The greater part of the produce goes for sale to the capital of
Gwâlior, when the money it brings is paid into the treasury in rent,
or revenue, to the chief, who distributes it in salaries among his
establishments, who again pay it for land produce to the cultivators,
farmers, and agricultural capitalists, who again pay it back into the
treasury in land revenue. No more people reside in the villages than
are absolutely necessary to the cultivation of the land, because the
chief takes all the produce beyond what is necessary for their bare
subsistence; and, out of what he takes, maintains establishments that
reside elsewhere. There is nowhere any jungle to be seen, and very
few of the villages that are scattered over the plains have any fruit
or ornamental trees left; and, when the spring crops, to which the
tillage is chiefly confined, are taken off the ground, the face of
the country must have a very naked and dreary appearance.[3] Near one
village on the road I saw some men threshing corn in a field, and
among them a peacock (which, of course, I took to be domesticated)
breakfasting very comfortably upon the grain as it flew around him. A
little farther on I saw another quietly working his way into a stack
of corn, as if he understood it to have been made for his use alone.
It was so close to me as I passed that I put out my stick to push it
off in play, and, to my surprise, it flew off in a fright at my white
face and strange dress, and was followed by the others. I found that
they were all wild, if that term can be applied to birds that live on
such excellent terms with mankind. On reaching our tents we found
several feeding in the corn-fields close around them, undisturbed by
our host of camp-followers; and were told by the villagers, who had
assembled to greet us, that they were all wild. 'Why', said they,
'should we think of _keeping_ birds that live among us on such easy
terms without being _kept_?' I asked whether they ever shot them, and
was told that they never killed or molested them, but that any one
who wished to shoot them might do so, since they had here no
religions regard for them.[4] Like the pariah dogs the peacocks seem
to disarm the people by confiding in them--their tameness is at once
the cause and the effect of their security. The members of the little
communities among whom they live on such friendly terms would not
have the heart to shoot them; and travellers either take them to be
domesticated, or are at once disarmed by their tameness.
At Antrî a sufficient quantity of salt is manufactured for the
consumption of the people of the town. The earth that contains most
salt is dug up at some distance from the town, and brought to small
reservoirs made close outside the walls. Water is here poured over
it, as over tea and coffee. Passing through the earth, it flows out
below into a small conduit, which takes it to small pits some yards'
distance, whence it is removed in buckets to small enclosed
platforms, where it is exposed to the Sun's rays, till the water
evaporates, and leaves the salt dry.[5] The want of trees over this
vast plain of fine soil from the Sindh river is quite lamentable. The
people of Antrî pointed out the place close to my tents where a
beautiful grove of mango-trees had been lately taken off to Gwâlior
for _gun-carriages_ and firewood, in spite of all the proprietor
could urge of the detriment to his own interest in this world, and to
those of his ancestors in that to which they had gone. Wherever the
army of this chief moved they invariably swept off the groves of
fruit-trees in the same reckless manner. Parts of the country, which
they merely passed through, have recovered their trees, because the
desire to propitiate the Deity, and to perpetuate their name by such
a work, will always operate among Hindoos as a sufficient incentive
to secure groves, wherever man has be made to feel that their rights
of property in the trees will be respected.[6] The lands around the
village, which had a well for irrigation, paid four times as much as
those of the same quality which had none, and were made to yield two
crops in the year. As everywhere else, so here, those lands into
which water flows from the town and can be made to stand for a time,
are esteemed the best, as this water brings down with it manures of
all kinds.[7] I had a good deal of talk with the cultivators as I
walked through the fields in the evenings; and they seemed to dwell
much upon the good faith which is observed by the farmers and
cultivators in the Honourable Company's territories, and the total
absence of it in those of Sindhia's, where no work, requiring an
outlay of capital from the land, is, in consequence, ever thought of-
-both farmers and cultivators engaging from year to year, and no
farmer ever feeling secure of his lease for more than one.
Notes:
1. December, 1835.
2. The anthor's favourite theory. See _ante_, Chapter 14 note 7,
Chapter 24 note 6, on the formation of black cotton soil. The Gwâlior
plain is covered with this soil.
3. It has a very desolate appearance. The Indian Midland Railway now
passes through Gwâlior.
4. In many parts of India, especially in Mathurâ (Mattra) on the
Jumna, and the neighbouring districts, the peacock is held strictly
sacred, and shooting one would be likely to cause a riot. Tavernier
relates a story of a rich Persian merchant being beaten to death by
the Hindoos of Gujarât for shooting a peacock. (Tavernier, _Travels_,
transl. Ball, vol. i, p. 70.) the bird is regarded as the vehicle of
the Hindoo god of war, variously called Kumâra, Skanda, or Kârtikeya.
the editor, like the author, has observed that in Bundêlkhand no
objection is raised to the shooting of peacocks by any one who cares
for such poor sport.
5. In British India the manufacture of salt can be practised only by
persons duly licensed.
6. The Revenue Settlement Regulations now in force in British India
provide liberally for the encouragement of groves, and hundred of
miles of road are annually planted with trees.
7. Sanitation did not trouble native states in those days.
CHAPTER 36
Gwâlior and its Government.
On the 22nd,[1] we came on fourteen miles to Gwâlior, over some
ranges of sandstone hills, which are seemingly continuations of the
Vindhyan range. Hills of indurated brown and red iron clay repose
upon and intervene between these ranges, with strata generally
horizontal, but occasionally bearing signs of having been shaken by
internal convulsions. These convulsions are also indicated by some
dykes of compact basalt which cross the road.[2]
Nothing can be more unprepossessing than the approach to Gwâlior; the
hills being naked, black, and ugly, with rounded tops devoid of grass
or shrubs, and the soil of the valleys a poor red dust without any
appearance of verdure or vegetation, since the few autumn crops that
lately stood upon them have been removed.[3] From Antrî to Gwâlior
there is no sign of any human habitation, save that of a miserable
police guard of four or five, who occupy a wretched hut on the side
of the road midway, and seem by their presence to render the scene
around more dreary.[4] the road is a mere footpath unimproved and
unadorned by any single work of art; and, except in this footpath,
and the small police guard, there is absolutely no single sign in all
this long march to indicate the dominion, or even the presence, of
man; and yet it is between two contiguous [_sic_] capitals, one
occupied by one of the most ancient, and the other by one of the
greatest native sovereigns of Hindustan.[5] One cannot but feel that
he approaches the capital of a dynasty of barbarian princes, who,
like Attila, would choose their places of residence, as devils choose
their pandemonia, for their ugliness, and rather reside in the dreary
wastes of Tartary than on the shores of the Bosphorus. There are
within the dominions of Sindhia seats for a capital that would not
yield to any in India in convenience, beauty, and salubrity; but, in
all these dominions, there is not, perhaps, another place so
hideously ugly as Gwâlior, or so hot and unhealthy. It has not one
redeeming quality that should recommend it to the choice of a
rational prince, particularly to one who still considers his capital
as his camp, and makes every officer of his army feel that he has as
little of permanent interest in his house as he would have in his
tent.[6]
Phûl Bâgh, or the _flower-garden_, was suggested to me as the best
place for my tents, where Sindhia had built a splendid summer-house.
As I came over this most gloomy and uninteresting march, in which the
heart of a rational man sickens, as he recollects that all the
revenues of such an enormous extent of dominion over the richest soil
and the most peaceable people in the world should have been so long
concentrated upon this point, and squandered without leaving one sign
of human art or industry, I looked forward with pleasure to a quiet
residence in the _flower-garden_, with good foliage above, and a fine
sward below, and an atmosphere free from dust, such as we find in and
around all the residences of Muhammadan princes. On reaching my tents
I found them pitched close outside the _flower-garden_, in a small
dusty plain, without a blade of grass or a shrub to hide its
deformity--just such a place as the pig-keepers occupy in the suburbs
of other towns. On one side of this little plain, and looking into
it, was the _summer-house_ of the prince, without one inch of green
sward or one small shrub before it.
Around the wretched little _flower-garden_ was a low, naked, and
shattered mud wall, such as we generally see in the suburbs thrown up
to keep out and in the pigs that usually swarm in such places--'and
the swine they crawled out, and the swine they crawled in'.[7] When I
cantered up to my tent-door, a sipâhî of my guard came up, and
reported that as the day began to dawn a gang of thieves had stolen
one of my best carpets, all the brass brackets of my tent-poles, and
the brass bell with which the sentries on duty sounded the hour; all
Lieutenant Thomas's cooking utensils, and many other things, several
of which they had found lying between the tents and the prince's
_pleasure-house_, particularly the contents of a large heavy box of
geological specimens. They had, in consequence, concluded the gang to
be lodged in the prince's pleasure-house. The guard on duty at this
place would make no answer to their inquiries, and I really believe
that they were themselves the thieves. The tents of the Râjâ of
Raghugarh, who had come to pay his respects to the Sindhia, his liege
lord, were pitched near mine. He had the day before had five horses
stolen from him, with all the plate, jewels, and valuable clothes he
possessed; and I was told that I must move forthwith from the
_flower-garden_, or cut off the tail of every horse in my camp.
Without tails they might not be stolen, with them they certainly
would. Having had sufficient proof of their dexterity, we moved our
tents to a grove near the residency, four miles from the flower-
garden and the court.[8]
As a citizen of the world I could not help thinking that it would be
an immense blessing upon a large portion of our species if an
earthquake were to swallow up this court of Gwâlior, and the army
that surrounds it. Nothing worse could possibly succeed, and
something better might. It is lamentable to think how much of evil
this court and camp inflict upon the people who are subject to them.
In January, 1828, I was passing with a party of gentlemen through the
town of Bhîlsâ, which belongs to this chief, and lies between Sâgar
and Bhopal,[9] when we found, lying and bleeding in one of the
streets, twelve men belonging to a merchant at Mirzapore, who had the
day before been wounded and plundered by a gang of robbers close
outside the walls of the town. Those who were able ran in to the
Âmil, or chief of the district, who resides in the town; and begged
him to send some horsemen after the banditti, and intercept them as
they passed over the great plains. 'Send your own people', said he,
'or hire men to send. Am I here to look after the private affairs of
merchants and travellers, or to collect the revenues of the prince?'
