She was almost dead with the fright and the water, in which she had

been kept afloat by her clothes. She was taken to Harding; but the

whole city of Benares was in an uproar, at the rescue of a Brahman's

widow from the funeral pile, for such it had been considered, though

the man had been a year dead. Thousands surrounded his house, and his

court was filled with the principal men of the city, imploring him to

surrender the woman; and among the rest was the poor woman's father,

who declared that he could not support his daughter; and that she

had, therefore, better be burned, as her husband's family would no

longer receive her. The uproar was quite alarming to a young man, who

felt all the responsibility upon himself in such a city as[10]

Benares, with a population of three hundred thousand people,[11] so

prone to popular insurrections, or risings _en masse_ very like them.

He long argued the point of the time that had elapsed, and the

unwillingness of the woman, but in vain; until at last the thought

struck him suddenly, and he said that 'The sacrifice was manifestly

unacceptable to their God--that the sacred river, as such, had

rejected her; she had, without being able to swim, floated down two

miles upon its bosom, in the face of an immense multitude; and it was

clear that she had been rejected. Had she been an acceptable

sacrifice, after the fire had touched her, the river would have

received her'. This satisfied the whole crowd. The father said that,

after this unanswerable argument, he would receive his daughter; and

the whole crowd dispersed satisfied.[12]

The following conversation took place one morning between me and a

native gentleman at Jubbulpore soon after suttees had been prohibited

by Government:--

'What are the castes among whom women are not permitted to remarry

after the death of their husbands?'

'They are, sir, Brahmans, Râjpûts, Baniyâs (shopkeepers), Kâyaths

(writers).'

'Why not permit them to marry, now that they are no longer permitted

to burn themselves with the dead bodies of their husbands?'

'The knowledge that they cannot unite themselves to a second husband

without degradation from caste, tends strongly to secure their

fidelity to the first, sir. Besides, if all widows were permitted to

marry again, what distinction would remain between us and people of

lower caste? We should all soon sink to a level with the lowest.'

'And so you are content to keep up your caste at the expense of the

poor widows?'

'No; they are themselves as proud of the distinction as their

husbands are.'

'And would they, do you think, like to hear the good old custom of

burning themselves restored?'

'Some of them would, no doubt.'

'Why?'

'Because they become reunited to their husbands in paradise, and are

there happy, free from all the troubles of this life.'

'But you should not let them have any troubles as widows.'

'If they behave well, they are the most honoured members of their

deceased husbands' families; nothing in such families is ever done

without consulting them, because all are proud to have the memory of

their lost fathers, sons, and brothers so honoured by their

widows.[13] But women feel that they are frail, and would often

rather burn themselves than be exposed all their lives to temptation

and suspicion.'

'And why do not the men burn themselves to avoid the troubles of

life?'

'Because they are not called to it from Heaven, as the women are.'

'And you think that the women were really called to be burned by the

Deity?'

'No doubt; we all believe that they were called and supported by the

Deity; and that no tender beings like women could otherwise

voluntarily undergo such tortures--they become inspired with

supernatural powers of courage and fortitude. When Dulî Sukul, the

Sihôrâ[14] banker's father, died, the wife of a Lodhî cultivator of

the town declared, all at once, that she had been a suttee with him

six times before; and that she would now go into paradise with him a

seventh time. Nothing could persuade her from burning herself. She

was between fifty and sixty years of age, and had grandchildren, and

all her family tried to persuade her that it must be a mistake, but

all in vain. She became a suttee, and was burnt the day after the

body of the banker.'

'Did not Dulî Sukul's family, who were Brahmans, try to dissuade her

from it, she being a Lodhî, a very low caste?'

'They did; but they said all things were possible with God; and it

was generally believed that this was a call from Heaven.'

'And what became of the banker's widow?'

'She said that she felt no divine call to the flames. This was thirty

years ago; and the banker was about thirty years of age when he

died.'

'Then he will have rather an old wife in paradise?'

'No, sir; after they pass through the flames upon earth, both become

young in paradise.'

'Sometimes women used to burn themselves with any relic of a husband,

who had died far from home, did they not?'

'Yes, sir, I remember a fisherman, about twenty years ago, who went

on some business to Benares from Jubbulpore, and who was to have been

back in two months. Six months passed away without any news of him;

and at last the wife dreamed that he had died on the road, and began

forthwith, in the middle of the night, to call out "Sat, sat, sat!"

Nothing could dissuade her from burning; and in the morning a pile

was raised for her, on the north bank of the large tank of

Hanumân,[15] where you have planted an avenue of trees. There I saw

her burned with her husband's turban in her arms, and in ten days

after her husband came back.'

'Now the burning has been prohibited, a man cannot get rid of a bad

wife so easily?'

'But she was a good wife, sir, and bad ones do not often become

suttees.'

'Who made the pile for her?'

'Some of her family, but I forget who. They thought it must have been

a call from Heaven, when, in reality, it was only a dream.'

'You are a Râjpût?'

'Yes.'

'Do Râjpûts in this part of India now destroy their female infants?'

'Never; that practice has ceased everywhere in these parts; and is

growing into disuse in Bundêlkhand, where the Râjâs, at the request

of the British Government, have prohibited it among their subjects.

This was a measure of real good. You see girls now at play in

villages, where the face of one was never seen before, nor the voice

of one heard.'

'But still those who have them grumble, and say that the Government

which caused them to be preserved should undertake to provide for

their marriage. Is it not so?'

'At first they grumbled a little, sir; but as the infants grew on

their affections, they thought no more about it.'[16]

Gurcharan Baboo, the Principal of the little Jubbulpore College,[17]

called upon me one forenoon, soon after this conversation. He was

educated in the Calcutta College; speaks and writes English

exceedingly well; is tolerably well read in English literature, and

is decidedly a _thinking man_. After talking over the matter which

caused his visit, I told him of the Lodhî woman's burning herself

with the Brahman banker at Sihôrâ, and asked him what he thought of

it. He said that 'In all probability this woman had really been the

wife of the Brahman in some former birth--of which transposition a

singular case had occurred in his own family.

'His great-grandfather had three wives, who all burnt themselves with

his body. While they were burning, a large serpent came up, and,

ascending the pile, was burnt with them. Soon after another came up,

and did the same. They were seen by the whole multitude, who were

satisfied that they had been the wives of his great-grandfather in a

former birth, and would become so again after this sacrifice. When

the "srâddh", or funeral obsequies, were performed after the

prescribed intervals,[18] the offerings and prayers were regularly

made for _six souls_ instead of four; and, to this day, every member

of his family, and every Hindoo who had heard the story, believed

that these two serpents had a just right to be considered among his

ancestors, and to be prayed for accordingly in all "srâddh".'

A few days after this conversation with the Principal of the

Jubbulpore College, I had a visit from Bholî Sukul, the present head

of the Sihôrâ banker's family, and youngest brother of the Brahman

with whose ashes the Lodhî woman burned herself. I requested him to

tell me all that he recollected about this singular suttee, and he

did so as follows:

'When my eldest brother, the father of the late Dulî Sukul, who was

so long a native collector under you in this district, died about

twenty years ago at Sihôrâ, a Lodhî woman, who resided two miles

distant in the village of Khitolî, which has been held by our family

for several generations, declared that she would burn herself with

him on the funeral pile; that she had been his wife in three

different births, had already burnt herself with him three times, and

had to burn with him four times more. She was then sixty years of

age, and had a husband living [of] about the same age. We were all

astounded when she came forward with this story, and told her that it

must be a mistake, as we were Brahmans, while she was a Lodhî. She

said that there was no mistake in the matter; that she, in the last

birth, resided with my brother in the sacred city of Benares, and one

day gave a holy man who came to ask charity salt, by mistake, instead

of sugar, with his food. That, in consequence, he told her she

should, in the next birth, be separated from her husband, and be of

inferior caste; but that, if she did her duty well in that state, she

should be reunited to him in the following birth. We told her that

all this must be a dream, and the widow of my brother insisted that,

if she were not allowed to burn herself, the other should not be

allowed to take her place. We prevented the widow from ascending the

pile, and she died at a good old age only two years ago at Sihôrâ. My

brother's body was burned at Sihôrâ, and the poor Lodhî woman came

and stole one handful of the ashes, which she placed in her bosom,

and took back with her to Khitolî. There she prevailed upon her

husband and her brother to assist her in her return to her former

husband and caste as a Brahman. No soul else would assist them, as we

got the then native chief to prohibit it; and these three persons

brought on their own heads the pile, on which she seated herself,

with the ashes in her bosom. The husband and his brother set fire to

the pile, and she was burned.'[19]

'And what is now your opinion, after a lapse of twenty years?'

'Why, that she had really been the wife of my brother; for at the

pile she prophesied that my nephew Dulî should be, what his

grandfather had been, high in the service of the Government, and, as

you know, he soon after became so.'

'And what did your father think?'

'He was so satisfied that she had been the wife of his eldest son in

a former birth, that he defrayed all the expenses of her funeral

ceremonies, and had them all observed with as much magnificence as

those of any member of the family. Her tomb is still to be seen at

Khitolî, and that of my brother at Sihôrâ.'

I went to look at these tombs with Bholî Sukul himself some short

time after this conversation, and found that all the people of the

town of Sihôrâ and village of Khitolî really believed that the old

Lodhî woman had been his brother's wife in a former birth, and had

now burned herself as his widow for the fourth time. Her tomb is at

Khitolî, and his at Sihôrâ.

Notes:

1. _Satî_, a virtuous woman, especially one who burns herself with

her husband. The word, in common usage, is transferred to the

sacrifice of the woman.

2. The women of Bundêlkhand wear the same costume, a full loin-cloth,

as those of the Jubbulpore district. North of the Jumna an ordinary

petticoat is generally worn.

3. Suttee was prohibited during the administration of Lord William

Bentinck by the Bengal Regulation xvii, dated 4th December, 1829,

extended in 1830 to Madras and Bombay. The advocates of the practice

unsuccessfully appealed to the Privy Council. Several European

officers defended the custom. A well-written account of the suttee

legislation is given in Mr. D. Boulger's work on Lord William

Bentinck in the 'Rulers of India' series.

4. Whenever it is practicable, Hindoos are placed on the banks of

sacred rivers to die, especially in Bengal.

5. For explanation of this phrase, see the following story of the

Lodhî woman, following note [14], in this chapter. The name is

abnormal. _Upadhya_ is a Brahman title meaning 'spiritual preceptor'.

Brahmans serving in the army sometimes take the title Singh, which is

more properly assumed by Râjpûts or Sikhs.

6. An instance of such a prophecy, of a favourable kind, will be

found at the end of this chapter; and another, disastrously

fulfilled, in Chapter 21, _post_.

7. Rîwâ (Rewah) is a considerable principality lying south of

Allahabad and Mirzapore and north of Sâgar. The chiefs are Baghêl

Râjpûts. The proper title of the Udaipur, or Mêwâr, chief is Rânâ,

not Raja. See 'Annals of Mewar', chapters 1-18, pp. 173-401, in the

Popular Edition of Tod's _Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan_

(Routledge, 1914), an excellent and cheap reprint. The original

quarto edition is almost unobtainable.

8. The masculine form of the word satî (suttee).

9. Well known to tourists as the seat of the Mahârâja of Benares.

10. 'of' in text.

11. In the author's time no regular census had been taken. His rough

estimate was excessive. The census figures, including the

cantonments, are: 1872, 175,188; 1901, 209,331; 1911, 203,804.

12. This Benares story, accidentally omitted from the author's text,

was printed as a note at the end of the second volume. It has now

been inserted in the place which seems most suitable. Interesting and

well-told narratives of several suttees will be found in Bernier,

_Travels in the Mogul Empire_, pp. 306-14, ed. Constable. See also

Dubois, _Hindu Manners_, &c., 3rd ed. (1906), chapter 19.

