good capacity, and most amiable disposition. My duties brought us
much into communication; and, though we never met, we had conceived a
mutual esteem for each other. He had been long suffering from an
affection of the liver, and had latterly persuaded himself that his
mother was practising upon his life, with a view to secure the
government to the eldest son of her daughter, which would, she
thought, ensure the real power to her for life. That she wished him
dead with this view, I had no doubt; for she had ruled the state for
several years up to 1831, during what she was pleased to consider his
minority; and she surrendered the power into his hands with great
reluctance, since it enabled her to employ her _paramour_ as
minister, and enjoy his society as much as she pleased, under the
pretence of holding _privy councils_ upon affairs of great public
interest.[4] He used to communicate his fears to me; and I was not
without apprehension that his mother might some day attempt to hasten
his death by poison. About a month before his death he wrote to me to
say that spears had been found stuck in the ground, under the water
where he was accustomed to swim, with their sharp points upwards;
and, had he not, contrary to his usual practice, walked into the
water, and struck his foot against one of them, he must have been
killed. This was, no doubt, a thing got up by some designing person
who wanted to ingratiate himself with the young man; for the mother
was too shrewd a woman ever to attempt her son's life by such awkward
means. About four months before I reached the capital, this amiable
young prince died, leaving two paternal uncles, a mother, a widow,
and one sister, the wife of one of our Sâgar pensioners, Morîsar Râo.
The mother claimed the inheritance for her grandson by this daughter,
a very handsome young lad, then at Jhânsî, on the pretence that her
son had adopted him on his death-bed. She had his head shaved, and
made him go through all the other ceremonies of mourning, as for the
death of his real father. The eldest of his uncles, Raghunâth Râo,
claimed the inheritance as the next heir; and all his party turned
the young lad out of caste as a Brahman, for daring to go into
mourning for a father who was yet alive; one of the greatest of
crimes, according to Hindoo law, for they would not admit that he had
been adopted by the deceased prince.[5]
The question of inheritance had been referred for decision to the
Supreme Government through the prescribed channel when I arrived, and
the decision was every day expected. The mother, with her daughter
and grandson, and the widow, occupied the castle, situated on a high
hill overlooking the city; while the two uncles of the deceased
occupied their private dwellings in the city below. Raghunâth Râo,
the eldest, headed the procession that came out to meet me about
three miles, mounted upon a fine female elephant, with his younger
brother by his side. The minister, Nârû Gopâl, followed, mounted upon
another, on the part of the mother and widow. Some of the Râjâ's
relations were upon two of the finest male elephants I have ever
seen; and some of their friends, with the 'Bakshî', or paymaster
(always an important personage), upon two others. Raghunâth Râo's
elephant drew up on the right of mine, and that of the minister on
the left; and, after the usual compliments had passed between us, all
the others fell back, and formed a line in our rear. They had about
fifty troopers mounted upon very fine horses in excellent condition,
which curvetted before and on both sides of us; together with a good
many men on camels, and some four or five hundred foot attendants,
all well dressed, but in various costumes. The elephants were so
close to each other that the conversation, which we managed to keep
up tolerably well, was general almost all the way to our tents; every
man taking a part as he found the opportunity of a pause to introduce
his little compliment to the Honourable Company or to myself, which I
did my best to answer or divert. I was glad to see the affectionate
respect with which the old man was everywhere received, for I had in
my own mind no doubt whatever that the decision of the Supreme
Government would be in his favour. The whole _cortège_ escorted me
through the town to my tent, which was pitched on the other side; and
then they took their leave, still seated on their elephants, while I
sat on mine, with my boy on my knee, till all had made their bow and
departed. The elephants, camels, and horses were all magnificently
caparisoned, and the housings of the whole were extremely rich. A
good many of the troopers were dressed in chain-armour, which, worn
outside their light-coloured quilted vests, looked very like black
gauze scarfs.
My little friend the Sarîmant's own elephant had lately died; and,
being unable to go to the cost of another with all its appendages, he
had come thus far on horseback. A native gentleman can never
condescend to ride an elephant without a train of at least a dozen
attendants on horseback--he would almost as soon ride a horse
_without a tail_.[6] Having been considered at one time as the equal
of all these Râjâs, I knew that he would feel a little mortified at
finding himself buried in the crowd and dust; and invited him, as we
approached the city, to take a seat by my side. This gained him
consideration, and evidently gave him great pleasure. It was late
before we reached our tents, as we were obliged to move slowly
through the streets of the city, as well for our own convenience as
for the safety of the crowd on foot before and around us. My wife,
who had gone on before to avoid the crowd and dust, reached the tents
halt an hour before us.
In the afternoon, when my second large tent had been pitched, the
minister came to pay me a visit with a large train of followers, but
with little display; and I found him a very sensible, mild, and
gentlemanly man, just as I expected from the high character he bears
with both parties, and with the people of the country generally. Any
unreserved conversation here in such a crowd was, of course, out of
the question, and I told the minister that it was my intention early
next morning to visit the tomb of his late master; where I should be
very glad to meet him, if he could make it convenient to come without
any ceremony. He seemed much pleased with the proposal, and next
morning we met a little before sunrise within the railing that
encloses the tomb or cenotaph; and there had a good deal of quiet
and, I believe, unreserved talk about the affairs of the Jhânsî
state, and the family of the late prince. He told me that, a few
hours before the Râjâ's death, his mother had placed in his arms for
adoption the son of his sister, a very handsome lad of ten years of
age--but whether the Râjâ was or was not sensible at the time he
could not say, for he never after heard him speak; that the mother of
the deceased considered the adoption as complete, and made her
grandson go through the funeral ceremonies as at the death of his
father, which for nine days were performed unmolested; but, when it
came to the tenth and last--which, had it passed quietly, would have
been considered as completing the title of adoption--Raghunâth Râo
and his friends interposed, and prevented further proceedings,
declaring that, while there were so many male heirs, no son could be
adopted for the deceased prince according to the usages of the
family.
The widow of the Râjâ, a timid, amiable young woman, of twenty-five
years of age, was by no means anxious for this adoption, having
shared the suspicions of her husband regarding the practices of his
mother; and found his sister, who now resided with them in the
castle, a most violent and overbearing woman, who would be likely to
exclude her from all share in the administration, and make her life
very miserable, were her son to be declared the Râjâ. Her wish was to
be allowed to adopt, in the name of her deceased husband, a young
cousin of his, Sadâsheo, the son of Nânâ Bhâo. Gangâdhar, the younger
brother of Raghunâth Râo, was exceedingly anxious to have his elder
brother declared Râjâ, because he had no sons, and from the
debilitated state of his frame, must soon die, and leave the
principality to him. Every one of the three parties had sent agents
to the Governor-General's representative in Bundêlkhand to urge their
claim; and, till the final decision, the widow of the late chief was
to be considered the sovereign. The minister told me that there was
one unanswerable argument against Raghunâth Râo's succeeding, which,
out of regard to his feelings, he had not yet urged, and about which
he wished to consult me as a friend of the late prince and his widow;
this was, that he was a leper, and that the signs of the disease were
becoming every day more and more manifest.
I told him that I had observed them in his face, but was not aware
that any one else had noticed them. I urged him, however, not to
advance this as a ground of exclusion, since they all knew him to be
a very worthy man, while his younger brother was said to be the
reverse; and more especially I thought it would be very cruel and
unwise to distress and exasperate him by so doing, as I had no doubt
that, before this ground could be brought to their notice, Government
would declare in his favour, right being so clearly on his side.
After an agreeable conversation with this sensible and excellent man,
I returned to my tents to prepare for the reception of Raghunâth Râo
and his party. They came about nine o'clock with a much greater
display of elephants and followers than the minister had brought with
him. He and his friends kept me in close conversation till eleven
o'clock, in spite of my wife's many considerate messages to say
breakfast was waiting. He told me that the mother of the late Râjâ,
his nephew, was a very violent woman, who had involved the state in
much trouble during the period of her regency, which she managed to
prolong till her son was twenty-five years of age, and resigned with
infinite reluctance only three years ago; that her minister during
her regency, Gangadhar Mûlî, was at the same time her _paramour_, and
would be surely restored to power and to her embraces, were her
grandson's claim to the succession recognized; that it was with great
difficulty he had been able to keep this atrocious character under
surveillance pending the consideration of their claims by the Supreme
Government; that, by having the head of her grandson shaved, and
making him go through all the other funeral ceremonies with the other
members of the family, she had involved him and his young _innocent
wife_ (who had unhappily continued to drink out of the same cup with
her husband) _in the dreadful crime of mourning for a father whom
they knew to be yet alive_, a crime that must be expiated by the
'prâyaschit,'[7] which-would be exacted from the young couple on
their return to Sâgar before they could be restored to caste, from
which they were now considered as excommunicated. As for the young
widow, she was everything they could wish; but she was so timid that
she would be governed by the old lady, if she should have any
ostensible part assigned her in the administration.[8]
I told the old gentleman that I believed it would be my duty to pay
the first visit to the widow and mother of the late prince, as one of
pure condolence, and that I hoped my doing so would not be considered
any mark of disrespect towards him, who must now be looked up to as
the head of the family. He remonstrated against this most earnestly;
and, at last, tears came into his eyes as he told me that, if I paid
the first visit to the castle, he should never again be able to show
his face outside his door, so great would be the indignity he would
be considered to have suffered; but, rather than I should do this, he
would come to my tents, and escort me himself to the castle. Much was
to be said on both sides of the weighty question; but, at last, I
thought that the arguments were in his favour--that, if I went to the
castle first, he might possibly resent it upon the poor woman and the
prime minister when he came into power, as I had no doubt he soon
would--and that I might be consulting their interest as much as his
feelings by going to his house first. In the evening I received a
message from the old lady, urging the necessity of my paying the
first visit of condolence for the death of my young friend to the
widow and mother. 'The rights of mothers', said she, 'are respected
in all countries; and, in India, the first visit of condolence for
the death of a man is always due to the mother, if alive.' I told the
messenger that my resolution was unaltered, and would, I trusted, be
found the best for all parties under present circumstances. I told
him that I dreaded the resentment towards them of Raghunâth Râo, if
he came into power.
'Never mind that,' said he: 'my mistress is of too proud a spirit to
dread resentment from any one--pay her the compliment of the first
visit, and let her enemies do their worst.' I told him that I could
leave Jhânsî without visiting either of them, but could not go first
to the castle; and he said that my departing thus would please the
old lady better than the _second visit_. The minister would not have
said this--the old lady would not have ventured to send such a
message by him--the man was an understrapper; and I left him to mount
my elephant and pay my two visits.[9]
With the best _cortège_ I could muster, I went to Raghunâth Râo's,
where I was received with a salute from some large guns in his
courtyard, and entertained with a party of dancing girls and
musicians in the usual manner. Attar of roses and 'pân'[10] were
given, and valuable shawls put before me, and refused in the politest
terms I could think of; such as, 'Pray do me the favour to keep these
things for me till I have the happiness of visiting Jhânsî again, as
I am going through Gwâlior, where nothing valuable is a moment safe
from thieves'. After sitting an hour, I mounted my elephant, and
proceeded up to the castle, where I was received with another salute
from the bastions. I sat for half an hour in the hall of audience
with the minister and all the principal men of the court, as
Raghunâth Râo was to be considered as a private gentleman till the
decision of the Supreme Government should be made known; and the
handsome lad, Krishan Râo, whom the old woman wished to adopt, and
whom I had often seen at Sâgar, was at my request brought in and
seated by my side. By him I sent my message of condolence to the
widow and mother of his deceased uncle, couched in the usual terms--
that the happy effects of good government in the prosperity of this
city, and the comfort and happiness of the people, had extended the
fame of the family all over India; and that I trusted the reigning
member of that family, whoever he might be, would be sensible that it
was his duty to sustain that reputation by imitating the example of
those who had gone before him. After attar of roses and pân had been
handed round in the usual manner, I went to the summit of the highest
tower in the castle, which commands an extensive view of the country
around.
The castle stands upon the summit of a small hill of syenitic rock.