Neither he, nor the prince himself, nor any other officer of the
public establishments ever dreamed that it was their duty to protect
the life, property, or character of travellers, or indeed of any
other human beings, save the members of their own families. In this
pithy question the Âmil of Bhîlsâ described the nature and character
of the government. All the revenues of his immense dominions are
spent entirely in the maintenance of the court and camps of the
prince; and every officer employed beyond the boundary of the court
and camp considers his duties to be limited to the collection of the
revenue. Protected from all external enemies by our military forces,
which surround him on every side, his whole army is left to him for
purposes of parade and display; and having, according to his notions,
no use for them elsewhere, he concentrates them around his capital,
where he lives among them in the perpetual dread of mutiny and
assassination. He has nowhere any police, nor any establishment
whatever, for the protection of the life and property of his
subjects; nor has he, any more than his predecessors, ever, I
believe, for one moment thought that those from whose industry and
frugality he draws his revenues have any right whatever to expect
from him the use of such establishments in return. They have never
formed any legitimate part of the Marâthâ government, and, I fear,
never will.[10]
The misrule of such states, situated in the midst of our dominions,
is not without its use. There is, as Gibbon justly observes, 'a
strong propensity in human nature to depreciate the advantages, and
to magnify the evils, of the present times'; and, if the people had
not before their eyes such specimens of native rule to contrast with
ours, they would think more highly than they do of that of their past
Muhammadan and Hindoo sovereigns; and be much less disposed than they
are to estimate fairly the advantages of being under ours. The native
governments of the present day are fair specimens of what they have
always been--grinding military despotisms--their whole history is
that of 'Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of
thousands'; as if rulers were made merely to slay, and the ruled to
be slain. In politics, as in landscape, ''Tis distance lends
enchantment to the view', and the past might be all _couleur de rose_
in the imaginations of the people were it not represented in these
ill-governed states, where the 'lucky accident' of a good governor is
not to be expected in a century, and where the secret of the
responsibility of ministers to the people is yet undiscovered.[11]
The fortress of Gwâlior stands upon a tableland, a mile and a half
long by a quarter of a mile wide, at the north-east end of a small
insulated sandstone hill, running north-east and south-west, and
rising at both ends about three hundred and forty feet above the
level of the plain below. At the base is a kind of glacis, which runs
up at an angle of forty-five from the plain to within fifty, and, in
some places, within twenty feet of the foot of the wall.
The interval is the perpendicular face of the horizontal strata of
the sandstone rock. The glacis is formed of a bed of basalt in all
stages of decomposition, with which this, like the other sandstone
hills of Central India, was once covered, and of the debris and
chippings of the rocks above. The walls are raised a certain uniform
height all round upon the verge of the precipice, and being thus made
to correspond with the edge of the rock, the line is extremely
irregular. They are rudely built of the fine sandstone of the rock on
which they stand, and have some square and some semicircular bastions
of different sizes, few of these raised above the level of the wall
itself.[12] On the eastern face of the rock, between the glacis and
foot of the wall, are cut out, in bold relief, the colossal figures
of men sitting bareheaded under canopies, on each side of a throne or
temple; and, in another place, the colossal figure of a man standing
naked, and facing outward, which I took to be that of Buddha.[l3]
The town of Gwâlior extends along the foot of the hill on one side,
and consists of a single street above a mile long. There is a very
beautiful mosque, with one end built by a Muhammad Khan, A.D. 1665,
of the white sandstone of the rock above it. It looks as fresh as if
it had not been finished a month; and struck, as I passed it, with so
noble a work, apparently new, and under such a government, I alighted
from my horse, went in, and read the inscription, which told me the
date of the building and the name of the founder. There is no stucco-
work over any part of it, nor is any required on such beautiful
materials; and the stones are all so nicely cut that cement seems to
have been considered useless. It has the usual two minarets or
towers, and over the arches and alcoves are carved, as customary,
passages from the Korân, in the beautiful Kufic characters.[14] The
court and camp of the chief extends out from the southern end of the
hill for several miles.
The whole of the hill on which the fort of Gwâlior stands had
evidently, at no very distant period, been covered by a mass of
basalt, surmounted by a crust of indurated brown and red iron clay,
with lithomarge, which often assumes the appearance of common
laterite. The boulders of basalt, which still cap some part of the
hill, and form the greater part of the glacis at the bottom, are for
the most part in a state of rapid decomposition; but some of them are
still so hard and fresh that the hammer rings upon them as upon a
bell, and their fracture is brilliantly crystalline. The basalt is
the same as that which caps the sandstone hills of the Vindhya range
throughout Mâlwâ. The sandstone hills around Gwâlior all rise in the
same abrupt manner from the plain as those through Mâlwâ generally;
and they have almost all of them the same basaltic glacis at their
base, with boulders of that rock scattered over the top, all
indicating that they were at one time buried, in the same manner
under one great mass of volcanic matter, thrown out from their
submarine craters in streams of lava, or diffused through the ocean
or lakes in ashes, and deposited in strata. The geological character
of the country about Gwâlior is very similar to that of the country
about Sâgar; and I may say the same of the Vindhya range generally,
as far as I have seen it, from Mirzapore on the Ganges to Bhopâl in
Mâlwâ--hills of sandstone rising suddenly from alluvial plain, and
capped, or bearing signs of having been capped, by basalt reposing
immediately upon it, and partly covered in its turn by beds of
indurated iron clay.[15]
The fortress of Gwâlior was celebrated for its strength under the
Hindoo sovereigns of India; but was taken by the Muhammadans after a
long siege, A.D. 1197.[16] the Hindoos regained possession, but were
again expelled by the Emperor Îltutmish, A. D. 1235.[17] the Hindoos
again got possession, and after holding it one hundred years, again
surrendered it to the forces of the Emperor Ibrâhîm, A.D. 1519.[18]
In 1543 it was surrendered up by the troops of the Emperor
Humâyûn[19] to Shêr Khân, his successful competitor for the
empire.[20] It afterwards fell into the hands of a Jât chief, the
Rânâ of Gohad,[21] from whom it was taken by the Marâthâs. While in
their possession, it was invested by our troops under the command of
Major Popham; and, on the 3rd of August, 1780, taken by escalade.[22]
The party that scaled the wall was gallantly led by a very
distinguished and most promising officer, Captain Bruce, brother of
the celebrated traveller.[23]
It was made over to us by the Rânâ of Gohad, who had been our ally in
the war. Failing in his engagement to us, he was afterwards abandoned
to the resentment of Mâdhojî Sindhia, chief of the Marâthâs.[24] In
1783, Gwâlior was invested by Mâdhojî Sindhia's troops, under the
command of one of the most extraordinary men that have ever figured
in Indian history, the justly celebrated General De Boigne.[25] After
many unsuccessful attempts to take it by escalade, he bought over
part of the garrison, and made himself master of the place. Gohad
itself was taken soon after in 1784; but the Rânâ, Chhatarpat, made
his escape. He was closely pursued, made prisoner at Karaulî, and
confined in the fortress of Gwâlior, where he died in the year
1785.[26] He left no son, and his claims upon Gohad devolved upon his
nephew, Kîrat Singh, who, at the close of our war with the Marâthâs,
got from Lord Lake, in lieu of these claims, the estate of Dholpur,
situated on the left banks of the river Chambal, which is estimated
at the annual value of three hundred thousand, or three lâkhs, of
rupees. He died this year, 1835, and has been succeeded by his son,
Bhagwant Singh, a lad of seventeen years of age.[27]
Notes:
1. December, 1835.
2. Throughout the northern edge of the trap country in Râjputâna,
Gwâlior, and Bundêlkhand, dykes are rare or wanting.' (W. T.
Blandford, in _Manual of the Geology of India_, 1st ed., Part 1, p.
328.) The dykes mentioned in the text may not have been visited by
the officers of the Geological Surrey.
3. 'Basalt generally disintegrates into a reddish soil, quite
different from _regar_ in character. This reddish soil may be seen
passing into _regar_, but, as a rule, the black soil is confined to
the flatter ground at the bottom of the valleys, or on flat hill-
tops, the brown or red soils occupying the slopes' (ibid. p. 433).
4. Johnson, in his _Journey to the Western Islands_, observes: 'Now
and then we espied a little corn-field, which served to impress more
strongly the general barrenness.' [W. H. S.] The remark referred to
the shores of Loch Ness (p. 237 of volume viii of Johnson's Works,
London, 1820).
5. By this awkward phrase the author seems to mean Lucknow, on the
east, the capital of the kingdom of Oudh, and Udaipur, to the west,
the capital of the long-descended chieftain of Mêwâr. Alternatively,
the author may possibly have referred to Agra and Gwâlior, rather
than Lucknow and Udaipur.
6. 'The new city at Gwâlior below the fortress is, like the city of
Jhânsî, known as the 'Lashkar', or camp. The old city of Gwâlior
encircles the north end of the fortress. The new city, or Lashkar,
lies to the south, more than a mile distant. In January, 1859, the
population of the two cities together amounted to 142,044 persons
(_A.S.R._, vol. ii, p. 331).
7. Only those readers who have lived in India can fully understand
the reasons why the pigs should frequent such a place, and how great
would be the horrors of encamping in it.
8. In the description of the author's encampment at Gwâlior, he fell
into a mistake, which he discovered too late for correction in his
journal. His tents were not pitched within the Phûl Bâgh, as he
supposed, but without; and seeing nothing of this place, he imagined
that the dirty and naked ground outside was actually the flower-
garden. The Phûl Bâgh, however, is a very pleasing and well-ordered
garden, although so completely secluded from observation by lofty
walls that many other travellers must have encamped on the same spot
without being aware of its existence. (_Publishers' note at end of
volume ii of original edition_. )
9. Bhîlsâ is the principal town of the Isâgarh subdivision in the
Gwâlior State. The famous Buddhist antiquities near it are described
at length in Cunningham, _The Bhîlsâ Topes, or Buddhist Monuments of
Central India_ (1854), and in Maisey, _Sânchi and its Remains. A full
Description of the Ancient Buildings, Sculptures, and Inscriptions at
Sânchi, near Bhîlsâ, in Central India_. With an Introductory Note by
Major-General Sir Alexander Cunningham, K.C.I.E. (1892). It is
surprising that so keen an observer as the author appears not to have
noticed any of the great Buddhist buildings of Central India.
10. The government of Gwâlior has improved since the author wrote.
Many reforms have been begun and more or less fully executed. In May,
1887, the vast hoard of rupees buried in pits in the fort, valued at
five millions sterling, was exhumed, and lent to the Government of
India to be usefully employed. The passive opposition of a court like
that of Gwâlior to the effectual execution of reforms is continuous
and difficult to overcome.
11. The author's description of the ordinary Asiatic government at
almost all times and in all places as 'a grinding military despotism'
is correct. Sentimental persons in both India and England are apt to
forget this weighty truth. The golden age of India, excepting,
perhaps, the Gupta period between A.D. 330 and 455, is as mythical as
that of Ireland. What Persia now is, that would India be, if she had
been left to her own devices.
