, with a fort-crowned rock visible at
the end of it, and here is the Bazaar. Jaipur has a modern aspect, for
it is a busy and prosperous commercial centre. Here is a wool cart in
the city. The streets are broad—perhaps the broadest in the world—and
cross one another at right angles, and at night are well lighted with
gas.
[Sidenote: 35.
The Samrat Yantra, Jaipur Observatory.] One of the most interesting of
the old Indian observatories, with great stone instruments, even larger
than those of Benares, is in this city. It was constructed at the
beginning of the 18th century, and has recently been restored by the
progressive Maharaja. This is the great Samrat Yantra, or sundial, the
largest in the world. The gnomon is 75 feet in height. Notice how small
in comparison is the keeper of the observatory, who may be seen standing
just outside the line of the shadow on the circumference of the dial. In
the distance, above some dwelling houses, is visible the clock-tower of
the Maharaja’s palace, the time of which is regulated by this sundial.
[Sidenote: 36.
The Palace Gardens, Jaipur—Crocodiles.] [Sidenote: 37.
The Same, Tomb of a pet dog.] [Sidenote: 38.
Flamingoes at Jaipur.] [Sidenote: 39.
Sita Ranji Temple, Jaipur.] The palace stands amid beautiful gardens. We
have here a tank in these gardens showing the Maharaja’s crocodiles, and
here is the tomb among the trees of one of the late Maharaja’s pet dogs.
Outside the city walls are fine public gardens, covering some forty
acres, containing an aviary and menagerie. Here is a group of
flamingoes, caught in the neighbourhood. Finally, we have one of the
temples in the city, built of red sandstone and finely carved.
[Sidenote: 40.
The Lake and Palace, Amber.] [Sidenote: 41.
Shish Mahal, Amber.] [Sidenote: 42.
The Palace, Alwar.] [Sidenote: 43.
The Same from above.] A few miles from Jaipur is Amber, the ancient
capital of Jaipur State, but now abandoned and in ruins. Here we have a
view of the old Palace and the Lake, and here one of the many fine
buildings, the Shish Mahal. Next we see the Palace at Alwar, a
comparatively modern city, the present capital of the State of Alwar,
and then we have a view over the palace looking down from the hill
above.
[Sidenote: 44.
City Gate, Bikaner.] [Sidenote: 45.
Jain Temple, Bhandashar, Bikaner.] [Sidenote: 46.
Bikaner from the Jain Temple.] [Sidenote: 47.
Street in Bikaner.] [Sidenote: 48.
Grain Sellers, Bikaner.] [Sidenote: 49.
Bikaner Fort.] Now we visit Bikaner, in an oasis of the northwestern
desert. This is the city gate, with a level railway crossing in front.
Notice the camel waiting for the passing of the train, and the
water-carriers. Here of course water is a valuable commodity. The
district of which Bikaner is the centre suffers frequently from famine
owing to drought. Then we have a Jain temple crowning a rocky mound, and
from the terrace of this temple we obtain a view over the city, with its
flat roofs and desert spaces. There follows a view in one of the narrow
streets, showing the carved front of a house belonging to one of the
richer Jains of the city. Finally we have a typical group of grain
sellers in front of the Customs House, and a view of the Fort.
[Sidenote: 50.
H.H. The Raja of Nabha and his ministers.] [Sidenote: 51.
H.H. The Raja of Nabha.] [Sidenote: 52.
The Palace of the Crown Prince of Nabha.] [Sidenote: 53.
Sirdar Fateh Singh.] [Sidenote: 54.
Sikhs at Nabha.] [Sidenote: 55.
An Akali at Nabha.] [Sidenote: 56.
The Chief Justice of Nabha.] [Sidenote: 57.
Sirdar Bisham Singh.] On our way northeastward we will next visit the
city of Nabha, though it is the centre of a Sikh and not of a Rajput
State. Here is the Raja of Nabha surrounded by his Council of Ministers,
and here his portrait. Then we have in the distance the palace of the
Crown Prince of Nabha, seen from the roof of Elgin House, the home of
the British Resident. Next there follow a series of portraits. The first
is of a young princeling. The second is of a group of Sikhs; in front is
a priest, and to the right, in black, an Akali, or warrior-monk. There
follows another slide showing one of these Akalis in ancient fighting
costume. Then we have, by way of contrast, the very up to date Chief
Justice of Nabha, but notice in the background sentry duty economically
performed by a pasteboard soldier! Here is a typical Sikh face, that of
the Vakil to the Political Agent at the British Residency.
[Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 2.] Finally, we will cross the Chambal river
and, leaving Rajputana, will enter Central India, and visit the two
cities of Gwalior and Indore, the capitals of the Maratha Princes
Sindhia and Holkar. Gwalior lies a little south of Delhi and Agra. The
city is dominated by an isolated rock fort, flat-topped and steep-sided,
more than three hundred feet in height. There is but a single road up,
and along this road are six successive gates, arranged as at the fort of
Chitor in Rajputana. Sindhia captured Gwalior rather more than a hundred
years ago. When the Indian Mutiny broke out his people, being of Hindi
race, of the same kin therefore as the people of Agra and Oudh, revolted
and joined the mutineers, but Sindhia and his Maratha officers remained
loyal and escaped to British protection.
[Sidenote: 58.
The Fort, Gwalior.] Gwalior was the scene of the last episodes in the
Indian Mutiny. Driven from Delhi and from around Cawnpore and Lucknow,
the mutineers marched in 1858 against Sindhia, who met them in battle,
but was defeated. Then General Sir Hugh Rose followed them up in what is
known as the Central Indian campaign, and defeated them at Gwalior. The
fort of Gwalior itself was taken by a remarkable feat of daring. Two
British subalterns with a blacksmith and an outpost force picked the
locks of the first five gateways up the road entry before they were
discovered. They stormed the last gate, one of them being killed. So
Gwalior Fort was taken, and for a generation was garrisoned by British
troops, but about twenty years ago it was restored to the Maharaja
Sindhia.
[Sidenote: 59.
Holkar’s Palace, Indore.] Indore lies in the land of Malwa, a
considerable distance south of Gwalior and on high ground about the
sources of the Chambal river. The Governor-General’s Agent for Central
India has his residence here by treaty, and close at hand is now the
army cantonment of Mhow. At the time of the Mutiny some of Holkar’s
infantry attacked the Residency, and as the Resident, Sir Henry Durand,
had only twenty men to defend it, he was compelled to retreat with some
women and children. But it was soon recovered and nothing very serious
ensued in this part of India.
The Rajputana Agency is as large as the whole British Isles, but it
contains only about ten million people, since a great part of it is
desert. The Central Indian Agency is about as large as England and
Scotland without Wales. It has a population only a little smaller than
that of Rajputana. We may measure the significance of the more important
chiefs in these two Agencies by the fact that Sindhia rules a country
little less, either in area or population, than the Kingdom of Scotland.
The Native States of India, of which we have seen a series of examples,
occupy about a third of the area of the whole country, and contain about
one-fifth of the population. They represent in their present secure
position a new phase of Anglo-Indian policy. The Indian Mutiny closed a
period characterised by successive great annexations to the territory
directly ruled by Britain. Since the Mutiny there has been no
acquisition of directly ruled provinces, except in Burma. Therein the
policy of the Empire differs markedly from that of the old East India
Company. The King-Emperor now guarantees the privileges and separate
modes of rule in the Feudatory States. As a result, there are no more
loyal supporters of the British Raj than these great native chiefs, who
in recent years have raised an army of Imperial Service Troops, to
reinforce the Indian and British armies for the defence of the Empire
and the maintenance of internal order.
[Sidenote: 60.
Political Map of India.] Let us cast our eye over the map and enumerate
the principal divisions of India. Under direct British rule are in the
south Madras and in the east Burma. Then in succession through the plain
at the foot of the Himalayas are Eastern Bengal and Assam; Bengal; the
United Provinces of Agra and Oudh; and the Punjab. In the east centre
round Nagpur are the Central Provinces, and in the west is the
Presidency of Bombay, with the detached territory of Sind on the lower
Indus. On the Northwestern Frontier are British Baluchistan and the
Northwest Frontier Province, while in the midst of Rajputana is the
little district of Ajmer, and away in the south amid the forests of the
Western Ghats the little district of Coorg. Ceylon, as was said in the
first lecture, though British, is not a part of India, but a separate
Crown Colony. All these Provinces are directly administered by the
British Civil Service.
Now consider the Feudatory States. In the far south, from Cape Comorin
along the west coast, we have the two little countries of Travancore and
Cochin, ruled by Hindu Maharajas. They are far removed from all the
greater problems of Indian Government, remote homes of the caste system
in its most stringent form, and also, curiously, of a most ancient form
of Christianity introduced long centuries ago from Nestorian sources in
Western Asia. Then, north of the Nilgiri hills and the hill station of
Ootacamund, is the State of Mysore, high on the plateau, completely
surrounded by British territory of the Provinces of Madras, Bombay, and
Coorg. The Maharaja here is a Hindu in religion, and the people are
chiefly Hindu. Northward again, and still on the Deccan plateau, is the
largest and most important native State of India, ruled from Hyderabad
by the Nizam, a Musulman, who administers a country largely of Hindu
religion. Then we have the two great groups of States, whose relations
with the Empire are conducted by the Agencies of Central India and
Rajputana. The most important of the Central Indian chiefs are Holkar
and Sindhia, Marathas in a Hindi-speaking country, though in faith
Hindus like their subjects. In Rajputana are the Rajput States of which
we have spoken in this lecture.