13. Widows are not always so well treated. Their life in Lower

Bengal, especially, is not a pleasant one,

14. Sihôrâ, on the road from Jubbulpore to Mirzâpur, twenty-seven

miles from the former, is a town with a population of more than

5,000. A smaller town with the same name exists in the Bhandâra

district of the Central Provinces.

15. The monkey-god. His shrines are very numerous in the Central

Provinces and Bundêlkhand.

16. Within the last hundred years more than one officer has believed

that infanticide had been suppressed by his efforts, and yet the

practice is by no means extinct. In the Agra Province the severely

inquisitorial measures adopted in 1870, and rigorously enforced, have

no doubt done much to break the custom, but, in the neighbouring

province of Oudh, the practice continued to be common for many years

later. A clear case in the Râi Barelî District came before me in

1889, though no one was punished, for lack of judicial proof against

any individual. The author discusses infanticide as practised in Oudh

in many passages of his _Journey through the Kingdom of Oudh_

(Bentley, 1858), It is possible that female infanticide may be still

prevalent in many Native States. Mr. Willoughby in the years

preceding A.D. 1849 made great progress in stamping it out among the

Jharejas of the Kathiâwâr States in the Bombay Presidency. There is

reason to hope that the crime will gradually disappear from all parts

of India, but it is difficult to say how far it still prevails,

though the general opinion is that it is now comparatively rare

(_Census Report, India_, 1911, p. 217).

17. A college of more pretensions now exists at Jabalpur

(Jubbulpore), and is affiliated in Arts and Law to the University of

Allahabad established in 1887. The small college alluded to in the

text was abolished in 1850.

18. For description of the tedious and complicated 'srâddh'

ceremonies see chapter 11 of Monier Williams's _Religious Thought and

Life in India_.

19. This version of the story differs in some minute particulars from

the version given _ante_, [14].

CHAPTER 5

Marriages of Trees--The Tank and the Plantain--Meteors--Rainbows.

Before quitting Jubbulpore, to which place I thought it very unlikely

that I should ever return, I went to visit the groves in the

vicinity, which, at the time I held the civil charge of the district

in 1828, had been planted by different native gentlemen upon lands

assigned to them rent-free for the purpose, on condition that the

holder should bind himself to plant trees at the rate of twenty-five

to the acre, and keep them up at that rate; and that for each grove,

however small, he should build and keep in repair a well, lined with

masonry, for watering the trees, and for the benefit of

travellers.[1]

Some of these groves had already begun to yield fruit, and all had

been _married_. Among the Hindoos, neither the man who plants a

grove, nor his wife, can taste of the fruit till he has _married_ one

of the mango-trees to some other tree (commonly the tamarind-tree)

that grows near it in the same grove. The proprietor of one of these

groves that stands between the cantonment and the town, old Barjôr

Singh, had spent so much in planting and watering the grove, and

building walls and wells of _pucka_[2] masonry, that he could not

afford to defray the expense of the marriage ceremonies till one of

the trees, which was older than the rest when planted, began to bear

fruit in 1833, and poor old Barjôr Singh and his wife were in great

distress that they dared not taste of the fruit whose flavour was so

much prized by their children. They began to think that they had

neglected a serious duty, and might, in consequence, be taken off

before another season could come round. They therefore sold all their

silver and gold ornaments, and borrowed all they could; and before

the next season the grove was married with all due pomp and ceremony,

to the great delight of the old pair, who tasted of the fruit in June

1834.

The larger the number of the Brahmans that are fed on the occasion of

the marriage, the greater the glory of the proprietor of the grove;

and when I asked old Barjôr Singh, during my visit to his grove, how

many he had feasted, he said, with a heavy sigh, that he had been

able to feast only one hundred and fifty. He showed me the mango-tree

which had acted the part of the bridegroom on the occasion, but the

bride had disappeared from his side. 'And where is the bride, the

tamarind?' 'The only tamarind I had in the grove died', said the old

man, 'before we could bring about the wedding; and I was obliged to

get a jasmine for a wife for my mango. I planted it here, so that we

might, as required, cover both bride and bridegroom under one canopy

during the ceremonies; but, after the marriage was over, the gardener

neglected her, and she pined away and died.'

'And what made you prefer the jasmine to all other trees after the

tamarind?'

'Because it is the most celebrated of all trees, save the rose.'

'And why not have chosen the rose for a wife?'

'Because no one ever heard of marriage between the rose and the

mango; while they [_sic_] take place every day between the mango and

the _chambêlî_ (jasmine).'[3]

After returning from the groves, I had a visit after breakfast from a

learned Muhammadan, now guardian to the young Râjâ of Uchahara,[4]

who resides part of his time at Jubbulpore. I mentioned my visit to

the groves and the curious notion of the Hindoos regarding the

necessity of marrying them; and he told me that, among Hindoos, the

man who went to the expense of making a tank dared not drink of its

waters till he had married his tank to some banana-tree, planted on

the bank for the purpose.[5]

'But what', said he with a smile, 'could you expect from men who

believe that Indra is the god who rules the heavens immediately over

the earth, that he sleeps during eight months in the year, and during

the other four his time is divided between his duties of sending down

rain upon the earth, and repelling with his arrows Râjâ Bali, who by

his austere devotions (_tapasya_) has received from the higher gods a

promise of the reversion of his dominions? The lightning which we

see', said the learned Maulavî, 'they believe to be nothing more than

the glittering of these arrows, as they are shot from the bow of

Indra upon his foe Râjâ Bali '.[6]

'But, my good friend Maulavî Sâhib, there are many good Muhammadans

who believe that the meteors, which we call shooting stars, are in

reality stars which the guardian angels of men snatch from the

spheres, and throw at the devil as they see him passing through the

air, or hiding himself under one or other of the constellations. Is

it not so?'

'Yes, it is; but we have the authority of the holy prophet for this,

as delivered down to us by his companions in the sacred traditions,

and we are bound to believe it. When our holy prophet came upon the

earth, he found it to be infested with a host of magicians, who, by

their abominable rites and incantations, get into their interest

certain devils, or demons, whom they used to send up to heaven to

listen to the orders which the angels received from God regarding men

and the world below. On hearing these orders, they came off and

reported them to the magicians, who were thereby enabled to foretell

the events which the angels were ordered to bring about. In this

manner they often overheard the orders which the angel Gabriel

received from God, and communicated them to the magicians as soon as

he could deliver them to our holy prophet. Exulting in the knowledge

obtained in this diabolical manner, these wretches tried to turn his

prophecies into ridicule; and, seeing the evil effects of such

practices among men, he prayed God to put a stop to them. From that

time guardian angels have been stationed in different parts of the

heavens, to keep off the devils; and as soon as one of them sees a

devil sneaking too near the heaven of heavens, he snatches the

nearest star, and flings it at him.'[7] This, he added, was what all

true Muhammadans believed regarding the shooting of stars. He had

read nothing about them in the works of Plato, Aristotle,

Hippocrates, or Galen, all of which he had carefully studied, and

should be glad to learn from me what modern philosophers in Europe

thought about them.

I explained to him the supposed distance and bulk of the fixed stars

visible to the naked eye; their being radiant with unborrowed light,

and probably every one of them, like our own sun, the great centre of

a solar system of its own; embracing the vast orbits of numerous

planets, revolving around it with their attendant satellites; the

stars visible to the naked eye being but a very small portion of the

whole which the telescope had now made distinctly visible to us; and

those distinctly visible being one cluster among many thousand with

which the genius of Galileo, Newton, the Herschells, and many other

modern philosophers had discovered the heavens to be studded. I

remarked that the notion that these mighty suns, the centres of

planetary systems, should be made merely to be thrown at devils and

demons, appeared to us just as unaccountable as those of the Hindoos

regarding Indra's arrows.

'But', said he, 'these foolish Hindoos believe still greater

absurdities. They believe that the rainbow is nothing but the fume of

a large snake, concealed under the ground; that he vomits forth this

fume from a hole in the surface of the earth, without being himself

seen; and, when you ask them why, in that case, the rainbow should be

in the west while the sun is in the east, and in the east while the

sun is in the west, they know not what to say.'[8]

'The truth is, my friend Maulavî Sahib, the Hindoos, like a very

great part of every other nation, are very much disposed to attribute

to supernatural influences effects that the wiser portion of our

species know to rise from natural causes.'

The Maulavî was right. In the _Mishkât-ul-Masâbih_,[9] the authentic

traditions of their prophet,[10] it is stated that Ayesha, the widow

of Muhammad, said, 'I heard His Majesty say, "The angels come down to

the region next the world, and mention the works that have been pre-

ordained in heaven; and the devils, who descend to the lowest region,

listen to what the angels say, and hear the orders predestined in

heaven, and carry them to fortune-tellers; therefore, they tell a

hundred lies with it from themselves "'[11]

'Ibn Abbâs said, "A man of His Majesty's friends informed me, that

whilst His Majesty's friends were sitting with him one night, a very

bright star shot; and His Highness said, "What did you say in the

days of ignorance when a star shot like this?" They said, "God and

His messenger know best; we used to say, a great man was born to-

night, and a great man died."[12] Then His Majesty said, "You

mistook, because the shootings of these stars are neither for the

life nor death of any person; but when our cherisher orders a work,

the bearers of the imperial throne sing hallelujahs; and the

inhabitants of the regions who are near the bearers repeat it, till

it reaches the lowest regions. After the angels which are near the

bearers of the imperial throne say, "What did your cherisher order?"

Then they are informed; and so it is handed from one region to

another, till the information reaches the people of the lowest

region. Then the devils steal it, and carry it to their friends,

(that is) magicians; and these stars are thrown at these devils; not

for the birth or death of any person. Then the things which the

magicians tell, having heard from the devils, are true, but these

magicians tell lies, and exaggerate in what they hear".'

Kutâdah said, 'God has created stars for three uses; one of them, as

a cause of ornament of the regions; the second, to stone the devil

with; the third, to direct people going through forests and on the

sea. Therefore, whoever shall explain them otherwise, does wrong, and

loses his time, and speaks from his own invention and

embellishes'.[13]

Ibn Abbâs. ['The prophet said,] "Whoever attains to the knowledge of

astrology for any other explanation than the three aforementioned,

then verily he has attained to a branch of magic. An astrologer is a

magician, and a magician is a necromancer, and a necromancer is an

infidel."'[14]

This work contains the precepts and sayings of Muhammad, as declared

by his companions, who themselves heard them, or by those who heard

them immediately from those companions; and they are considered to be

binding upon the faith and conduct of Musalmans, though not all

delivered from inspiration.

Everything that is written in the Korân itself is supposed to have

been brought direct from God by the angel Gabriel.[15]

Notes:

1. In planting mango groves, it is a rule that they shall be as far

from each other as not to admit of their branches ever meeting.

'Plant trees, but let them not touch' ('_Âm lagao, nis lageñ nahîñ_')

is the maxim. [W. H. S.]

2. _Pakkâ_; the word here means 'cemented with lime mortar', and not

only with mud (_kachchâ_).

3. The _chambêlî_ is known in science as the _Jasminum grandiflorum_,

and the mango-tree as _Mangifera Indica_.

4. A small principality west of Rîwâ, and 110 miles north-west of

Jubbulpore. It is also known as Nâgaudh, or Nâgod.

5. Compare the account of the marriage of the _tulasî_ shrub (_Ocymum

sanctum_) with the sâlagrâm stone, or fossil ammonite, in Chapter 19,

_post_.