12. Sir A. Cunningham was stationed at Gwâlior for five years, and
had thus an exceptionally accurate knowledge of the fortress. His
account, which corrects the text in some particulars, is as follows:-
'the great fortress of Gwâlior is situated on a precipitous, flat-
topped, and isolated hill of sandstone, which rises 300 feet above
the town at the north end, but only 274 feet at the upper gate of the
principal entrance. The hill is long and narrow; its extreme length
from north to south being one mile and three-quarters, while its
breadth varies from 600 feet opposite the main entrance to 2,800 feet
in the middle opposite the great temple. The walls are from 30 to 35
feet in height, and the rock immediately below them is steeply, but
irregularly, scarped all round the hill. The long line of battlements
which crowns the steep scarp on the east is broken only by the lofty
towers and fretted domes of the noble palace of Râjâ Mân Singh. On
the opposite side, the line of battlements is relieved by the deep
recess of the Urwâhi valley, and by the zigzag and serrated parapets
and loopholed bastions which flank the numerous gates of the two
western entrances. At the northern end, where the rock has been
quarried for ages, the jagged masses of the overhanging cliff seem
ready to fall upon the city beneath them. To the south the hill is
less lofty, but the rock has been steeply scarped, and is generally
quite inaccessible. Midway over all towers the giant form of a
massive Hindu temple, grey with the moss of ages. Altogether, the
fort of Gwâlior forms one of the most picturesque views in Northern
India' (_A.S.R._, vol. ii, p. 330).
13. The nakedness of the image in itself proves that Buddha could not
be the person represented. His statues are never nude. The Gwâlior
figures are images of some of the twenty-four great saints
(Tîrthankaras or Jinas) of the Digambara sect of the Jain religion.
Jain statues are frequently of colossal size. The largest of those at
Gwâlior is fifty-seven feet high. The Gwâlior sculptures are of late
date--the middle of the fifteenth century. The antiquities of
Gwâlior, including these sculptures, are well described in _A.S.R._,
vol. ii, pp. 330-95, plates lxxxvi to xci.
14. This mosque is the Jâmi', or cathedral, mosque 'situated at the
eastern foot of the fortress, near the Âlamgîrî Darwâza (gate). It is
a neat and favourable specimen of the later Moghal architecture. Its
beauty, however, is partly due to the fine light-coloured sandstone
of which it is built. This at once attracted the notice of Sir Wm.
Sleeman, who, &c.' (_A.S.R._, vol. ii, p. 370). This mosque is in the
old city, described as 'a crowded mass of small flat-roofed stone
houses' (ibid. p. 330).
15. The Geological Survey recognizes a special group of 'transition'
rocks between the metamorphic and the Vindhyan series under the name
of the Gwâlior area. 'The Gwâlior area is . . . only fifty miles long
from east to west, and about fifteen miles wide. It takes its name
from the city of Gwâlior, which stands upon it, surrounding the
famous fort built upon a scarped outlier of Vindhyan sandstone, which
rests upon a base of massive bedded trap belonging to the transition
period' (_Manual of Geology of India_, 1st ed., Part l, p. 56). The
writers of the manual do not notice the basaltic cap of the fort hill
described by the author, and at p. 300 use language which implies
that the hill is outside the limits of the Deccan trap. But the
author's observations seem sufficiently precise to warrant the
conclusion that he was right in believing the basaltic cap of the
Gwâlior hill to be an outlying fragment of the vast Deccan trap
sheet. The relation between laterite and lithomarge is discussed in
p. 353 of the _Manual_, and the occurrence of laterite caps on the
highest ground of the country, at two places-near Gwâlior, 'outside
of the trap area', is noticed (ibid. p. 356). These two places are at
Râipur hill, and on the Kaimûr sandstone, about two miles to the
north-west. No doubt these two hills are outliers of the Central
India spread of laterite, which has been traced as far as Siprî,
about sixty miles south of the Râipur hill (Hacket, _Geology of
Gwâlior and Vicinity_, in _Records of Geol. Survey of India_, vol.
iii, p. 41). The geology of Gwâlior is also discussed in Mallet's
paper entitled 'Sketch of the Geology of Scindia's Territories'
(_Records_, vol. viii, p. 55). Neither writer refers to the basaltic
cap of Gwâlior fort hill. For the refutation of the author's theory
of the subaqueous origin of the Deccan trap see notes Chapters 14,
note 13, and Chapter 17, note 3 _ante_.
16. In the reign of Muizz-ud-dîn, Muhammad bin Sâm, also known by the
names of Shibâb-ud-din, and Muhammad Ghorî. He struck billon coins at
the Gwâlior mint. the correct date is A.D. 1196. The Hîjrî year 592
began on the 6th Dec., A.D. 1195.
17. Shams-ud-dîn Îltutmish, 'the greatest of the Slave Kings',
reigned from A.D. 1210 to 1235 (A.H. 607-633). He besieged Gwâlior in
A.H. 629 and after eleven months' resistance captured the place in
the month Safar, A.H. 630, equivalent to Nov.-Dec. A.D. 1232. The
date given in the text is wrong. The correct name of this king is
Îltutmish (_Z.D.M.G._, vol. lxi (1907), pp. 192, 193). It is written
Altumash by the author, and Altamsh by Thomas and Cunningham. A
summary of the events of his reign, based on coins and other original
documents, is given on page 45 of Thomas, _Chronicles of the Pathân
Kings of Delhi_. Îltutmish recorded an inscription dated A.H. 630 at
Gwâlior (ibid. p. 80). This inscription was seen by Bâbur, but has
since disappeared.
18. Ibrâhîm Lodî, A.D. 1517-26. He was defeated and killed by Bâbur
at the first battle of Pânîpat, A.D. 1526. the correct date of his
capture of Gwâlior, according to Cunningham (_A.S.R._, vol. ii, p.
340), is 1518.
19. Humâyûn was son of Bâbur, and father of Akbar the Great. His
first reign lasted from A.D. 1530 to 1540; his second brief reign of
less than six months was terminated by an accident in January A.D.
1556. The correct date of the surrender of Gwâlior to Shêr Shâh was
A.D. 1542, corresponding to A.H. 949 (_A. S .R._, vol. ii, p. 393),
which year began 17th April, 1542.
20. Shêr Khan is generally known as Shêr (or Shîr) Shâh. A good
summary of his career from A.D. 1528 to his death in A.D. 1545 (A.H.
934 to 952) is given by Thomas (op. cit. p. 393). He struck coins at
Gwâlior in A.H. 950, 951, 952 (ibid. p. 403).
21. Gohad lies between Etawah (Itâwâ) and Gwâlior, twenty-eight miles
north-east of the latter. The chief, originally an obscure Jât
landholder, rose to power during the confusion of the eighteenth
century, and allied himself with the British in 1789 (Thornton,
_Gazetteer_, s.v. 'Gohad').
22. This memorable exploit was performed during Warren Hastings's war
with the Marâthâs, Sir Eyre Coote being Commander-in-Chief. Captain
Popham first stormed the fort of Lahar, a stronghold west of Kâlpî
(Calpee), and then, by a cleverly arranged escalade, captured 'with
little trouble and small loss' the Gwâlior fortress, which was
garrisoned by a thousand men, and commonly supposed to be
impregnable. 'Captain Popham was rewarded for his gallant services by
being promoted to the rank of Major' (Thornton, _The History of the
British Empire in India_, 2nd ed., 1859, p. 149). 'It is said that
the spot (for escalade) was pointed out to Popham by a cowherd, and
that the whole of the attacking party were supplied with grass shoes
to prevent them from slipping on the ledges of rock. There is a story
also that the cost of these grass shoes was deducted from Popham's
pay when he was about to leave India as a Major-General, nearly a
quarter of a century afterwards' (_A.S.R._, vol. ii, p. 340).
23. James Bruce, 'the celebrated traveller', was Consul at Algiers.
He explored Tripoli, Tunis, Syria, and Egypt, and travelled in
Abyssinia from November 1769 to December 1771. He returned to Egypt
by the Nile, arriving at Cairo in January 1773. His travels were
published in 1790. He died in 1794.
24. The Sindhia family of Gwâlior was founded by Rânojî Sindhia, a
man of humble origin, in the service of the Peshwâ. Rânojî died about
A.D. 1750, and was succeeded by one of his natural sons, Mâhâdajî
(corruptly Mahdaju, &c.) Sindhia, whose turbulent and chequered
career lasted till 1794, when he was succeeded by his grand-nephew,
Daulat Râo. The Marâthâ power under Daulat Râo was broken in 1803, by
Sir Arthur Wellesley at Assaye and Argaum, and by Lord Lake at
Laswârî. Mâhâdajî's career is treated fully by Grant Duff, _A History
of the Mahrattas_ (1826 and reprint). Mr. H. G. Keene in his little
book (_Rulers of India_, Oxford, 1892) erroneously gives the chiefs
name as 'Mâdhava Rao'. The anthor's 'Mâdhojî' also is wrong.
25. It is impossible within the limits of a note to give an account
of the extraordinary career of General De Boigne. His Indian
adventures began in 1778, and terminated in September 1796, when he
retired from Sindhia's service, and sold his private regiment of
Persian cavalry, six hundred strong, to Lord Cornwallis, on behalf of
the East India Company, for three lakhs of rupees (about £30,000). He
settled in his native town, Chambéri in Savoy, and lived, in the
enjoyment of his great wealth, and of high honours conferred by the
sovereigns of France and Italy, until 21st June, 1830. He was created
a Count, and was succeeded in the title by his son. See G. M.
Raymond, _Mémoire sur la Carrière Militaire et Politique de M. le
Général Comte de Boigne, 2ième_ ed., Chambéry, 1830. Nine chapters of
Mr. Herbert Compton's book, _A Particular Account of European
Military Adventurers of Hindustan_ (London, 1892), are devoted to De
Boigne.
26. The cession of Gohad to Sindhia, sanctioned in the year 1805,
during the brief and inglorious second term of office of Lord
Cornwallis, was effected by Sir George Barlow. The transaction is
severely censured by Thornton (_History_, p. 343) as a breach of
faith. Gwâlior was given up to Sindhia along with Gohad. In January
1844, shortly after the battle of Maharâjpur, Gwâlior was again
occupied by the forces of the Company, and the fortress (save for the
Mutiny period) continued in British occupation until the 2nd December
1885, when Lord Dufferin restored it to Sindhia in exchange for
Jhânsî. In June 1857 the Gwâlior soldiery mutinied and massacred the
Europeans, but the Maharâjâ remained throughout loyal to the English
Government.
Sir Hugh Rose recaptured the place by assault on the 28th June 1858.
In the changed circumstances of the country, and with regard to the
modern developments of the art of war, the Gwâlior fortress is now of
slight military value.
27. The territory of the Dholpur chief is about fifty-four miles long
by twenty-three broad. The town of Dholpur is nearly midway between
Agra and Gwâlior. The revenue is estimated by Thornton (1858) as
seven lâkhs, not only three lâkhs as stated by the author. It was
about eight lâkhs in 1904 (_I.G._, 1908).
CHAPTER 37
Content for Empire between the Sons of Shâh Jahân.