It will be observed that, with the small exceptions of Travancore and
Cochin, all the States thus far enumerated lie inland and are surrounded
by British territory directly administered. The remaining native states
form a fringe along the northern and northwestern borders. To the
northeast amid the foot hills of the Himalayas are in succession, from
east to west, Bhutan, Sikkim, and Nepal. Of these, Nepal stands outside
the Indian Protectorate in a special relation of independent alliance
with the British Government. In the far north is the state of Kashmir,
whose centre is a beautiful valley, with a lake in its midst, deeply
sunk amid the Himalayan ranges proper. A part of the foot hills on the
one hand and a length of the Tibetan Indus on the other hand are also
included within the territory ruled by the Maharaja of Kashmir. To the
northwest are the Pathan and Baluchi hill tribes in relation with the
North West Frontier Province and British Baluchistan.
Such a survey as that which we have thus rapidly made gives perhaps the
best idea of the complexity and vastness of the Indian Political System.
The Indian Empire is in fact not a country but, as the inhabitants of
the United States say of their own land, a sub-continent, and as regards
everything but mere area the expression is far more true of India than
of the United States, for in the United States a single race and a
single religion are dominant, but in India a long history lives to this
day in the most striking social contrasts, presenting all manner of
problems which it will take generations to solve.
--------------
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LECTURE VII.
---
=DELHI.=
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THE MUHAMMADAN RELIGION.
LIST OF THE MOGUL EMPERORS FROM
HUMAYUN TO AURANGZEB.
HUMAYUN 1530-1540
1555-1556
AKBAR 1556-1605
JEHANGIR 1605-1627
SHAH JAHAN 1627-1658
AURANGZEB 1658-1707
----------------------------
[Sidenote: 1.
Map of Northern India.] Once more we look at the map of Northern India.
We realise the great mountain wall of the Himalayas, four and five miles
high, curving through fifteen hundred miles along the northeast frontier
of the Indian lowland. Behind the Himalayas is the Tibetan plateau,
three miles in average elevation. Northwestward of India there is
another plateau, but a lower one than Tibet, and the mountain ranges
which divide it from the Indian plain are lower than the Himalayas.
Observe the great series of streams which emerge from the Himalayas, and
gather on the one hand into the Indus River, flowing southwestward, and
on the other hand into the Ganges, flowing southeastward. See the
position of the Indian desert and the Aravalli Hills, and note the exact
spot where stands the city of Delhi.
[Sidenote: 2.
Map of the neighborhood of Delhi.] We turn now to a map on a larger
scale of the region round Delhi. We see the Himalaya mountains, the
Aravalli hills, and the Indian Desert. We see the streams of the Indus
and Ganges systems turning away from one another, and we see Simla, the
summer capital of India, high on a spur of the Himalayas, above the
divide between the Indus and the Ganges tributaries. Just north of Simla
is the valley of the Sutlej, tributary to the Indus, and where the
Sutlej issues from the mountains we note the off-take of a great system
of irrigation canals. It is true that the lowland northwestward of Delhi
is not quite desert. Nevertheless it has but a sparse rainfall, and the
result of the construction of the irrigation canals derived from the
Himalayan waters is that great colonies have been established in this
region, and wheat is grown on thousands of square miles that were
formerly waste. India has a great population, but with modern methods of
water supply, and more advanced methods of cultivation, there is still
ample room for settlement within its boundaries. We see on the map that
there are other irrigation canals derived from the Ganges where it
emerges from the mountains at Hardwar, and from the Jumna.
Delhi is the Musulman capital of India. What Benares and Patna and Gaya
were and are to the Brahman and Buddhist civilisations native to India,
what Calcutta and Madras and Bombay and Karachi are to the English from
over the seas, that are Delhi and Agra to the Musulmans entering India
from the northwest. The Musulmans were not the first to come this way
into India. The oldest of the sacred books of the Hindus tell of a
people who came from the northwest and apparently founded the Hindu
religion, accepting no doubt some of the religious beliefs of the
earlier, the Dravidian, population. From these Aryan invaders, speaking
Sanskrit, have been derived the languages of the peoples of Northern
India. Southeastward, southward, and southwestward from Delhi as far as
the centre of India, there spread the Hindi, Bengali, and Marathi
languages, as evidence of the effective conquest made by those remote
invaders entering through the Delhi passage between the desert and the
mountains. So far, however, as their language was concerned, they failed
to establish themselves in the Dravidian south. Long afterwards, but
still some three hundred years before the Christian era, the Greeks
under Alexander the Great traversed Persia and Turkestan and came over
the Hindu Kush, the mountain backbone of what is now Afghanistan, down
into the plains of the Punjab. Alexander advanced across the rivers of
the Punjab, tributary to the Indus, apparently as far as the Sutlej, and
then turned southward and followed the Indus to its mouth. Part of his
troops returned through the Persian Gulf on board the fleet, and part he
led back with great loss along the barren northern shore of the Arabian
Sea. Alexander and the Greeks came therefore to the very threshold of
India, and then turned aside towards the sea, leaving the desert of
Rajputana between them and the great prize of the conqueror.
In the seventh century of the Christian era there arose in Arabia the
prophet Muhammad, who in his youth had been influenced both by Christian
and Hebrew teaching. He preached to the Arabs that there was but one
God, and that Muhammad was his prophet.
Muhammad, “The Praised,” was born in Mecca, about the year 570. He
belonged to one of the ruling families of the tribe of Arabs who held
Mecca and the surrounding country, but his father died before he was
born, and his mother when he was only six months old. From his earliest
youth Muhammad was addicted to solitude and musing. In his wanderings he
visited Syria, and in a Nestorian convent there learned many of the
Hebrew and Christian ideas which he subsequently incorporated into his
teaching. In his twenty-fifth year he married Khadija, a widow of noble
birth and considerable wealth. This marriage placed him in a position of
independence, for he had previously been very poor.
When Muhammad was forty years old there came to him a Divine Call,
bidding him teach his people to abandon their idols, to worship God, and
to accept him as God’s Prophet. At first Muhammad met with the most
bitter opposition, and in the year 622 A.D. he had to flee from Mecca to
a city called Yathreb, which received him and made him its chief
magistrate. Ever since that event this city has been called
Medinat-un-Nabi, the City of the Prophet; or, shortly, Medina. The
flight of Muhammad from Mecca is called the Hegira, and it is from this
event that the Muhammadan calendar dates. In the year 630 A.D. Mecca was
conquered, and shortly after this all Arabia submitted to the claims of
the prophet.
After Muhammad’s death the Arabs set forth to conquer the world and to
convert it to Islam. They subdued Egypt and Syria and the plain of the
Euphrates. They marched to the gates of Constantinople, and through
Northern Africa to the Strait of Gibraltar, and beyond Gibraltar through
Spain into France, there to suffer a great defeat at the hands of the
Christian Franks, which saved the remainder of Christendom. All this was
accomplished in little more than a hundred years from the Hegira.
But the Musulmans did not wage war only against Christendom. Their
armies advanced from the Euphrates up on to the Persian plateau and down
into the lowlands of Turkestan in the heart of Asia, and over the Hindu
Kush into Afghanistan, and then down into the plain of the River Indus.
Already in the seventh century there had been Musulman incursions into
India overseas, by way of Sind. In the eleventh century after Christ the
Musulmans entered Gangetic India, and took Delhi. They founded there a
Muhammadan realm, which presently extended through most of Northern
India.
[Sidenote: 3.
The Mogul Empire at its greatest extent.] Five hundred years later a
second Musulman invasion, more effective than the first, came into India
by way of Delhi. The Moguls or Mongols of Central Asia had been
converted to Islam, and in the time of our King Henry the Eighth they
refounded the Musulman power at Delhi. For a hundred and fifty years,
from the time of our Queen Elizabeth to that of our Queen Anne, the
series of Mogul Emperors, from Humayun to Aurangzeb, ruled in splendid
state practically the whole of India. This map shows the greatest spread
of the Mogul Empire. Agra, a hundred miles down the Jumna from Delhi,
became a subsidiary capital to Delhi, and in these two cities we have
to-day the supreme examples of Muhammadan architectural art.
The Musulman, it must be remembered, came as an alien to India. He is no
polytheist or pantheist, but a believer in the one God, and that a
spiritual God, so that he holds it wrong to make any graven image,
whether of man or of animal. Islam is the name which the followers of
the prophet gave to their religion: it means primarily submission, and
so peace, greeting, safety, and salvation, and in its ethical sense it
signifies striving after righteousness. Islam is in its essence pure
Theism coupled with some definite rules of conduct. Belief in a future
life and accountability for human action in another existence are two of
the principal doctrines of the Islamic creed. Every Musulman is his own
priest, and, in theory at any rate, no divisions of race or colour are
recognised among the followers of the Prophet. Musulmans are forbidden
to take alcohol. The gospel of Islam is the Koran—The Book—in which are
embodied the teachings and precepts of the Arabian Prophet. The Koran
incorporates, as we have already seen, much that was drawn both from
Hebrew and Christian teaching.