The elevation of the outer wall is about one hundred feet above the
level of the plain, and the top of the tower on which I stood about
one hundred feet more, as the buildings rise gradually from the sides
to the summit of the hill. The city extends out into the plain to the
east from the foot of the hill on which the castle stands. Around the
city there is a good deal of land, irrigated from four or five tanks
in the neighbourhood, and now under rich wheat crops; and the gardens
are very numerous, and abound in all the fruit and vegetables that
the people most like. Oranges are very abundant and very fine, and
our tents have been actually buried in them and all the other fruits
and vegetables which the kind people of Jhânsî have poured in upon
us. The city of Jhânsî contains about sixty thousand inhabitants, and
is celebrated for its manufacture of carpets.[11] There are some very
beautiful temples in the city, all built by Gosâins, one [_sic_] of
the priests of Siva who here engage in trade, and accumulate much
wealth.[12] The family of the chief do not build tombs; and that now
raised over the place where the late prince was buried is dedicated
as a temple to Siva, and was made merely with a view to secure the
place from all danger of profanation.[13]
The face of the country beyond the influence of the tanks is neither
rich nor interesting. The cultivation seemed scanty and the
population thin, owing to the irremediable sterility of soil, from
the poverty of the primitive rock from whose detritus it is chiefly
formed. Raghunâth Râo told me that the wish of the people in the
castle to adopt a child as the successor to his nephew arose from the
desire to escape the scrutiny into the past accounts of disbursements
which he might be likely to order. I told him that I had myself no
doubt that he would be declared the Râjâ, and urged him to turn all
his thoughts to the future, and to allow no inquiries to be made into
the past, with a view to gratify either his own resentment, or that
of others; that the Rajas of Jhânsî had hitherto been served by the
most respectable, able, and honourable men in the country, while the
other chiefs of Bundêlkhand could get no man of this class to do
their work for them--that this was the only court in Bundêlkhand in
which such men could be seen, simply because it was the only one in
which they could feel themselves secure--while other chiefs
confiscated the property of ministers who had served them with
fidelity, on the pretence of embezzlement; the wealth thus acquired,
however, soon disappearing, and its possessors being obliged either
to conceal it or go out of the country to enjoy it. Such rulers thus
found their courts and capitals deprived of all those men of wealth
and respectability who adorned the courts of princes in other
countries, and embellished, not merely their capitals, but the face
of their dominions in general with their chateaus and other works of
ornament and utility. Much more of this sort passed between us, and
seemed to make an impression upon him; for he promised to do all that
I had recommended to him. Poor man! he can have but a short and
miserable existence, for that dreadful disease, the leprosy, is
making sad inroads in his System already.[14] His uncle, Raghunâth
Râo, was afflicted with it; and, having understood from the priests
that by _drowning_ himself in the Ganges (taking the 'samâdh'), he
should remove all traces of it from his family, he went to Benares,
and there drowned himself, some twenty years ago. He had no children,
and is said to have been the first of his family in whom the disease
showed itself.[15]
Notes:
1. December, 1835.
2. Now the head-quarters of the British district of the same name,
and also of the Indian Midland Railway. Since the opening of this
railway and the restoration of the Gwâlior fort to Sindhia in 1886,
the importance of Jhânsî, both civil and military, has much
increased. The native town was given up by Sindhia in exchange for
the Gwâlior stronghold.
3. This chief is called Râjâ Râo Râmchand in the _N.W.P. Gazetteer_,
1st ed. He died on August 20, 1835. His administration had been weak,
and his finances were left in great disorder. Under his successor the
disorder of the administration became still greater.
4. Dowagers in Indian princely families are frequently involved in
such intrigues and plots. The editor could specify instances in his
personal experience. Compare Chapter 34, _post_.
5. An adopted son passes completely out of the family of his natural,
into that of his adoptive, father, all his rights and duties as a son
being at the same time transferred. In this case, the adoption had
not really taken place, and the lad's duty to his living natural
father remained unaffected.
6. This statement will not apply to those districts in the United
Provinces where elephants are numerous and often kept by gentry of no
great rank or wealth, A Râjâ, of course, always likes to have a few
mounted men clattering behind him, if possible.
7. The 'prâyaschit' is an expiating atonement by which the person
humbles himself in public. It is often imposed for crimes committed
in a _former birth_, as indicated by inflictions suffered in this.
[W. H. S.] The practical working of Hindoo caste rules is often
frightfully cruel. The victims of these rules in the case described
by the author were a boy ten years old, and his child-wife of still
more tender years. Yet all the penalties, including rigorous fasts,
would be mercilessly exacted from these innocent children. Leprosy
and childlessness are among the afflictions supposed to prove the
sinfulness of the sufferer in some former birth, perhaps thousands of
years ago.
8. The poor young widow died of grief some months after my visit; her
spirits never rallied after the death of her husband, and she never
ceased to regret that she had not burned herself with his remains.
The people of Jhânsî generally believe that the prince's mother
brought about his death by (_dînâî_) slow poison, and I am afraid
that that was the impression on the mind of the poor widow. The
minister, who was entirely on her side, and a most worthy and able
man, was quite satisfied that this suspicion was without any
foundation whatever in truth. [W. H. S.]
9. Considering the fact that, 'till the final decision, the widow of
the late chief was to be considered the sovereign', it would be
difficult to justify the anthor's decision. The reigning sovereign
was clearly entitled to the first visit. Questions of precedence,
salutes, and etiquette are as the very breath of their nostrils to
the Indian nobility.
10. The leaf of _Piper betel_, handed to guests at ceremonial
entertainments, along with the nut of _Areca catechu_, made up in a
packet of gold or silver leaf.
11. This estimate of the population was probably excessive. The
population in 1891, including the cantonments, was 53,779, and in
1911, 70,208. The fort of Gwâlior and the cantonment of Morâr were
surrendered by the Government of India to Sindhia in exchange for the
fort and town of Jhânsî on March 10, 1886. Sindhia also relinquished
fifty-eight villages in exchange for thirty given up by the
Government of India, the difference in value being adjusted by cash
payments. The arrangements were finally sanctioned by Lord Dufferin
on June 13, 1888.
12. These buildings are both tombs and temples. The Gosâins of Jhânsî
do not burn, but bury their dead; and over the grave those who can
afford to do so raise a handsome temple, and dedicate it to Siva. [W.
H. S.] The custom of burial is not peculiar to the Saiva Gosâins of
Jhânsî. It is the ordinary practice of Gosâins throughout India. Many
of the Gosâins are devoted to the worship of Vishnu. Burial of the
dead is practised by a considerable number of the Hindoo castes of
the artisan grade, and by some divisions of the sweeper caste. See
Crooke, 'Primitive Rites of Disposal of the Dead' (_J. Anthrop.
Institute_, vol. xxix, N.S., vol. ii (1900), pp. 271-92).
13. This tact lends some support to W. Simpson's theory that the
Hindoo temple is derived from a sepulchral structure.
14. This chief died of leprosy in May, 1838. [W. H. S.]
15. Raghunâth Râo was the first of his family invested by the Peshwâ
with the government of the Jhânsî territory, which he had acquired
from the Bundêlkhand chiefs. He went to Benares in 1795 to drown
himself, leaving his government to his third brother, Sheorâm Bhâo,
as his next brother, Lachchhman Râo, was dead, and his sons were
considered incapable. Sheorâm Bhâo died in 1815, and his eldest son,
Krishan Râo, had died four years before him, in 1811, leaving one
son, the late Râjâ, and two daughters. This was a noble sacrifice to
what he had been taught by his spiritual teachers to consider as a
duty towards his family; and we must admire the man while we condemn
the religion and the priests. There is no country in the world where
parents are more reverenced than in India, or where they more readily
make sacrifices of all sorts for their children, or for those they
consider as such. We succeeded in [June] 1817 to all the rights of
the Peshwâ in Bundêlkhand, and, with great generosity, converted the
viceroys of Jhânsî and Jâlaun into independent sovereigns of
hereditary principalities, yielding each ten lakhs of rupees. [W. H.
S.] The statement in the note that Raghunâth Râo I 'went to Benares
in 1795 to drown himself' is inconsistent with the statement in the
text that this event happened 'some twenty years ago'. The word
'twenty' is evidently a mistake for 'forty'. The _N. W. P.
Gazetteer_, 1st ed., names several persons who governed Jhânsî on
behalf of the Peshwâ between 1742 and 1770, in which latter year
Raghunâth Râo I received charge. According to the same authority,
Sheo (Shio) Râm Bhâo is called 'Sheo Bhâo Hari, better known as Sheo
Râo Bhâo', and is said to have succeeded Raghunâth Râo I in 1794, and
to have died in 1814, not 1816. A few words may here be added to
complete the history. The leper Raghunâth Râo II, whose claim the
author strangely favoured, was declared Râjâ, and died, as already
noted, in May, 1838, 'his brief period of rule being rendered unquiet
by the opposition made to him, professedly on the ground of his being
a leper'. His revenues fell from twelve lâkhs (£120,000) to three
lâkhs of rupees (£30,000) a year. On his death in 1838, the
succession was again contested by four claimants. Pending inquiry
into the merits of their claims, the Governor-General's Agent assumed
the administration. Ultimately, Gangâdhar Râo, younger brother of the
leper, was appointed Râjâ. The disorder in the state rendered
administration by British officers necessary as a temporary measure,
and Gangâdhar Râo did not obtain power until 1842. His rule was, on
the whole, good. He died childless in November, 1853, and Lord
Dalhousie, applying the doctrine of lapse, annexed the estate in
1854, granting a pension of five thousand rupees, or about five
hundred pounds, monthly to Lacchhmî Bâî, Gangâdhar Râo's widow, who
also succeeded to personal property worth about one hundred thousand
pounds. She resented the refusal of permission to adopt a son, and
the consequent annexation of the state, and was further deeply
offended by several acts of the English Administration, above all by
the permission of cow-slaughter. Accordingly, when the Mutiny broke
out, she quickly joined the rebels. On the 7th and 8th June, 1857,
all the Europeans in Jhânsî, men, women, and children, to the number
of about seventy persons, were cruelly murdered by her orders, or
with her sanction. On the 9th June her authority was proclaimed. In
the prolonged fighting which ensued, she placed herself at the head
of her troops, whom she led with great gallantry. In June, 1858,
after a year's bloodstained reign, she was killed in battle. By
November, 1858, the country was pacified.
CHAPTER 30
Haunted Villages.
On the 16th[1] we came on nine miles to Amabâi, the frontier village
of the Jhânsî territory, bordering upon Datiyâ,[2] where I had to
receive the farewell visits of many members of the Jhânsî parties,
who came on to have a quiet opportunity to assure me that, whatever
may be the final order of the Supreme Government, they will do their
best for the good of the people and the state; for I have always
considered Jhânsî among the native states of Bundêlkhand as a kind of
oasis in the desert, the only one in which a man can accumulate
property with the confidence of being permitted by its rulers freely
to display and enjoy it. I had also to receive the visit of
messengers from the Râjâ of Datiyâ, at whose capital we were to
encamp the next day, and, finally, to take leave of my amiable little
friend the Sarîmant, who here left me on his return to Sâgar, with a
heavy heart I really believe.
We talked of the common belief among the agricultural classes of
villages being haunted by the spirits of ancient proprietors whom it
was thought necessary to propitiate. 'He knew', he said, 'many
instances where these spirits were so very _froward_ that the present
heads of villages which they haunted, and the members of their little
communities, found it almost impossible to keep them in good humour;
and their cattle and children were, in consequence, always liable to
serious accidents of one kind or another. Sometimes they were bitten
by snakes, sometimes became possessed by devils, and, at others, were
thrown down and beaten most unmercifully. Any person who falls down
in an epileptic fit is supposed to be thrown down by a ghost, or
possessed by a devil.[3] They feel little of our mysterious dread of
ghosts; a sound _drubbing_ is what they dread from them, and he who
hurts himself in one of the fits is considered to have got it. 'As
for himself, whenever he found any one of the villages upon his
estate haunted by the spirit of an old "patêl" (village proprietor),
he always made a point of giving him a _neat little shrine_, and
having it well endowed and attended, to keep him in good humour; this
he thought was a duty that every landlord owed to his tenants.'
Râmchand, the pundit, said that 'villages which had been held by old
Gond (mountaineer) proprietors were more liable than any other to
those kinds of visitations; that it was easy to say what village was
and was not haunted, but often exceedingly difficult to discover to
whom the ghost belonged. This once discovered, his nearest surviving
relation was, of course, expected to take steps to put him to rest;
but', said he, 'it is wrong to suppose that the ghost of an old
proprietor must be always doing mischief--he is often the best friend
of the cultivators, and of the present proprietor too, if he treats
him with proper respect; for he will not allow the people of any
other village to encroach upon their boundaries with impunity, and
they will be saved all the expense and annoyance of a reference to
the "adâlat" (judicial tribunals) for the settlement of boundary
disputes. It will not cost much to conciliate these spirits, and the
money is generally well laid out.'