6. There is a sublime passage in the Psalms of David, where the

lightning is said to be the arrows of God. Psalm lxxvii:

17, 'The clouds poured out water: the skies sent out a sound: thine

arrows also went abroad.

18. The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven; the lightnings

lightened the world: the earth trembled and shook.' [W. H. S.]

The passage is quoted from the Authorized Bible version; the Prayer

Book version is finer.

7. 'We guard them from every devil driven away with stones; except

him who listeneth by stealth, at whom a visible flame is darted.'

Korân, chapter 15, Sale's translation. See _post_, end of this

chapter.

8. Nine Hindoos out of ten, or perhaps ninety-nine in a hundred,

throughout India, believe the rainbow to arise from the breath of the

snake, thrown up from the surface of the earth, as water is thrown up

by whales from the surface of the ocean. [W. H. S,]

9. '_Mishkât_ is a hole in a wall in which a lamp is placed, and

_Masâbih_ the plural of "a lamp", because traditions are compared to

lamps, and this book is like that which containeth a lamp. Another

reason is, that _Masâbih_ is the name of a book, and this book

comprehends its contents' (Matthews's translation, vol. i, p. v,

note).

10. The full title is _Mishkât-ul-Masâbih, or a Collection of the

most Authentic Traditions regarding the Actions and Sayings of

Muhammed; exhibiting the Origin of the Manners and Customs; the

Civil, Religious, and Military Policy of the Muslemâns_. Translated

from the original Arabic by Captain A. N. Matthews, Bengal Artillery.

Two vols. 4to; Calcutta, 1809-10, This valuable work, published by

subscription, is now very scarce. A fine copy is in the India Office

Library.

11. Book xxi, chapter 3, part i; vol. ii, p. 384. The quotations as

given by the author are inexact. The editor has substituted correct

extracts from Matthews's text. Matthews spells the name of the

prophet's widow as Aáyeshah.

12. In Sparta, the Ephoroi, once every nine years, watched the sky

during a whole cloudless, moonless night, in profound silence; and,

if they saw a shooting star, it was understood to indicate that the

kings of Sparta had disobeyed the gods, and their authority was, in

consequence, suspended till they had been purified by an oracle from

Delphi or Olympia. [W. H. S.] This statement rests on the authority

of Plutarch, _Agis_, 11.

13. _Mishkât_. Part iii of same chapter; vol. ii, p. 386.

14. Ibid. p. 386.

15. But the prying character of these devils is described in the

Korân itself. According to Muhammadans, they had access to all the

seven heavens till the time of Moses, who got them excluded from

three. Christ got them excluded from three more; and Muhammad managed

to get them excluded from the seventh and last. 'We have placed the

twelve signs in the heavens, and have set them out in various figures

for the observation of spectators, and we guard them from every devil

driven away with stones; except him who listeneth by stealth, at whom

a visible flame is darted' (Chapter 15).

'We have adorned the lower heaven with the ornament of stars, and we

have placed therein a guard against every rebellious devil, that they

may not listen to the discourse of exalted princes, for they are

darted at from every side, to repel them, and a lasting torment is

prepared for them; except him who catcheth a word by stealth, and is

pursued by a shining flame' (Chapter 37). [W. H. 8.] Passages of this

kind should he remembered by persons who expect orthodox Muhammadans

to accept the results of modern science.

CHAPTER 6

Hindoo Marriages.

Certain it is that no Hindoo will have a marriage in his family

during the four months of the rainy season; for among eighty millions

of souls[1] not one doubts that the Great Preserver of the universe

is, during these four months, down on a visit to Râjâ Bali, and,

consequently, unable to bless the contract with his presence.[2]

Marriage is a sacred duty among Hindoos, a duty which every parent

must perform for his children, otherwise they owe him no reverence. A

family with a daughter unmarried after the age of puberty is

considered to labour under the displeasure of the gods; and no member

of the other sex considers himself _respectable_ after the age of

puberty till he is married. It is the duty of his parent or elder

brothers to have him suitably married; and, if they do not do so, he

reproaches them with his _degraded condition_. The same feeling, in a

degree, pervades all the Muhammadan community; and nothing appears so

strange to them as the apparent indifference of old bachelors among

us to their _sad condition_.

Marriage, with all its ceremonies, its rights, and its duties, fills

their imagination from infancy to age; and I do not believe there is

a country upon earth in which a larger portion of the wealth of the

community is spent in the ceremonies, or where the rights are better

secured, or the duties better enforced, notwithstanding all the

disadvantages of the laws of polygamy. Not one man in ten can afford

to maintain more than one wife, and not one in ten of those who can

afford it will venture upon 'a sea of troubles' in taking a second,

if he has a child by the first. One of the evils which press most

upon Indian society is the necessity which long usage has established

of squandering large sums in marriage ceremonies. Instead of giving

what they can to their children to establish them, and enable them to

provide for their families and rise in the world, parents everywhere

feel bound to squander all they can borrow in the festivities of

their marriage. Men in India could never feel secure of being

permitted freely to enjoy their property under despotic and unsettled

governments, the only kind of governments they knew or hoped for; and

much of the means that would otherwise have been laid out in forming

substantial works, with a view to a return in income of some sort or

another, for the remainder of their own lives and of those of their

children, were expended in tombs, temples, sarâis, tanks, groves, and

other works--useful and ornamental, no doubt, but from which neither

they nor their children could ever hope to derive income of any kind.

The same feeling of insecurity gave birth, no doubt, to this

preposterous usage, which tends so much to keep down the great mass

of the people of India to that grade in which they were born, and in

which they have nothing but their manual labour to depend upon for

their subsistence. Every man feels himself bound to waste all his

stock and capital, and exhaust all his credit, in feeding idlers

during the ceremonies which attend the marriage of his children,

because his ancestors squandered similar sums, and he would sink in

the estimation of society if he were to allow his children to be

married with less.

But it could not have been solely because men could not invest their

means in profitable works, with any chance of being long permitted to

enjoy the profits under such despotic and unsettled governments, that

they squandered them in feeding idle people in marriage ceremonies;

since temples, tanks, and groves secured esteem in this life, and

promised some advantage in the next, and an outlay in such works

might therefore have been preferred. But under such governments a

man's title even to the exclusive possession of his wife might not be

considered as altogether secure under the mere sanction of religion;

and the outlay in feeding the family, tribe, and neighbourhood during

the marriage ceremony seems to have been considered as a kind of

value in exchange given for her to society. There is nothing that she

and her husband recollect through life with so much pride and

pleasure as the cost of their marriage, if it happen to be large for

their condition of life; it is their _amoka_, their title of

nobility;[3] and their parents consider it their duty to make it as

large as they can. A man would hardly feel secure of the sympathy of

his family, tribe, circle of society, or rulers, for the loss of 'his

ox, or his ass, or anything that is his', if it should happen to have

cost him nothing; and, till he could feel secure of their sympathy

for the loss, he would not feel very secure in the possession. He,

therefore, or those who are interested in his welfare, strengthen his

security by an outlay which invests his wife with a tangible value in

cost, well understood by his circle and rulers. His family, tribe,

and circle have received the purchase money, and feel bound to secure

to him the commodity purchased; and, as they are in all such matters

commonly much stronger than the rulers themselves, the money spent

among them is more efficacious in securing the exclusive enjoyment of

the wife than if it had been paid in taxes or fees to them for a

marriage licence.[4] The pride of families and tribes, and the desire

of the multitude to participate in the enjoyment of such ceremonies,

tend to keep up this usage after the cause in which it originated may

have ceased to operate; but it will, it is to be hoped, gradually

decline with the increased feeling of security to person, property,

and character under our rule. Nothing is now more common than to see

an individual in the humblest rank spending all that he has, or can

borrow, in the marriage of one of many daughters, and trusting to

Providence for the means of marrying the others; nor in the higher,

to find a young man, whose estates have, during a long minority,

under the careful management of Government officers, been freed from

very heavy debts, with which an improvident father had left them

encumbered, the moment he attains his majority and enters upon the

management, borrowing three times their annual rent, at an exorbitant

interest, to marry a couple of sisters, at the same rate of outlay in

feasts and fireworks that his grandmother was married with.[5]

Notes:

1. The author's figure of 'eighty millions' was a mere guess, and

probably, even in his time, was much below the mark. The figures of

the census of 1911 are:

Total population of India, excluding

Burma . . . . 301,432,623

Hindus . . . . 217,197,213

The proportions in different provinces vary enormously.

2. See _ante_. Chapter 1, note 3.

3. The word _amoka_ is corrupt, and even Sir George Grierson cannot

suggest a plausible explanation. Can it be a misprint for _anka_, in

the sense of 'stamp'?

4. Akbar levied a tax on marriages, ranging from a single copper coin

(_dâm_ = 1/40th of rupee) for poor people to 10 gold mohurs, or about

150 rupees, for high officials. Abûl Fazl declares that 'the payment

of this tax is looked upon as auspicious', a statement open to doubt

(Blochmann, transl. _Aîn_, vol. i, p. 278). In 1772 Warren Hastings

abolished the marriage fees levied up to that time in Bengal by the

Muhammadan law-officers. But I am disposed to think that a modern

finance minister might reconsider the propriety of imposing a

moderate tax, carefully graduated.

5. Extravagance in marriage expenses is still one of the principal

curses of Indian society. Considerable efforts to secure reform have

been made by various castes during recent years, but, as yet, small

results only have been attained. The editor has seen numerous painful

examples of the wreck of fine estates by young proprietors assuming

the management after a long term of the careful stewardship of the

Court of Wards.

CHAPTER 7

The Purveyance System,

We left Jubbulpore on the morning of the 20th November, 1835, and

came on ten miles to Baghaurî. Several of our friends of the 29th

Native Infantry accompanied us this first stage, where they had a

good day's shooting. In 1830 I established here some venders in wood

to save the people from the miseries of the purveyance system; but I

now found that a native collector, soon after I had resigned the

civil charge of the district, and gone to Sâgar,[1] in order to

ingratiate himself with the officers and get from them favourable

testimonials, gave two regiments, as they marched over this road,

free permission to help themselves gratis out of the store-rooms of

these poor men, whom I had set up with a loan from the public

treasury, declaring that it must be the wish and intention of

Government to supply their public officers free of cost; and

consequently that no excuses could be attended to. From that time

shops and shopkeepers have disappeared. Wood for all public officers

and establishments passing this road has ever since, as in former

times, been collected from the surrounding villages gratis, under the

purveyance system, in which all native public officers delight, and

which, I am afraid, is encouraged by European officers, either from

their ignorance or their indolence. They do not like the trouble of

seeing the men paid either for their wood or their labour; and their

head servants of the kitchen or the wardrobe weary and worry them out

of their best resolutions on the subject. They make the poor men sit

aloof by telling them that their master is a tiger before breakfast,

and will eat them if they approach; and they tell their masters that

there is no hope of getting the poor men to come for their money till

they have bathed or taken their breakfast. The latter wait in hopes

that the gentleman will come out or send for them as soon as he has

been tamed by his breakfast; but this meal has put him in good humour

with all the world, and he is now no longer unwilling to trust the

payment of the poor men to his butler, or his _valet de chambre_.

They keep the poor wretches waiting, declaring that they have as yet

received no orders to pay them, till, hungry and weary, in the

afternoon they all walk back to their homes in utter despair of

getting anything.