More than sixty millions of the Indian population hold the faith of
Islam. They are scattered all over the land, usually in a minority,
although that minority, as we have already learned, is frequently
powerful, for it gives ruling chiefs to many districts which are
dominantly Hindu. In two parts only of India are the Musulmans in a
majority, namely, in the far east, beyond the mouths of the Ganges in
the newly formed Province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, and in the Indus
Basin from the neighbourhood of Delhi through the Punjab into Sind. For
this reason, and also because of its physical character—lying low
beneath the uplands of Afghanistan, and separated from the greater part
of India by the breadth of the desert—we may think of the Indus Valley
as being an ante-chamber to India proper. In this ante-chamber, and in
the Delhi passage, between the desert and the mountains, for more than
nine hundred years the Musulmans have predominated.
When the decay of the Mogul Empire began in the time of our Queen Anne,
the chief local representatives of the Imperial Rule, such as the Nizam
of Hyderabad, and the Nawabs of Bengal and Oudh, assumed an independent
position. It was with these new dynasties that the East India Company
came into conflict in the days of General Clive, and thus we may regard
the British Empire in India as having been built up from the fragments
into which the Mogul Empire broke. In one region, however, the Western
Deccan, the Hindus re-asserted themselves, and there was a rival bid for
Empire, as we have already learned, on the part of the Marathas. It was
the work of General Wellesley, afterwards Duke of Wellington, to defeat
the Marathas. In the north also, in the Punjab, there was a
recrudescence of the Hindu race, due to the new sect of the Sikhs, who
set up a power with which at a later time the British Raj came into
conflict. But this was not until after Delhi, the very seat of the Mogul
throne, had been taken.
[Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 2.] [Sidenote: 4.
Simla, Viceregal Lodge—distant view.] [Sidenote: 5.
Simla, Bazaar and Town Hall.] We are now prepared for the fact shown in
this map, that the tract northwestward of Delhi, in the gateway between
the desert and the mountains, is sown over with battle fields—ancient
battlefields near Delhi, where the incoming Musulmans overthrew the
Indian resistance, and modern battlefields near the Sutlej, where
advancing British power inflicted defeat upon the Sikhs after severe
contests. It is by no accident that Simla, the residence during more
than half the year of the British Viceroy, is placed on the Himalayan
heights above this natural seat of Empire and of struggle for Empire.
In the Mutiny of 1857 the Sikhs of the Punjab, and of the still
continuing Tributary States of Nabha and Patiala, mentioned in the last
lecture, remained loyal to the British rule, although they had been
conquered in the terrible battles on the Sutlej less than ten years
before. In no small measure this was due to the extraordinary influence
wielded over them by Sir John Lawrence, afterwards Lord Lawrence, the
brother of that Sir Henry Lawrence who defended the Residency of
Lucknow. As a result of the Sikh loyalty some of the British forces in
the Punjab were free to march to the re-capture of Delhi. Thus the
Indian Mutiny was overcome from two bases, on the one hand at Lucknow
and Cawnpore by an army from the sea and Calcutta, and on the other hand
at Delhi by an army advancing from the Punjab over the track beaten by
so many conquerors in previous ages. Let us visit Delhi and see its
defences, its mosques, the palaces of its Emperors, and the memorials of
the Mutiny. Then we will go to Agra to see other splendid monuments of
the Musulman dynasty. After that we will turn to Hardwar, at the point
where the sacred Ganges bursts from its Himalayan valley on to the
plain. Hardwar is a pilgrimage centre of the Hindus, second in sanctity
only to Benares itself.
[Sidenote: 6.
The Kashmir Gate, Delhi.] East of Delhi, running almost due southward,
is the river Jumna, crossed by the great bridge of the East Indian
Railway, which carries the main line from Delhi through the United
Provinces and Bengal to Calcutta. West of the city is the last spur of
the Aravalli hills, the famous Ridge of Delhi, striking northeastward.
The city lies between the Ridge and the Jumna. It may be divided into
three parts. To the north is the European quarter. In the centre is
Shahjahanabad, or modern Delhi, entered from the north by the Kashmir
Gate. Between Shahjahanabad and the river is the Fort. The Jama Masjid
(Great Mosque) stands in the centre of Shahjahanabad, and the Kalan
Masjid (Black Mosque) is about half a mile further south. Passing out of
the modern city southward by the Delhi Gate we enter Firozabad, or
ancient Delhi, the capital of the earlier Mogul rulers. Further still to
the south are even more ancient ruins.
[Sidenote: 7.
Jama Masjid, Delhi.] [Sidenote: 8.
View from halfway up a Minaret, Jama Masjid.] [Sidenote: 9.
View from top of Minaret, looking south.] [Sidenote: 10.
The Same, looking northeast.] [Sidenote: 11.
Kalan Masjid, Delhi.] Let us begin our sight-seeing in the centre of the
modern city, at the Jama Masjid, a great building of marble and
sandstone. Its principal treasures are a hair of Muhammad, and some of
his handwriting. Here is a view of the mosque from the balcony of a
neighbouring house. Let us go up one of the minarets and look over the
city. This is a view taken from a little gallery half way up. To the
left is seen part of the large central dome of the mosque, and to the
right the top of one of the columns which rise on either side of the
main archway. Beyond, far below, can be seen part of the city. Next we
have a view, due southward, from the top of the minaret. The Kalan
Masjid is just visible in the foreground, but a smoke haze obscures the
more distant part of the town. We turn round and look northeastward over
the Fort. Notice on the ground the shadow of the other minaret of the
mosque. In the distance can be seen the Jumna, and crossing it the great
bridge of the East Indian Railway. Here we have a closer view of the
Kalan Masjid, or Black Mosque, built in the original style of the
mosques of Arabia with many small solid domes, unadorned by carving. It
has a sombre appearance. We see in front one of these domes, and behind
it the tops of two others.
[Sidenote: 12.
The Lahore Gate, Delhi Fort.] [Sidenote: 13.
The Delhi Gate, Delhi Fort.] [Sidenote: 14.
The Pearl Mosque, Delhi Fort.] [Sidenote: 15.
The Hall of Public Audience, Delhi Fort.] [Sidenote: 16.
The Orpheus Panel.] The chief glory of Delhi is, however, the Fort, and
the group of palace buildings within its precincts. It is approached
through the Lahore Gate, of which we have here a view. This gate is in
the middle of the west side of the Fort. Along the east side flows the
River Jumna. In the southern face there is another great gateway, the
Delhi Gate, with a grey stone elephant on either side of the entry.
Within the Fort, is the Moti Masjid, or Pearl Mosque, built by
Aurangzeb, of white and grey marble. The finest of the buildings of the
Fort is, however, the great Hall of Public Audience, the Diwan-i-Am.
There is a raised recess, in the wall of this hall, where formerly stood
the famous Peacock Throne of Aurangzeb, made of solid gold inlaid with
diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, and backed by two peacocks set thick
with gems. This throne was carried off when the Persians under Nadir
Shah sacked the city in 1739, and massacred most of its inhabitants.
Above the entry to the recess of the Peacock Throne are a number of
panels about nine inches high and six inches broad, made of inlaid
stones. Here is a photograph of one of them. Some of these panels were
injured, but, thanks to Lord Curzon, an expert artist from Florence has
recently restored them and made new ones in the spirit of the earlier to
fill the vacant spaces.
[Sidenote: 17.
The Hall of Private Audience, Delhi Fort.] We pass next to the innermost
court of the Fort-palace, the Hall of Private Audience, the
Diwan-i-Khas, ninety feet long and seventy feet broad, built of white
marble with many inlaid flowers of jewels. Beneath the cornice runs the
famous inscription: “If there is a Paradise upon earth it is this, it is
this.” Here we see one of the graceful arches, and beyond in the
distance the towers of the Pearl Mosque, already described.
[Sidenote: 18.
Mausoleum of Humayun, Delhi.] To see old Delhi we must drive from the
modern city either by the Delhi Gate in the south wall of the Fort or by
the Ajmer Gate in the southeast corner of the city wall, past great
dome-topped temples, most of them in ruins, until a few miles out, not
far from the trunk road leading from Delhi to Agra, we come to the
Mausoleum of Humayun, of which we have here a view. The design, as will
be realised presently, is very similar to that of the Taj Mahal at Agra,
but the Mausoleum is the older building. Notice the terraced platform on
which it stands. It is built of red sandstone and marble. Beneath the
platform, and approached by a long dark passage, is the vault where
Humayun is buried. Around the Mausoleum are a number of old ruins, and
the debris and cactus remind one of Pagan in Burma, which we saw in the
second lecture.
[Sidenote: 19.