Several anecdotes were told me in illustration; and all that I could
urge against the probability or possibility of such Visitation
appeared to them very inconclusive and unsatisfactory. They mentioned
the case of the family of village proprietors in the Sâgar district,
who had for several generations, at every new settlement, insisted
upon having the name of the spirit of the old proprietor inserted in
the lease instead of their own, and thereby secured his good graces
on all occasions. Mr. Fraser had before mentioned this case to me. In
August, 1834, while engaged in the settlement of the land revenue of
the Sâgar district for twenty years, he was about to deliver the
lease of the estate made out in due form to the head of the family, a
very honest and respectable old gentleman, when he asked him
respectfully in whose name it had been made out. 'In yours, to be
sure; have you not renewed your lease for twenty years?' The old man,
in a state of great alarm, begged him to have it altered immediately,
or he and his family would all be destroyed--that the spirit of the
ancient proprietor presided over the village community and its
interests, and that all affairs of importance were transacted is his
name. 'He is', said the old man, 'a very jealous spirit, and will not
admit of any living man being considered for a moment as a proprietor
or joint proprietor of the estate. It has been held by me and my
ancestors immediately under Government for many generations; but the
lease deeds have always been made out in his name, and ours have been
inserted merely as his managers or bailiffs--were this good old rule,
under which we have so long prospered, to be now infringed, we should
all perish under his anger.' Mr. Fraser found, upon inquiring, that
this had really been the case; and, to relieve the old man and his
family from their fears, he had the papers made out afresh, and the
_ghost_ inserted as the proprietor. The modes of flattering and
propitiating these beings, natural and supernatural, who are supposed
to have the power to do mischief, are endless.[4]
While I was in charge of the district of Narsinghpur, in the valley
of the Nerbudda, in 1823, a cultivator of the village of Bêdû, about
twelve miles distant from my court, was one day engaged in the
cultivation of his field on the border of the village of Barkharâ,
which was supposed to be haunted by the spirit of an old proprietor,
whose temper was so froward and violent that the lands could hardly
be let for anything, for hardly any man would venture to cultivate
them lest he might unintentionally incur his ghostship's displeasure.
The poor cultivator, after begging his pardon in secret, ventured to
drive his plough a few yards beyond the proper line of his boundary,
and thus add half an acre of Barkharâ to his own little tenement,
which was situated in Bêdû. That very night his only son was bitten
by a snake, and his two bullocks were seized with the murrain. In
terror he went of to the village temple, confessed his sin, and
vowed, not only to restore the half-acre of land to the village of
Barkharâ, but to build a very handsome shrine upon the spot as a
perpetual sign of his repentance. The boy and the bullocks all three
recovered, and the shrine was built; and is, I believe, still to be
seen as the boundary mark.
The fact was that the village stood upon an elevated piece of ground
rising out of a moist plain, and a colony of snakes had taken up
their abode in it. The bites of these snakes had on many occasions
proved fatal, and such accidents were all attributed to the anger of
a spirit which was supposed to haunt the village. At one time, under
the former government, no one would take a lease of the village on
any terms, and it had become almost entirely deserted, though the
soil was the finest in the whole district. With a view to remove the
whole prejudices of the people, the governor, Goroba Pundit, took the
lease himself at the rent of one thousand rupees a year; and, in the
month of June, went from his residence, twelve miles, with ten of his
own ploughs to superintend the commencement of so _perilous_ an
undertaking.
On reaching the middle of the village, situated on the top of the
little hill, he alighted from his horse, sat down upon a carpet that
had been spread for him under a large and beautiful banyan-tree, and
began to refresh himself with a pipe before going to work in the
fields. As he quaffed his hookah, and railed at the follies of the
men, 'whose absurd superstitions had made them desert so beautiful a
village with so noble a tree in its centre', his eyes fell upon an
enormous black snake, which had coiled round one of its branches
immediately over his head, and seemed as if resolved at once to
pounce down and punish him for his blasphemy. He gave his pipe to his
attendant, mounted his horse, from which the saddle had not yet been
taken, and never pulled rein till he got home. Nothing could ever
induce him to visit this village again, though he was afterwards
employed under me as a native collector; and he has often told me
that he verily believed this was the spirit of the old landlord that
he had unhappily neglected to propitiate before taking possession.
My predecessor in the civil charge of that district, the late Mr.
Lindsay of the Bengal Civil Service, again tried to remove the
prejudices of the people against the occupation and cultivation of
this fine village. It had never been measured, and all the revenue
officers, backed by all the farmers and cultivators of the
neighbourhood, declared that the spirit of the old proprietor would
never allow it to be so. Mr. Lindsay was a good geometrician, and had
long been in the habit of superintending his revenue surveys himself,
and on this occasion be thought himself particularly called upon to
do so. A new measuring cord was made for the occasion, and, with fear
and trembling, all his officers attended him to the first field; but
in measuring it the rope, by some accident, broke. Poor Lindsay was
that morning taken ill and obliged to return to Narsinghpur, where he
died soon after from fever. No man was ever more beloved by all
classes of the people of his district than he was; and I believe
there was not one person among them who did not believe him to have
fallen a victim to the resentment of the spirit of the old
proprietor. When I went to the village some years afterwards, the
people in the neighbourhood all declared to me that they saw the cord
with which he was measuring fly into a thousand pieces the moment the
men attempted to straighten it over the first field.[5]
A very respectable old gentleman from the Concan, or Malabar
coast,[6] told me one day that every man there protects his field of
corn and his fruit-tree by dedicating it to one or other of the
spirits which there abound, or confiding it to his guardianship. He
sticks up something in the field, or ties on something to the tree,
in the name of the said spirit, who from that moment feels himself
responsible for its safe keeping. If any one, without permission from
the proprietor, presumes to take either an ear of corn from the
field, or fruit from the tree, he is sure to be killed outright, or
made extremely ill. 'No other protection is required', said the old
gentleman, 'for our fields and fruit-trees in that direction, though
whole armies should have to march through them.' I once saw a man
come to the proprietor of a jack-tree,[7] embrace his feet, and in
the most piteous manner implore his protection. He asked what was the
matter. 'I took', said the man, 'a jack from your tree yonder three
days ago, as I passed at night; and I have been suffering dreadful
agony in my stomach ever since. The spirit of the tree is upon me,
and you only can pacify him.' The proprietor took up a bit of cow-
dung, moistened it, and made a mark with it upon the man's forehead,
_in the name of the spirit_, and put some of it into the knot of hair
on the top of his head. He had no sooner done this than the man's
pains all left him, and he went off, vowing never again to give
similar cause of offence to one of these guardian spirits. 'Men',
said my old friend, 'do not die there in the same regulated spirit,
with their thoughts directed exclusively towards God, as in other
parts; and whether a man's spirit is to haunt the world or not after
his death all depends on that.'
Notes:
1. December, 1835.
2. Datiyâ (Datia, Dutteeah) is a small state, with an area of about
911 square miles, and a cash revenue of about four lâkhs of rupees.
On the east it touches the Jhânsî district, but in all other
directions it is enclosed by the territories of Sindhia, the Maharaja
of Gwâlior. The principality was separated from Orchhâ by a family
partition in the seventeenth century. The first treaty between the
Râjâ and the British Government was concluded on the 15th March,
1804.
3. The belief that epileptic patients are possessed by devils is, of
course, in no wise peculiar to India. It is almost universal.
Professor Lombroso discusses the belief in diabolical possession in
chap. 4 of _The Man of Genius_ (London ed., 1891).
4. 'The educated European of the nineteenth century cannot realize
the dread in which the Hindoo stands of devils. They haunt his paths
from the cradle to the grave. The Tamil proverb in fact says, "The
devil who seizes yon in the cradle, goes with you to the funeral
pile".' The fear and worship of ghosts, demons, and devils are
universal throughout India, and the rites practised are often
comical. The ghost of a bibulous European official with a hot temper,
who died at Muzaffarnagar, in the United Provinces, many years ago,
was propitiated by offerings of beer and whisky at 'his tomb. Much
information on the subject is collected in the articles 'Demon',
'Devils', 'Dehwâr', and 'Deified Warriors' in Balfour, _Cyclopaedia
of India_ (3rd ed.). Almost every number of Mr. Crooke's periodical
_North Indian Notes and Queries_ (Allahabad: Pioneer Press; London:
A. Constable & Co., 5 vols., from 1891-2 to 1895-6) gave fresh
instances of the oddities of demon-worship.
5. The officials of the native Governments were content to use either
a rope or a bamboo for field measurements, and these primitive
instruments continued to satisfy the early British officers. For many
years past a proper chain has been always employed for revenue
surveys.
6. 'The author uses the term 'Concan' (Konkan) in a wide sense, so as
to cover all the territory between the Western Ghâts and the sea,
including Malabar in the south. The term is often used in a more
restricted sense to mean Bombay and certain other districts, to the
north of Malabar.
7. _Artocarpus integrifolius_. The jack fruit attains an enormous
size, and sometimes weighs fifty or sixty pounds. Indians delight in
it, but to most Europeans it is extremely offensive.
CHAPTER 31
Interview with the Râjâ of Datiyâ--Fiscal Errors of Statesmen--
Thieves and Robbers by Profession.
On the 17th[1] we came to Datiyâ, nine miles over a dry and poor
soil, thinly, and only partially, covering a bed of brown and grey
syenite, with veins of quartz and feldspar, and here and there dykes
of basalt, and a few boulders scattered over the surface. The old
Râjâ, Parîchhit,[2] on one elephant, and his cousin, Dalîp Singh,
upon a second, and several of their relations upon others, all
splendidly caparisoned, came out two miles to meet us, with a very
large and splendid _cortège_. My wife, as usual, had gone on in her
palankeen very early, to avoid the crowd and dust of this 'istikbâl',
or meeting; and my little boy, Henry, went on at the same time in the
palankeen, having got a slight fever from too much exposure to the
sun in our slow and stately entrance into Jhânsî. There were more men
in steel chain armour in this _cortège_ than in that of Jhânsî; and,
though the elephants were not quite so fine, they were just as
numerous, while the crowd of foot attendants was still greater. They
were in fancy dresses, individually handsome, and collectively
picturesque; though, being all soldiers, not quite pleasing to the
eye of a soldier. I remarked to the Râjâ, as we rode side by side on
our elephants, that we attached much importance to having our
soldiers all in uniform dresses, according to their corps, while he
seemed to care little about these matters. 'Yes,' said the old man,
with a smile, 'with me every man pleases himself in his dress, and I
care not what he wears, provided it is neat and clean.' They
certainly formed a body more picturesque from being allowed
individually to consult their own fancies in their dresses, for the
native taste in dress is generally very good. Our three elephants
came on abreast, and the Râjâ and I conversed as freely as men in
such situations can converse. He is a stout, cheerful old gentleman,
as careless apparently about his own dress as about that of his
soldiers, and a much more sensible and agreeable person than I
expected; and I was sorry to learn from him that he had for twelve
years been suffering from an attack of sciatica on one side, which
had deprived him of the use of one of his legs. I was obliged to
consent to halt the next day that I might hunt in his preserve
(_ramnâ_) in the morning, and return his visit in the evening. In the
Râjâ's cortege there were several men mounted on excellent horses,
who carried guitars, and played upon them, and sang in a very
agreeable style, I had never before seen or heard of such a band, and
was both surprised and pleased.
The great part of the wheat, gram,[3] and other exportable land
produce which the people consume, as far as we have yet come, is
drawn from our Nerbudda districts, and those of Mâlwa which border
upon them; and, _par conséquent_, the price has been rapidly
increasing as we recede from them in our advance northward. Were the
soil of those Nerbudda districts, situated as they are at such a
distance from any great market for their agricultural products, as
bad as it is in the parts of Bundêlkhand that I came over, no net
surplus revenue could possibly be drawn from them in the present
state of arts and industry. The high prices paid here for land
produce, arising from the necessity of drawing a great part of what
is consumed from such distant lands, enables the Râjâs of these
Bundêlkhand states to draw the large revenue they do. These chiefs
expend the whole of their revenue in the maintenance of public
establishments of one kind or other; and, as the essential articles
of subsistence, wheat and gram, &c., which are produced in their own
districts, or those immediately around them, are not sufficient for
the supply of these establishments, they must draw them from distant
territories. All this produce is brought on the backs of bullocks,
because there is no road from the districts whence they obtain it,
over which a wheeled carriage can be drawn with safety; and, as this
mode of transit is very expensive, the price of the produce, when it
reaches the capitals, around which these local establishments are
concentrated, becomes very high. They must pay a price equal to the
collective cost of purchasing and bringing this substance from the
most distant districts, to which they are at any time obliged to have
recourse for a supply, or they will not be supplied; and, as there
cannot be two prices for the same thing in the same market, the wheat
and gram produced in the neighbourhood of one of these Bundêlkhand
capitals fetch as high a price there as that brought from the most
remote districts on the banks of the Nerbudda river; while it costs
comparatively nothing to bring it from the former lands to the
markets. Such lands, in consequence, yield a rate of rent much
greater compared with their natural powers of fertility than those of
the remotest districts whence produce is drawn for these markets or
capitals; and, as all the lands are the property of the Râjâs, they
drew all those rents as revenue.[4]
Were we to take this revenue, which the Rajas now enjoy, in tribute
for the maintenance of public establishments concentrated at distant
seats, all these local establishments would, of course, be at once
disbanded; and all the effectual demand which they afford for the raw
agricultural produce of distant districts would cease. The price of
this produce would diminish in proportion, and with it the value of
the lands of the districts around such capitals. Hence the folly of
conquerors and paramount powers, from the days of the Greeks and
Romans down to those of Lord Hastings[5] and Sir John Malcolm,[6] who
were all bad political economists, supposing that conquered and ceded
territories could always be made to yield to a foreign state the same
amount of gross revenue as they had paid to their domestic
government, whatever their situation with reference to the markets
for their produce--whatever the state of their arts and their
industry--and whatever the character and extent of the local
establishments maintained out of it. The settlements of the land
revenue in all the territories acquired in Central India during the
Marâthâ war, which ended in 1817, were made upon the supposition that
the lands would continue to pay the same rate of rent under the new
as they had paid under the old government, uninfluenced by the
diminution of all local establishments, civil and military, to one-
tenth of what they had been; that, under the new order of things, all
the waste lands must be brought into tillage, and be able to pay as
high a rate of rent as before tillage, and, consequently, that the
aggregate available net revenue must greatly and rapidly increase.