If, in the meantime, the gentleman comes out, and finds the men, his

servants pacify him by declaring either that they have not yet had

time to carry his orders into effect, that they could not get copper

change for silver rupees, or that they were anxious to collect all

the people together before they paid any, lest they might pay some of

them twice over. It is seldom, however, that he comes among them at

all; he takes it for granted that the people have all been paid; and

passes the charge in the account of his servants, who all get what

these porters ought to have received. Or, perhaps the gentleman may

persuade himself that, if he pays his valet or butler, these

functionaries will never pay the poor men, and think that he had

better sit quiet and keep the money in his own pocket. The native

police or revenue officer is directed by his superior to have wood

collected for the camp of a regiment or great civil officers, and he

sends out his myrmidons to employ the people around in felling trees,

and cutting up wood enough to supply not only the camp, but his own

cook-rooms and those of his friends for the next six months. The men

so employed commonly get nothing; but the native officer receives

credit for all manner of superlatively good qualities, which are

enumerated in a certificate. Many a fine tree, dear to the affections

of families and village communities, has been cut down in spite, or

redeemed from the axe by a handsome present to this officer or his

myrmidons. Lambs, kids, fowls, milk, vegetables, all come flowing in

for the great man's table from poor people, who are too hopeless to

seek for payment, or who are represented as too proud and wealthy to

receive it. Such always have been and such always will be some of the

evils of the purveyance system. If a police officer receives an order

from the magistrate to provide a regiment, detachment, or individual

with boats, carts, bullocks, or porters, he has all that can be found

within his jurisdiction forthwith seized--releases all those whose

proprietors are able and willing to pay what he demands, and

furnishes the rest, which are generally the worst, to the persons who

require them. Police officers derive so much profit from these

applications that they are always anxious they should be made; and

will privately defeat all attempts of private individuals to provide

themselves by dissuading or intimidating the proprietors of vehicles

from voluntarily furnishing them. The gentleman's servant who is sent

to procure them returns and tells his master that there are plenty of

vehicles, but that their proprietors dare not send them without

orders from the police; and that the police tell him they dare not

give such orders without the special sanction of the magistrate. The

magistrate is written to, but declares that his police have been

prohibited from interfering in such matters without special orders,

since the proprietors ought to be permitted to send their vehicles to

whom they choose, except on occasions of great public emergency; and,

as the present cannot be considered as one of these occasions, he

does not feel authorized to issue such orders. On the Ganges, many

men have made large fortunes by pretending a general authority to

seize boats for the use of the commissariat, or for other Government

purposes, on the ground of having been once or twice employed on that

duty; and what they get is but a small portion of that which the

public lose. One of these self-constituted functionaries has a boat

seized on its way down or up the river; and the crew, who are merely

hired for the occasion, and have a month's wages in advance, seeing

no prospect of getting soon out of the hands of this pretended

Government servant, desert, and leave the boat on the sands; while

the owner, if he ever learns the real state of the case, thinks it

better to put up with his loss than to seek redress through expensive

courts, and distant local authorities. If the boat happens to be

loaded and to have a supercargo, who will not or cannot bribe high

enough, he is abandoned on the sands by his crew; in his search for

aid from the neighbourhood, his helplessness becomes known--he is

perhaps murdered, or runs away in the apprehension of being so--the

boat is plundered and made a wreck. Still the dread of the delays and

costs of our courts, and the utter hopelessness of ever recovering

the lost property, prevent the proprietors from seeking redress, and

our Government authorities know nothing of the circumstances.

We remained at Baghaurî the 21st to enable our people to prepare for

the long march they had before them, and to see a little more of our

Jubbulpore friends, who were to have another day's shooting, as black

partridges[2] and quail had been found abundant in the neighbourhood

of our camp.[3]

Notes:

1. Or Saugor, the head-quarters of the district of that name in the

Central Provinces. The town is 109 miles north-west of Jabalpur. The

author took charge of the Sâgar district in January 1831.

2. _Francolinus vulgaris_.

3. The purveyance system (Persian _rasad rasânî_) above described is

one of the necessary evils of Oriental life. It will be observed that

the author, though so keenly sensitive to the abuses attending the

system, proposes no substitute for it, and confesses that the small

attempt he made to check abuse was a failure. From time immemorial it

has been the custom for Government officials in India to be supplied

with necessaries by the people of the country through which their

camps pass. Under native Governments no officials ever dream of

paying for anything. In British territory requisitions are limited,

and in well ordered civil camps nothing is taken without payment

except wood, coarse earthen vessels, and grass. The hereditary

village potter supplies the pots, and this duty is fully recognized

as one attaching to his office. The landholders supply the wood and

grass. None of these things are ordinarily procurable by private

purchase in sufficient quantity, and in most cases could not be

bought at all. Officers commanding troops send in advance

requisitions specifying the quantities of each article needed, and

the indent is met by the civil authorities. Everything so indented

for, including wood and grass, is supposed to be paid for, but in

practice it is often impossible, with the agency available, to ensure

actual payment to the persons entitled. Troops and the people in

civil camps must live, and all that can be done is to check abuse, so

far as possible, by vigilant administration. The obligation of

landholders to supply necessaries for troops and officials on the

march is so well established that it forms one of the conditions of

the contract with Government under which proprietors in the

permanently settled province of Benares hold their lands. The extreme

abuses of which the system is capable under a lax and corrupt native

Government are abundantly illustrated in the author's _Journey

through the Kingdom of Oudh_. 'The System of Purveyance and Forced

Labour' is the subject of article xxv in the Hon. F, J, Shore's

curious book, _Notes on Indian Affairs_ (London, 1837, 2 vols. 8vo).

Many of the abuses denounced by Mr. Shore have been suppressed, but

some, unhappily, still exist, and are likely to continue for many

years.

CHAPTER 8

Religious Sects--Self-government of the Castes--Chimney-sweepers--

Washerwomen[1]--Elephant Drivers.

Mîr Salâmat Alî, the head native collector of the district, a

venerable old Musalmân and most valuable public servant, who has been

labouring in the same vineyard with me for the last fifteen years

with great zeal, ability, and integrity, came to visit me after

breakfast with two very pretty and interesting young sons. While we

were sitting together my wife's under-woman[2] said to some one who

was talking with her outside the tent-door, 'If that were really the

case, should I not be degraded?' 'You see, Mîr Sâhib',[3] said I,

'that the very lowest members of society among these Hindoos still

feel the pride of caste, and dread exclusion from their own, however

low.'[4]

'Yes', said the Mîr, 'they are a very strange kind of people, and I

question whether they ever had a real prophet among them.'

'I question, Mîr Sahib, whether they really ever had such a person.

They of course think the incarnations of their three great divinities

were beings infinitely superior to prophets, being in all their

attributes and prerogatives equal to the divinities themselves.[5]

But we are disposed to think that these incarnations were nothing

more than great men whom their flatterers and poets have exalted into

gods--this was the way in which men made their gods in ancient Greece

and Egypt. These great men were generally conquerors whose glory

consisted in the destruction of their fellow creatures; and this is

the glory which their flatterers are most prone to extol. All that

the poets have sung of the actions of men is now received as

revelation from heaven; though nothing can be more monstrous than the

actions attributed to the best incarnation, Krishna, of the best of

their gods, Vishnu.[6]

'No doubt', said Salâmat Ali; 'and had they ever had a real prophet

among them he would have revealed better things to them. Strange

people! when their women go on pilgrimages to Gayâ, they have their

heads shaved before the image of their god; and the offering of the

hair is equivalent to the offer of their heads;[7] for heads, thank

God, they dare no longer offer within the Company's territories.'

'Do you. Mîr Sahib, think that they continue to offer up human

sacrifices anywhere?'

'Certainly I do. There is a Râjâ at Ratanpur, or somewhere between

Mandlâ and Sambalpur, who has a man offered up to Dêvî every year,

and that man must be a Brahman. If he can get a Brahman traveller,

well and good; if not, he and his priests offer one of his own

subjects. Every Brahman that has to pass through this territory goes

in disguise.[8] With what energy did our emperor Aurangzêb apply

himself to put down iniquities like this in the Râjputâna states, but

all in vain. If a Râjâ died, all his numerous wives burnt themselves

with his body--even their servants, male and female, were obliged to

do the same; for, said his friends, what is he to do in the next

world without attendants? The pile was enormous. On the top sat the

queen with the body of the prince; the servants, male and female,

according to their degree, below; and a large army stood all round to

drive into the fire again or kill all who should attempt to

escape.'[9]

'This is all very true, Mîr Sâhib, but you must admit that, though

there is a great deal of absurdity in their customs and opinions,

there is, on the other hand, much that we might all take an example

from. The Hindoo believes that Christians and Musalmâns may be as

good men in all relations of life as himself, and in as fair a way to

heaven as he is; for he believes that my Bible and your Korân are as

much revelations framed by the Deity for our guidance, as the

Shâstras are for his. He doubts not that our Christ was the Son of

God, nor that Muhammad was the prophet of God; and all that he asks

from us is to allow him freely to believe in his own gods, and to

worship in his own way. Nor does one caste or sect of Hindoos ever

believe itself to be alone in the right way, or detest any other for

not following in the same path, as they have as much of toleration

for each other as they have for us.[10]

'True,' exclaimed Salâmat Alî, 'too true! we have ruined each other;

we have cut each other's throats; we have lost the empire, and we

deserve to lose it. You won it, and you preserved it by your _union_-

-ten men with one heart are equal to a hundred men with different

hearts. A Hindoo may feel himself authorized to take in a Musalmân,

and might even think it _meritorious_ to do so; but he would never

think it meritorious to take in one of his own religion. There are no

less than seventy-two sects of Muhammadans; and every one of these

sects would not only take in the followers of every other religion on

earth, but every member of every one of the other seventy-one sects;

and the nearer that sect is to its own, the greater the merit in

taking in its members.'[11]

'Something has happened of late to annoy you, I fear, Mîr Sâhib?'

'Something happens to annoy us every day, sir, where we are more than

one sect of us together; and wherever you find Musalmâns you will

find them divided into sects.'

It is not, perhaps, known to many of my countrymen in India that in

every city and town in the country the right of sweeping the houses

and streets is one of the most intolerable of monopolies, supported

entirely by the pride of caste among the scavengers, who are all of

the lowest class. The right of sweeping within a certain range is

recognized by the caste to belong to a certain member; and, if any

other member presumes to sweep within that range, he is

excommunicated--no other member will smoke out of his pipe, or drink

out of his jug; and he can get restored to caste only by a feast to

the whole body of sweepers. If any housekeeper within a particular

circle happens to offend the sweeper of that range, none of his filth

will be removed till he pacifies him, because no other sweeper will

dare to touch it; and the people of a town are often more tyrannized

over by these people than by any other.[12]

It is worthy of remark that in India the spirit of combination is

always in the inverse ratio to the rank of the class; weakest in the

highest, and strongest in the lowest class. All infringements upon

the rules of the class are punished by fines. Every fine furnishes a

feast at which every member sits and enjoys himself. Payment is

enforced by excommunication--no one of the caste will eat, drink, or

smoke with the convicted till the fine is paid; and, as every one

shares in the fine, every one does his best to enforce payment. The

fines are imposed by the elders, who know the circumstances of the

culprit, and fix the amount accordingly. Washermen will often at a

large station combine to prevent the washermen of one gentleman from

washing the clothes of the servants of any other gentleman, or the

servants of one gentleman from getting their clothes washed by any

other person than their own master's washerman. This enables them

sometimes to raise the rate of washing to double the fair or ordinary

rate; and at such places the washermen are always drunk with one

continued routine of feasts from the fines levied.[13] The cost of

these fees falls ultimately upon the poor servants or their masters.

This combination, however, is not always for bad or selfish purposes.