The Kutab Minar and Iron Pillar, Delhi.] We resume our drive, past
ruined tombs and walls, and at last, about eleven miles south of Delhi,
we come to the buildings of the Kutab Minar, where are some of the few
remains of the Hindu period now visible in the neighbourhood, though the
mass of the work is of Muhammadan date. The Kutab was begun at the end
of the 12th century, on the site of an ancient Hindu temple destroyed by
the Musulmans. The famous Iron Pillar stands in front of the mosque. It
is one of the most remarkable of all the antiquities of India, for it
consists of a solid mass of wrought iron, weighing probably more than
six tons, and measuring some 24 feet in height, with an average diameter
of a little over a foot. At the base is an inscription in Sanskrit, from
which it appears that its probable date is the fourth century, A.D. This
inscription runs thus: “As long as I stand so long shall the Hindu
kingdom endure.” The Kutab mosque is the Moslem reply to this. The
wrought iron of the Pillar has an almost bluish colour when seen against
the warm sunlit red sandstone of the great Kutab Tower. In this
photograph a man has climbed to the top of the Pillar, and stands there
as though a statue, giving us the scale of the monument.
[Sidenote: 20.
The Lat of Asoka, the Ridge, Delhi.] Now let us visit the district to
north of the modern city, of deep interest in connection with the
Mutiny. On the Ridge top, between the Flagstaff Tower towards its
northeastern end and the Mutiny Memorial further south, is another
curious pillar, this one of stone, called the Lat of Asoka. At its base
is the following modern inscription:
“This pillar was originally erected at Meerut in the third century B.C.
by King Asoka. It was removed thence, and set up in the Koshuk Shikar
Palace by the Emperor Firuz Shah in A.D. 1356, but was thrown down and
broken into five pieces by the explosion of a powder magazine A.D.
1713-1719. It was restored and set up in this place by the British
Government A.D. 1867.”
[Sidenote: 21.
The Flagstaff Tower, the Ridge, Delhi.] We will walk past the various
memorials of the Mutiny struggle. Here is the Flagstaff Tower, in which
were gathered at the outbreak of danger the women and children of the
British garrison anxiously looking for relief from Meerut. But the
relief did not come, and Delhi was stormed and captured by the
mutineers. The refugees in the Flagstaff Tower were compelled to fly for
their lives to Karnal, on the road to the Punjab, where gradually
British troops and loyal natives were assembled. The British returned to
the Ridge, and for two months the siege of the city was pressed, but
unsuccessfully. A brigade and a siege train then arrived from the
Punjab, commanded by General Nicholson. The struggle continued for yet
another month. Our troops were not in sufficient force to surround and
starve the city, and it was therefore necessary to bombard and storm the
defences. Slowly the British won their way into the town, though with
terrible loss. General Nicholson was himself wounded in one of the
assaults, and died a week later. At last, on the 20th September, the
Fort was taken, and next day the rebel King of Delhi was captured at
Humayun’s Tomb, and was exiled to Rangoon. Two of his sons were shot in
front of the Delhi Gate. The terrible nature of this siege may be
realised from the fact that of the ten thousand British and loyal native
troops who took part in it nearly four thousand were killed and wounded.
Here is the statue of General Nicholson in the park named after him,
just south of the cemetery, outside the Kashmir Gate, where he is
buried. On the Ridge itself is the Mutiny Memorial, unfortunately not a
very beautiful building.
[Sidenote: 22.
General Nicholson’s Statue, Delhi.] [Sidenote: 23.
The Mutiny Memorial, the Ridge, Delhi.]
[Sidenote: 24.
Horse Fair, Delhi.] [Sidenote: 25.
Dariba Street, Delhi.] Finally, we have two scenes of native life at
Delhi. The first is a horse fair outside the Kashmir Gate, and the
second a street view.
Let us travel to Agra, which stands on the right bank of the Jumna,
about a hundred miles southeast of Delhi. The Jumna flows from north to
south until beside Agra Fort, and then turns sharply eastward. About a
mile and a half further on, on the same right bank, now the south side
of the river, there stands the Taj Mahal, the most celebrated of all
Muhammadan tombs. The building of Agra Fort was commenced by the Emperor
Akbar in the middle of the 16th century, and was completed by Shah
Jahan, the father of Aurangzeb, in the 17th century. It was this Shah
Jahan who built the Palace within the Fort and also the Taj.
[Sidenote: 26.
The Pearl Mosque, Agra Fort.] The Fort and the buildings which it
contains rise by the side of the river and dominate the plain beyond it.
Here within the Fort we have a view of the marble interior of the Moti
Masjid, or Pearl Mosque, built by Shah Jahan in the middle of the 17th
century. The floor is divided by inlaid lines of black and yellow marble
into some six hundred separate divisions, called Masalas, used by the
Musulmans for prayer. In the centre is a large marble tank. The effect
produced on entering this mosque is profound. Outside, the city may be
quivering in a haze of heat, but here the cool and soft light, and an
entire absence of any discordant features in the architecture, combine
to give a sense of rest and peace. Many Europeans have remarked that
this mosque is a rendering in stone of the text “My house shall be
called the house of prayer.”
[Sidenote: 27.
Jehangir’s Throne, Agra Fort.] [Sidenote: 28.
The Jessamine Tower, Agra Fort.] [Sidenote: 29.
The Seat of the Jester, Agra Fort.] Let us go out on to the open space
by the wall, and look over the moat which divides the main buildings of
the Fort from the outer rampart by the river. Across the water the Taj
Mahal can just be seen beyond the bend of the river. In front of us is
Jehangir’s throne, set up in the time of Akbar. It consists of a single
great slab of black marble. Close by, is the Jessamine Tower. Here we
have another view in which we see the Throne from the back and a corner
of the Jessamine Tower. Notice the lower slab opposite, which is called
the Seat of the Jester. The effect of its presence is by contrast to
enhance the beauty of Jehangir’s Throne itself. Between the wall in the
foreground and the outer ramparts by the river there is a drop of some
sixty feet, and in this ditch fights between lions and elephants used to
be held in the days of the Mogul Emperors.
[Sidenote: 30.
Jama Masjid, Agra.] Just outside the Fort, facing the west or Delhi
Gate, is the Jama Masjid, of which we have here a view. We see the
courtyard and one of the entries. The peculiarity of this mosque lies in
the structure of the three great domes. They are without necks. We can
just see the tops of two of them. They are built of red sandstone, and
the encircling bands are of white marble.
[Sidenote: 31.
Taj Mahal, Agra.] [Sidenote: 32.
The Taj Gardens.] [Sidenote: 33.
The Same, by moonlight.] We will now visit the Taj Mahal. It was built,
chiefly of marble inlaid with precious stones, by Shah Jahan as a tomb
for his queen. Here we have a view of the Taj taken from without the
entrance gateway. Then we pass through the gateway and enter the Taj
Gardens. The watercourse in the centre is of marble, and along each side
is a row of cypresses. The original cypresses had grown to such a height
that the view of the Taj was becoming obstructed. They were therefore
removed, and those which we see in the picture were planted by Lord
Curzon, when he was Viceroy. The Taj is perhaps most beautiful in the
light of the setting sun, or by moonlight. We have here a photograph
made from a painting of the Taj by moonlight.
[Sidenote: 34.
The Bazaar, Agra.] [Sidenote: 35.
Agra College.] [Sidenote: 36.
Agra Jail—Wool spinning.] [Sidenote: 37.
Agra Jail—Carpet making.] We will drive back through the native city.
This is a typical scene in the Bazaar. Notice the Kotwal, or Chief of
the Police, in the centre of the crowd. He is an Afghan, standing well
over six feet in height and finely proportioned. On the awning over one
of the shops an advertisement obtrudes, showing that even the native
quarters of the cities of India are being permeated with European
methods. Here is Agra College, endowed about a century ago by the then
Maharaja of Gwalior. There are about a thousand students. Close by is
the Jail. In this picture we see some of the prisoners spinning wool,
and in the next they are making carpets.
The next series of pictures relates to the great Muhammadan anniversary
of the Moharam, and in order to understand them it is necessary to say a
few words regarding the history of Islam and the contending sects which
have emerged from that history. Muhammad died in the year 632. He left
no son; but one of his daughters, Fatima, was married to a cousin whose
name was Ali. Abu Bakr, who had been a great friend and supporter of
Muhammad, was elected Caliph or Vice-Regent of the Prophet. Abu Bakr
died in 634, and was succeeded by Omar, who conquered Persia and Syria.
To him Jerusalem capitulated. Omar was murdered in the same year, and
was succeeded by Osman, who was killed in 656. Then Ali, the cousin and
son-in-law of Muhammad, was elected to the Caliphate. Ali was murdered
in 661, and Hasan, his son, was elected Caliph in his place, but was
induced to resign in favour of a Caliph of another family. Husain, the
second son of Ali, never acknowledged the title of the Caliph who had
superseded his brother Hasan, and when the Musulmans of Mesopotamia
invited him to overthrow the usurping Caliph he felt it his duty to
respond to their appeal. Accompanied by his family and a few retainers
he left for Mesopotamia. On the way, at a place called Karbala, on the
west bank of the Euphrates, they were overtaken by the Caliph’s army,
and after a heroic struggle lasting several days were all slaughtered,
save the women and a sickly child called Ali, who died soon afterwards.
Thus ended the Republic of Islam. Up to this time the office of Caliph
had been elective and the government essentially democratic. The seat of
government was now moved from Medina to Damascus.