Under the Emperors of Delhi the fortress of Gwâlior was always
considered as an imperial State prison, in which they confined those
rivals and competitors for dominion whom they did not like to put to
a violent death. They kept a large menagerie, and other things, for
their amusement. Among the best of the princes who ended their days
in this great prison was Sulaimân Shikoh, the eldest son of the
unhappy Dârâ.[1] A narrative of the contest for empire between the
four sons of Shâh Jahân may, perhaps, prove both interesting and
instructive; and, as I shall have occasion, in the course of my
rambles, to refer to the characters who figured in it, I shall
venture to give it a place. . . .[2]
Notes:
1. 'The prisons of Gwâlior are situated in a small outwork on the
western side of the fortress, immediately above the Dhondha gateway.
They are called "nau chaukî", or "the nine cells", and are both well
lighted and well ventilated. But in spite of their height, from
fifteen to twenty-six feet, they must be insufferably close in the
hot season. These were the State prisons in which Akbar confined his
rebellious cousins, and Aurangzêb the troublesome sons of Dârâ and
Murâd, as well as his own more dangerous son Muhammad. During these
times the fort was strictly guarded, and no one was allowed to enter
without a pass' (_A.S.R._, vol. ii, p. 369), Sulaimân Shikoh, whom
Manucci credits with 'all the gifts of nature', was poisoned at
Gwâlior early in the reign of Aurangzêb, by order of that monarch,
paternal uncle of the victim (Irvine, _Storia do Mogor_, i. 380). The
author, following Bernier, always calls Shâhjahân's eldest son simply
Dârâ. His name really was Dârâ Shikoh (or Shukoh), meaning 'in
splendour like Darius'.
2. The following twelve chapters contain an historical piece, to the
personages and events of which the author will have frequent occasion
to refer; and it is introduced in this place from its connexion with
Gwâlior, the State prison in which some of its actors ended their
days. [W. H. S.]
The 'historical piece' which occupies chapters 37 to 46, inclusive of
the author's text is little more than a paraphrase of _The History of
the Late Rebellion in the States of the Great Mogol_ by Bernier, as
the disquisition is called in Brock's translation. Mr. A. Constable's
revised and annotated translation of Bernier's work (Constable and
Co., 1891; reprinted with corrections. Oxford University Press, 1914)
renders superfluous the reprinting of Sleeman's paraphrase, which
would require much correction and comment before it could be
presented to readers of the present day. The main facts of the
narrative are, moreover, now easily accessible in the histories of
Elphinstone and innumerable other writers. Such explanations as may
be required to elucidate allusions to the excised portion in the
later chapters of the anthor's work will be found in the notes. The
titles of the chapters which have not been reprinted follow here for
facility of reference.
CHAPTER 38
Aurangzêb and Murâd Defeat their Father's Army near Ujain.
CHAPTER 39
Dârâ Marches in Person against his Brothers, and is Defeated.
CHAPTER 40
Dârâ Retreats towards Lahore--Is robbed by the Jâts--Their Character.
CHAPTER 41
Shâh Jahân Imprisoned by his Two Sons, Aurangzêb and Murâd.
CHAPTER 42
Aurangzêb Throws off the Mask, Imprisons his Brother Murâd, and
Assumes the Government of the Empire.
CHAPTER 43
Aurangzêb Meets Shujâ in Bengal and Defeats him, after Pursuing Dârâ
to the Hyphasis.
CHAPTER 44
Aurangzêb Imprisons his Eldest Son--Shujâ and all his Family are
Destroyed.
CHAPTER 45
Second Defeat and Death of Dârâ, and Imprisonment of his Two Sons.
CHAPTER 46
Death and Character of Amîr Jumla,
CHAPTER 47
Reflections on the Preceding History.
The contest for the empire of India here described is very like that
which preceded it, between the sons of Jahângîr, in which Shâh Jahân
succeeded in destroying all his brothers and nephews; and that which
succeeded it, forty years after,[1] in which Mu'azzam, the second of
the four sons of Aurangzêb, did the same;[2] and it may, like the
rest of Indian history, teach us a few useful lessons. First, we
perceive the advantages of the law of primogeniture, which accustoms
people to consider the right of the eldest son as sacred, and the
conduct of any man who attempts to violate it as criminal. Among
Muhammadans, property, as well real as personal, is divided equally
among the sons;[3] and their Korân, which is their only civil and
criminal, as well as religions, code, makes no provision for the
successions to sovereignty. The death of every sovereign is, in
consequence, followed by a contest between his sons, unless they are
overawed by some paramount power; and he who succeeds in this contest
finds it necessary, for his own security, to put all his brothers and
nephews to death, lest they should be rescued by factions, and made
the cause of future civil wars. But sons, who exercise the powers of
viceroys and command armies, cannot, where the succession is
unsettled, wait patiently for the natural death of their father--
delay may be dangerous. Circumstances, which now seem more favourable
to their views than to those of their brothers, may alter; the
military aristocracy depend upon the success of the chief they choose
in the enterprise, and the army more upon plunder than regular pay;
both may desert the cause of the more wary for that of the more
daring; each is flattered into an overweening confidence in his own
ability and good fortune; and all rush on to seize upon the throne
yet filled by their wretched parent, who, in the history of his own
crimes, now reads those of his children. Gibbon has justly observed
(chap. 7): 'the superior prerogative of birth, when it has obtained
the sanction of time and popular opinion, is the plainest and least
invidious of all distinctions among mankind. The acknowledged right
extinguishes the hopes of faction; and the conscious security disarms
the cruelty of the monarch. To the firm establishment of this idea we
owe the peaceful succession and mild administration of European
monarchies. To the defect of it we must attribute the frequent civil
wars through which an Asiatic despot is obliged to cut his way to the
throne of his fathers. Yet, even in the East, the sphere of
contention is usually limited to the princes of the reigning house;
and, as soon as the fortunate competitor has removed his brethren by
the sword and the bowstring, he no longer entertains any jealousy of
his meaner subjects.'
Among Hindoos, both real and personal property is divided in the same
manner equally among the sons;[4] but a principality is, among them,
considered as an exception to this rule; and every large estate,
within which the proprietor holds criminal jurisdiction, and
maintains a military establishment, is considered a principality. In
such cases the law of primogeniture is rigorously enforced; and the
death of the prince scarcely ever involves a contest for power and
dominion between his sons. The feelings of the people, who are
accustomed to consider the right of the eldest son to the succession
as religiously sacred, would be greatly shocked at the attempt of any
of his brothers to invade it. The younger brothers, never for a
moment supposing they could be supported in such a sacrilegious
attempt, feel for their eldest brother a reverence inferior only to
that which they feel for their father; and the eldest brother, never
supposing such attempts on their part as possible, feels towards them
as towards his own children. All the members of such a family
commonly live in the greatest harmony.[5] In the laws, usages, and
feelings of the people upon this subject we had the means of
preventing that eternal subdivision of landed property, which ever
has been, and ever will be, the bane of everything that is great and
good in India; but, unhappily, our rulers have never had the wisdom
to avail themselves of them. In a great part of India the property,
or the lease of a _village_ held in farm under Government, was
considered as a _principality_, and subject strictly to the same laws
of primogeniture--it was a _fief_, held under Government on condition
of either direct service, rendered to the State in war, in education,
or charitable or religions duties, or of furnishing the means, in
money or in kind, to provide for such service. In every part of the
Sâgar and Nerbudda Territories the law of primogeniture in such
leases was in force when we took possession, and has been ever since
preserved.[6] The eldest of the sons that remain united with the
father, at his death, succeeds to the estate, and to the obligation
of maintaining all the widows and orphan children of those of his
brothers who remained united to their parent stock up to their death,
all his unmarried sisters, and, above all, his mother. All the
younger brothers aid him in the management, and are maintained by him
till they wish to separate, when a division of the stock takes place,
and is adjusted by the elders of the village. The member, who thus
separates from the parent stock, from that time forfeits for ever all
claims to support from the possessor of the ancestral estate, either
for himself, his widow, or his orphan children.[7]
Next, it is obvious that no existing Government in India could, in
case of invasion or civil war, count upon the fidelity of their
aristocracy either of land or of office. It is observed by Hume, in
treating of the reign of King John in England, that 'men easily
change sides in a civil war, especially where the power is founded
upon an hereditary and independent authority, and is not derived from
the opinion and favour of the people'--that is, upon the people
collectively or the nation; for the hereditary and independent
authority of the English baron in the time of King John was founded
upon the opinion and fidelity of only that portion of the people over
which he ruled, in the same manner as that of the Hindoo chiefs of
India in the time of Shâh Jahân; but it was without reference either
to the honesty of the cause he espoused, or to the opinion and
feeling of the nation or empire generally regarding it. The Hindoo
territorial chiefs, like the feudal barons of the Middle Ages in
Europe, employed all the revenues of their estates in the maintenance
of military followers, upon whose fidelity they could entirely rely,
whatever side they might themselves take in a civil war; and the more
of these resources that were left at their disposal, the more
impatient they became of the restraints which settled governments
imposed upon them. Under such settled governments they felt that they
had an _arm_ which they could not use; and the stronger that arm, the
stronger was their desire to use it in the subjugation of their
neighbours. The reigning emperors tried to secure their fidelity by
assigning to them posts of honour about their court that required
their personal attendance in all their pomp of pride; and by taking
from each a daughter in marriage. If any one rebelled or neglected
his duties, he was either crushed by the imperial forces, or put to
the _ban of the empire_', and his territories were assigned to any
one who would undertake to conquer them.[8] Their attendance at our
viceroyal court would be a sad encumbrance;[9] and our Governor-
General could not well conciliate them by matrimonial alliances,
unless we were to alter a good deal in their favour our law against
polygamy; nor would it be desirable to 'let slip the dogs of war'
once more throughout the land by adopting the plan of putting the
refractory chiefs to the ban of the empire. Their troops would be of
no use to us in the way they are organized and disciplined, even if
we could rely upon their fidelity in time of need; and this I do not
think we ever can.[10]
If it be the duty of all such territorial chiefs to contribute to the
support of the public establishments of the paramount power by which
they are secured in the possession of their estates, and defended
from all external danger, as it most assuredly is, it is the duty of
that power to take such contribution in money, or the means of
maintaining establishments more suited to its purpose than their rude
militia can ever be; and thereby to impair the _powers_ of that arm
which they are so impatient to wield for their own aggrandizement,
and to the prejudice of their neighbours; and to strengthen that of
the paramount power by which the whole are kept in peace, harmony,
and security. We give to India what India never had before our rule,
and never could have without it, the assurance that there will always
be at the head of the Government a sensible ruler trained up to
office in the best school in the world; and that the security of the
rights, and the enforcement of the duties, presented or defined by
law, will not depend upon the will or caprice of individuals in
power. These assurances the people in India now everywhere thoroughly
understand and appreciate. They see in the native states around them
that the lucky accident of an able governor is too rare ever to be
calculated upon; while all that the people have of property, office,
or character, depends not only upon their governor, but upon every
change that he may make in his ministers.