I was once on the staff of an officer commanding a brigade on

service, whose elephant driver exercised an influence over him that

was often mischievous and sometimes dangerous;[14] for in marching

and choosing his ground, this man was more often consulted than the

quarter-master-general. His bearing was most insolent, and became

intolerable, as well to the European gentlemen as to the people of

his caste.[15] He at last committed himself by saying that he would

spit in the face of another gentleman's elephant driver with whom he

was disputing. All the elephant drivers in our large camp were

immediately assembled, and it was determined in council to refer the

matter to the decision of the Râjâ of Darbhanga's driver, who was

acknowledged the head of the class. We were all breakfasting with the

brigadier after muster when the reply came-the distance to Darbhanga

from Nâthpur on the Kûsî river, where we then were, must have been a

hundred and fifty miles.[16] We saw men running in all directions

through the camp, without knowing why, till at last one came and

summoned the brigadier's driver. With a face of terror he came and

implored the protection of the brigadier; who got angry, and fumed a

good deal, but seeing no expression of sympathy on the faces of his

officers, he told the man to go and hear his sentence. He was

escorted to a circle formed by all the drivers in camp, who were

seated on the grass. The offender was taken into the middle of the

circle and commanded to stand on one leg[17] while the Raja's

driver's letter was read. He did so, and the letter directed him to

apologize to the offended party, pay a heavy fine for a feast, and

pledge himself to the offended drivers never to offend again. All the

officers in camp were delighted, and some, who went to hear the

sentence explained, declared that in no court in the world could the

thing have been done with more solemnity and effect. The man's

character was quite altered by it, and he became the most docile of

drivers. On the same principle here stated of enlisting the community

in the punishment of offenders, the New Zealanders, and other savage

tribes who have been fond of human flesh, have generally been found

to confine the feast to the body of those who were put to death for

offences against the state or the individual. I and all the officers

of my regiment were at one time in the habit of making every servant

who required punishment or admonition to bring immediately, and give

to the first religious mendicant we could pick up, the fine we

thought just. All the religionists in the neighbourhood declared that

justice had never been so well administered in any other regiment; no

servant got any sympathy from them--they were all told that their

masters were far too lenient.

We crossed the Hiran river[18] about ten miles from our last ground

on the 22nd,[19] and came on two miles to our tents in a mango grove

close to the town of Katangî,[20] and under the Vindhya range of

sandstone hills, which rise almost perpendicular to the height of

some eight hundred feet over the town. This range from Katangî skirts

the Nerbudda valley to the north, as the Sâtpura range skirts it to

the south; and both are of the same sandstone formation capped with

basalt upon which here and there are found masses of laterite, or

iron clay. Nothing has ever yet been found reposing upon this iron

clay.[21] The strata of this range have a gentle and almost

imperceptible dip to the north, at right angles to its face which

overlooks the valley, and this face has everywhere the appearance of

a range of gigantic round bastions projecting into what was perhaps a

lake, and is now a well-peopled, well-cultivated, and very happy

valley, about twenty miles wide. The river crosses and recrosses it

diagonally. Near Jubbulpore it flows along for some distance close

under the Sâtpura range to the south; and crossing over the valley

from Bheraghât, it reaches the Vindhya range to the north, at the

point where it reaches the Hiran river, forty miles below.

Notes:

1. This is a slip, probably due to the printer's reader. There are no

chimney-sweepers in India. The word should be 'sweepers'. The members

of this caste and a few other degraded communities, such as the Doms,

do all the sweeping, scavenging, and conservancy work in India.

'Washerwomen' is another slip: read 'Washermen'.

2. The 'under-woman', or 'second ayah', was a member of the sweeper

caste.

3. The title Mîr Sâhib implies that Salâmat Alî was a Sayyid,

claiming descent from Alî, the cousin, son-in-law, and pupil of

Muhammad, who became Khalîf in A.D. 656.

4. The sweeper castes stand outside the Hindoo pale, and often

incline to Muhammadan practices. They worship a special form of the

Deity, under the names of Lâl Beg, Lâl Guru, &c.

5. No _avatâr_ or incarnation of Brahma is known to most Hindoos, and

incarnations of Siva are rarely mentioned. The only _avatârs_

ordinarily recognized are those of Vishnu, as enumerated ante.

Chapter 2, note 4.

6. This theory is a very inadequate explanation of the doctrine of

_avatârs_.

7. 'Women . . . are most careful to preserve their hair intact. They

pride themselves on its length and weight. For a woman to have to

part with her hair is one of the greatest of degradations, and the

most terrible of all trials. It is the mark of widowhood. Yet in some

sacred places, especially at the confluence of rivers, the cutting

off and offering of a few locks of hair (_Venî-dânam_) by a virtuous

wife is considered a highly meritorious act' (Monier Williams,

_Religious Thought and Life in India_, p, 375). Gayâ in Bihâr, fifty-

five miles south of Patna, is much frequented by pilgrims devoted to

Vishnu.

8. All the places named are in the Central Provinces. Ratanpur, in

the Bilâspur District, is a place of much antiquarian interest, full

of ruins; Mandlâ, in the Mandlâ District, was the capital of the

later Gond chiefs of Garhâ Mandlâ; and Sambalpur is the capital of

the Sambalpur District. If the story is true, the selection of a

Brahman for sacrifice is remarkable, though not without precedent.

Human sacrifice has prevailed largely in India, and is not yet quite

extinct. In 1891 some Jâts in the Muzaffarnagar District of the

United Provinces sacrificed a boy in a very painful manner for some

unascertained magical purpose. It was supposed that the object was to

induce the gods to grant offspring to a childless woman. Other

similar cases have occurred in recent years. One occurred close to

Calcutta in 1892. In the hill tracts of Orissa bordering on the

Central Provinces the rite of human sacrifice was practised by the

Khonds on an awful scale, and with horrid cruelty, It was suppressed

by the special efforts of Macpherson, Campbell, MacViccar, and other

officers, between the years 1837 and 1854. Daring that period the

British officers rescued 1,506 victims intended for sacrifice

(_Narrative of Major-General John Campbell, C.B., of his Operations

in the Hill Tracts of Orissa for the Suppression of Human Sacrifices

and Female Infanticide_. Printed for private circulation. London:

Hurst and Blackett, 1861). The rite, when practised by Hindoos, may

have been borrowed from some of the aboriginal races. The practice,

however, has been so general throughout the world that few peoples

can claim the honour of freedom from the stain of adopting it at one

time or another, Much curious information on the subject, and many

modern instances of human sacrifices in India, are collected in the

article 'Sacrifice' in Balfour, _Cyclopaedia of India_, 3rd edition,

1885. Major S. C. Macpherson, _Memorials of Service in India_ (1865),

and Frazer, _Golden Bough_, 3rd edition, Part V, vol. i (1912), pp.

236 seq., may also be consulted.

9. Bernier vividly describes an 'infernal tragedy' of this kind which

he witnessed, in or about the year 1659, during Aurangzêb's reign, in

Râjputâna. On that occasion five female slaves burnt themselves with

their mistress (_Travels_, ed. Constable and V. A. Smith (1914), p.

309).

10. Hinduism is a social system, not a creed, A Hindoo may believe,

or disbelieve, what speculative doctrine he chooses, but he must not

eat, drink, or marry, save in accordance with the custom of his

caste. Compare Asoka on toleration; 'The sects of other people all

deserve reverence for one reason or another' (Rock Edict xii; V. A.

Smith, _Asoka_, 2nd edition (1909), p. 170).

11. Mîr Salâmat Alî is a stanch Sunnî, the sect of Osmân; and they

are always at daggers drawn with the Shîas, or the sect of Alî. He

alludes to the Shîas when he says that one of the seventy-two sects

is always ready to take in the whole of the other seventy-one.

Muhammad, according to the traditions, was one day heard to say, 'The

time will come when my followers will he divided into seventy-three

sects; all of them will assuredly go to hell save one.' Every one of

the seventy-three sects believes itself to be the one happily

excepted by their prophet, and predestined to paradise. I am

sometimes disposed to think Muhammad was self-deluded, however

difficult it might be to account for so much 'method in his madness'.

It is difficult to conceive a man placed in such circumstances with

more amiable dispositions or with juster views of the rights and

duties of men in all their relations with each other, than are

exhibited by him on almost all occasions, save where the question of

_faith_ in his divine mission was concerned.

A very interesting and useful book might be made out of the history

of those men, more or less mad, by whom multitudes of mankind have

been led and perhaps governed; and a philosophical analysis of the

points on which they were really mad and really sane, would show many

of them to have been fit subjects for a madhouse during the whole

career of their glory. [W. H. S.]

For an account of Muhammadan sects, see section viii of the

Preliminary Dissertation in Sale's Korân, entitled, 'Of the Principal

Sects among the Muhammadans; and of those who have pretended to

Prophecy among the Arabs, in or since the Time of Muhammad'; and T.

P. Hughes, _Dictionary of Islam_ (1885). The chief sects of the

Sunnîs, or Traditionists, are four in number. 'The principal sects of

the Shîas are five, which are subdivided into an almost innumerable

number.' The court of the kings of Oudh was Shîa. In most parts of

India the Sunnî faith prevails.

The relation between genius and insanity is well expressed by Dryden

(_Absalom and Achitopfel_):

Great wits are sure to madness near allied,

And thin partitions do their bounds divide.

The treatise of Professor Cesare Lombroso, entitled _The Man of

Genius_ (London edition, 1891), is devoted to proof and illustration

of the proposition that genius is 'a special morbid condition'. He

deals briefly with the case of Muhammad at pages 31, 39, and 325,

maintaining that the prophet, like Saint Paul, Julius Caesar, and

many other men of genius, was subject to epileptic fits. The

Professor's book seems to be exactly what Sir W. H. Sleeman desired

to see.

12. In the author's time, when municipal conservancy and sanitation

were almost unknown in India, the tyranny of the sweepers' guild was

chiefly felt as a private inconvenience. It is now one of the

principal of the many difficulties, little understood in Europe,

which bar the progress of Indian sanitary reform. The sweepers cannot

be readily coerced because no Hindoo or Musalmân would do their work

to save his life, nor will he pollute himself even by beating the

refractory scavenger. A strike of sweepers on the occasion of a great

fair, or of a cholera epidemic, is a most dangerous calamity. The

vested rights described in the text are so fully recognized in

practice that they are frequently the subject of sale or mortgage.

13. The low-caste Hindoos are generally fond of drink, when they can

get it, but seldom commit crime under its influence.

14. An elephant driver, by reason of his position on the animal, has

opportunities for private conversation with his master.

15. Elephant drivers (_mahouts_) are Muhammadans, who should have no

caste, but Indian Musalmâns have become Hinduized, and fallen under

the dominion of caste.

16. Darbhanga is in Tirhût, seventy miles NE. of Dinapore. The Kûsî

(Kôsî or Koosee) river rises in the mountains of Nepâl, and falls

into the Ganges after a course of about 325 miles. Nâthpur, in the

Puraniya (Purneah) District, is a mart for the trade with Nepal.

17. The customary attitude of a suppliant.

18. A small river which falls into the Nerbudda on the right-hand

side, at Sânkal. Its general course is south-west.

19. November, 1835.

20. Described in the _Gazetteer_ (1870) as 'a large but decaying

village in the Jabalpur district, situated at the foot of the Bhânrer

hills, twenty-two miles to the north-west of Jabalpur, on the north

side of the Hiran, and on the road to Sâgar'.

21. The convenient restriction of the name Vindhya to the hills

north, and of Sâtpura to the hills south of the Nerbudda is of modern

origin (_Manual of the Geology of India_, 1st ed., Part I, p. iv).

The Sâtpura range, thus defined, separates the valley of the Nerbudda

from the valleys of the Taptî flowing west, and the Mahânadî flowing

east. The Vindhyan sandstones certainly are a formation of immense

antiquity, perhaps pre-Silurian. They are azoic, or devoid of

fossils; and it is consequently impossible to determine exactly their

geological age, or 'horizon' (ibid. p. xxiii). The cappings of

basalt, in some cases with laterite superimposed, suggest many

difficult problems, which will be briefly discussed in the notes to

Chapters 14 and 17.