In the middle of the eighth century of the Christian era a great
revolution took place in Western Asia. The revolt was headed by a
descendant of Abbas, an uncle of the Prophet, and the outcome of it was
that the Abbassides, or members of the family of Abbas, established
themselves as Caliphs, and ruled at Bagdad from the year 756 to the year
1258. When Bagdad was destroyed by the Mongols a member of the
Abbassides family escaped to Cairo, where he was recognised as Caliph by
the Sultan of Egypt. The eighth Caliph in succession from this man
renounced the Caliphate in favour of Sultan Salim, the great Ottoman
conqueror, and it is on this renunciation that the title of the Sultan
of Turkey to the spiritual headship of Islam is based.
It will be seen from this short statement of the history that a great
change took place in Islam when Husain, the descendant of the Caliph Ali
and of Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter, was slain at Karbala, on the
Euphrates. From that tragedy dates the chief division of Islam. The
Shiah sect traces its foundation to the Caliph Ali and the immediate
descendants of the Prophet, who are regarded as the rightful exponents
of his teaching. Some twenty millions of the Indian Musulmans are
Shiahs, and Shiahism is also the State religion of Persia. There are a
large number of Shiahs also in other parts of the Muhammadan world, but
nowhere, except in Persia, a majority. The Shiahs are advocates of
Apostolic descent and lineal succession to the Caliphate.
The other of the two great divisions of the Musulmans are the Sunnis,
who advocate the principle of election to the Caliphate. Almost all the
Sunnis acknowledge the spiritual headship of the Sultan of Turkey, who
is, of course, repudiated by the Shiahs. At the present time nearly 50
millions of the Musulmans of India are Sunnis, and there are Sunni
Musulmans in China, Tartary, Afghanistan, Asiatic and European Turkey,
Arabia, Egypt, Northern and Central Africa, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Russia,
Ceylon, and the Malay Archipelago.
[Sidenote: 38.
Moharam Time at Agra.] [Sidenote: 39.
The Same.] [Sidenote: 40.
The Same.] [Sidenote: 41.
The Same.] [Sidenote: 42.
The Same.] [Sidenote: 43.
Shiahs burying Tazias.] We are now in a position to understand the
significance of the anniversary of the Karbala. Annually there is held
in the Muhammadan month Moharam a festival in memory of the death of
Husain. The scenes of the battle are reproduced, and the tazia or tomb
of Husain is carried in procession amidst cries of “Hasan, Husain!”
Properly, this is a Shiah festival only, but in India both the Sunnis
and Shiahs take part in it. Here are photographs representing the
festival. The tazias are pagoda-like structures, made of a variety of
materials. They are carried in long procession through the town, and
finally the little biers—representative of the biers of Hasan and
Husain—contained inside the tazias are buried at the Karbala, outside
the city. We have first a street view in Agra showing the crowd at
Moharam time. In the distance is Agra Fort. Next we have three views of
the procession of the tazias, and then a view of the Karbala beyond the
city, where the biers from the tazias are buried. The Shiahs, however,
do not bury their tazias in the Karbala, but on the banks of the Jumna.
Here we see them in the early morning conducting the ceremony with most
solemn ritual.
[Sidenote: 44.
Fields of Wheat and Barley.] [Sidenote: 45.
The Public Audience Hall, Fatehpur Sikri.] [Sidenote: 46.
The Great Capital, Fatehpur Sikri.] [Sidenote: 47.
Gate of Victory, Fatehpur Sikri.] Let us drive out from Agra
southwestward on the road to Fatehpur Sikri, the city erected by the
Emperor Akbar, but abandoned by his successors in favour of Agra. On the
way, we note fields of wheat and barley, separated by an irrigation
channel. We pass villages amid mango trees, and occasional ruins, and
arrive at Fatehpur Sikri. There we enter the great quadrangle and the
Public Audience Hall of the Palace, built of red sandstone. It was in
this hall that Akbar used to sit on certain days to see personally
anyone who had grievances to lay before him. Notice in the quadrangle
the stone pierced with a hole which is fixed in the ground. Criminals
were put to death by being trampled upon by an elephant, and to that
ring the elephant was tied. We pass on to the Private Audience Hall of
Akbar, the Diwan-i-Khas. Note the huge capital of the column in the
centre. Tradition says that Akbar used to sit on the top of this
capital. Finally, here is the magnificent Gate of Victory.
[Sidenote: 48.
Mausoleum of Akbar, Sikandra.] [Sidenote: 49.
The Same—a Marble Inscription.] [Sidenote: 50.
The Same—the Cloisters.] We leave Fatehpur Sikri, and drive back, past
many other tombs, in the direction of the Cantonment at Agra until we
come to the burial place of Akbar at Sikandra. This is the gateway of
the great Mausoleum. Notice the cut marble inscriptions down the sides
of the arch. They are quotations from the Koran. Here is a clearer
photograph of a part of these inscriptions, and here we have the marble
court above the tomb of Akbar. Round the Cloisters are verses
celebrating his greatness. “Think not that the sky will be so kind as
Akbar was,” is the tenor of one of them.
[Sidenote: 51.
Hariki Piri, Hardwar.] [Sidenote: 52.
Sarwan Nath Temple, Hardwar.] [Sidenote: 53.
The Same, from above.] [Sidenote: 54.
Camels at Hardwar.]
Finally we will travel away to Hardwar, some two hundred miles due north
of Agra. It is on the Ganges, at the point where the river leaves the
last foot hills of the Himalayas and enters the plain. Hardwar is a
great centre of Hindu pilgrimage for the purpose of ablution in the
sacred waters. At the annual fair are gathered hundreds of thousands of
worshippers. So great has been the crush of people endeavouring to bathe
that on occasion many have been trampled upon and drowned. The great day
at Hardwar is towards the end of March, when the Hindu year begins, and
when, according to tradition, the Ganges river first appeared from its
source in the mountains. There was a town of Hardwar more than a
thousand years ago, but its ancient buildings have disappeared. Here we
have a view of the famous Bathing Ghat, a comparatively small flight of
steps, where the river is considered to be specially sacred. The water
is purer than at Benares in the plain. It flows swiftly and is as clear
as crystal. Near by we have a temple, the Sarwan Nath, with great stone
elephants, and here is a second view of the same temple seen from a
neighbouring roof. Notice the Trisul, or bronze trident, the typical
weapon of Siva, the Destroyer.
[Sidenote: 55.
Sacred Cow at Hardwar.] Here is a string of camels at Hardwar, and then
a sacred cow—especially sacred because deformed, for a freak of nature
is miraculous.
[Sidenote: 56.
The Road to Mussoorie.] [Sidenote: 57.
The Same, Coolies carrying Baggage.] [Sidenote: 58.
The Same, a Tree across the Road.] [Sidenote: 59.
Mussoorie.] [Sidenote: 60.
The Himalayas from Mussoorie.] Not far northward of Hardwar, among the
foot hills of the Himalayas, is Mussoorie, a hill station supplementary
to Simla. Mussoorie is about a mile above sea level. We have two views
taken on the steep mountain road up to it; the second shows coolies
carrying baggage. In the next view we realise something of the
difficulties of travel in these hill districts of much rainfall, for the
road is blocked by the fall of a great tree. Here we have a view of
Mussoorie itself, and then the landscape from Mussoorie looking towards
the Himalayan ranges to the north. Close by, but lower down, is Dehra
Dun, the headquarters of the Gurkha Rifles, enlisted from Nepal, and
also of the Imperial Cadet Corps, a small training force consisting
wholly of the sons of ruling chiefs. We shall hear of the Gurkhas again
in connection with the defences of India, which will be the subject of
the next and concluding lecture of this Course.
--------------
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LECTURE VIII.
---
=THE NORTHWEST FRONTIER.=
---
THE SIKHS.
In the British Empire there is but one land frontier on which warlike
preparation must ever be ready. It is the Northwest Frontier of India.
True that there is another boundary, even longer, drawn across the
American Continent, but there, fortunately, only customs houses are
necessary and an occasional police guard. The Northwest Frontier of
India, on the other hand, lies through a region whose inhabitants have
been recruited throughout the ages by invading warlike races. Except for
the Gurkha mountaineers of Nepal, the best soldiers of the Indian Army
are derived from the northwest, from the Rajputs, the Sikhs, the Punjabi
Musulmans, the Dogra mountaineers north of the Punjab, and the Pathan
mountaineers west of the Punjab. The provinces along the frontier, and
the Afghan land immediately beyond it, are the one region in all India
from which, under some ambitious lead, the attempt might be made to
establish a fresh imperial rule by the overthrow of the British Raj. It
would not be the freedom of India which would ensue, but an oriental
despotism and race domination from the northwest. Such is the teaching
of history, and such the obvious fate of the less warlike peoples of
India, should the power of Britain be broken either by warfare on the
spot, or by the defeat of our navy. Beyond the northwest frontier,
moreover, at a greater or less distance are the continental Powers of
Europe.
[Sidenote: 1.