The government of the Muhammadans was always essentially military,
and the aristocracy was always one of military office. There was
nothing else upon which an aristocracy could be formed. All high
civil offices were combined with the military commands. The emperor
was the great proprietor of all the lands, and collected and
distributed their rents through his own servants. Every Musalmân with
his Korân in his hand was his own priest and his own lawyer; and the
people were nowhere represented in any municipal or legislative
assembly--there was no bar, bench, senate, corporation, art, science,
or literature by which men could rise to eminence and power. Capital
had nowhere been concentrated upon great commercial or manufacturing
establishments. There were, in short, no great men but the military
servants of Government; and all the servants of Government held their
posts at the will and pleasure of their sovereign.[11]
If a man was appointed by the emperor to the command of five
thousand, the whole of this five thousand depended entirely on his
favour for their employment, and upon their employment for their
subsistence, whether paid from the imperial treasury, or by an
assignment of land in some distant province.[12] In our armies there
is a regular gradation of rank; and every officer feels that he holds
his commission by a tenure as high in origin, as secure in
possession, and as independent in its exercise, as that of the
general who commands; and the soldiers all know and feel that the
places of those officers, who are killed or disabled in action, will
be immediately filled by those next in rank, who are equally trained
to command, and whose authority none will dispute. In the Muhammadan
armies there was no such gradation of rank. Every man held his office
at the will of the chief whom he followed, and he was every moment
made to feel that all his hopes of advancement must depend upon his
pleasure. The relation between them was that of patron and client;
the client felt bound to yield implicit obedience to the commands of
his patron, whatever they might be; and the patron, in like manner,
felt bound to protect and promote the interests of his client, as
long as he continued to do so. As often as the patron changed sides
in a civil war, his clients all blindly followed him; and when he was
killed, they instantly dispersed to serve under any other leader whom
they might find willing to take their services on the same terms.
The Hindoo chiefs of the military class had hereditary territorial
possessions; and the greater part of these possessions were commonly
distributed on conditions of military service among their followers,
who were all of the same clan. But the highest Muhammadan officers of
the empire had not an acre more of land than they required for their
dwelling-houses, gardens, and cemeteries. They had nothing but their
office to depend upon, and were always naturally anxious to hold it
under the strongest side in any competition for dominion. When the
star of the competitor under whom they served seemed to be on the
wane, they soon found some plausible excuse to make their peace with
his rival, and serve under his banners. Each competitor fought for
his own life, and those of his children; the imperial throne could be
filled by only one man; and that man dared not leave one single
brother alive. His father had taken good care to dispose of all his
own brothers and nephews in the last contest. The subsistence of the
highest, as well as that of the lowest, officer in the army depended
upon their employment in the public service, and all such employments
would be given to those who served the victor in the struggle. Under
such circumstances one is rather surprised that the history of civil
wars in India exhibits so many instances of fidelity and devotion.
The mass of the people stood aloof in such contests without any
feeling of interest, save the dread that their homes might become the
seat of the war, or the tracks of armies which were alike destructive
to the people in their course whatever side they might follow. The
result could have no effect upon their laws and institutions, and
little upon their industry and property. As ships are from necessity
formed to weather the storms to which they are constantly liable at
sea, so were the Indian village communities framed to weather those
of invasion and civil war, to which they were so much accustomed by
land; and, in the course of a year or two, no traces were found of
ravages that one might have supposed it would have taken ages to
recover from. The lands remained the same, and their fertility was
improved by the fallow; every man carried away with him the
implements of his trade, and brought them back with him when he
returned; and the industry of every village supplied every necessary
article that the community required for their food, clothing,
furniture, and accommodation. Each of these little communities, when
left unmolested, was in itself sufficient to secure the rights and
enforce the duties of all the different members; and all they wanted
from their government was moderation in the land taxes, and
protection from external violence. Arrian says: 'If any intestine war
happens to break forth among the Indians, it is deemed a heinous
crime either to seize the husbandmen or spoil their harvest. All the
rest wage war against each other, and kill and slay as they think
convenient, while they live quietly and peaceably among them, and
employ themselves at their rural affairs either in their fields or
vineyards.'[13] I am afraid armies were not much more disposed to
forbearance in the days of Alexander than at present, and that his
followers must have supposed they remained untouched, merely because
they heard of their sudden rise again from their ruins by that spirit
of moral and political vitality with which necessity seems to have
endowed them.[14]
During the early part of his life and reign, Aurangzêb was employed
in conquering and destroying the two independent kingdoms of Golconda
and Bîjâpur in the Deccan, which he formed into two provinces
governed by viceroys. Each had had an army of above a hundred
thousand men while independent. The officers and soldiers of these
armies had nothing but their courage and their swords to depend upon
for their subsistence. Finding no longer any employment under settled
and legitimate authority in defending the life, property, and
independence of the people, they were obliged to seek it around the
standards of lawless freebooters; and upon the ruins of these
independent kingdoms and their disbanded armies rose the Marâthâ
power, the hydra-headed monster which Aurangzêb thus created by his
ambition, and spent the last twenty years of his life in vain
attempts to crush.[15] The monster has been since crushed by being
deprived of its Peshwâ, the head which alone could infuse into all
the members of the confederacy a feeling of nationality, and direct
all their efforts, when required, to one common object. Sindhia, the
chief of Gwâlior, is one of the surviving members of this great
confederacy--the rest are the Holkars of Indore, the Bhônslâs of
Nâgpur, and the Gaikwârs of Barodâ,[16] the grandchildren of the
commandants of predatory armies, who formed capital cities out of
their standing camps in the countries they invaded and conquered in
the name of their head, the Sâtârâ Râjâ,[17] and afterwards in that
of his mayor of the palace, the Peshwâ. There is not now the
slightest feeling of nationality left among the Marâthâ States,
either collectively or individually.[18] There is not the slightest
feeling of sympathy between the mass of the people and the chief who
rules over them, and his public establishments. To maintain these
public establishments he everywhere plunders the people, who most
heartily detest him and them. These public establishments are
composed of men of all religions and sects, gathered from all
quarters of India, and bound together by no common feeling, save the
hope of plunder and promotion. Not one in ten is from, or has his
family in, the country where he serves, nor is one in ten of the same
clan with his chief. Not one of them has any hope of a provision
either for himself, when disabled from wounds or old age from serving
his chief any longer, or for his family, should he lose his life in
his service.
In India[19] there are a great many native chiefs who were enabled,
during the disorders which attended the decline and fall of the
Muhammadan power and the rise and progress of the Marâthâs and
English, to raise and maintain armies by the plunder of their
neighbours. The paramount power of the British being now securely
established throughout the country, they are prevented from indulging
any longer in such sporting propensities; and might employ their vast
revenues in securing the blessing of good civil government for the
territories in the possession of which they are secured by our
military establishment. But these chiefs are not much disposed to
convert their swords into ploughshares; they continue to spend their
revenues on useless military establishments for purposes of parade
and show. A native prince would, they say, be as insignificant
without an army as a native gentleman upon an elephant without a
cavalcade, or upon a horse without a tail. But the said army have
learnt from their forefathers that they were to look to aggressions
upon their neighbours--to pillage, plunder, and conquest, for wealth
and promotion; and they continue to prevent their prince from
indulging in any disposition to turn his attention to the duties of
civil government. They all live in the hope of some disaster to the
paramount power which secures the increasing wealth of the
surrounding countries from their grasp; and threatened innovations
from the north-west raise their spirits and hopes in proportion as
they depress those of the classes engaged in all branches of peaceful
industry.
There are, in all parts of India, thousands and tens of thousands who
have lived by the sword, or who wish to live by the sword, but cannot
find employment suited to their tastes. These would all flock to the
standard of the first lawless chief who could offer them a fair
prospect of plunder; and to them all wars and rumours of war are
delightful. The moment they hear of a threatened invasion from the
north-west, they whet their swords, and look fiercely around upon
those from whose breasts they are 'to cut their pound of flesh'.[20]
Notes:
1. 'Fifty years after' would be more nearly correct. Aurangzêb wa
crowned 23rd July, 1658, according to the author. See end of next
note.
2. On the death of Aurangzêb, which took place in the Deccan, on the
3rd of March, 1707 (N.S.), his son 'Azam marched at the head of the
troops which he commanded in the Deccan, to meet Mu'azzam, who was
viceroy in Kabul. They met and fought near Agra. 'Azam was defeated
and killed. The victor marched to meet his other brother, Kâm Baksh,
whom he killed near Hyderabad in the Deccan, and secured to himself
the empire. On his death, which took place in 1713, his four sons
contended in the same way for the throne at the head of the armies of
their respective viceroyalties. Mu'izz-ud-dîn, the most crafty,
persuaded his two brothers, Rafî-ash-Shân and Jahân Shâh, to unite
their forces with his own against their ambitions brother, Azîm-ash-
Shân, whom they defeated and killed, Mu'izz-ud-dîn then destroyed his
two allies. [W. H. S.]
The above note is not altogether accurate. 'Azam, the third son of
Aurangzêb, was killed in battle near Agra, in June 1707. During the
interval between Aurangzêb's death and his own, he had struck coins.
Mu'azzam, the second, and eldest then surviving son, after the defeat
of his rival, ascended the throne under the title of Shâh Âlam
Bahâdur Shâh, and is generally known as Bahâdur Shâh. He was then
sixty-four years of age, his father having been eighty-seven years
old when he died. The events following the death of Bahâdur Shâh are
narrated as follows by Mr. Lane-Poole; 'The Deccan was the weakest
point in the empire from the beginning of the reign. Hardly had
Bahâdur appointed his youngest brother, Kâm Baksh ('Wish-fulfiller'),
viceroy of Bîjâpur and Haidarâbâd, when that infatuated prince
rebelled and committed such atrocities that the Emperor was compelled
to attack him. Zû-l-Fikâr engaged and defeated the rebel king (who
was striking coins in full assumption of sovereignty) near
Haidarâbâd, and Kâm Baksh died of his wounds (1708, A.H. 1120).
'In the midst of this confusion, and surrounded by portents of coming
disruption, Bahâdur died, 1712 (1124). He left four sons, who
immediately entered with the zest of their race upon the struggle for
the crown. The eldest, 'Azîm-ash-Shân ("Strong of Heart"), first
assumed the sceptre, but Zû-l-Fikâr, the prime minister, opposed and
routed him, and the prince was drowned in his flight. The successful
general next defeated and slew two other brothers, Khujistah Akhtâr
Jahân-Shâh and Rafî-ash-Shân, and placed the surviving of the four
sons of Bahâdur [i.e. Mu'izz-ud-dîn] on the throne with the title of
Jahândâr ("World-owner"). The new Emperor was an irredeemable
poltroon and an abandoned debauchee.' (_The History of the Moghul
Emperors of Hindustan illustrated by their Coins_, Constable, 1892,
and in Introd. to _B. M. Catal. of Moghul Emperors_, same date.)