CHAPTER 9

The Great Iconoclast--Troops routed by Hornets--The Rânî of Garhâ--

Hornets' Nests in India.

On the 23rd,[1] we came on nine miles to Sangrâmpur, and, on the

24th, nine more to the valley of Jabêrâ,[2] situated on the western

extremity of the bed of a large lake, which is now covered by twenty-

four villages. The waters were kept in by a large wall that united

two hills about four miles south of Jabêrâ. This wall was built of

great cut freestone blocks from the two hills of the Vindhiya range,

which it united. It was about half a mile long, one hundred feet

broad at the base, and about one hundred feet high. The stones,

though cut, were never, apparently, cemented; and the wall has long

given way in the centre, through which now falls a small stream that

passes from east to west of what was once the bottom of the lake, and

now is the site of so many industrious and happy little village

communities.[3] The proprietor of the village of Jabêrâ, in whose

mango grove our tents were pitched, conducted me to the ruins of the

wall; and told me that it had been broken down by the order of the

Emperor Aurangzêb.[4] History to these people is all a fairy tale;

and this emperor is the great destroyer of everything that the

Muhammadans in their fanaticism have demolished of the Hindoo

sculpture or architecture; and yet, singular as it may appear, they

never mention his name with any feelings of indignation or hatred.

With every scene of his supposed outrage against their gods or their

temples, there is always associated the recollection of some instance

of his piety, and the Hindoos' glory--of some idol, for instance, or

column, preserved from his fury by a miracle, whose divine origin he

is supposed at once to have recognized with all due reverence.

At Bherâgarh,[5] the high priest of the temple told us that

Aurangzêb and his soldiers knocked off the heads, arms, and noses of

all the idols, saying that 'if they had really any of the godhead in

them, they would assuredly now show it, and save themselves'. But

when they came to the door of Gaurî Sankar's apartments, they were

attacked by a nest of hornets, that put the whole of the emperor's

army to the rout; and his imperial majesty called out: 'Here we have

really something like a god, and we shall not suffer him to be

molested; if all your gods could give us proof like this of their

divinity, not a nose of them would ever be touched'.

The popular belief, however, is that after Aurangzêb's army had

struck off all the prominent features of the other gods, one of the

soldiers entered the temple, and struck off the ear of one of the

prostrate images underneath their vehicle, the Bull. 'My dear', said

Gaurî, 'do you see what these saucy men are about?' Her consort

turned round his head;[6] and, seeing the soldiers around him,

brought all the hornets up from the marble rocks below, where there

are still so many nests of them, and the whole army fled before them

to Teorî, five miles.[7] It is very likely that some body of troops

by whom the rest of the images had been mutilated, may have been

driven off by a nest of hornets from within the temple where this

statue stands. I have seen six companies of infantry, with a train of

artillery and a squadron of horse, all put to the rout by a single

nest of hornets, and driven off some miles with all their horses and

bullocks. The officers generally save themselves by keeping within

their tents, and creeping under their bed-clothes, or their carpets;

and servants often escape by covering themselves up in their

blankets, and lying perfectly still. Horses are often stung to a

state of madness, in which they throw themselves over precipices and

break their limbs, or kill themselves. The grooms, in trying to save

their horses, are generally the people who suffer most in a camp

attacked by such an enemy. I have seen some so stung as to recover

with difficulty; and I believe there have been instances of people

not recovering at all. In such a frightful scene I have seen a

bullock sitting and chewing the cud as calmly as if the whole thing

had been got up for his amusement. The hornets seldom touch any

animal that remains perfectly still.

On the bank of the Bînâ river at Eran, in the Sâgar district, is a

beautiful pillar of a single freestone, more than fifty feet high,

surmounted by a figure of Krishna, with the glory round his head.[8]

Some few of the rays of this glory have been struck off by lightning;

but the people declare that this was done by a shot fired at it from

a cannon by order of Aurangzêb, as his army was marching by on its

way to the Deccan. Before the scattered fragments, however, could

reach the ground, the air was filled, they say, by a swarm of

hornets, that put

the whole army to flight; and the emperor ordered his gunners to

desist, declaring that he was 'satisfied of the presence of the god'.

There is hardly any part of India in which, according to popular

belief, similar miracles were not worked to convince the emperor of

the peculiar merits or sanctity of particular idols or temples,

according to the traditions of the people, derived, of course, from

the inventions of priests. I should mention that these hornets

suspend their nests to the branches of the highest trees, under

rocks, or in old deserted temples. Native travellers, soldiers, and

camp followers, cook and eat their food under such trees; but they

always avoid one in which there is a nest of hornets, particularly on

a still day. Sometimes they do not discover the nest till it is too

late. The unlucky wight goes on feeding his fire, and delighting in

the prospect of the feast before him, as the smoke ascends in curling

eddies to the nest of the hornets. The moment it touches them they

sally forth and descend, and sting like mad creatures every living

thing they find in motion. Three companies of my regiment were

escorting treasure in boats from Allahabad to Cawnpore for the army

under the Marquis of Hastings, in 1817.[9] The soldiers all took

their dinners on shore every day; and one still afternoon a sipâhî

(sepoy), by cooking his dinner under one of those nests without

seeing it, sent the infuriated swarm among the whole of his comrades,

who were cooking in the same grove, and undressed, as they always are

on such occasions. Treasure, food, and all were immediately deserted,

and the whole of the party, save the European officers, were up to

their noses in the river Ganges. The hornets hovered over them; and

it was amusing to see them bobbing their heads under as the insects

tried to pounce upon them. The officers covered themselves up in the

carpets of their boats; and, as the day was a hot one, their

situation was still more uncomfortable than that of the men. Darkness

alone put an end to the conflict.

I should mention that the poor old Rânî, or Queen of Garhâ, Lachhmî

Kuâr, came out as far as Katangî with us to take leave of my wife, to

whom she has always been attached. She had been in the habit of

spending a day with her at my house once a week; and being the only

European lady from whom she had ever received any attention, or

indeed ever been on terms of any intimacy with, she feels the more

sensible of the little offices of kindness and courtesy she has

received from her.[10] Her husband, Narhar Sâ, was the last of the

long line of sixty-two sovereigns who reigned over these territories

from the year A.D. 358 to the Sâgar conquest, A.D. 1781.[11] He died

a prisoner in the fortress of Kûrai, in the Sâgar district, in A. D.

1789, leaving two widows.[12] One burnt herself upon the funeral

pile, and the other was prevented from doing so, merely because she

was thought too young, as she was not then fifteen years of age. She

received a small pension from the Sâgar Government, which was still

further reduced under the Nâgpur Government which succeeded it in the

Jubbulpore district in which the pension had been assigned; and it

was not thought necessary to increase the amount of this pension when

the territory came under our dominion,[13] so that she has had barely

enough to subsist upon, about one hundred rupees a month. She is now

about sixty years of age, and still a very good-looking woman. In her

youth she must have been beautiful. She does not object to appear

unveiled before gentlemen on any particular occasion; and, when Lord

W. Bentinck was at Jubbulpore in 1833, I introduced, the old queen to

him. He seemed much interested, and ordered the old lady a pair of

shawls. None but very coarse ones were found in the store-rooms of

the Governor-General's representative, and his lordship said these

were not such as a Governor-General could present, or a queen,

however poor, receive; and as his own 'toshakhâna' (wardrobe) had

gone on,[l4] he desired that a pair of the finest kind should be

purchased and presented to her in his name. The orders were given in

her presence and mine. I was obliged to return to Sâgar before they

could be carried into effect; and, when I returned in 1835,[15] I

found that the _rejected_ shawls had been presented to her, and were

such coarse things that she was ashamed to wear them, as much, I

really believe, on account of the exalted person who had given them,

as her own. She never mentioned the subject till I asked her to let

me see the shawls, which she did reluctantly, and she was too proud

to complain. How the good intentions of the Governor-General had been

frustrated in this case I have never learned. The native officer in

charge of the store was dead, and the Governor-General's

representative had left the place. Better could not, I suppose, be

got at this time, and he did not like to defer giving them.

Notes:

1. November, 1835.

2. Sangrâmpur is in the Jabalpur District, thirty miles north-west of

Jabalpur, or the road to Sâgar, The village of Jabêrâ is thirty-nine

miles from Jabalpur.

3. Similar lakes, formed by means of huge dams thrown across valleys,

are numerous in the Central Provinces and Bundêlkhand. The

embankments of some of these lakes are maintained by the Indian

Government, and the water is distributed for irrigation. Many of the

lakes are extremely beautiful, and the ruins of grand temples and

palaces are often found on their banks. Several of the embankments

are known to have been built by the Chandêl princes between A.D. 800

and 1200, and some are believed to be the work of an earlier Parihâr

dynasty.

4. A.D. 1658--1707. Aurangzêb, though possibly credited with more

destruction than he accomplished, did really destroy many hundreds of

Hindoo temples. A historian mentions the demolition of 262 at three

places in Râjputâna in a single year (A.D. 1679-80) (E. and D. vii,

188).

5. This name is used as a synonym for Bheraghât, _ante_, Chapter 1,

paragraph 1. It is written Beragur in the author's text. The author,

in _Ramaseeana_, Introduction, p. 77, note, describes the Gaurî-

Sankar sculpture as being 'at Beragur on the Nerbudda river'.

6. Gaurî is one of the many names of Pârvatî, or Dêvî, the consort of

the god Siva, Sankar, or Mahâdêo, who rides upon the bull Nandî.

7. This village seems to be the same as Tewar, the ancient Tripura,

'six miles to the west of Jabalpur; and on the south side of the

Bombay road' (_A. S. R_., vol. ix, p. 57). The adjacent ruins are

known by the name of Karanbêl.

8. The pillar bears an inscription showing that it was erected during

the reign of Budha Gupta, in the year 165 of the Gupta era,

corresponding to A.D. 484-5. This, and the other important remains of

antiquity at Eran, are fully described in _A. S. R_., vol. vii, p.

88; vol. x, pp. 76-90, pl. xxiii-xxx; and vol. xiv, p. 149, pl. xxxi;

also in Fleet, _Gupta Inscriptions_ (Calcutta, 1888). The material of

the pillar is red sandstone. According to Cunningham the total height

is 43 feet. The peculiar double-faced, two-armed image on the summit

does not seem to be intended for Krishna, but I cannot say what the

meaning is (H. F. A., p. 174, fig. 121).

9. During the wars with the Marâthâs and Pindhârîs, which ended in

1819.

10. After we left Jubbulpore, the old Rânî used to receive much kind

and considerate attention from the Hon. Mrs. Shore, a very amiable

woman, the wife of the Governor-General's representative, the Hon.

Mr. Shore, a very worthy and able member of the Bengal Civil Service.

[W. H. S.] For notice of Mr. Shore, see note at end of Chapter 13.

11. See the author's paper entitled '_History of the Gurha Mundala

Rajas_', in _J. A. S. B_., vol. vi (1837), p. 621, and the article

'Mandla' in _C. P. Gazetteer_ (1870).

12. Kûrai is on the route from Sâgar to Nasîrâbâd, thirty-one miles

WNW. of the former.