Political Map of Northwest India.] The Indian army and the Indian
strategical railways are therefore organized with special reference to
the belt of territory, extending from northeast to southwest, which lies
beyond the Indian desert and is traversed from end to end by the Indus
River. This frontier belt divides naturally into two parts. Inland we
have the Punjab, where the rivers, emerging from their mountain valleys,
gradually close together through the plain to form the single stream of
the lower Indus; seaward we have Sind, where the Indus divides into
distributaries forming a delta. Sind, as already stated, is a part of
the Bombay Province, with which it is connected by sea from the Port of
Karachi. Of late a railway has been constructed from Ahmadabad in the
main territory of Bombay, across the southern end of the Desert, to
Hyderabad at the head of the Indus delta. The Punjab is a separate
Province with its own Lieutenant-Governor resident at Lahore. It was
conquered from the Sikhs by a British army based on Delhi, and therefore
ultimately on Calcutta.
[Sidenote: 2.
Map of Lower Asia.] To understand the significance of the Northwest
Frontier of India we must look far beyond the immediate boundaries of
the Empire. We have here a map of Lower Asia. Upon it we see a broad
tract of upland which, commencing in Asia Minor, extends through Armenia
and Persia to include Baluchistan and Afghanistan. There is thus one
continuous belt of plateau stretching from Europe to the boundary of
India. The eastern end of this belt, that is to say, Persia,
Afghanistan, and Baluchistan, is known as Iran. On all sides save the
northwest and the northeast, the Iranian plateau descends abruptly to
lowlands or to the sea. Southward and southwestward lie the Arabian Sea
and the Persian Gulf, and the long lowland which is traversed by the
rivers Euphrates and Tigris. Northward, to the east of the Caspian Sea,
is the broad lowland of Turkestan, traversed by the Rivers Oxus and
Jaxartes, draining into the Sea of Aral. Eastward is the plain of the
Indus. The defence of India from invasion depends in the first place on
the maintenance of British sea power in the Persian Gulf and along the
south coast of Baluchistan, and in the second place on our refusal to
allow the establishment of alien bases of power on the Iranian plateau,
especially on those parts of it which lie towards the south and east.
[Sidenote: 3.
Map of the Northwest Frontier.] In the next map we have on a larger
scale the detail of that part of Iran which lies nearest to India. Here
we see, west of the Punjab, a great triangular mass of mountain ridges
which splay out westward and southward from the northeast. These ridges
and the intervening valleys constitute Afghanistan. Flowing from the
Afghan valleys we have on the one hand the Kabul river, which descends
eastward to the Indus, and, on the other hand, the greater river
Helmund, which flows southwestward into the depressed basin of Seistan,
where it divides into many channels, forming as it were an inland delta
from which the waters are evaporated by the hot air, for there is no
opening to the sea. The valley of the Kabul river on the one hand, and
the oasis of Seistan on the other, might in the hands of an enemy become
bases wherein to prepare the invasion of India. Therefore, without
annexing this intricate and difficult upland, we have declared it to be
the policy of Britain to exclude from Afghanistan and from Seistan all
foreign power.
Further examination of the map will show that there are two lines, and
only two, along which an invasion of India might be conducted. On the
one hand, the mountains become very narrow just north of the head of the
Kabul River. There in fact a single though lofty ridge, the Hindu Kush,
is all that separates the basin of the Oxus from that of the Indus. As
we see from the map, low ground is very near on the two sides of the
Hindu Kush. The way into India over the passes of the Hindu Kush is
known as the Khyber route, from the name of the last defile by which the
track descends into the Indian Plain.
If we now look some five hundred miles to the southwest of Kabul, we see
that the Afghan mountains come suddenly to an end, and that a pathway
leads round their fringe from Herat to the Indus Basin, passing along
the border of Seistan. From Herat to beyond Kandahar, this way lies over
an upland plain and is easy, but the last part of the journey is through
a mountainous district down to the lowland of the Indus. This is the
Bolan route, so called from the last gorge towards India. It will be
noticed that the Bolan route debouches upon the Indus opposite to the
great Indian Desert. Therefore it is that the Khyber route has been the
more frequented. It leads directly between the desert and the mountain
foot, upon the inner gateway of India at Delhi.
We conquered the Punjab from the Sikhs, but for many centuries it had
been ruled by the Musulmans. In the break up of the Mogul Empire
invaders had come, during the eighteenth century, from Persia and from
Afghanistan, who carried devastation even as far as Delhi. Thus it was
that with relative ease the Sikhs as contemporaries of the Marathas
established a dominion in the helpless Punjab. They extended their rule
also into the mountains of Kashmir, north of Lahore.
Let us commence our survey of the northwest at Dehra Dun, which is
placed in a mountain valley among the foot hills of the Himalayas, not
far from the hill station of Mussoorie, of which we heard in the last
lecture. Then from Dehra Dun we will travel two hundred miles
northwestward, crossing the Beas, one of the five rivers of the Punjab,
to Amritsar, the holy city of the Sikhs. Fifty miles west of Amritsar,
on the Ravi, another of the Indus tributaries, is Lahore, the
traditional capital of the Punjab. From Lahore onward we traverse
irrigated strips of fertile ground, with sandy plains intervening, with
a scanty herbage for a few camels. Then follows a broken and more
desolate country in the north of the Punjab. So we come to the Indus
itself, and beyond this, nearly three hundred miles from Lahore, to the
military station of Peshawar, the last Indian city on the great track
leading northwestward from Calcutta, through Allahabad and Delhi. Not
far from Peshawar is the Khyber Pass.
The Khyber is protected by its own hill tribes. We have enlisted them on
the side of law and order by enrolling them into military forces, just
as the Scottish Highlanders were enrolled in the British army in the
18th century.
Then leaving Peshawar we will visit Quetta, some five hundred miles
southwestward, and see there the second great centre of British force on
the Frontier. It has been established to command the Bolan route to
Kandahar and Herat. The whole army in India is organised with reference
to these two points, Peshawar and Quetta, or in other words, the Khyber
and the Bolan. There are many other passes in the frontier mountains,
but they offer merely loopways from the two main routes.
[Sidenote: 4.
12th Bengal Infantry.] [Sidenote: 5.
Bombay Mountain Battery.] [Sidenote: 6.
Heavy Battery in Elephant Draught.] The Indian forces are now grouped
into a Northern and a Southern army. The Northern army is distributed
southeastward from Peshawar past Delhi and Allahabad to Calcutta, so
that all the forces along that long line may be regarded as supporting
the brigades on the Khyber front. The Southern army is similarly posted
for the reinforcement of Quetta. It is distributed in the Bombay
Presidency and immediately around. The conditions of the defence of
India have of course been vitally changed by the construction of the
Northwestern Railway from the port of Karachi through the Indus basin,
with its two branches towards the Bolan and the Khyber. To-day that
defence could be conducted over the seas directly from Britain through
Karachi, so that the desert of Rajputana would lie between the defending
forces and the main community of India within.
[Sidenote: 7.
18th P. W. Tiwana Horse.] [Sidenote: 8.
Gurkha Rifles: Physical Drill.] [Sidenote: 9.
The Same—Bayonet Practice.] [Sidenote: 10.
32nd Mountain Battery, Advancing Down Hill.] [Sidenote: 11.
The Same—Retiring Up Hill.] [Sidenote: 12.
Battery in Action.] As we start for Dehra Dun let us stop for a moment
on the ridge at Delhi to see a squadron of the 18th Prince of Wales’s
Tiwana Horse, recruited partly from among the Sikhs and partly from the
Musulmans. Then at Dehra Dun we have the Gurkha Rifles. We see them at
physical drill and then at bayonet practice. At the same place we visit
a battery of Mountain Artillery, for Dehra Dun is in the Terai, at the
foot of the Himalayas. Mountain batteries are much utilised in
operations over the broken and hilly country towards the Northwest
Frontier. The men are Punjabis; and it will be noticed that the guns are
carried by mules. Here we see the battery advancing down hill, and here
we see it retiring up hill. Then we have a mountain gun in action.
From Dehra Dun we proceed to Amritsar, the chief centre of the Sikh
religion, which resulted from a reformation of Hinduism in the middle of
the fifteenth century. It is therefore modern indeed as compared with
the parent religion itself. The Sikhs abandoned idolatry, and also
distinctions of caste. The word Sikh means “disciple.” In their origin a
religious sect, the Sikhs developed into a powerful military
commonwealth, which rose to great position in the Punjab and surrounding
lands as the Mogul strength decayed at Delhi. The Sikhs only succumbed
to the British after two wars, fought in 1846 and 1849, which were among
the severest in the whole history of British India. Yet they remained
loyal during the Mutiny.
[Sidenote: 13.
The Causeway and the Golden Temple, Amritsar.] [Sidenote: 14.
The Golden Temple, Amritsar.] [Sidenote: 15.
The Akal Bungah, Amritsar.] The Emperor Akbar granted to the Sikhs a
site for their capital by the shore of a sacred tank, and this capital,
Amritsar, has now grown to be a city of over 150,000 inhabitants, the
third most wealthy and populous of the Punjab. It is surpassed only by
Delhi and Lahore, and Delhi has been included in the Punjab only in
recent times, and for convenience of administration. In this view we see
the famous Golden Temple, built in the centre of the sacred tank. The
bridge across the water leading to the entry is of marble. The doors of
the gateway are of silver without, and on the inner side of wood inlaid
with ivory. The lower part of the walls of the temple itself are of
white marble inlaid with jaspar and mother-of-pearl, but the upper part
is plated with gilded copper. In the middle of the temple, under a
canopy, is the Grant Sahib, the sacred book of the Sikhs, covered with a
cloth of gold. Here we have another view of the Golden Temple seen
across the tank, and behind it is the Clock Tower. Opposite the chief
entry to the temple is a square surrounded by public buildings, of which
the most important is the Akal Bungah, wherein are performed the
ceremonies of initiation and investiture of the Sikhs.