Those who had the making of the settlements and the governing of
these new territories did not consider that the diminution of every
_establishment_ was the removal of a _market_, of an effectual demand
for land produce; and that, when all the waste lands should be
brought into tillage, the whole would deteriorate in fertility, from
the want of fallows, Under the prevailing system of agriculture,
which afforded the lands no other means of renovation from over-
cropping. The settlements of land which were made throughout our new
land acquisitions upon these fallacious assumptions of course failed.
During a series of quinquennial settlements the assessment has been
everywhere gradually reduced to about two-thirds of what it was when
our rule began, to less than one-half of what Sir John Malcolm, and
all the other local authorities, and even the worthy Marquis of
Hastings himself, under the influence of their opinions, expected it
would be. The land revenues of the native princes of Central India,
who reduced their public establishments, which the new order of
things seemed to render useless, and thereby diminished the only
markets for the raw produce of their lands, have been everywhere
falling off in the same proportion; and scarcely one of them now
draws two-thirds of the income he drew from the same lands in 1817.
There are in the valley of the Nerbudda districts that yield a great
deal more produce every year than either Orchhâ, Jhânsî, or Datiyâ;
and yet, from the want of the same domestic markets, they do not
yield one-fourth of the amount of land revenue. The lands are,
however, rated equally high to the assessment, in proportion to their
value to the farmers and cultivators. To enable them to yield a
larger revenue to Government, they require to have larger
establishments as markets for land produce. These establishments may
be either public, and paid by Government; or they may be private, as
manufactories, by which the land produce of these districts would be
consumed by people employed in investing the value of their labour in
commodities suited to the demand of distant markets, and more
valuable than land produce in proportion to their weight and bulk.[7]
These are the establishments which Government should exert itself to
introduce and foster; since the valley of the Nerbudda, in addition
to a soil exceedingly fertile, has in its whole line, from its source
to its embouchure, rich beds of coal reposing for the use of future
generations, under the sandstone of the Sâtpura and Vindhya ranges,
and beds no less rich of very fine iron. These advantages have not
yet been justly appreciated; but they will be so by and by.[8]
About half-past four in the afternoon of the day we reached Datiyâ, I
had a visit from the Râjâ, who came in his palankeen, with a very
respectable, but not very numerous or noisy, train, and he sat with
me about an hour. My large tents were both pitched parallel to each
other, about twenty paces distant, and united to each other at both
ends by separate 'kanâts', or cloth curtains. My little boy was
present, and behaved extremely well in steadily refusing, without
even a look from me, a handful of gold mohurs, which the Râjâ pressed
several times upon his acceptance. I received him at the door of my
tent, and supported him upon my arm to his chair, as he cannot walk
without some slight assistance, from the affection already mentioned
in his leg. A salute from the guns at his castle announced his
departure and return to it. After the audience, Lieutenant Thomas and
I ascended to the summit of a palace of the former Râjâs of this
state, which stands upon a high rock close inside the eastern gate of
the city, whence we could see to the west of the city a still larger
and handsomer palace standing, I asked our conductors, the Râjâ's
servants, why it was unoccupied. 'No prince these degenerate days',
said they, 'could muster a family and court worthy of such a palace--
the family and court of the largest of them would, within the walls
of such a building, feel as if they were in a desert. Such palaces
were made for princes of the older times, who were quite different
beings from those of the present day.'
From the deserted palace we went to the new garden which is preparing
for the young Râjâ, an adopted son of about ten years of age. It is
close to the southern wall of the city, and is very extensive and
well managed. The orange-trees are all grafted, and sinking under the
weight of as fine fruit as any in India. Attempting to ascend the
steps of an empty bungalow upon a raised terrace at the southern
extremity of the garden, the attendants told us respectfully that
they hoped we would take off our shoes if we wished to enter, as the
ancestor of the Râjâ by whom it was built, Râm Chand, had lately
_become a god_, and was there worshipped. The roof is of stone,
supported on carved stone pillars. On the centre pillar, upon a
ground of whitewash, is a hand or trident. This is the only sign of a
sacred character the building has yet assumed; and I found that it
owed this character of sanctity to the circumstance of some one
having vowed an offering to the manes of the builder, if he obtained
what his soul most desired; and, having obtained it, all the people
believe that those who do the same at the same place in a pure spirit
of faith will obtain what they pray for.
I made some inquiries about Hardaul Lâla, the son of Bîrsingh Deo,
who built the fort of Dhamonî, one of the ancestors of the Datiyâ
Râjâ, and found that he was as much worshipped here at his birthplace
as upon the banks of the Nerbudda as the supposed great _originator_
of the cholera morbus. There is at Datiyâ a temple dedicated to him
and much frequented; and one of the priests brought me a flower in
his name, and chanted something indicating that Hardaul Lâla was now
worshipped even so far as the British _capital of Calcutta_, I asked
the old prince what he thought of the origin of the worship of this
his ancestor; and he told me that when the cholera broke out first in
the camp of Lord Hastings, then pitched about three stages from his
capital, on the bank of the Sindh at Chândpur Sunârî, several people
recovered from the disease immediately after making votive offerings
in his name; and that he really thought the spirit of his great-
grandfather had worked some wonderful cures upon people afflicted
with this dreadful malady.[9]
The town of Datiyâ contains a population of between forty and fifty
thousand souls. The streets are narrow, for, in buildings, as in
dress, the Râjâ allows every man to consult his own inclinations.
There are, however, a great many excellent houses in Datiyâ, and the
appearance of the place is altogether very good. Many of his
feudatory chiefs reside occasionally in the city, and have all their
establishments with them, a practice which does not, I believe,
prevail anywhere else among these Bundêlkhand chiefs, and this makes
the capital much larger, handsomer, and more populous than that of
Tehrî. This indicates more of mutual confidence between the chief and
his vassals, and accords well with the character they bear in the
surrounding countries. Some of the houses occupied by these barons
are very pretty. They spend the revenue of their distant estates in
adorning them, and embellishing the capital, which they certainly
could not have ventured to do under the late Râjâs of Tehrî, and may
not possibly be able to do under the future Rajas of Datiyâ. The
present minister of Datiyâ, Ganêsh, is a very great knave, and
encourages the residence upon his master's estate of all kinds of
thieves and robbers, who bring back from distant districts every
season vast quantities of booty, which they share with him. The chief
himself is a mild old gentleman, who would not suffer violence to be
offered to any of his nobles, though he would not, perhaps, quarrel
with his minister for getting him a little addition to his revenue
from without, by affording a sanctuary to such kind of people. As in
Tehrî, so here, the pickpockets constitute the entire population of
several villages, and carry their depredations northward to the banks
of the Indus, and southward to Bombay and Madras.[10] But colonies of
thieves and robbers like these abound no less in our own territories
than in those of native states. There are more than a thousand
families of them in the districts of Muzaffarnagar, Sahâranpur, and
Meerut in the Upper Doâb,[11] all well enough known to the local
authorities, who can do nothing with them.
They extend their depredations into remote districts, and the booty
they bring home with them they share liberally with the native police
and landholders under whose protection they live. Many landholders
and police officers make large fortunes from the share they get of
this booty. Magistrates do not molest them, because they would
despair of ever finding the proprietors of the property that might be
found upon them; and, if they could trace them, they would never be
able to persuade them to come and 'enter upon a worse sea of
troubles' in prosecuting them. These thieves and robbers of the
professional classes, who have the sagacity to avoid plundering near
home, are always just as secure in our best regulated districts as
they are in the worst native states, from the only three things which
such depredators care about--the penal laws, the odium of the society
in which they move, and the vengeance of the god they worship; and
they are always well received in the society around them, as long as
they can avoid having their neighbours annoyed by summons to give
evidence for or against them in our courts. They feel quite sure of
the goodwill of the god they worship, provided they give a fair share
of their booty to his priests; and no less secure of immunity from
penal laws, except on very rare occasions when they happen to be
taken in the tact, in a country where such laws happen to be in
force.[12]
Notes:
1. December, 1835.
2. Râjâ Parîchhit died in 1839.
3. The word gram (_Cicer arietinum_) is misprinted 'grain' in the
author's text, in this place and in many others.
4. Bundêlkhand exports to the Ganges a great quantity of cotton,
which enables it to pay for the wheat, gram, and other land produce
which it draws from distant districts, [W. H. S.] Other considerable
exports from Bundêlkhand used to be the root of the _Morinda
citrifolia_, yielding a dark red dye, and the coarse _kharwâ_ cloth,
a kind of canvas, dyed with this dye, which is known by the name of
'_ âl_'. But modern chemistry has nearly killed the trade in
vegetable dyes. The construction of railways and roads has
revolutionized the System of trade, and equalized prices.
5. Governor-General from October 4, 1813, till January 1, 1823. He
was Earl of Moira when he assumed office.
6. Sir John Malcolm was Agent to the Governor-General in Central
India from 1817 to 1822, and was appointed Governor of Bombay in
1827.
7. The construction of railways and the development of trade with
Europe have completely altered the conditions. The Nerbudda valley
can now yield a considerable revenue.
8. The iron ore no doubt is good, but the difficulties in the way of
working it profitably are so great that the author's sanguine
expectations seem unlikely to be fully realized. V. Ball, in his day
the best authority on the subject, observes, 'As will be abundantly
shown in the course of the following pages, the manufacture of iron
has, in many parts of India, been wholly crushed out of existence by
competition with English iron, while in others it is steadily
decreasing, and it seems destined to become extinct' (_Economic
Geology_ (1881), being part of the _Manual of the Geology of India_,
p. 338). Ball thought that, if improved methods of reduction should
be employed, the Chândâ ore might be worked profitably. As regards
the rest of India, with the doubtful exception of Upper Assam, he had
little hope of success. Full details of the working of the mines in
the Jabalpur, Narsinghpur, and Chândâ districts of the Central
Provinces are given in pp. 384 to 392 of the same work. See also _I.
G._ (1908), vol. x, p. 51; and _The Oxford Survey of the British
Empire_ (Oxford, 1914), vol. ii, Asia, pp. 143, 160. A powerful
company formed at Bombay in 1907, operating at a spot on the borders
of the Central Provinces and Orissa, hopes to turn out 7,000 tons of
'steel shapes' per month.
Coal is not found below the very ancient sandstone rocks, classed by
geologists under the name of the Vindhyan Series. The principal beds
of coal are found in the great series of rocks, known collectively as
the Gondwâna System, which is supposed to range in age from the
Permian to the Upper Jurassic periods of European geologists
(_Manual_, vol. i, p. 102). This Gondwâna System includes sandstones.
A coalfield at Mohpâni, ninety-five miles west-south-west from
Jabalpur by rail, was worked from 1862 to 1904 by the Nerbudda Coal
and Iron Company; and is now worked by the G. I. P. Railway Company.
The principal coal-field of the Central Provinces for some years was
that near Warôrâ in the Chândâ district, but the amount which can be
extracted profitably is approaching exhaustion; in fact the colliery
was closed in 1906. Thick seams are known to exist to the south of
Chândâ near the Wardhâ river. See _I. G._, 1907, vol. iii, chap. iii,
p. 135; vol. x. p. 51.
9. See note to Chapter 25, _ante_, note 7.
10. 'Pickpockets' is not a suitable term.
11. The Persian word 'doâb' means the tract of land between two
rivers, which ultimately meet. The upper doâb referred to in the text
lies between the Ganges and the Jumna.