13. The 'Sâgar and Nerbudda Territories', comprising the Sâgar,

Jabalpur, Hoshangâbâd, Seonî, Damoh, Narsinghpur, and Baitûl Mandlâ

Districts, are now under the Local Administration of the Chief

Commissioner of the Central Provinces, established in 1861 by Lord

Canning, who appointed Sir Richard Temple Chief Commissioner. These

territories were at first administered by a semi-political agency,

but were afterwards, in 1852, placed under the Lieutenant-Governor of

the North-Western Provinces (now the Agra Province in the United

Provinces of Agra and Oudh), to whom they remained subject until

1861. They had been ceded by the Marâthâs to the British in 1818, and

the cession was confirmed by the treaty of 1826.

14. All official presents given by native chiefs to the Governor-

General are credited to the 'toshakhâna', from which also are taken

the official gifts bestowed in return.

15. By resolution of Government, dated January 10, 1836, the author

was appointed General Superintendent of the Operations against

Thuggee, with his head-quarters at Jubbulpore.

CHAPTER 10

The Peasantry and the Land Settlement.

The officers of the 29th had found game so plentiful, and the weather

so fine, that they came on with us as far as Jaberâ, where we had the

pleasure of their society on the evening of the 24th, and left them

on the morning of the 25th.[1] A great many of my native friends,

from among the native landholders and merchants of the country,

flocked to our camp at every stage to pay their respects, and bid me

farewell, for they never expected to see me back among them again.

They generally came out a mile or two to meet and escort us to our

tents; and much do I fear that my poor boy will never again, in any

part of the world, have the blessings of Heaven so fervently invoked

upon him by so many worthy and respectable men as met us at every

stage on our way from Jubbulpore. I am much attached to the

agricultural classes of India generally, and I have found among them

some of the best men I have ever known. The peasantry in India have

generally very good manners, and are exceedingly intelligent, from

having so much more leisure and unreserved and easy intercourse with

those above them. The constant habit of meeting and discussing

subjects connected with their own interests, in their own fields, and

'under their own fig-trees', with their landlords and Government

functionaries of all kinds and degrees, prevents their ever feeling

or appearing impudent or obtrusive; though it certainly tends to give

them stentorian voices, that often startle us when they come into our

houses to discuss the same points with us.

Nine-tenths of the immediate cultivators of the soil in India are

little farmers, who hold a lease for one or more years, as the case

may be, of their lands, which they cultivate with their own stock.

One of these cultivators, with a good plough and bullocks, and a good

character, can always get good land on moderate terms from holders of

villages.[2] Those cultivators are, I think, the best, who learn to

depend upon their stock and character for favourable terms, hold

themselves free to change their holdings when their leases expire,

and pretend not to any hereditary right in the soil. The lands are, I

think, best cultivated, and the society best constituted in India,

where the holders of estates of villages have a feeling of permanent

interest in them, an assurance of an hereditary right of property

which is liable only to the payment of a moderate Government demand,

descends undivided by the law of primogeniture, and is unaffected by

the common law, which prescribes the equal subdivision among children

of landed as well as other private property, among the Hindoos and

Muhammadans; and where the immediate cultivators hold the lands they

till by no other law than that of common specific contract.

When I speak of holders of villages, I mean the holders of lands that

belong to villages. The whole face of India is parcelled out into

estates of villages.[3] The village communities are composed of those

who hold and cultivate the land, the established village servants,

priest, blacksmith, carpenter, accountant, washerman, basket-maker

(whose wife is ex officio the midwife of the little village

community), potter, watchman, barber, shoemaker, &c., &c.[4] To these

may be added the little banker, or agricultural capitalist, the

shopkeeper, the brazier, the confectioner, the ironmonger, the

weaver, the dyer, the astronomer or astrologer, who points out to the

people the lucky day for every earthly undertaking, and the

prescribed times for all religious ceremonies and observances. In

some villages the whole of the lands are parcelled out among

cultivating proprietors, and are liable to eternal subdivisions by

the law of inheritance, which gives to each son the same share. In

others, the whole of the lands are parcelled out among cultivators,

who hold them on a specific lease for limited periods from a

proprietor who holds the whole collectively under Government, at a

rate of rent fixed either permanently or for limited periods. These

are the two extremes. There are but few villages in which all the

cultivators are considered as proprietors--at least but few in our

Nerbudda territories; and these will almost invariably be found of a

caste of Brahmans or a caste of Râjpûts, descended from a common

ancestor, to whom the estate was originally given in rent-free

tenure, or at a quit-rent, by the existing Government for his prayers

as a priest, or his services as a soldier. Subsequent Governments,

which resumed unceremoniously the estates of others, were deterred

from resuming these by a dread of the curses of the one and the

swords of the other.[5] Such communities of cultivating proprietors

are of two kinds: those among whom the lands are parcelled out, each

member holding his share as a distinct estate, and being individually

responsible for the payment of the share of the Government demand

assessed upon it; and those among whom the lands are not parcelled

out, but the profits divided as among copartners of an estate held

jointly. They, in either case, nominate one of their members to

collect and pay the Government demand; or Government appoints a man

for this duty, either as a salaried servant or a lessee, with

authority to levy from the cultivating proprietors a certain sum over

and above what is demandable from him.

The communities in which the cultivators are considered merely as

leaseholders are far more numerous; indeed, the greater part of the

village communities in this part of India are of this description;

and, where the communities are of a mixed character, the cultivating

proprietors are considered to have merely a right of occupancy, and

are liable to have their lands assessed at the same rate as those

held on a mere lease tenure. In all parts of India the cultivating

proprietors in such mixed communities are similarly situated; they

are liable to be assessed at the same rate as others holding the same

sort of lands, and often pay a higher rate, with which others are not

encumbered. But this is not general; it is as much the interest of

the proprietor to have good cultivating tenants as it is that of the

tenants to have good proprietors; and it is felt to be the interest

of both to adjust their terms amicably among themselves, without a

reference to a third and superior party, which is always costly and

commonly ruinous.[6]

It is a question of very great importance, no less morally and

politically than fiscally, which of these systems deserves most

encouragement--that in which the Government considers the immediate

cultivators to be the hereditary proprietors, and, through its own

public officers, parcels out the lands among them, and adjusts the

rates of rent demandable from every minute partition, as the lands

become more and more subdivided by the Hindoo and Muhammadan law of

inheritance; or that in which the Government considers him who holds

the area of a whole village or estate collectively as the hereditary

proprietor, and the immediate cultivators as his lease-tenants--

leaving the rates of rent to be adjusted among the parties without

the aid of public officers, or interposing only to enforce the

fulfilment of their mutual contracts. In the latter of these two

systems the land will supply more and better members to the middle

and higher classes of the society, and create and preserve a better

feeling between them and the peasantry, or immediate cultivators of

the soil; and it will occasion the re-investment upon the soil, in

works of ornament and utility, of a greater portion of the annual

returns of rent and profit, and a less expenditure in the costs of

litigation in our civil courts, and bribery to our public officers.

Those who advocate the other system, which makes the immediate

cultivators the proprietors, will, for the most part, be found to

reason upon false premisses--upon the assumption that the rates of

rent demandable from the immediate cultivators of the soil _were

everywhere limited and established by immemorial usage, in a certain

sum of money per acre, or a certain share of the crop produced from

it_; and that 'these rates were not only so limited and fixed, but

everywhere _well known to the people_', and might, consequently, have

become well known to the Government, and recorded in public

registers. Now every practical man in India, who has had

opportunities of becoming well acquainted with the matter, knows that

_the reverse is the case_; that the rate of rent demandable from

these cultivators _never was the same upon any two estates at the

same time: nor even the same upon any one estate at different limes,

or for any consecutive number of years_.[7] The rates vary every year

on every estate, according to the varying circumstances that

influence them--such as greater or less exhaustion of the soil,

greater or less facilities of irrigation, manure, transit to market,

drainage--or from fortuitous advantages on one hand, or calamities of

season on the other; or many other circumstances which affect the

value of the land, and the abilities of the cultivators to pay. It is

not so much the proprietors of the estate or the Government as the

cultivators themselves who demand every year a readjustment of the

rate demandable upon their different holdings. This readjustment must

take place; and, if there is no landlord to effect it, Government

must effect it through its own officers. Every holding becomes

subdivided when the cultivating proprietor dies and leaves more than

one child; and, as the whole face of the country is open and without

hedges, the division is easily and speedily made. Thus the field-map

which represents an estate one year will never represent it fairly

five years after; in fact, we might almost as well attempt to map the

waves of the ocean as field-map the face of any considerable area in

any part of India.[8]

If there be any truth in my conclusions, our Government has acted

unwisely in going, as it has generally done, into [one or other of]

the two extremes, in its settlement of the land revenue.

In the Zamîndârî settlement of Bengal, it conferred the hereditary

right of property over areas larger than English counties on

individuals, and left the immediate cultivators mere tenants-at-

will.[9] These individuals felt no interest in promoting the comfort

and welfare of the village communities, or conciliating the

affections of the cultivators, whom they never saw or wished to see;

and they let out the village, or other subdivision of their estates,

to second parties quite as little interested, who again let them out

to others, so that the system of rack-renting went on over the whole

area of the immense possession. This was a system 'more honoured in

the breach than in the observance'; for, as the great landholders

became involved in the ruin of their cultivators, their estates were

sold for arrears of revenue due to Government, and thus the

proprietary right of one individual has become divided among many,

who will have the feelings which the larger holders wanted, and so

remedy the evil. In the other extreme, Government has constituted the

immediate cultivators the proprietors; thereby preventing any one who

is supported upon the rent of land, or the profits of agricultural

stock, from rising above the grade of a peasant, and so depriving

society of one of its best and most essential elements. The remedy of

both is in village settlements, in which the estate shall be of

moderate size, and the hereditary property of the holder, descending

on the principle of a principality, by the right of primogeniture,

unaffected by the common law. This is the system which has been

adopted in the Nerbudda territory, and which, I trust, will be always

adhered to.

When we enter upon the government of any new territorial acquisition

in India, we do not require or pretend to change the civil laws of

the people; because their civil laws and their religion are in

reality one and the same, and are contained in one and the same code,

as certainly among the Hindoos, the Muhammadans, and the Parsees, as

they were among the Israelites. By these codes, and the established

usages everywhere well understood by the people, are their rights and

duties in marriage, inheritance, succession, caste, contract, and all

the other civil relations of life, ascertained; and when we displace

another Government we do not pretend to alter such rights and duties

in relation to each other, we merely change the machinery and mode of

procedure by which these rights are secured and these duties

enforced.[10]

Of criminal law no system was ever either regularly established or

administered in any state in India, by any Government to which we

have succeeded; and the people always consider the existing

Government free to adopt that which may seem best calculated to

effect the one great object, which criminal law has everywhere in

view--_the security of life, property, and character, and the

enjoyment of all their advantages_. The actions by which these are

affected and endangered, the evidence by which such actions require

to be proved, and the penalties with which they require to be

visited, in order to prevent their recurrence, are, or ought to be,

so much the same in every society, that the people never think us

bound to search for what Muhammad and his companions thought in the

wilds of Arabia, or the Sanskrit poets sang about them in courts and

cloisters. They would be just as well pleased everywhere to find us

searching for these things in the writings of Confucius and

Zoroaster, as in those of Muhammad and Manu: and much more so, to see

us consulting our own common-sense, and forming a penal code of our

own, suitable to the wants of such a mixed community.[11]

The fiscal laws which define the rights and duties of the landed

interests and the agricultural classes in relation to each other and

to the ruling powers were also everywhere exceedingly simple and well

understood by the people. What in England is now a mere fiction of

law is still in India an essential principle. All lands are held

directly or indirectly of the sovereign: to this rule there is no

exception.[12] The reigning sovereign is essentially the proprietor

of the whole of the lands in every part of India, where he has not

voluntarily alienated them; and he holds these lands for the payment

of those public establishments which are maintained for the public

good, and are supported by the rents of the lands either directly

under assignment, or indirectly through the sovereign proprietor.