He was killed in 1713, and was succeeded by Farrukh-sîyar, the son of
Azîm-ush-Shân. The chronology is as follows:-
No. Sovereign. A.H. A.D.
VI. Aurangzêb Âlamgîr, Muhayî-ud-dîn . 1068 1658
['Azam Shâh . . . . . 1118 1707
Kâm Baksh . . . . . 1119-20 1708]
VII. Bahâdur Shâh-'Âlam, Kutb-ud-dîn . . 1119 1707
VIII. Jahândâr Shâh, Mu'izz-ud-dîn . . 1124 1713
IX. Farrukhsîyar . . . . . 1124 1713
The question concerning the exact date from which the beginning of
Aurangzêb's reign should be reckoned is obscured by the conflict of
authorities and has given rise to much discussion. The results may be
stated briefly as follow:--
Aurangzêb formally took possession of the throne in a garden outside
Delhi on the 1st Zû'l Q'adah, A.H. 1068, July 31, A.D. 1658, but
subsequently orders were passed to antedate the beginning of the
reign to 1st Ramazân in the same year, equivalent to June 2, 1658.
After the destruction of Shâh Shujâ, Aurangzêb returned to Delhi in
May, A.D. 1659, and was again enthroned with full ceremonial on June
15, 1659 (= A.H. 1069). Some authors consequently assume the
accession to have taken place in 1659. But the reign certainly began
in A.D. 1658, and should be reckoned as running from the official
date, June 2 of that year. The dates given above are in New Style
(N.S.). If recorded in Old Style (O.S.) they would be ten days
earlier. (See Irvine and Hoernle in _J.A.S.B._, Part I, vol. lxii
(1893), pp. 256-67; and Irvine, in _Ind. Ant._, vol. xl (1911), pp.
74, 75.)
3. The author invariably ignores the fact that daughters and other
female relatives inherit under Muhammadan law.
4. Hindoo law does not ordinarily recognize any right of succession
for daughters, and so differs essentially from the law of Islam. The
exceptions to this general rule are unimportant.
5. The experience of most officials does not confirm this statement.
6. The statement now requires modification. After the Central
Provinces were constituted in 1861, the principle of succession by
primogeniture was maintained only in the Hoshangâbâd, Chhindwâra,
Chândâ, and Chhattîsgarh Districts. But even there the legal effect
of the restrictions on alienation and partition is 'not quite free
from doubt' (_I.G._ 1908, x. 73). The tendency of the law courts is
to apply everywhere uniform rules taken from the Hindoo law books.
7. 'See _ante_, Chapter 10, notes 10, 16. The gradual conversion of
tenure by leases from Government into proprietary right in land has
brought the land under the operation of the ordinary Hindoo law, and
each member of a joint family can now enforce partition of the land
as well as of the stock upon it. The evils resulting from incessant
partition are obvious, but no remedy can be devised. The people
insist on partition, and will effect it privately, if the law imposes
obstacles to a formal public division.
8. These remarks attribute too much System to the disorderly working
of an Asiatic despotism. No institution resembling the formal 'ban of
the empire' ever really existed in India.
9. The Râjâs at Simla might now be considered by some people as an
encumbrance.
10. The author could not foresee the gallant service to be rendered
by the Chiefs of the Panjâb and other territories in the Mutiny, nor
the institution of the Imperial Service Troops. Those troops, first
organized in 1888, in response to the voluntary offers made by many
princes as a reply to the Russian aggression on Panjdeh, are select
bodies, picked from the soldiery of certain native states, and
equipped and drilled in the European manner. Cashmere (Kâshmîr) and
many States in the Panjâb and elsewhere furnish troops of this kind,
officered by local gentlemen, under the guidance of English
inspecting officers. The Kâshmîr Imperial Service Troops did
excellent service during the campaign of 1892 in Hunza and Nagar. the
System so happily introduced is likely to be much further developed.
In 1907 the authorized strength was a little over 18,000 (_I.G._, iv
(1907), pp. 87, 373).
11. 'In Rome, as in Egypt and India, many of the great works which,
in modern nations, form the basis of gradations of rank in society,
were executed by Government out of public revenue, or by individuals
gratuitously for the benefit of the public; for instance, roads,
canals, aqueducts, bridges, &c., from which no one derived an income,
though all derived benefit. There was no capital invested, with a
view to profit, in machinery, railroads, canals, steam-engines, and
other great works which, in the preparation and distribution of man's
enjoyments, save the labour of so many millions to the nations of
modern Europe and America, and supply the incomes of many of the most
useful and most enlightened members of their middle and higher
classes of society. During the republic, and under the first
emperors, the laws were simple, and few derived any considerable
income from explaining them. Still fewer derived their incomes from
expounding the religion of the people till the establishment of
Christianity.
Man was the principal machine in which property was invested with a
view to profit, and the concentration of capital in hordes of slaves,
and the farm of the public revenues of conquered provinces and
tributary states, were, with the land, the great basis of the
aristocracies of Rome, and the Roman world generally. The senatorial
and equestrian orders were supported chiefly by lending out their
slaves as gladiators and artificers, and by farming the revenues, and
lending money to the oppressed subjects of the provinces, and to
vanquished princes, at an exorbitant interest, to enable them to pay
what the state or its public officers demanded. The slaves throughout
the Roman empire were about equal in number to the free population,
and they were for the most part concentrated in the hands of the
members of the upper and middle classes, who derived their incomes
from lending and employing them. They were to those classes in the
old world what canals, railroads, steam-engines, &c., are to those of
modern days. Some Roman citizens had as many as five thousand slaves
educated to the one occupation of gladiators for the public shows of
Rome. Julius Caesar had this number in Italy waiting his return from
Gaul; and Gordianus used commonly to give five hundred pair for a
public festival, and never less than one hundred and fifty.
In India slavery is happily but little known;[a] the church had no
hierarchy either among the Hindoos or Muhammadans; nor had the law
any high interpreters. In all its civil branches of marriage,
inheritance, succession, and contract, it was to the people of the
two religions as simple as the laws of the twelve tables; and
contributed just as little to the support of the aristocracy as they
did. In all these respects, China is much the same; the land belongs
to the sovereign, and is minutely subdivided among those who farm and
cultivate it--the great works in canals, aqueducts, bridges, roads,
&c., are made by Government, and yield no private income. Capital is
nowhere concentrated in expensive machinery; their church is without
a hierarchy, their law without barristers-their higher classes are
therefore composed almost exclusively of the public servants of the
Government. The rule which prescribes that princes of the blood shall
not be employed in the government of provinces and the command of
armies, and that the reigning sovereign shall have the nomination of
his successor, has saved China from a frequent return of the scenes
which I have described. None of the princes are put to death, because
it is known that all will acquiesce in the nomination when made
known, supported as it always is by the popular sentiment throughout
the empire. [W. H. S.]
a. the anthor's statement that in the year 1836 slavery was 'but
little known in India' is a truly astonishing one. Slavery of various
kinds--racial, predial, domestic--the slavery of captives, and of
debtors, had existed in India from time immemorial, and still
flourished in 1836. Slavery, so far as the law can abolish it, was
abolished by the Indian Act v of 1843, but the final blow was not
dealt until January l, 1862, when sections 370, &c., of the Indian
Penal Code came into force. In practice, domestic servitude exists to
this day in great Muhammadan households, and multitudes of
agricultural labourers have a very dim consciousness of personal
freedom. The Criminal Law Commissioners, who reported previous to the
passage of Act v of 1843, estimated that in British India, as then
constituted, the proportion of the slave to the free population
varied from one-sixth to two-fifths. Sir Bartle Frere estimated the
slave population of the territories included in British India in the
year 1841 as being between eight and nine millions. Slaves were
heritable and transferable property, and could be mortgaged or let
out on hire. The article 'Slave' in Balfour, _Cyclopaedia_ (3rd ed.),
from which most of the above particulars are taken, is copious, and
gives references to various authorities. The following works may also
be consulted: _The Law and Custom of Slavery in British India_, by
William Adam, 8vo, 1840; _An Account of Slave Population in the
Western Peninsula of India_, 1822, with an Appendix on Slavery in
Malabar; _India's Cries to British Humanity_, by J. Peggs, 8vo, 1830;
and _E.H.I._, 3rd ed. (1914), pp. 100, 178, 180, 441.
12. In Akbar's time there were thirty-three grades of official rank,
and the officers were known as 'commanders of ten thousand',
'commanders of five thousand', and so on. Only princes of the blood
royal were granted the commands of seven thousand and of ten
thousand. The number of troopers actually provided by each officer
did not correspond with the number indicated by his title. The graded
officials were called _mansabdârs_, no clear distinction between
civil and military duties being drawn (_The Emperor Akbar_, by Count
Von Noer; translated by Annette S. Beveridge, Calcutta, 1890, vol. i,
p. 267).
13. Diodorus Siculus has the same observation. 'No enemy ever does
any prejudice to the husbandmen; but, out of a due regard to the
common good, forbear to injure them in the least degree; and,
therefore, the land being never spoiled or wasted, yields its fruit
in great abundance, and furnishes the inhabitants with plenty of
victual and all other provisions.' Book II, chap. 3. [W. H. S.] These
allegations certainly cannot be accepted as accurate statements of
fact, however they may be explained. See _E.H.I._, 3rd ed. (1914), p.
442.
14. The rapid recovery of Indian villages and villagers from the
effects of war does not need for its explanation the evocation of 'a
spirit of moral and political vitality'. The real explanation is to
be found in the simplicity of the village life and needs, as
expounded by the author in the preceding passage. Human societies
with a low standard of comfort and a simple scheme of life are, like
individual organisms of lowly structure and few functions, hard to
kill. Human labour, and a few cattle, with a little grain and some
sticks, are the only essential requisites for the foundation or
reconstruction of a village.
15. Golconda was taken by Aurangzêb, after a protracted siege, in
1677. Bîjâpur surrendered to him on the 15th October, 1686. The vast
ruins of this splendid city, which was deserted after the conquest,
occupy a space thirty miles in circumference. The town has partially
recovered, and is now the head-quarters of a Bombay District, with
about 24,000 inhabitants. Sivâjî, the founder of the Marâthâ power,
died in 1680.
16. The Indore and Barodâ States still survive, and the reigning
chiefs of both have frequently visited England, and paid their
respects to their Sovereign. Bhônslâ was the family name of the
chiefs of Berâr, also known as the Râjâs of Nâgpur. The last Râjâ,
Raghojî III, died in December 1853, leaving no child begotten or
adopted. Lord Dalhousie annexed the State as lapsed, and his action
was confirmed in 1864 by the Court of Directors and the Crown.