12. These 'colonies of thieves and robbers' are still the despair of
the Indian administrator. They are known to Anglo-Indian law as
'criminal tribes', and a special Act has been passed for their
regulation. The principle of that Act is police supervision,
exercised by means of visits of inspection, and the issue of
passports. The Act has been applied from time to time to various
tribes, but has in every case failed. In 1891, Sir Auckland Colvin,
then Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces, adopted the
strong measure of suddenly capturing many hundreds of Sânsias, a
troublesome criminal tribe, in the Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, and Alîgarh
Districts. Some of the prisoners were sent to a special jail, or
reformatory, called a 'settlement', at Sultânpur in Oudh, and the
others were drafted off to various landlords' estates. These latter
were supposed to devote themselves to agriculture. The editor, as
Magistrate of Muzaffarnagar, effected the capture of more than seven
hundred Sânsias in that district, and dispatched them in accordance
with orders. As most people expected, the agricultural pupils
promptly absconded. Multitudes of Sânsias in the Panjâb and elsewhere
remained unaffected by the raid, which could not have any permanent
effect. The milder expedient of settling and nursing a large colony,
organized in villages, of another criminal tribe, the Bâwarias
(Boureahs), was also tried many years ago in the same district of
Muzaffarnagar. The people settled readily enough, and reclaimed a
considerable area of waste land, but were not in the least degree
reformed. At the beginning of the cold season, in October or
November, most of the able-bodied men annually leave the villages,
and remain absent on distant forays till March or April, when they
return with their booty, enjoying almost complete immunity, for the
reasons stated in the text. On one occasion some of these Bâwarias of
Muzaffarnagar stole a lâkh and a half of rupees (about £12,000 at
that time), in currency notes at Tuticorin, in the south of the
peninsula, 1,400 miles distant from their home. The number of such
criminal tribes, or castes, is very great, and the larger of these
communities, such as the Sânsias, each comprise many thousands of
members, diffused over an enormous area in several provinces. It is,
therefore, impossible to put them down, except by the use of drastic
measures such as no civilized European Government could propose or
sanction. The criminal tribes, or castes, are, to a large extent,
races; but, in many of these castes, fresh blood is constantly
introduced by the admission of outsiders, who are willing to eat with
the members of the tribe, and so become for ever incorporated in the
brotherhood. The gipsies of Europe are closely related to certain of
these Indian tribes. The official literature on the subject is of
considerable bulk. Mr. W. Crooke's small book, _An Ethnographic
Glossary_, published in 1891 (Government Press, Allahabad), is a
convenient summary of most of the facts on record concerning the
criminal and other castes of Northern India, and gives abundant
references to other publications. See also his larger work, _Castes
and Tribes of the N. W. P. and Oudh_, 4 vols. Calcutta, 1906. The
author's folio book, _Report on the Budhuk alias Bagree Decoits and
other Gang Robbers by Hereditary Profession, and on the Measures
adopted by the Government of India for their Suppression_ (Calcutta,
1849), _ante_, Bibliography No. 12, probably is the most valuable of
the original authorities on the subject, but it is rare and seldom
consulted.
CHAPTER 32
Sporting at Datiyâ--Fidelity of Followers to their Chiefs in India--
Law of Primogeniture wanting among Muhammadans.
The morning after we reached Datiyâ, I went out with Lieutenant
Thomas to shoot and hunt in the Râjâ's large preserve, and with the
_humane_ and determined resolution of killing no more game than our
camp would be likely to eat; for we were told that the deer and wild
hogs were so very numerous that we might shoot just as many as we
pleased.[l] We were posted upon two terraces, one near the gateway,
and the other in the centre of the preserve; and, after waiting here
an hour, we got each a shot at a hog. Hares we saw, and might have
shot, but we had loaded all our barrels with ball for other game. We
left the 'ramnâ', which is a quadrangle of about one hundred acres of
thick grass, shrubs, and brushwood, enclosed by a high stone wall.
There is one gate on the west side, and this is kept open during the
night, to let the game out and in. It is shut and guarded during the
day, when the animals are left to repose in the shade, except on such
occasions as the present, when the Râjâ wants to give his guests a
morning's sport. On the plains and woods outside we saw a good many
large deer, but could not manage to get near them in our own way, and
had not patience to try that of the natives, so that we came back
without killing anything, or having had any occasion to exercise our
_forbearance_. The Râjâ's people, as soon as we left them, went about
their sport after their own fashion, and brought us a fine buck
antelope after breakfast. They have a bullock trained to go about the
fields with them, led at a quick pace by a halter, with which the
sportsman guides him, as he walks along with him by the side opposite
to that facing the deer he is in pursuit of. He goes round the deer
as he grazes in the field, shortening the distance at every circle
till he comes within shot. At the signal given the bullock stands
still, and the sportsman rests his gun upon his back and fires. They
seldom miss. Others go with a fine buck and doe antelope, tame, and
trained to browse upon the fresh bushes, which are woven for the
occasion into a kind of hand-hurdle, behind which a man creeps along
over the fields towards the herd of wild ones, or sits still with his
matchlock ready, and pointed out through the leaves. The herd seeing
the male and female strangers so very busily and agreeably employed
upon their apparently inviting repast, advance to accost them, and
are shot when they get within a secure distance.[2] The hurdle was
filled with branches from the 'dhau' (_Lythrum fructuosum_) tree, of
which the jungle is for the most part composed, plucked as we went
along; and the tame antelopes, having been kept long fasting for the
purpose, fed eagerly upon them. We had also two pairs of falcons; but
a knowledge of the brutal manner in which these birds are fed and
taught is enough to prevent any but a _brute_ from taking much
delight in the sport they afford.[3]
The officer who conducted us was evidently much disappointed, for he
was really very anxious, as he knew his master the Râjâ was, that we
should have a good day's sport. On our way back I made him ride by my
side, and talk to me about Datiyâ, since he had been unable to show
me any sport. I got his thoughts into a train that I knew would
animate him, if he had any soul at all for poetry or poetical
recollections, as I thought he had. 'The noble works in palaces and
temples,' said he, 'which you see around you, Sir, mouldering in
ruins, were built by princes who had beaten emperors in battle, and
whose spirits still hover over and protect the place. Several times,
under the late disorders which preceded your paramount rule in
Hindustan, when hostile forces assembled around us, and threatened
our capital with destruction, lights and elephants innumerable were
seen from the tops of those battlements, passing and repassing under
the walls, ready to defend them had the enemy attempted an assault.
Whenever our soldiers endeavoured to approach near them, they
disappeared; and everybody knew that they were spirits of men like
Bîrsingh Deo and Hardaul Lâla that had come to our aid, and we never
lost confidence.' It is easy to understand the devotion of men to
their chiefs when they believe their progenitors to have been
demigods, and to have been faithfully served by their ancestors for
several generations. We neither have, nor ever can have, servants so
personally devoted to us as these men are to their chiefs, though we
have soldiers who will fight under our banners with as much courage
and fidelity. They know that their grandfathers served the
grandfathers of these chiefs, and they hope their grandchildren will
serve their grandsons. The one feels as much pride and pleasure in so
serving, as the other in being so served; and both hope that the link
which binds them may never be severed. Our servants, on the contrary,
private and public, are always in dread that some accident, some
trivial fault, or some slight offence, not to be avoided, will sever
for ever the link that binds them to their master.
The fidelity of the military classes of the people of India to their
immediate chief, or leader, whose _salt they eat_, has been always
very remarkable, and commonly bears little relation to his _moral
virtues_, or conduct to _his_ superiors. They feel that it is their
duty to serve him who feeds and protects them and their families in
all situations, and under all circumstances; and the chief feels
that, while he has a right to their services, it is his imperative
duty so to feed and protect them and their families. He may change
sides as often as he pleases, but the relations between him and his
followers remain unchanged. About the side he chooses to take in a
contest for dominion, they ask no questions, and feel no
responsibility. God has placed their destinies in dependence upon
his; and to him they cling to the last. In Mâlwa, Bhopâl, and other
parts of Central India, the Muhammadan rule could be established over
that of the Râjpût chief only by the annihilation of the entire race
of their followers.[4] In no part of the world has the devotion of
soldiers to their immediate chief been more remarkable than in India
among the Râjpûts; and in no part of the world bas the fidelity of
these chiefs to the paramount power been more unsteady, or their
devotion less to be relied upon. The laws of Muhammad, which
prescribe that the property in land be divided equally among the
sons,[5] leaves no rule for succession to territorial or political
dominion. It has been justly observed by Hume: 'The right of
primogeniture was introduced with the feudal law; an institution
which is hurtful by producing and maintaining an unequal division of
property; but it is advantageous in another respect by accustoming
the people to a preference for the eldest son, and thereby preventing
a partition or disputed succession in the monarchy.'
Among the Muhammadan princes there was no law that bound the whole
members of a family to obey the eldest son of a deceased prince.
Every son of the Emperor of Hindustan considered that he had a right
to set up his claim to the throne, vacated by the death of his
father; and, in anticipation of that death, to strengthen his claim
by negotiations and intrigues with all the territorial chiefs and
influential nobles of the empire. However _prejudicial to the
interests_ of his elder brother such measures might be, they were
never considered to be an _invasion of his rights_, because such
rights had never been established by the laws of their prophet. As
all the sons considered that they had an equal right to solicit the
support of the chiefs and nobles, so all the chiefs and nobles
considered that they could adopt the cause of whichever _son_ they
chose, without incurring the reproach of either _treason_ or
dishonour. The one who succeeded thought himself justified by the law
of self-preservation to put, not only his brothers, but all their
sons, to death; so that there was, after every new succession, an
entire _clearance_ of all the male members of the imperial family.
Aurangzêb said to his pedantic tutor, who wished to be raised to high
station on his accession to the imperial throne, 'Should not you,
instead of your flattery, have taught me something of that point so
important to a king, which is, what are the reciprocal duties of a
sovereign to his subjects, and those of the subjects to their
sovereign? And ought not you to have considered that one day I should
be obliged, with the sword, to dispute my life and the crown with my
brothers? Is not that the destiny, almost of all the sons of
Hindustan?'[6] Now that they have become pensioners of the British
Government, the members increase like white ants; and, as Malthus has
it, 'press so hard against their means of subsistence' that a great
many of them are absolutely starving, in spite of the enormous
pension the head of the family receives for their maintenance.[7]
The city of Datiyâ is surrounded by a stone wall about thirty feet
high, with its foundation on a solid rock; but it has no ditch or
glacis, and is capable of little or no defence against cannon. In the
afternoon I went, accompanied by Lieutenant Thomas, and followed by
the best _cortège_ we could muster, to return the Râjâ's visit. He
resides within the walls of the city in a large square garden,
enclosed with a high wall, and filled with fine orange-trees, at this
time bending under the weight of the most delicious fruit. The old
chief received us at the bottom of a fine flight of steps leading up
to a handsome pavilion, built upon the wall of one of the faces of
this garden. It was enclosed at the back, and in front looked into
the garden through open arcades. The floors were spread with handsome
carpets of the Jhânsî manufacture. In front of the pavilion was a
wide terrace of polished stone, extending to the top of the flight of
the steps; and, in the centre of this terrace, and directly opposite
to us as we looked into the garden, was a fine _jet d'eau_ in a large
basin of water in full play, and, with its shower of diamonds,
showing off the rich green and red of the orange-trees to the best
advantage.
The large quadrangle thus occupied is called the 'kila', or fort, and
the wall that surrounds it is thirty feet high, with a round
embattled tower at each corner. On the east face is a fine large
gateway for the entrance, with a curtain as high as the wall itself.
Inside the gate is a piece of ordnance painted red, with the largest
calibre I ever saw.[8] This is fired once a year, at the festival of
the Dasahra.[9]
Our arrival at the wall was announced by a salute from some fine
brass guns upon the bastions near the gateway. As we advanced from
the gateway up through the garden to the pavilion, we were again
serenaded by our friends with their guitars and excellent voices.
They were now on foot, and arranged along both sides of the walk that
we had to pass through. The open garden space within the walls
appeared to me to be about ten acres. It is crossed and recrossed at
right angles by numerous walks, having rows of plantain and other
fruit trees on each side; and orange, pomegranate, and other small
fruit trees to fill the space between; and anything more rich and
luxuriant one can hardly conceive. In the centre of the north and
west sides are pavilions with apartments for the family above,
behind, and on each side of the great reception room, exactly similar
to that in which we were received on the south face. The whole
formed, I think, the most delightful residence that I have seen for a
hot climate. There is, however, no doubt that the most healthy
stations in this, and every other hot climate, are those situated
upon dry, open, sandy plains, with neither shrubberies nor
basins.[10]
We were introduced to the young Râjâ, the old man's adopted son, a
lad of about ten years of age, who is to be married in February next.