When a Muhammadan or Hindoo sovereign assigned lands rent-free in

_perpetuity_, it was always understood, both by the donor and

receiver, to be with the _small reservation_ of a right in his

successor to resume them for the public good, if he should think

fit.[13] Hindoo sovereigns, or their priests for them, often tried to

bar this right by _invoking curses_ on the head of that successor who

should exercise it.[14] It is a proverb among the people of these

territories, and, I believe, among the people of India generally,

that the lands which pay no rent to Government have no 'barkat',

blessing from above--that the man who holds them is not blessed in

their returns like the man who pays rent to Government and thereby

contributes his aid to the protection of the community. The fact is

that every family that holds rent-free lands must, in a few

generations, become miserable from the minute subdivision of the

property, and the litigation in our civil courts which it entails

upon the holders.[15] It is certainly the general opinion of the

people of India that no land should be held without paying rent to

Government, or providing for people employed in the service of

Government, for the benefit of the people in its defensive,

religious, judicial, educational, and other establishments. Nine-

tenths of the land in these Nerbudda territories are held in lease

immediately under Government by the heads of villages, whose leases

have been renewable every five years; but they are now to have a

settlement for twenty.[l6] The other tenth is held by these heads of

villages intermediately under some chief, who holds several portions

of land immediately under Government at a quit-rent, or for service

performed, or to be performed, for Government, and lets them out to

farmers. These are, for the most part, situated in the more hilly and

less cultivated parts.

Notes:

1. November, 1835.

2. This observation does not hold good in densely populated tracts,

which are now numerous.

3. These 'estates of villages' are known by the Persian name of

'mauza'. The topographical division of the country into 'mauzas',

which may be also translated by the terms 'townlands' or 'townships',

has developed spontaneously. Some 'mauzas' are uninhabited, and are

cultivated by the residents of neighbouring villages.

4. In some parts of Central and Southern India, the 'Gârpagrî', who

charms away hail-storms from the crops, and 'Bhûmkâ', who charms away

tigers from the people and their cattle, are added to the number of

village servants, [W. H .S.] 'In many parts of Berâr and Mâlwa every

village has its "bhûmkâ", whose office it is to charm the tigers; and

its "gârpagrî", whose duty it is to keep off the hail-storms. They

are part of the village servants, and paid by the village community,

After a severe hail-storm took place in the district of Narsinghpur,

of which I had the civil charge in 1823, the office of "gârpagrî" was

restored to several villages in which it had ceased for several

generations. They are all Brahmans, and take advantage of such

calamities to impress the people with an opinion of their usefulness.

The "bhûmkâs" are all Gônds, or people of the woods, who worship

their own Lares and Penates' (_Ramaseeana_, Introduction, p. 13.

note).

5. Very often the Government of the country know nothing of these

tenures; the local authorities allowed them to continue as a

perquisite of their own. The holders were willing to pay them a good

share of the rent, assured that they would be resumed if reported by

the local authorities to the Government. These authorities consented

to take a moderate share of the rent, assured that they should get

little or nothing if the lands were resumed. [W. H. S.] 'Rent' here

means 'land-revenue'. Of course, under modern British administration

the particulars of all tenures are known and recorded in great

detail,

6. Since the author wrote these remarks the legal position of

cultivating proprietors and tenants has been largely modified by the

pressure of population and a long course of legislation. The Rent

Acts, which began with Act x of 1859, are now numerous, and have been

accompanied by a series of Land Revenue Acts, and many collateral

enactments. All the problems of the Irish land question are familiar

topics to the Anglo-Indian courts and legislatures.

7. This proposition no doubt was true for the 'Sâgar and Nerbudda

Territories' in 1835, but it cannot be predicated of the thickly

populated and settled districts in the Gangetic valley without

considerable qualification. Examples of long-established, unchanged,

well-known rent-rates are not uncommon.

8. In recent years this task of 'mapping the waves of the ocean' has

been attempted. Every periodical settlement of the land revenue in

Northern India since 1833 has been accompanied by the preparation of

detailed village maps, showing each field, even the tiniest, a few

yards square, with a separate number. In many cases these maps were

roughly constructed under non-professional supervision, but in many

districts they have been prepared by the cadastral branch of the

Survey Department. The difficulty mentioned by the author has been

severely felt, and it constantly happens that beautiful maps become

useless in four or five years. Efforts are made to insert annual

corrections in copies of the maps through the agency of the village

accountants, and the 'kânûngos', or officers who supervise them, but

the task is an enormous one, and only partial success is attained. In

addition to the maps, records of great bulk are annually prepared

which give the most minute details about every holding and each

field.

9. The Permanent Settlement of Bengal, effected under the orders of

Lord Cornwallis in 1793, was soon afterwards extended to the province

of Benares, now included in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh.

Illusory provisions were made to protect the rights of tenants, but

nothing at all effectual was done till the passing of Act x of 1859,

which has been largely modified by later legislation.

10. The general principle here stated of respect for personal

substantive law in civil matters is still the guide of the Indian

Legislature, but the accumulation of Privy Council and High Court

rulings, combined with the action of codes, has effected considerable

gradual change. Direct legislation has anglicized the law of

contract, and has modified, though not so largely, the law of

marriage, inheritance, and succession.

11. In the author's time the courts of the East India Company still

followed the Muhammadan criminal law, as modified by the Regulations.

The Indian Penal Code of 1869 placed the substantive criminal law on

a thoroughly scientific basis. This code was framed with such

masterly skill that to this day it has needed little material

amendment. The first Criminal Procedure Code, passed in 1861, has

been twice recast. The law of evidence was codified by Sir James

FitzJames Stephen in the Indian Evidence Act of 1870.

12. This proposition, in the editor's opinion, truly states the

theory of land tenures in India, and it was a generally accurate

statement of actual fact in the author's time. Since then the long

continuance of settled government, by fostering the growth of private

rights, has tended to obscure the idea of state ownership. The modern

revenue codes, instead of postulating the ownership of the state,

enact that the claims of the state--that is to say, the land-revenue-

-are the first charge on the land and its produce. The Malabar coast

offers an exception to the general Hindu role of state ownership of

land. The Nairs, Coorgs, and Tulus enjoyed full proprietary rights

(Dubois, _Hindu Manners, &c_., 3rd edition (1906), p. 57).

13. Amîr Khân, the Nawâb of Tonk, assigned to his physician, who had

cured him of an intermittent fever, lands yielding one thousand

rupees a year, in rent-free tenure, and gave him a deed signed by

himself and his heir-apparent, declaring expressly that it should

descend to him and his heir for ever. He died lately, and his son and

successor, who had signed the deed, resumed the estate without

ceremony. On being remonstrated with, he said that 'his father, while

living, was, of course, master, and could make him sign what he

pleased, and give land rent-free to whom he pleased; but his

successor must now be considered the best judge whether they could be

spared or not; that if lands were to be alienated in perpetuity by

every reigning Nawâb for every dose of medicine or dose of prayers

that he or the members of his family required, none would soon be

left for the payment of the soldiers, or other necessary public

servants of any description'. This was told me by the son of the old

physician, who was the person to whom the speech was made, his father

having died before Amîr Khân. [W. H. S.] Amîr Khân was the famous

Pindhârî leader. H. T. Prinsep translated his Memoirs from the

Persian of Busawun Lâl (Calcutta, 1832).

14. The ancient deeds of grant, engraved on copper, of which so many

have been published within the last hundred years, almost invariably

conclude with fearful curses on the head of any rash mortal who may

dare to revoke the grant. Usually the pious hope is expressed that,

if he should be guilty of such wickedness, he may rot in filth, and

be reborn a worm.

15. Revenue officers commonly observe that revenue-free grants, which

the author calls rent-free, are often ill cultivated. The simple

reason is that the stimulus of the collector's demand is wanting to

make the owner exert himself.

16. These leases now carry with them a right of ownership, involving

the power of alienation, subject to the lien of the land revenue as a

first charge. Conversely, the modern codes lay down the principle

that the revenue settlement must be made with the proprietor. The

author's rule of agricultural succession by primogeniture in the

Nerbudda territories has survived only in certain districts (see

_post_, Chapter 47). The land-revenue law and the law concerning the

relations between landlords and tenants have now been more or less

successfully codified in each province. Mr. B. H. Baden-Powell's

encyclopaedic work _The Land Systems of British India_ (3 volumes:

Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1892) gives very full information concerning

Indian tenures as now existing, and the law applicable to them at the

date of publication.

CHAPTER 11

Witchcraft.

On leaving Jabêrâ,[1] I saw an old acquaintance from the eastern part

of the Jubbulpore district, Kehrî Singh.

'I understand, Kehrî Singh', said I, 'that certain men among the

Gonds of the jungle, towards the source of the Nerbudda, eat human

flesh. Is it so?'

'No, sir; the men never eat people, but the Gond women do.'

'Where?'

'Everywhere, sir; there is not a parish, nay, a village, among the

Gonds, in which you will not find one or more such women.'

'And how do they eat people?'

'They eat their livers, sir.'

'Oh, I understand; you mean witches?'

'Of course! Who ever heard of other people eating human beings?'

'And you really still think, in spite of all that we have done and

said, that there are such things as witches?'

'Of course we do--do not we find instances of it every day? European

gentlemen are too apt to believe that things like this are not to be

found here, because they are not to be found in their own country.

Major Wardlow, when in charge of the Seonî district, denied the

existence of witchcraft for a long time, but he was at last

convinced.'

'How?'

'One of his troopers, one morning after a long march, took some milk

for his master's breakfast from an old woman without paying for it.

Before the major had got over his breakfast the poor trooper was down

upon his back, screaming from the agony of internal pains. We all

knew immediately that he had been bewitched, and recommended the

major to send for some one learned in these matters to find out the

witch. He did so, and, after hearing from the trooper the story about

the milk, this person at once declared that the woman from whom he

got it was the criminal. She was searched for, found, and brought to

the trooper, and commanded to cure him. She flatly denied that she

had herself conjured him; but admitted that her household gods might,

unknown to her, have punished him for his wickedness. This, however,

would not do. She was commanded to cure the man, and she set about

collecting materials for the "pûjâ" (worship); and before she could

get quite through the ceremonies, all his pains had left him. Had we

not been resolute with her, the man must have died before evening, so

violent were his torments.'

'Did not a similar case occur to Mr. Fraser at Jubbulpore?'

'A "chaprâsî"[2] of his, while he had charge of the Jubbulpore

district, was sent out to Mandlâ[3] with a message of some kind or

other. He took a cock from an old Gond woman without paying for it,

and, being hungry after a long journey, ate the whole of it in a

curry. He heard the woman mutter something, but being a raw,

unsuspecting young man, he thought nothing of it, ate his cock, and

went to sleep. He had not been asleep three hours before he was

seized with internal pains, and the old cock was actually heard

crowing in his belly. He made the best of his way back to Jubbulpore,

several stages, and all the most skilful men were employed to charm

away the effect of the old woman's spell, but in vain. He died, and

the cock never ceased crowing at intervals up to the hour of his

death.'

'And was Mr. Fraser convinced?'

'I never heard, but suppose he must have been.'

'Who ate the livers of the victims? The witches themselves, or the

evil spirits with whom they had dealings?'

'The evil spirits ate the livers; but they are set on to do so by the

witches, who get them into their power by such accursed sacrifices

and offerings. They will often dig up young children from their

graves, bring them to life, and allow these devils to feed upon their

livers, as falconers allow their hawks to feed on the breasts of

pigeons. You "sâhib lôg" (European gentlemen) will not believe all

this, but it is, nevertheless, all very true.'[4]