[Sidenote: 16.
School of Sikh and Hindu Children.] [Sidenote: 17.
Street Scene, Amritsar.] [Sidenote: 18.
Street Conjurer, Amritsar.] A few scenes follow showing phases of life
at Amritsar. Here we see a part of the tesselated pavement which
surrounds the sacred tank, and a school of Hindu and Sikh children. Next
is a street scene showing the gateway leading to another sacred tank,
and here is a conjurer with a cobra entwined about his neck. Amritsar
has to-day become an important manufacturing city. From raw materials
brought by the Khyber route, from the central Asian markets, are here
manufactured shawls of the famous Kashmir design, and also fine silks,
embroideries, carpets, carvings, and metal work of various kinds.
[Sidenote: 19.
Lahore, from roof of Shish Mahal.] [Sidenote: 20.
West Gate, Jama Masjid, Lahore.] Let us now go on to Lahore, the ancient
and the modern capital of the Punjab. Here is a view taken from the roof
of the Shish Mahal, or Palace of Mirrors, in the Fort of Lahore, looking
towards the southwest, over the Jama Masjid, towards the River Ravi, on
whose left bank the city stands. Next is seen the fine west gate of the
Jama Masjid, a mosque built by the Emperor Aurangzeb, which contains
relics of Muhammad.
[Sidenote: 21.
Zamzamah, Lahore.] [Sidenote: 22.
Sarai, Lahore.] [Sidenote: 23.
The Same, showing Wazir Khan’s House.] [Sidenote: 24.
Old Houses, Lahore.] Do you remember “Kim” in Rudyard Kipling’s book? We
have in this view the Zamzamah, the old gun under the tree on which Kim
sat in the first chapter. Astride on its muzzle is an urchin, just like
what Kim must have been. Here is the Sarai, a quadrangle about sixty
yards square, with round arched verandahs on all sides. Note the well in
the centre. Next is the actual house where Wazir Khan, Kipling’s Mahbub
Ali, used to sleep. Beyond may be seen horses brought for sale. The
Sarai belongs to-day to the Maharaja of Kashmir, who obtains a revenue
from the fees paid by the horsedealers using it. Near by we have a busy
street scene, showing old houses belonging to Hindu merchants.
[Sidenote: 25.
The Court of Justice, Lahore.] [Sidenote: 26.
Mayo School of Art, Lahore.] [Sidenote: 27.
The same—Wood-working.] [Sidenote: 28.
The Same—Metal-working.] [Sidenote: 29.
Statuette of Buddha.] At Lahore there are a number of really handsome
modern buildings. We have in this view the Court of Justice, situated in
the chief street, the Mall. Next is the fine building of the Lahore
School of Art, showing students sketching out of doors, and then a
number of Punjabis in the wood-working room of the school. Here is the
metal-working department. At the back of the room some senior students
are finishing a large lamp in hammered brass-work, which was afterwards
exhibited in London. The Lahore Museum, a corner of which we saw just
now in the view of the “Kim” gun, is another fine building, containing
among other curiosities a statuette of Buddha after his forty-nine days’
fast, excavated at Sikri near Peshawar. This statuette, some three feet
high and two feet broad, is one of the finest examples of ancient
sculpture found in India. It is carved with extreme delicacy and
refinement, and is supposed to date back to about the first century of
the Christian era.
[Sidenote: 30.
Bridge of Boats over the Ravi, near Lahore.] [Sidenote: 31.
Jehangir’s tomb.] We will drive out from Lahore to the west of the city
on the high road to Peshawar. We pass the Musulman cemetery and the
Hindu burning ground, and then reach the banks of the Ravi. A bridge of
boats crosses the river a little below the railway bridge. Here we turn
aside from the Peshawar road and reach Shahdara, where is the tomb of
the Emperor Jehangir. In this picture we have a close view of part of
it, showing the inlaid marble. Near by is the ruined tomb of Jehangir’s
wife, Nur Jehan. It was probably never finished, and has been neglected.
[Sidenote: 32.
Edwardes Gate, Peshawar.] [Sidenote: 33.
Kissa Kahani, Peshawar.] [Sidenote: 34.
Police Station, Peshawar.] [Sidenote: 35.
Silk Market, Peshawar.] [Sidenote: 36.
In the Silk Market, Peshawar.] From Lahore we travel by the Northwestern
Railway to Peshawar, a distance of nearly three hundred miles. Peshawar,
as we have already learned, is the most important garrison city on the
Northwest Frontier, and the capital of the recently created Northwest
Frontier Province. It has about a hundred thousand inhabitants, chiefly
Musulmans. Here we see the Edwardes Gate, with its fine pointed arch,
and passing through it we enter the Kissa Kahani, the Lombard Street of
Peshawar. The Edwardes Gate may be seen from within at the end of the
street. Here is the Kotwali, or Police Station, and just within the
gateway of the Kotwali is the Silk Market. Peshawar is a most important
commercial centre on the great road from Samarkand and Bokhara in
Central Asia, through Kabul and the Khyber, to Lahore and Delhi. In the
bazaar we find representatives of many Asiatic races. Here we see skeins
of Chinese silk, red and white and yellow, hung out in the sun to dry
after being dyed. Near by are the stalls of bankers and money-changers,
which are sometimes raided by the wild tribesmen visiting Peshawar from
the neighbourhood of the Khyber Pass.
[Sidenote: 37.
Ghor Khatri, Peshawar.] [Sidenote: 38.
Peshawar from the Ghor Khatri, looking north.] [Sidenote: 39.
The Same, looking west.] In the northeastern corner of Peshawar is the
famous Ghor Khatri, which stands on a piece of rising ground commanding
a fine view over the whole city. Here is a part of the building, with a
bullock cart in front. The Ghor Khatri was successively a Buddhist
Monastery and a Hindu temple, and is now used as municipal offices and
as the official residence of the agents of the Ameer of Afghanistan when
they visit Peshawar. We climb to the roof and look upon the city
beneath. A second view is in the direction of Jamrud and the Khyber.
[Sidenote: 40.
Gymnastic Class, Government High School, Peshawar.] [Sidenote: 41.
Lowest Class, same School.] Here in Peshawar, on the very border of
British rule, it is interesting to see the progress of western
education. This is the Government High School. A class is in the
playground under gymnastic instruction. The boys are mostly Musulmans,
though a few Hindus may be distinguished by their caps in the place of
turbans. This is the lowest class of the school, and is being taught
reading and writing by a native master. Notice that the boys’ shoes have
been taken off.
[Sidenote: 42.
Jamrud.] [Sidenote: 43.
Khyber Rifles drilling.] [Sidenote: 44.
Khyber Rifles marching.] [Sidenote: 45.
Zakka Khel Afridis.] [Sidenote: 46.
The Sarai, Jamrud.] [Sidenote: 47.
Caravan, near Jamrud.] [Sidenote: 48.
Ali Masjid.] [Sidenote: 49.
Ali Masjid, nearer view.] [Sidenote: 50.
A Subadar, 59th Sind Rifles.] Jamrud, at the immediate entrance to the
Khyber, lies some nine miles west of Peshawar. Here is a distant view of
it from the Peshawar road. To the right can just be seen the Fort, and
to the left Jamrud Village. Next we see a company of the Khyber Rifles,
photographed at Jamrud, and here the same company marching. By way of
striking contrast, are a group of the Zakka Khel Afridis in their native
dress. They are the raw material from which the Khyber Riflemen are
made. Typical wild tribesmen of the hills, they have been enlisted in
the British Army to keep them out of mischief, and also to assist in
repelling raids by their fellow-tribesmen, who continue to dwell amid
the hill fastnesses of the region. The Afridis, of whom the Zakka Khel
is a clan, seem perfectly well content, provided that there is fighting,
which they love for its own sake. Here we see the Sarai at Jamrud, where
all caravans going into India or returning to Central Asia halt for the
night. The men in this picture are mostly Kabulis, with long-haired
Bactrian camels from Central Asia, stronger and finer than the Indian
species. These camels are laden with tea, sugar, and general supplies.
Outside Jamrud we see a caravan of Indian camels taking stores back to
Peshawar after operations in the Khyber against the hill tribes. Beyond
Jamrud the road enters the Khyber, with the sweeping curve seen in this
view. The Fort of Ali Masjid, nearly three thousand feet above sea
level, crowns a steeply sloping hill on the crest of the path between
Jamrud and Landi Kotal, where begins the descent into Afghanistan. Here
is a nearer view, with the tents of an expeditionary force at the foot
of the Fort. It shows the continuation of the way in the direction of
Landi Kotal. Notice how steep are the cliffs and how narrow the Pass at
this point. Beneath the Fort, in the face of the hill, are seen caves in
which dwell during the winter months the wild clan known as the Kuchi
Khel. Finally, we have a portrait, painted in the camp at Ali Masjid, of
Nasar Khan, a Subadar, or native officer, of the 59th Sind Rifles.