He is plain in person, but has a pleasing expression of countenance;
and, if he be moulded after the old man, and not after his minister,
the country may perhaps have in him the 'lucky accident' of a good
governor.[11] I have rarely seen a finer or more prepossessing man
than the Râjâ, and all his subjects speak well of him. We had an
elephant, a horse, abundance of shawls, and other fine clothes placed
before us as presents; but I prayed the old gentleman to keep them
all for me till I returned, as I was a mere voyageur without the
means of carrying such valuable things in safety; but he would not be
satisfied till I had taken two plain hilts of swords and spears, the
manufacture of Datiyâ, and of little value, which Lieutenant Thomas
and I promised to keep for his sake. The rest of the presents were
all taken back to their places. After an hour's talk with the old man
and his ministers, attar of roses and pân were distributed, and we
took our leave to go and visit the old palace, which as yet we had
seen only from a distance. There were only two men besides the Râjâ,
his son, and ourselves, seated upon chairs. All the other principal
persons of the court sat around cross-legged on the carpet; but they
joined freely in the conversation, I was told by these courtiers how
often the young chief had, during the day, asked when he could have
the happiness of seeing me; and the old chief was told, in my
hearing, how many _good things_ I had said since I came into his
territories, all tending to his honour and my credit. This is a
species of barefaced flattery to which we are all doomed to submit in
our intercourse with these native chiefs; but still, to a man of
sense, it never ceases to be distressing and offensive; for he can
hardly ever help feeling that they must think him a mere child before
they could venture to treat him with it. This is, however, to put too
harsh a construction upon what in reality, the people mean only as
civility; and they, who can so easily consider the grandfathers of
their chiefs as gods, and worship them as such, may be suffered to
treat _us_ as heroes and sayers of good things without offence.[12]
We ascended to the summit of the old palace, and were well repaid for
the trouble by the view of an extremely rich sheet of wheat, gram,
and other spring crops, extending to the north and east, as far as
the eye could reach, from the dark belt of forest, three miles deep,
with which the Râjâ has surrounded his capital on every side as
hunting grounds. The lands comprised in this forest are, for the most
part, exceedingly poor, and water for irrigation is unattainable
within them, so that little is lost by this taste of the chief for
the sports of the field, in which, however, he cannot himself now
indulge.
On the 19th[13] we left Datiyâ, and, after emerging from the
surrounding forest, came over a fine plain covered with rich spring
crops for ten miles, till we entered among the ravines of the river
Sindh, whose banks are, like those of all rivers in this part of
India, bordered to a great distance by these deep and ugly
inequalities. Here they are almost without grass or shrubs to clothe
their hideous nakedness, and have been formed by the torrents, which,
in the season of the rains, rush from the extensive plain, as from a
wide ocean, down to the deep channel of the river in narrow streams.
These streams cut their way easily through the soft alluvial soil,
which must once have formed the bed of a vast lake.[14] On coming
through the forest, before sunrise we discovered our error of the day
before, for we found excellent deer-shooting in the long grass and
brushwood, which grow luxuriantly at some distance from the city. Had
we come out a couple of miles the day before, we might have had noble
sport, and really required the _forbearance and humanity_ to which we
had so magnanimously resolved to sacrifice our 'pride of art' as
sportsmen; for we saw many herds of the nîlgâi, antelope, and spotted
deer,[15] browsing within a few paces of us, within the long grass
and brushwood on both sides of the road. We could not stay, however,
to indulge in much sport, having a long march before us.
Notes:
1. Some readers may be shocked at the notion of the author shooting
pig, but, in Bundêlkhand, where pig-sticking, or hog-hunting, as the
older writers call it, is not practised, hog-shooting is quite
legitimate.
2. The common antelope, or black buck (_Antilope bezoartica_, or
_cervicapra_) feed in herds, sometimes numbering many hundreds, in
the open plains, especially those of black soil. Men armed with
matchlocks can scarcely get a shot except by adopting artifices
similar to those described in the text.
3. Sixteen species of hawks, belonging to several genera, are trained
in India. They are often fed by being allowed to suck the blood from
the breasts of live pigeons, and their eyes are darkened by means of
a silken thread passed through holes in the eyelids. 'Hawking is a
very dull and very cruel sport. A person must become insensible to
the sufferings of the most beautiful and most inoffensive of the
brute creation before he can feel any enjoyment in it. The cruelty
lies chiefly in the mode of feeding the hawks' (_Journey through the
Kingdom of Oude_, vol. i, p, 109). Asoka forbade the practice by the
words: 'The living must not be fed with the living' (Pillar Edict V,
_c._ 243 B.C., in V. A. Smith, _Asoka_, 2nd ed. (1909), p. 188).
4. The wording of this sentence is unfortunate, and it is not easy to
understand why the author mentioned Bhopâl. The principality of
Bhopâl was formed by Dost Mohammed Khân, an Afghân officer of
Aurangzêb, who became independent a few years after that sovereign's
death in 1707. Since that time the dynasty has always continued to be
Muhammadan. The services of Sikandar Bêgam in the Mutiny are well
known. Mâlwa is the country lying between Bundêlkhand, on the east,
and Râjputâna, on the west, and includes Bhopâl. Most of the states
in this region are now ruled by Hindoos, but the local dynasty which
ruled the kingdom of Mâlwa and Mândû from A.D. 1401 to 1531 was
Musalmân. (See Thomas, _Chronicles of the Pathan Kings of Dehli_, pp.
346-53.)
5. All near relatives succeed to a Muhammadan's estate, which is
divided, under complicated rules, into the necessary number of
shares. A son's share is double that of a daughter. As between
themselves all sons share equally.
6. Bernier's _Revolutions of the Mogul Empire_. [W. H. S.] The author
seems to have used either the London edition of 1671, entitled _The
History of the Late Revolution of the Empire of the Great Mogul_, or
one of the reprints of that edition. The anecdote referred to is
called by Bernier 'an uncommonly good story'. Aurangzêb made a long
speech, ending by dismissing the unlucky pedagogue with the words:
'Go! withdraw to thy native village. Henceforth let no man know
either who thou art, or what is become of thee.' (Bernier, _Travels
in the Mogul Empire_, pp. 154-161, ed. Constable and V. A, Smith,
1914.) Manucci repeats the story with slight variations (_Storie da
Mogor_, vol. ii, pp. 29-33).
7. Compare the forcible description of the state of the Delhi royal
family in Chapter 76, _post_. The old emperor's pension was one
hundred thousand rupees a month. The events of the Mutiny effected a
considerable clearance, though the number of persons claiming
relationship with the royal house is still large. A few of these have
taken service under the British Government, but have not
distinguished themselves.
8. The author, unfortunately, does not give the dimensions of this
piece. Rûmî Khân's gun at Bîjâpur, which was cast in the sixteenth
century at Ahmadnagar, is generally considered the largest ancient
cannon in India. It is fifteen feet long, and weighs about forty-one
tons, the calibre being two feet four inches. Like the gun at Datiyâ,
it is painted with red lead, and is worshipped by Hindoos, who are
always ready to worship every manifestation of power. Another big gun
at Bîjâpur is thirty feet in length, built up of bars bound together.
Other very large pieces exist at Gâwîlgarh in Berâr, and Bîdar in the
Nîzam's dominions. (Balfour, _Cyclopaedia_, 3rd ed., s.v. Gun,
Bîjâpur, Gawilgarh Hill Range, and Beder.)
9. The Dasahra festival, celebrated at the beginning of October,
marks the close of the rains and the commencement of the cold season.
It is observed by all classes of Hindus, but especially by Râjâs and
the military classes, for whom this festival has peculiar importance.
In the old days no prince or commander, whether his command consisted
of soldiers or robbers, ever undertook regular operations until the
Dasahra had been duly observed. All Râjâs still receive valuable
offerings on this occasion, which form an important element in their
revenue. In some places buffaloes are sacrificed by the Râjâ in
person. The soldiers worship the weapons which they hope to use
during the coming season. Among the Marâthâs the ordnance received
especial attention and worship. The ceremony of worshipping certain
leguminous trees at this festival has been noticed _ante_, Chapter 26
note 8.
10. Few Europeans nowadays could join in the author's enthusiastic
admiration of the Datiyâ garden. The arrangements seem to have been
those usual in large formal native gardens in Northern India.
11. This lad has since succeeded his adoptive father as the chief of
the Datiyâ principality. The old chief found him one day lying in the
grass, as he was shooting through one of his preserves. His elephant
was very near treading upon the infant before he saw it. He brought
home the boy, adopted him as his son, and declared him his successor,
from having no son of his own. The British Government, finding that
the people generally seemed to acquiesce in the old man's wishes,
sanctioned the measure, as the paramount power. [W. H. S.] The old
Râjâ died in 1839, and the succession of the boy, Bijai Bahâdur, thus
strangely favoured by fortune, was unsuccessfully opposed by one of
the nobles of the state. Bijai Bahâdur governed the state with
sufficient success until his death in 1857. The succession was then
again disputed, and disturbances took place which were suppressed by
an armed British force. The state is still governed by its hereditary
ruler, who has been granted the privilege of adoption (_N.W.P.
Gazetteer_, 1st ed., vol. i, p. 410, s.v. Datiyâ).
12. The fact is that all Oriental rulers thoroughly enjoy the most
outrageous flattery, and would feel defrauded if they did not get it
in abundance. Even Akbar, the greatest of them, could enjoy it, and
allow the courtly poet to say 'See Akbar, and you see God'. Indians
find it difficult to believe that European officials really dislike
attentions which are exacted by rulers of their own races.
13. December, 1835.
14. This theory is probably incorrect. See _ante_, Chapter 14, note
7, on formation of black soil.
15. Nîlgâi, or 'blue-bull', a huge, heavy antelope of bovine form,
common in India, scientifically named _Portax pictus_. By 'antelope'
the author means the common antelope, or black buck, the _Antilope
bezoartica_, or _cervicapra_ of naturalists. The spotted deer, or
'chîtal', a very handsome creature, is the _Axis maculata_ of Gray,
the _Cervus axis_ of other zoologists.
CHAPTER 33
'Bhûmiâwat.'
Though no doubt very familiar to our ancestors during the Middle
Ages, this is a thing happily but little understood in Europe at the
present day. 'Bhûmiâwat', in Bundêlkhand, signifies a war or fight
for landed inheritance, from 'bhûm', the land, earth, &c.; 'bhûmia',
a landed proprietor.
When a member of the landed aristocracy, no matter how small, has a
dispute with his ruler, he collects his followers, and levies
indiscriminate war upon his territories, plundering and burning his
towns and villages, and murdering their inhabitants till he is
invited back upon his own terms. During this war it is a point of
honour not to allow a single acre of land to be tilled upon the
estate which he has deserted, or from which he has been driven; and
he will murder any man who attempts to drive a plough in it, together
with all his family, if he can. The smallest member of this landed
aristocracy of the Hindoo military class will often cause a terrible
devastation during the interval that he is engaged in his bhûmiâwat;
for there are always vast numbers of loose characters floating upon
the surface of Indian society, ready to 'gird up their loins' and use
their sharp swords in the service of marauders of this kind, when
they cannot get employment in that of the constituted authorities of
government.
Such a marauder has generally the sympathy of nearly all the members
of his own class and clan, who are apt to think that his case may one
day be their own. He is thus looked upon as contending for the
interests of all; and, if his chief happens to be on bad terms with
other chiefs in the neighbourhood, the latter will clandestinely
support the outlaw and his cause, by giving him and his followers
shelter in the hills and jungles, and concealing their families and
stolen property in their castles. It is a maxim in India, and, in the
less settled parts of it, a very true one, that 'one Pindhâra or
robber makes a hundred'; that is, where one robber, by a series of
atrocious murders and robberies, frightens the people into non-
resistance, a hundred loose characters from among the peasantry of
the country will take advantage of the occasion, and adopt his name,
in order to plunder with the smallest possible degree of personal
risk to themselves.
Some magistrates and local rulers, under such circumstances, have
very unwisely adopted the measure of prohibiting the people from
carrying or having arms in their houses, the very thing which, above
all others, such robbers most wish; for they know, though such
magistrates and rulers do not, that it is the innocent only, and the
friends to order, who will obey the command. The robber will always
be able to conceal his arms, or keep with them out of reach of the
magistrate; and he is now relieved altogether from the salutary dread
of a shot from a door or window. He may rob at his leisure, or sit
down like a gentleman and have all that the people of the surrounding
towns and villages possess brought to him, for no man can any longer
attempt to defend himself or his family.[1] Weak governments are
obliged soon to invite back the robber on his own terms, for the
people can pay them no revenue, being prevented from cultivating
their lands, and obliged to give all they have to the robbers, or
submit to be plundered of it. Jhânsî and Jâlaun are exceedingly weak
governments, from having their territories studded with estates held
rent-free, or at a quit-rent, by Pawâr, Bundêla, and Dhandêl barons,
who have always the sympathy of the numerous chiefs and their barons
of the same class around.