17. The State of Sâtârâ, like that of Nâgpur, lapsed owing to failure
of heirs, and was annexed in 1854. It is now a district in the Bombay
Presidency.
18. During the early years of the twentieth century a spirit of
Marâthâ nationalism has been sedulously cultivated, with inconvenient
results.
19. This paragraph, and that next following, are, in the original
edition, printed as part of Chapter 48, 'The Great Diamond of
Kohinûr', with which they have nothing to do. They seem to belong
properly to Chapter 47, and are therefore inserted here. The
observations in both paragraphs are merely repetitions of remarks
already recorded.
20. It need hardly be said that these fire-eaters no longer exist.
CHAPTER 48
The Great Diamond of Kohinûr.
The foregoing historical episode occupies too large a space in what
might otherwise be termed a personal narrative; but still I am
tempted to append to it a sketch of the fortunes of that famous
diamond, called with Oriental extravagance the Mountain of Light,
which, by exciting the cupidity of Shâh Jahân, played so important a
part in the drama.
After slumbering for the greater part of a century in the imperial
treasury, it was afterwards taken by Nâdir Shâh, the king of Persia,
who invaded India under the reign of Muhammad Shâh, in the year
1738.[1] Nadir Shâh, in one of his mad fits, had put out the eyes of
his son, Razâ Kulî Mirzâ, and, when he was assassinated, the
conspirators gave the throne and the diamond to this son's son,
Shâhrukh Mirza, who fixed his residence at Meshed.[2] Ahmad Shâh, the
Abdâlî, commanded the Afghân cavalry in the service of Nâdir Shâh,
and had the charge of the military chest at the time he was put to
death. With this chest, he and his cavalry left the camp during the
disorders that followed the murder of the king, and returned with all
haste to Kandahâr, where they met Tarîkî Khân, on his way to Nâdir
Shâh's camp with the tribute of the five provinces which he had
retained of his Indian conquests, Kandahâr, Kâbul, Tatta, Bakkar,
Multân, and Peshâwar. They gave him the first news of the death of
the king, seized upon his treasure, and, with the aid of this and the
military chest, Ahmad Shâh took possession of these five provinces,
and formed them into the little independent kingdom of Afghânistan,
over which he long reigned, and from which he occasionally invaded
India and Khurâsân.[3]
Shâhrukh Mirzâ had his eyes put out some time after by a faction.
Ahmad Shâh marched to his relief, put the rebels to death, and united
his eldest son, Taimûr Shâh, in marriage to the daughter of the
unfortunate prince, from whom he took the diamond, since it could be
of no use to a man who could no longer see its beauties. He
established Taimûr as his viceroy at Herât, and his youngest son at
Kandahâr; and fixed his own residence at Kâbul, where he died.[4] He
was succeeded by Taimûr Shâh, who was succeeded by his eldest son,
Zamân Shâh, who, after a reign of a few years, was driven from his
throne by his younger brother, Mahmûd. He sought an asylum with his
friend Ashîk, who commanded a distant fortress, and who betrayed him
to the usurper, and put him into confinement. He concealed the great
diamond in a crevice in the wall of the room in which he was
confined; and the rest of his jewels in a hole made in the ground
with his dagger. As soon as Mahmûd received intimation of the arrest
from Ashîk, he sent for his brother, had his eyes put out, and
demanded the jewels, but Zamân Shâh pretended that he had thrown them
into the river as he passed over. Two years after this, the third
brother, the Sultân Shujâ, deposed Mahmûd, ascended the throne by the
consent of his elder brother, and, as a fair specimen of his notions
of retributive justice, he blew away from the mouths of cannon, not
only Ashîk himself, but his wife and all his innocent and unoffending
children.
He intended to put out the eyes of his deposed brother, Mahmûd, but
was dissuaded from it by his mother and Zamân Shâh, who now pointed
out to him the place where he had concealed the great diamond. Mahmûd
made his escape from prison, raised a party, drove out his brothers,
and once more ascended the throne. The two brothers sought an asylum
in the Honourable Company's territories; and have from that time
resided at an out frontier station of Lûdiâna, upon the banks of the
Hyphasis,[5] upon a liberal pension assigned for their maintenance by
our Government. On their way through the territories of the Sikh
chief, Ranjit Singh, Shujâ was discovered to have this great diamond,
the Mountain of Light, about his person; and he was, by a little
torture skilfully applied to the mind and body, made to surrender it
to his generous host.[6] Mahmûd was succeeded in the government of
the fortress and province of Herât by his son Kâmrân; but the throne
of Kâbul was seized by the mayor of the palace, who bequeathed it to
his son Dost Muhammad, a man, in all the qualities requisite in a
sovereign, immeasurably superior to any member of the house of Ahmad
Shâh Abdâlî. Ranjit Singh had wrested from him the province of
Peshâwar in times of difficulty, and, as we would not assist him in
recovering it from our old ally, he thought himself justified in
seeking the aid of those who would, the Russians and Persians, who
were eager to avail themselves of so fair an occasion to establish a
footing in India. Such a footing would have been manifestly
incompatible with the peace and security of our dominions in India,
and we were obliged, in self-defence, to give to Shujâ the aid which
he had so often before in vain solicited, to enable him to recover
the throne of his very limited number of legal ancestors.[7]
Notes:
1. Nâdir Shâh was crowned king of Persia in 1736, entered the Panjâb,
at the close of 1738, and occupied Delhi in March 1739. Having
perpetrated an awful massacre of the inhabitants, he retired after a
stay of fifty-eight days, He was assassinated in May 1747.
2. Meshed, properly Mashhad ('the place of martyrdom'), is the chief
city of Khurâsân. Nâdir Shâh was killed while encamped there.
3. Ahmad Shâh defeated the Marâthâs in the third great battle of
Pânîpat, A.D. 1761. He had conquered the Panjâb in 1748. He invaded
India five times.
4. In 1773.
5. Lûdiâna (misspelt 'Ludhiâna' in _I.G._, 1908) is named from the
Lodî Afghâns, who founded it in 1481. The town is now the
headquarters of the district of the same name under the Panjâb
Government. Part of the district lapsed to the British Government in
1836, other parts lapsed during the years 1846 and 1847, and the rest
came from territory already British by rearrangement of jurisdiction.
Hyphasis is the Greek name for the Biâs river.
6. The above history of the Kohinûr may, I believe, be relied upon. I
received a narrative of it from Shâh Zamân, the blind old king
himself, through General Smith, who commanded the troops at Lûdiâna;
forming a detail of the several revolutions too long and too full of
new names for insertion here. [W. H. S.] The above note is, in the
original edition, misplaced, and appended to two paragraphs of the
text, which have no connexion with the story of the diamond, and
really belong to Chapter 47, to which they have been removed in this
edition.
The author assumes the identity of the Kohinûr with the great diamond
found in one of the Golconda mines, and presented by Amîr Jumla to
Shâh Jahân. The much-disputed history of the Kohinûr has been
exhaustively discussed by Valentine Ball (Tavernier's _Travels in
India_: Appendix I (1), 'The Great Mogul's Diamond and the true
History of the Koh-i-nur; and (2) 'Summary History of the Koh-i-
nur'). He has proved that the Kohinûr is almost certainly the diamond
given by Amîr (Mîr) Jumla to Shâh Jahân, though now much reduced in
weight by mutilation and repeated cutting. Assuming the identity of
the Kohinûr with Amîr Jumla's gift, the leading incidents in the
history of this famous jewel are as follows;--
Event. Approximate
Date.
Found at mine of Kollûr on the Kistna (Krishna)
river . . . . . . . . .Not known
Presented to Shâh Jahân by Mîr Jumla, being
uncut, and weighing about 756 English carats 1656 or 1657
Ground by Hortensio Borgio, and greatly reduced
in weight . . . . . . . about 1657
Seen and weighed by Tavernier in Aurangzêb's
treasury, its weight being 268 19/50 English
carats . . . . . . . . . 1665
Taken by Nadir Shâh of Persia from Muhammad
Shâh of Delhi, and named Kohinûr . . . 1739
Inherited by Shâh Rukh, grandson of Nadir Shâh. . 1747
Given up by Shâh Rukh to Ahmad Shâh Abdâlî . . 1751
Inherited by Tîmûr, son of Ahmad Shâh . . . 1772
Inherited by Shâh Zamân, son of Tîmûr . . . 1793
Taken by Shâh Shujâ, brother of Shâh Zamân . . 1795
Taken by Ranjit Singh, of Lahore, from Shâh Shujâ . 1813
Inherited by Dilîp (Dhuleep) Singh,
reputed son of Ranjit Singh. . . . . 1839
Annexed, with the Panjâb, and passed, through
John Lawrence's waistcoat pocket
(see his _Life_), into the possession
of H.M. the Queen, its weight then being
186 1/16 English carats . . . . . 1849
Exhibited at Great Exhibition in London . . . 1851
Recut under supervision of Messrs. Garrards, and
reduced in weight to 106 1/16 English carats . 1852
The difference in weight between 268 19/50 carats in 1665 and 186
1/16 carats in 1849 seems to be due to mutilation of the stone during
its stay in Persia and Afghanistan.
7. The policy of the first Afghan War has been, it is hardly
necessary to observe, much disputed, and the author's confident
defence of Lord Auckland's action cannot be accepted.
CHAPTER 49
Pindhârî System--Character of the Marâthâ Administration--Cause of
their Dislike to the Paramount Power.
The attempt of the Marquis of Hastings to rescue India from that
dreadful scourge, the Pindhârî system, involved him in a war with all
the great Marâthâ states, except Gwâlior; that is, with the Peshwâ at
Pûnâ, Holkâr at Indore, and the Bhonslâ at Nâgpur; and Gwâlior was
prevented from joining the other states in their unholy league
against us only by the presence of the grand division of the army,
under the personal command of the Marquis, in the immediate vicinity
of his capital. It was not that these chiefs liked the Pindhârîs, or
felt any interest in their welfare, but because they were always
anxious to crush that rising paramount authority which had the power,
and had always manifested the will, to interpose and prevent the free
indulgence of their predatory habits--the free exercise of that
weapon, a standing army, which the disorders incident upon the
decline and fall of the Muhammadan army had put into their hands, and
which a continued series of successful aggressions upon their
neighbours could alone enable them to pay or keep under control. They
seized with avidity any occasion of quarrel with the paramount power
which seemed likely to unite them all in one great effort to shake it
off; and they are still prepared to do the same, because they feel
that they could easily extend their depredations if that power were
withdrawn; and they know no other road to wealth and glory but such
successful depredations. Their ancestors rose by them, their states
were formed by them, and their armies have been maintained by them.