We now leave the Khyber region and, following the Indus for some six
hundred miles, we travel southward through a land which was not very
long ago a desert. To-day, as the result of a great investment of
British capital, irrigation works have changed the whole aspect of the
country. The provinces of the Punjab and Sind have hitherto been
regarded as significant chiefly in relation to the defence of the
Northwest Frontier of India. They have now no less importance when
considered in their economic development. The plain of the Indus has
become one of the chief wheatfields of the British Empire, for wheat is
the principal crop in the Punjab, in parts of Sind, and outside the
basin of the Indus itself, in the districts of the United Provinces
which lie about Agra. The wheat production of India on an average of
years is five times as great as that of the United Kingdom, and about
half as great as that of the United States. In one recent year at least,
the export of wheat from India to the United Kingdom has exceeded that
from the United States to the United Kingdom.
The brown waste of the plains of the Punjab becomes after the winter
rains a waving sea of green wheat extending over thousands of square
miles. Cultivation now spreads far beyond the area within which the
rainfall alone suffices. The lower Punjab and the central strip of Sind
have been converted into a second Egypt. Though the navigation of the
Indus is naturally inferior to that of the Ganges, yet communication has
been maintained by boat from the Punjab to the sea from Greek times
downward. The Indus flotilla of steamboats has, however, suffered
fatally from the competition of the Northwestern Railway, and the wheat
exported from Karachi is now almost wholly rail-borne.
[Sidenote: 51.
The Lansdowne Bridge.] [Sidenote: 52.
The Same.] [Sidenote: 53.
Khwaja Khizir Island.] Running southward through the fertile strip, not
very far from the left or western bank of the river, the railway leaves
the Punjab and enters Sind. At Rohri, one of the hottest places in all
India in the summer time, a line branches northwestward to Quetta and
Chaman, on the frontier of Afghanistan. Sukkur stands opposite to Rohri
on the right bank of the river, and the Lansdowne Railway Bridge between
these two towns is perhaps the most remarkable bridge in India. It was
built between 1887 and 1889, and about three thousand tons of steel and
iron were employed in its construction. It is eight hundred and forty
feet in length, with two magnificent spans. We see in this slide a view
of the Rohri end of it, taken from Suttian, an old nunnery founded for
women who preferred seclusion rather than the funeral pyre. The Hindu
custom was to burn the wife or wives with the husband’s body, until the
British Government intervened to prevent the practice. One end of the
town of Rohri, with its tall grey wattle and daub buildings, can be seen
under the bridge. A train is upon the bridge, and in front are some Pala
fishers, sailing on metal chatties into which they put the fish as they
catch them. This is another view of the bridge seen from Rohri itself.
We are here in the very heart of the rainless region. During twelve
years there have only been six showers at Rohri! A great engineering
scheme is now under consideration for damming the Indus near this point
so as to raise the level of the water in the upper reaches of the river.
In this manner the irrigation canals would be fed not only in time of
flood, as at present, but in the dry season as well. Near Rohri, in the
middle of the Indus channel, is Khwaja Khizir Island, on which stands an
ancient Hindu temple. In the foreground of the picture near the water’s
edge are Sindi boatmen mending their sails.
From Sukkur, passing through Shikarpur and Jacobabad, the railway
traverses the desert to the foot of the hills, and then ascends to
Quetta either by the Mashkaf—the actual line of the Bolan having been
abandoned—or by a longer loop line, the Harnai, which runs to the Peshin
valley. The latter is the usual way. By the Mashkaf route the line is
carried over a boulder-strewn plain about half a mile broad in the
bottom of a gorge with steeply rising heights on either side. Here and
there the strip of lower ground is trenched and split by deep canyons.
At first the line follows the Mashkaf river, and the gradients are not
very severe, but once Hirok, at the source of the Bolan river is passed,
a gradient of one in twenty-five begins, and two powerful engines are
required to drag the train up. The steep bounding ridges now close in on
either side with cliffs rising almost perpendicularly to several hundred
feet. Occasional block-houses high up amid the crags defend the Pass.
[Sidenote: 54.
The Chappar Rift.] [Sidenote: 55.
The Same.] The gradients of the Harnai route are not quite so steep as
those of the Mashkaf. Should either way be blocked or carried away by
landslips or floods the other would be available. The Harnai line passes
through the Chappar Rift, a precipitous gorge in a great mass of
limestone. In this view we are approaching the Rift from Mangi, and then
we have a view looking back from the middle of the Rift. As will be
seen, the railway runs across high bridges and through tunnels in the
mountain masses.
[Sidenote: 56.
Native Bazaar, Quetta.] Quetta occupies a very important strategical
position, about a mile above sea level, in the midst of a small plain
surrounded by great mountain ridges rising to a height of two miles and
more. Irrigation works have been constructed in the Quetta plain, which
is now an oasis among desert mountains, and has a population of some
thirty thousand, including many Afghans. The Agent General for British
Baluchistan resides there. The town, with its outposts, is of course
very strongly fortified, commanding as it does the railways leading
southeastward to the Indus, and the Khojak Pass leading northwestward to
Chaman and Kandahar. Here we have a scene in the native bazaar, with
Hindus performing a festival dance.
[Sidenote: 57.
Street in Chaman.] From Quetta the railway is carried northwestward,
through the Khojak tunnel, for another hundred and twenty miles to
Chaman on the frontier, where is a British outpost. Here is a street in
Chaman, with two old Pathans. Chaman is at present the terminus of the
railway. The material is, however, kept ready for its continuation, in
case of need, to Kandahar, in Afghanistan, seventy miles further. From
Kandahar through Herat to the rail-head of the Russian Trans-Caspian
Railway is some four hundred miles. By this route, did circumstances
allow, a connection might be made, giving through railway communication
between Europe and India.
[Sidenote: 58.
The Proclamation of the Queen-Empress at the Delhi Durbar, 1st Jan.,
1877.] At this last outpost of British Power we complete our journey
through the great Indian Empire. It was with no intention of Empire that
a few London merchants formed themselves into an East India Company in
the days of Queen Elizabeth. It was with no great force of white
soldiers that the conquest was in after centuries effected, but by the
organisation of Indian strength in a time of disorder, due to the
downfall of the Mogul Empire at Delhi. Province was added to province
under the British Raj of no set design and ambition, but for defensive
reasons under the threat of French or Maratha or Sikh rivalry. In the
great Mutiny the system of power and administration, thus upbuilt almost
casually, was tested, and it survived the test, but with a fundamental
change. The East India Company was dissolved, and the British Government
made itself directly responsible for peace and order in the Indian
Continent. The proclamation by which Queen Victoria assumed the rule of
India solemnly promised that in the administration of the country due
regard should be paid to the ancient rights, usages, and customs of
India. The change which was made in 1858, after the Mutiny, was
completed in 1877, when at a great durbar of the princes of India, held
at Delhi, Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India.
[Sidenote: 59.
The Same.] The British Raj in India is an organisation unparalleled in
history, for the Roman Empire consisted of provinces grouped round the
Imperial City, but Britain is a quarter of the globe removed from India.
Our power ultimately rests on our command of the seas and on the justice
of our administration. When either of these fail, the British position
in India will crumble. Within our duty of justice is included the
generous but firmly-directed readjustment of the methods of Indian
government, so as to adapt them to the now changing conditions of
oriental society.
[Sidenote: 60.
The Same.] The responsibility for India is, indeed, a great one. It is
idle to ask whether our forefathers should have assumed it. We could not
withdraw now without throwing India into disorder, and causing untold
suffering among three hundred million of our fellow human beings. Yet
the administration of such an Empire calls for virtues in our race
certainly not less than those needed for our own self-government. Above
all, we require knowledge of India, and sympathy with the points of view
begotten of oriental history.
---------------------
LIST OF VICEROYS OF INDIA SINCE THE TRANSFER
OF THE ADMINISTRATION FROM THE EAST INDIA
COMPANY TO THE CROWN IN 1858.
VISCOUNT CANNING, to 1862
March,
EARL OF ELGIN, 1862-3
SIR JOHN LAWRENCE, 1864-9
EARL OF MAYO, 1869-72
LORD NORTHBROOK, 1872-6
LORD LYTTON, 1876-80
MARQUESS OF RIPON, 1880-84
EARL OF DUFFERIN, 1884-88
MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE, 1888-94
EARL OF ELGIN, 1894-99
LORD CURZON OF KEDLESTON, 1899-1905
EARL OF MINTO, 1905-1910
LORD HARDINGE, 1910
---------------------
NOTE (I).—Many of the artistic and other objects mentioned in the
preceding pages can be better appreciated after a visit to the Indian
Museum at South Kensington.
NOTE (II).—The thanks of the Committee are due for a few of the slides
to Colonel Frederick Firebrace, R.E., Managing Director of the Great
Indian Peninsula Railway Company, and to Mr. A. L. Hetherington, of the
Board of Education.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Additional line spacing has been added before paragraphs with side
notes to make more room for the them.
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_);
text that was bold by “equal” signs (=bold=).
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