In the year 1832, the Pawâr barons of the estates of Noner, Jignî,
Udgâon, and Bilharî in Jhânsî had some cause of dissatisfaction with
their chief; and this they presented to Lord William Bentinck as he
passed through the province in December. His lordship told them that
these were questions of internal administration which they must
settle among themselves, as the Supreme Government would not
interfere. They had, therefore, only one way of settling such
disputes, and that was to raise the standard of bhûmiâwat, and cry,
'To your tents, O Israel!' This they did; and, though the Jhânsî
chief had a military force of twelve thousand men, they burnt down
every town and village in the territory that did not come into their
terms; and the chief had possession of only two, Jhânsî, the capital,
and the large commercial town of Mau,[2] when the Bundêla Râjâs of
Orchhâ and Datiyâ, who had hitherto clandestinely supported the
insurgents, consented to become the arbitrators. A suspension of arms
followed, the barons got all they demanded, and the bhûmiâwat ceased.
But the Jhânsî chief, who had hitherto lent large sums to the other
chiefs in the province, was reduced to the necessity of borrowing
from them all, and from Gwâlior, and mortgaging to them a good
portion of his lands.[3]
Gwâlior is itself weak in the same way. A great portion of its lands
are held by barons of the Hindoo military classes, equally addicted
to bhûmiâwat, and one or more of them is always engaged in this kind
of indiscriminate warfare; and it must be confessed that, unless they
are always considered to be ready to engage in it, they have very
little chance of retaining their possessions on moderate terms, for
these weak governments are generally the most rapacious when they
have it in their power.
A good deal of the lands of the Muhammadan sovereign of Oudh are, in
the same manner, held by barons of the Râjpût tribe; and some of them
are almost always in the field engaged in the same kind of warfare
against their sovereign. The baron who pursues it with vigour is
almost sure to be invited back upon his own terms very soon. If his
lands are worth a hundred thousand a year, he will get them for ten;
and have this remitted for the next five years, until he is ready for
another bhûmiâwat, on the ground of the injuries sustained during the
last, from which his estate has to recover. The baron who is
peaceable and obedient soon gets rack-rented out of his estate, and
reduced to beggary.[4]
In 1818, some companies of my regiment were for several months
employed in Oudh, after a young 'bhûmiâwatî' of this kind, Sheo Ratan
Singh. He was the nephew and heir of the Râjâ of Partâbgarh,[5] who
wished to exclude him from his inheritance by the adoption of a
brother of his young bride. Sheo Ratan had a small village for his
maintenance, and said nothing to his old uncle till the governor of
the province, Ghulâm Husani[6], accepted an invitation to be present
at the ceremony of adoption. He knew that, if he acquiesced any
longer, he would lose his inheritance, and cried, 'To your tents, 0
Israel!' He got a small band of three hundred Râjpûts, with nothing
but their swords, shields, and spears, to follow him, all of the same
clan and true men. They were bivouacked in a jungle not more than
seven miles from our cantonments at Partâbgarh, when Ghulâm Husain
marched to attack them with three regiments of infantry, one of
cavalry, and two nine-pounders. He thought he should surprise them,
and contrived so that he should come upon them about daybreak. Sheo
Ratan knew all his plans. He placed one hundred and fifty of his men
in ambuscade at the entrance to the jungle, and kept the other
hundred and fifty by him in the centre. When they had got well in,
the party in ambush rushed upon the rear, while he attacked them in
front. After a short resistance, Ghulâm Husain's force took to
flight, leaving five hundred men dead on the field, and their guns
behind them. Ghulâm Husain was so ashamed of the drubbing he got that
he bribed all the news-writers[7] within twenty miles of the place to
say nothing about it in their reports to court, and he never made any
report of it himself. A detachment of my regiment passed over the
dead bodies in the course of the day, on their return to cantonments
from detached command, or we should have known nothing about it. It
is true, we heard the firing, but that we heard every day; and I have
seen from my bungalow half a dozen villages in flames, at the same
time, from this species of contest between the Râjpût landholders and
the government authorities. Our cantonments were generally full of
the women and children who had been burnt out of house and home.
In Oudh such contests generally begin with the harvests. During the
season of tillage all is quiet; but, when the crops begin to ripen,
the governor begins to rise in his demands for revenue, and the
Râjpût landholders and cultivators to sharpen their swords and
burnish their spears. One hundred of them always consider themselves
a match for one thousand of the king's troops in a fair field,
because they have all one heart and soul, while the king's troops
have many.[8]
While the Pawârs were ravaging the Jhânsî state with their bhûmiâwat,
a merchant of Sâgar had a large convoy of valuable cloths, to the
amount, I think, of forty thousand rupees,[9] intercepted by them on
its way from Mirzâpur[10] to Râjputâna. I was then at Sâgar, and
wrote off to the insurgents to say that they had mistaken one of our
subjects for one of the Jhânsî chiefs, and must release the convoy.
They did so, and not a piece of the cloth was lost. This bhûmiâwat is
supposed to have cost the Jhânsî chief above twenty lâkhs of
rupees,[11] and his subjects double that sum.
Gopâl Singh, a Bundêla, who had been in the service of the chief of
Pannâ,[12] took to bhûmiâwat in 1809, and kept a large British force
employed in pursuit through Bundêlkhand and the Sâgar territories for
three years, till he was invited back by our Government in the year
1812, by the gift of a fine estate on the banks of the Dasân river,
yielding twenty thousand rupees[13] a year, which his son now enjoys,
and which is to descend to his posterity, many of whom will, no
doubt, animated by their fortunate ancestor's example, take to the
same trade. He had been a man of no note till he took to this trade,
but by his predatory exploits he soon became celebrated throughout
India; and, when I came to the country, no other man's chivalry was
so much talked of.
A Bundêla, or other landholder of the Hindoo military class, does not
think himself, nor is he indeed thought by others, in the slightest
degree less respectable for having waged this indiscriminate war upon
the innocent and unoffending, provided he has any cause of
dissatisfaction with his liege lord; that is, provided he cannot get
his land or his appointment in his service upon his own terms,
because all others of the same class and clan feel more or less
interested in his success.
They feel that their tenure of land, or of office, is improved by the
mischief he does; because every peasant he murders, and every field
he throws out of tillage, affects their liege lord in his most tender
point, his treasury; and indisposes him to interfere with their
salaries, their privileges, or their rents. He who wages this war
goes on marrying his sisters or his daughters to the other barons or
landholders of the same clan, and receiving theirs in marriage during
the whole of his bhûmiâwat,[14] as if nothing at all extraordinary
had happened, and thereby strengthening his hand at the game he is
playing.
Umrâo Singh of Jaklôn in Chandêrî, a district of Gwâlior bordering
upon Sâgar,[15] has been at this game for more than fifteen years out
of twenty, but his alliances among the baronial families around have
not been in the slightest degree affected by it. His sons and his
grandsons have, perhaps, made better matches than they might, had the
old man been at peace with all the world, during the time that he has
been desolating one district by his atrocities, and demoralizing all
those around it by his example, and by inviting the youth to join him
occasionally in his murderous enterprises. Neither age nor sex is
respected in their attacks upon towns or villages; and no Muhammadan
can take more pride and pleasure in defacing idols--the most
monstrous idol--than a 'bhûmiâwatî' takes in maiming an innocent
peasant, who presumes to drive his plough in lands that he chooses to
put under the _ban_.
In the kingdom of Oudh, this bhûmiâwat is a kind of nursery for our
native army; for the sons of Râjpût yeomen who have been trained in
it are all exceedingly anxious to enlist in our native infantry
regiments, having no dislike to their drill or their uniform. The
same class of men in Bundêlkhand and the Gwâlior State have a great
horror of the drill and uniform of our regular infantry, and nothing
can induce them to enlist in our ranks. Both are equally brave, and
equally faithful to their salt--that is, to the person who employs
them; but the Oudh Râjpût is a much more tameable animal than the
Bundêla. In Oudh this class of people have all inherited from their
fathers a respect for our rule and a love for our service. In
Bundêlkhand they have not yet become reconciled to our service, and
they still look upon our rule as interfering a good deal too much
with their sporting propensities.[16]
Notes:
1. Since the author's time conditions have much changed. Then, and
for long afterwards, up to the Mutiny, every village throughout the
country was fall of arms, and almost every man was armed.
Consequently, in those tracts where the Mutiny of the native army was
accompanied by popular insurrection, the flame of rebellion burned
fiercely, and was subdued with difficulty. The painful experience of
1857 and 1858 proved the necessity of general disarmament, and nearly
the whole of British India has been disarmed under the provisions of
a series of Acts. Licences to have and carry ordinary arms and
ammunition are granted by the magistrates of districts. Licences to
possess artillery are granted only by the Governor-General in
Council. The improved organization of the police and of the executive
power generally renders possible the strict enforcement of the law.
Some arms are concealed, but very few of these are serviceable. With
rare exceptions, arms are now carried only for display, and knowledge
of the use of weapons has died out in most classes of the population.
The village forts have been everywhere dismantled. Robbery by armed
gangs still occurs in certain districts (_see ante_, Chapter 23, note
14), but is much less frequent than it used to be in the author's
days.
2. Many towns and villages bear the name of Mau (_auglicè_, Mhow),
which may be, as Mr. Growse suggests, a form of the Sanskrit _mahi_,
'land' or 'ground'. The town referred to in the text is the principal
town of the Jhânsî district, distinguished from its homonyms as Mau-
Rânîpur, situated about east-south-east from Jhânsî, at a distance of
forty miles from that city. Its special export used to be the
'kharwâ' cloth, dyed with 'ai' (_see ante_., Chapter 31, note 4).
3. This insurrection continued into the year 1833. 'The inhabitants
were reduced to the greatest distress, and have, even to the present
day, scarcely recovered the losses they then sustained' (_N.W.P.
Gazetteer_, vol. i (1870), p. 296).
4. See the author's _Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, passim_.
5. Partâbgarh is now a separate district in the Fyzâbâd Division of
Oudh. The chief town, also called Partâbgarh, is thirty-two miles
north of Allahabad, and still possesses a Râjâ, who, at present
(1914), is a most respectable gentleman, with no thoughts of
violence. Further details about the Partâbgarh family are given in
the _Journey_, vol. i, p. 231.
6. Transcriber's note:- The author then uses the spelling 'Husain'
consistently.
7. 'The news department is under a Superintendent-General, who has
sometimes contracted for it, as for the revenues of a district, but
more commonly holds it in _amânî_, as a manager. . . . He nominates
his subordinates, and appoints them to their several offices, taking
from each a present gratuity and a pledge for such monthly payments
as he thinks the post will enable him to make. They receive from four
to fifteen rupees a month each, and have each to pay to their
President, for distribution among his patrons or patronesses at
Court, from one hundred to five hundred rupees a month in ordinary
times. Those to whom they are accredited have to pay them, under
ordinary circumstances, certain sums monthly, to prevent their
inventing or exaggerating cases of abuse of power or neglect of duty
on their part; but, when they happen to be really guilty of great
acts of atrocity, or great neglect of duty, they are required to pay
extraordinary sums, not only to the news-writers, who are especially
accredited to them, but to all others who happen to be in the
neighbourhood at the time. There are six hundred and sixty news-
writers of this kind employed by the king, and paid monthly three
thousand one hundred and ninety-four rupees, or, on an average,
between four and five rupees each; and the sums paid by them to their
President for distribution among influential officers and Court
favourites averages [sic] above one hundred and fifty thousand rupees
a year. . . . Such are the reporters of the circumstances in all the
cases on which the sovereign and his ministers have to pass orders
every day in Oudh. . . . the European magistrate of one of our
neighbouring districts one day, before the Oudh Frontier Police was
raised, entered the Oudh territory at the head of his police in
pursuit of some robbers, who had found an asylum in one of the King's
villages. In the attempt to secure them some lives were lost: and,
apprehensive of the consequences, he sent for the official news-
writer, and _gratified_ him in the usual way. No report of the
circumstances was made to the Oudh Darbâr; and neither the King, the
President, nor the British Government ever heard anything about it'
(_Journey through the Kingdom of Oude_, vol. i, pp. 67-69). Such a
System of official news-writers was usually maintained by Asiatic
despots from the most ancient times.
8. full details of the rotten state of the king's army are given in
the _Journey through the Kingdom of Oude_.
9. Then worth £4,000, or more.
10. Mirzâpur (Mirzapore) on the Ganges, twenty-seven miles from
Benares, was, in the author's time, the principal depot for the
cotton and cloth trade of Northern India. Although the East Indian
Railway passes through the city, the construction of the railway has
diverted the bulk of the trade from Mirzâpur, which is now a
declining place. The population, which wag 70,621 in 1881, fell to
32,332 in 1911. The carpets made there are well known.
11. Then equal to £200,000, or more.
12. The Pannâ State lies between the British districts of Bândâ, in
the United Provinces, on the north, and Damoh and Jabalpur, in the
Central Provinces, on the south. The chief is a descendant of
Chhatarsâl. For description and engraving of the diamond mines see
_Economic Geology_ (1881), p. 39.
13. Then equivalent to £2,000, or more.
14. The words 'of the same clan' are inexact. The author has shown
(_ante_, Chapter 23 following [10], and Chapter 26 following [32])
that Râjpûts never marry into their own clan.
15. 'The Râjâ of Chandêrî belonged to the same family as the Orchhâ
chief. Sindhia annexed a great part of the Chandêrî State in 1811.
Chandêrî was for a time British territory, but is now again in
Sindhia's dominions. Its vicissitudes are related in _N.W.P.
Gazetteer_ (1870), vol. i, pp. 351-8.
16. In Oudh the misgovernment, anarchy, and cruel rapine, briefly
alluded to in the text, and vividly described in detail by the author
in his _Journey through the Kingdom of Oude_, lasted until the
annexation of the kingdom by Lord Dalhousie in 1856, and, after a
brief lull, were renewed during the insurrection of 1857 and 1858.
The events of those years are a curious commentary on the author's
belief that the people of Oudh entertained 'a respect for our rule
and a love for our service'. The service of the British Government is
sought because it pays, but a foreign Government must not expect
love. Respect for the British rule depends upon the strength of that
rule. Oudh still sends many recruits to the native army, though the
young men no longer enjoy the advantage of a training in 'bhûmiâwat'.
An occasional gang-robbery or bludgeon fight is the meagre modern
substitute. The Râjpûts or Thâkurs of Bundêlkhand and Gwâlior still
retain their old character for turbulence, but, of course, have less
scope for what the author calls their 'sporting propensities' than
they had in his time.
CHAPTER 34
The Suicide--Relations between Parents and Children in India.
The day before we left Datiyâ our cook had a violent dispute with his
mother, a thing of almost daily occurrence; for though a very fat and
handsome old lady, she was a very violent one. He was a quiet man,
but, unable to bear any longer the abuse she was heaping upon him, he
first took up a pitcher of water and flung it at her head. It missed
her, and he then snatched up a stick, and, for the first time in his
life, struck her. He was her only son. She quietly took up all her
things, and, walking off towards a temple, said she would leave him
for ever; and he, having passed the Rubicon, declared that he was
resolved no longer to submit to the parental tyranny which she had
hitherto exercised over him. My water carrier, however, prevailed
upon her with much difficulty to return, and take up her quarters
with him and his wife and five children in a small tent we had given
them. Maddened at the thought of a blow from her son, the old lady
about sunset swallowed a large quantity of opium; and before the
circumstance was discovered, it was too late to apply a remedy. We
were told of it about eight o'clock at night, and found her lying in
her son's arms--tried every remedy at hand, but without success, and
about midnight she died. She loved her son, and he respected her; and
yet not a day passed without their having some desperate quarrel,
generally about the orphan daughter of her brother, who lived with
them, and was to be married, as soon as the cook could save out of
his pay enough money to defray the expenses of the ceremonies. The
old woman was always reproaching him for not saving money fast
enough. This little cousin had now stolen some of the cook's tobacco
for his young assistant; and the old lady thought it right to
admonish her. The cook likewise thought it right to add his
admonitions to those of his mother; but the old lady would have her
niece abused by nobody but herself, and she flew into a violent
passion at his presuming to interfere. This led to the son's outrage,
and the mother's suicide. The son is a mild, good-tempered young man,
who bears an excellent character among his equals, and is a very good
servant. Had he been less mild it had perhaps been better; for his
mother would by degrees have given up that despotic sway over her
child, which in infancy is necessary, in youth useful, but in manhood
becomes intolerable. 'God defend us from the anger of the mild in
spirit', said an excellent judge of human nature, Muhammad, the
founder of this cook's religion;[1] and certainly the mildest tempers
are those which become the most ungovernable when roused beyond a
certain degree; and the proud spirit of the old woman could not brook
the outrage which her son, so roused, had been guilty of. From the
time that she was discovered to have taken poison till she breathed
her last she lay in the arms of the poor man, who besought her to
live, that her only son might atone for his crime, and not be a
parricide.
There is no part of the world, I believe, where parents are so much
reverenced by their sons as they are in India, in all classes of
society. This is sufficiently evinced in the desire that parents feel
to have sons. The duty of daughters is from the day of their marriage
transferred entirely to their husbands and their husbands' parents,
on whom alone devolves the duty of protecting and supporting them
through the wedded and the widowed state. The links that united them
to their parents are broken. All the reciprocity of rights and duties
which have bound together the parent and child from infancy is
considered to end with the consummation of her marriage; nor does the
stain of any subsequent female backsliding ever affect the family of
her parents; it can affect that only of her husband, who is held
alone responsible for her conduct. If a widow inherits the property
of her husband, on her death the property would go to her husband's
brother, supposing neither had any children by their husbands, in
preference to her own brother; but between the son and his parents
this reciprocity of rights and duties follows them to the grave.[2]
One is delighted to see in sons this habitual reverence for the
mother; but, as in the present case, it is too apt to occasion a
domineering spirit, which produces much mischief even in private
families, but still more in sovereign ones. A prince, when he attains
the age of manhood, and ought to take upon himself the duties of the
government, is often obliged to witness a great deal of oppression
and misrule, from his inability to persuade his widowed mother to
resign the power willingly into his hands. He often tamely submits to
see his country ruined, and his family dishonoured, as at Jhânsî,
before he can bring himself, by some act of desperate resolution, to
wrest it from her grasp.[3] In order to prevent his doing so, or to
recover the reins he has thus obtained, the mother has often been
known to poison her own son; and many a princess in India, like
Isabella of England, has, I believe, destroyed her husband, to enjoy
more freely the society of her paramour, and hold these reins during
the minority of her son.[4]
In the exercise of dominion from behind the curtain (for it is those
who live behind the curtain that seem most anxious to hold it), women
select ministers who, to secure duration to their influence, become
their paramours, or, at least, make the world believe that they are
so, to serve their own selfish purposes. The sons are tyrannized over
through youth by their mothers, who endeavour to subdue their spirit
to the yoke, which they wish to bind heavy upon their necks for life;
and they remain through manhood timid, ignorant, and altogether
unfitted for the conduct of public affairs, and for the government of
men under a despotic rule, whose essential principle is a _salutary
fear_ of the prince in all his public officers. Every unlettered
native of India is as sensible of this principle [as] Montesquieu
was; and will tell us that, in countries like India, a chief, to
govern well, must have a _smack of the devil_ ('shaitân') in him;
for, if he has not, his public servants will prey upon his innocent
and industrious subjects.[5] In India there are no universities or
public schools, in which young men might escape, as they do in
Europe, from the enervating and stultifying influence of the
zanâna.[6] The state of mental imbecility to which a youth of
naturally average powers of mind, born to territorial dominion, is in
India often reduced by a haughty and ambitious mother, would be
absolutely incredible to a man bred up in such schools. They are
often utterly unable to act, think, or speak for themselves. If they
happen, as they sometimes do, to get well informed in reading and
conversation, they remain, Hamlet-like, nervous and diffident; and,
however speculatively or _ruminatively_ wise, quite unfit for action,
or for performing their part in the great drama of life.
In my evening ramble on the bank of the river, which was flowing
against the wind and rising into waves, my mind wandered back to the
hours of infancy and boyhood when I sat with my brothers watching our
little vessels as they scudded over the ponds and streams of my
native land; and then of my poor brothers John and Louis, whose bones
now he beneath the ocean. As we advance in age the dearest scenes of
early days must necessarily become more and more associated in our
recollection with painful feelings; for they who enjoyed such scenes
with us must by degrees pass away, and be remembered with sorrow even
by those who are conscious of having fulfilled all their duties in
life towards them--but with how much more by those who can never
remember them without thinking of occasions of kindness and
assistance neglected or disregarded. Many of them have perhaps left
behind them widows and children struggling with adversity, and
soliciting from us aid which we strive in vain to give.
During my visit to the Râjâ, a person in the disguise of one of my
sipâhîs[7] went to a shop and purchased for me five-and-twenty
rupees' worth of fine Europe chintz, for which he paid in good
rupees, which were forthwith assayed by a neighbouring goldsmith. The
sipâhî put these rupees into his own purse, and laid it down, saying
that he should go and ascertain from me whether I wished to keep the
whole of the chintz or not; and, if not, he should require back the
same money--that I was to halt to-morrow, when he would return to the
shop again. Just as he was going away, however, he recollected that
he wanted a turban for himself, and requested the shopkeeper to bring
him one. They were sitting in the verandah, and the shopkeeper had to
go into his shop to bring out the turban. When he came out with it,
the sipâhî said it would not suit his purpose, and went off, leaving
the purse where it lay, cautioning the shopkeeper against changing
any of the rupees, as he should require his own identical money back
if his master rejected any of the chintz. The shopkeeper waited till
four o'clock in the afternoon of the next day without looking into
the purse.
Hearing then that I had left Datiyâ, and seeing no signs of the
sipâhî, he opened the purse, and found that the rupees were all
copper, with a thin coating of silver. The man had changed them while
he went into the shop for a turban, and substituted a purse exactly
the same in appearance. After ascertaining that the story was true,
and that the ingenious thief was not one of my followers, I insisted
upon the man's taking the money from me, in spite of a great deal of
remonstrance on the part of the Râjâ's agent, who had come on with
us.
Notes:
1. The editor has failed to trace this quotation, which may possibly
be from the _Mishkat-ul-Masâbih_ (_ante_, Chapter 5, note 10).
Compare '"There is nothing more horrible than the rebellion of a
sheep", said de Marsay' (Balzac, _Lost by a Laugh_).
2. The English doggerel expresses the opposite sentiment,
'My son's my son till he gets him a wife;
My daughter's my daughter all her life.'
3. _Ante_, chap. 29, text at [4], and before [7].
4. Edward II, A.D. 1327.
5. The principle, so bluntly enunciated by the author, is true,
though the truth may be unpalatable to people who think they know
better, and it applies with as much force to European officials as it
does to Indian princes. The 'shaitân' is more familiar in his English
dress as Satan. The editor has failed to find any such phrase in the
works of Montesquieu. In chapter 9 of Book III of _L'Esprit des Lois_
that author lays down the principle that 'il faut de la crainte dans
un gouvernement despotique; pour la vertu, elle n'y est point
nécessaire,'
6. It can no longer be said that universities do not exist, at least
in name, in India. Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Lahore, and Allahabad
are the seats of universities, and new foundations at Dacca and Patna
are promised (1914). The Indian universities, when first established,
were mere examining bodies, on the model of the University of London.
But changes, initiated by Lord Curzon, are in progress, and the
University of London is being remodelled (1914). The Indian
institutions are not frequented by young princes and nobles, and have
little influence on their education. Attempts have been made, with
partial success, to provide special boarding schools, or 'Chiefs'
Colleges', for the sons of ruling princes and native nobles. The most
notable of such institution are the colleges at Ajmêr, Râjkôt in
Kâthiâwâr, and Indore. The influence of the zanâna is invariably
directed against every proposal to remove a young nobleman from home
for the purpose of education, and obstacles of many kinds render the
task of rightly educating such a youth extraordinarily difficult and
unsatisfactory. In some cases a considerable degree of success has
been attained.
7. Armed follower. The word is more familiar in the corrupt form
'sepoy'.
CHAPTER 35
Gwâlior Plain once the Bed of a Lake--Tameness of Peacocks.
On the 19th, 20th, and 21st[1] we came on forty miles to the village
of Antrî in the Gwâlior territory, over a fine plain of rich alluvial
soil under spring crops. This plain bears manifest signs of having
been at no very remote period, like the kingdom of Bohemia, the bed
of a vast lake bounded by the ranges of sandstone hills which now
seem to skirt the horizon all round; and studded with innumerable
islands of all shapes and sizes, which now rise abruptly in all
directions out of the cultivated plain.[2] The plain is still like
the unruffled surface of a vast lake; and the rich green of the
spring crops, which cover the surface in one wide sheet unintersected
by hedges, tends to keep up the illusion, which the rivers have
little tendency to dispel; for, though they have cut their way down
immense depths to their present beds through this soft alluvial
deposit, the traveller no sooner emerges from the hideous ravines,
which disfigure their banks, than he loses all trace of them. Their
course is unmarked by trees, large shrubs, or any of the signs which
mark the course of rivers in other quarters.
The soil over the vast plain is everywhere of good quality, and
everywhere cultivated, or rather worked, for we can hardly consider a
soil cultivated which is never either irrigated or manured, or
voluntarily relieved by fallows or an alternation of crops, till it
has descended to the last stage of exhaustion. The prince rack-rents
the farmer, the farmer rack-rents the cultivator, and the cultivator
rack-rents the soil. Soon after crossing the Sindh river we enter
upon the territories of the Gwâlior chief, Sindhia.