They look back upon them for all that seems to them honourable in the
history of their families. Their bards sing of them in all their
marriage and funeral processions; and, as their imaginations kindle
at the recollection, they detest the arm that is extended to defend
the wealth and the industry of the surrounding territories from their
grasp. As the industrious classes acquire and display their wealth in
the countries around during a long peace, under a strong and settled
government, these native chiefs, with their little disorderly armies,
feel precisely as an English country gentleman would feel with a pack
of foxhounds, in a country swarming with foxes, and without the
privilege of hunting them.[1]
Their armies always took the auspices and set out _kingdom taking_
(mulk gîrî) after the Dasahra,[2] in November, as regularly as
English gentlemen go partridge-shooting on the 1st of September; and
I may here give, as a specimen, the excursion of Jean Baptiste
Filose,[3] who sallied forth on such an expedition, at the head of a
division of Sindhia's army, just before this Pindhârî war commenced.
From Gwâlior he proceeded to Karaulî,[4] and took from that chief the
district of Sabalgarh, yielding four lâkhs of rupees yearly.[5] He
then took the territory of the Râjâ of Chandêrî,[6] Mor Pahlâd, one
of the oldest of the Bundêlkhand chiefs, which then yielded about
seven lâkhs of rupees,[7] but now yields only four. The Râjâ got an
allowance of forty thousand rupees a year. He then took the
territories of the Râjâs of Raghugarh and Bajranggarh,[8] yielding
three lâkhs a year; and Bahâdurgarh, yielding two lâkhs a year;[9]
and the three princes got fifty thousand rupees a year for
subsistence among them. He then took Lopar, yielding two lâkhs and a
half, and assigned the Râjâ twenty-five thousand. He then took Garhâ
Kota,[10] whose chief gets subsistence from our Government. Baptiste
had just completed his kingdom taking expedition, when our armies
took the field against the Pindhârîs; and, on the termination of that
war in 1817, all these acquisitions were confirmed and guaranteed to
his master Sindhia by our Government. It cannot be supposed that
either he or his army can ever feel any great attachment towards a
paramount authority that has the power and the will to interpose, and
prevent their indulging in such sporting excursions as these, or any
great disinclination to take advantage of any occasion that may seem
likely to unite all the native chiefs in a common effort to crush it.
The Nepalese have the same feeling as the Marâthâs in a still
stronger degree, since their kingdom-taking excursions had been still
greater and more successful; and, being all soldiers from the same
soil, they were easily persuaded, by a long series of successful
aggressions, that their courage was superior to that of all other
men.[11]
In the year 1833, the Gwâlior territory yielded a net revenue to the
treasury of ninety-two lâkhs of rupees, after discharging all the
local costs of the civil and fiscal administration of the different
districts, in officers, establishments, charitable institutions,
religions endowments, military fiefs, &c.[12] In the remote
districts, which are much infested by the predatory tribes of
Bhîls,[13] and in consequence badly peopled and cultivated, the net
revenue is estimated to be about one-third of the gross collections;
but, in the districts near the capital, which are tolerably well
cultivated, the net revenue brought to the treasury is about five-
sixths of the gross collections; and these collections are equal to
the whole annual rent of the land; for every man by whom the land is
held or cultivated is a mere tenant at will, liable every season to
be turned out, to give place to any other man that may offer more for
the holding.
There is nowhere to be seen upon the land any useful or ornamental
work, calculated to attach the people to the soil or to their
villages; and, as hardly any of the recruits for the regiments are
drawn from the peasantry of the country, the agricultural classes
have nowhere any feeling of interest in the welfare or existence of
the government. I am persuaded that there is not a single village in
all the Gwâlior dominions in which nine-tenths of the people would
not be glad to see that government destroyed, under the persuasion
that they could not possibly have a worse, and would be very likely
to find a better.
The present force at Gwâlior consists of three regiments of infantry,
under Colonel Alexander; six under the command of Apâjî, the adopted
son of the late Bâlâ Bâî;[14] eleven under Colonel Jacobs and his
son; five under Colonel Jean Baptiste Filose; two under the command
of the Mâmû Sâhib, the maternal uncle of the Mahârâjâ; three in what
is called Bâbû Bâolî's camp; in all thirty regiments, consisting,
when complete, of six hundred men each, with four field-pieces. The
'Jinsî', or artillery, consists of two hundred guns of different
calibre. There are but few corps of cavalry, and these are not
considered very efficient, I believe.[15]
Robbers and murderers of all descriptions have always been in the
habit of taking the field in India immediately after the festival of
the Dasahrâ,[16] at the end of October, from the sovereign of a state
at the head of his armies, down to the leader of a little band of
pickpockets from the corner of some obscure village. All invoke the
Deity, and take the auspices to ascertain his will, nearly in the
same way; and all expect that he will guide them successfully through
their enterprises, as long as they find the omens favourable. No one
among them ever dreams that his undertaking can be less acceptable to
the Deity than that of another, provided he gives him the same due
share of what he acquires in his thefts, his robberies, or his
conquests, in sacrifices and offerings upon his shrines, and in
donations to his priests.[17] Nor does the robber often dream that he
shall be considered a less respectable citizen by the circle in which
he moves than the soldier, provided he spends his income as
liberally, and discharges all his duties in his relations with them
as well; and this he generally does to secure their goodwill,
whatever may be the character of his depredations upon distant
circles of society and communities. The man who returned to Oudh, or
Rohilkhand, after a campaign under a Pindhârî chief, was as well
received as one who returned after serving one under Sindhia, Holkâr,
or Ranjît Singh. A friend of mine one day asked a leader of a band of
'dacoits', or banditti, whether they did not often commit murder.
'God forbid', said he, 'that we should ever commit murder; but, if
people choose to oppose us, we, of course, _strike and kill_; but you
do the same. I hear that there is now a large assemblage of troops in
the upper provinces going to take foreign countries; if they are
opposed, they will kill people. We only do the same.'[18] The history
of the rise of every nation in the world unhappily bears out the
notion that princes are only robbers upon a large scale, till their
ambition is curbed by a balance of power among nations.
On the 25th[19] we came on to Dhamêlâ, fourteen miles, over a plain,
with the range of sandstone hills on the left, receding from us to
the west; and that on the right receding still more to the east. Here
and there were some insulated hills of the same formation rising
abruptly from the plain to our right. All the villages we saw were
built upon masses of this sandstone rock, rising abruptly at
intervals from the surface of the plain, in horizontal strata. These
hillocks afford the people stone for building, and great facilities
for defending themselves against the inroads of freebooters. There is
not, I suppose, in the world a finer stone for building than these
sandstone hills afford; and we passed a great many carts carrying
them off to distant places in slabs or flags from ten to sixteen feet
long, two to three feet wide, and six inches thick. They are white,
with very minute pink spots, and of a texture so very fine that they
would be taken for indurated clay on a slight inspection. The houses
of the poorest peasants are here built of this beautiful freestone,
which, after two hundred years, looks as if it had been quarried only
yesterday.
About three miles from our tents we crossed over the little river
Ghorapachhâr,[20] flowing over a bed of this sandstone. The soil all
the way very light, and the cultivation scanty and bad. Except within
the enclosures of men's houses, scarcely a tree to be anywhere seen
to give shelter and shade to the weary traveller; and we could find
no ground for our camp with a shrub to shelter man or beast. All are
swept away to form gun-carriages for the Gwâlior artillery, with a
philosophical disregard to the comforts of the living, the repose of
the dead who planted them with a view to a comfortable berth in the
next world, and to the will of the gods to whom they are dedicated.
There is nothing left upon the land of animal or vegetable life to
enrich it; nothing of stock but what is necessary to draw from the
soil an annual crop, and which looks to one harvest for its entire
return. The sovereign proprietor of the soil lets it out by the year,
in farms or villages, to men who depend entirely upon the year's
return for the means of payment. He, in his turn, lets the lands in
detail to those who till them, and who depend for their subsistence,
and for the means of paying their rents, upon the returns of the
single harvest. There is no manufacture anywhere to be seen, save of
brass pots and rude cooking utensils; no trade or commerce, save in
the transport of the rude produce of the land to the great camp at
Gwâlior, upon the backs of bullocks, for want of roads fit for
wheeled carriages. No one resides in the villages, save those whose
labour is indispensably necessary to the rudest tillage, and those
who collect the dues of government, and are paid upon the lowest
possible scale. Such is the state of the Gwâlior territories in every
part of India where I have seen them.[21] The miseries and misrule of
the Oudh, Hyderabad, and other Muhammadan governments, are heard of
everywhere, because there are, under these governments, a middle and
higher class upon the land to suffer and proclaim them; but those of
the Gwâlior state are never heard of, because no such classes are
ever allowed to grow up upon the land. Had Russia governed Poland,
and Turkey Greece, in the way that Gwâlior has governed her conquered
territories, we should never have heard of the wrongs of the one or
the other.
In my morning's ride the day before I left Gwâlior, I saw a fine
leopard standing by the side of the most frequented road, and staring
at every one who passed. It was held by two men, who sat by and
talked to it as if it had been a human being. I thought it was an
animal for show, and I was about to give them something, when they
told me that they were servants of the Mahârâjâ, and were training
the leopard to bear the sight and society of man. 'It had', they
said, 'been caught about three months ago in the jungles, where it
could never bear the sight and society of man, or of any animal that
it could not prey upon; and must be kept upon the most frequented
road till quite tamed. Leopards taken when very young would', they
said, 'do very well as pets, but never answered for hunting; a good
leopard for hunting must, before taken, be allowed to be a season or
two providing for himself, and living upon the deer he takes in the
jungles and plains.'
Notes:
1. For the characteristics of the Marâthâs and Pindhârîs, see _ante_,
Chapter 21, note 2.
2. _Ante_, Chapter 26, note 8, and Chapter 32, note 9.
3. _Ante_, Chapter 17, note 6.
4. A small principality, about seventy miles equidistant from Agra,
Gwâlior, Mathurâ, Alwar, Jaipur, and Tonk. The attack on Karaulî
occurred in 1813. Full details are given in the author's _Report on
Budhuk alias Bagree Decoits_, pp. 99-104.
5. Four hundred thousand rupees.
6. _Ante_, Chapter 33, note 15.
7. Seven hundred thousand rupees.
8. Raghugarh is now a mediatized chiefship in the Central India
Agency, controlled by the Resident at Gwâlior. Bajranggarh, a
stronghold eleven miles south of Gûnâ (Goonah), and about 140 miles
distant from Gwâlior, is in the Raghugarh territory.
9. Three hundred thousand and two hundred thousand rupees,
respectively. Bahâdurgarh is now included in the Isâgarh district of
the Gwâlior State.
10. I cannot find any mention of Lopar, if the name is correctly
printed. Garhâ Kota seems to be a slip of the pen for Garhâ. Garhâ
Kota is in British territory, in the Sâgar District, C. P. But Garhâ
is a petty state, formerly included in the Raghugarh State. The town
of Garhâ is on the eastern slope of the Mâlwâ plateau in 25° 2' N.
and 78° 3' E. (_I.G._, 1908, s.v.).
11. On the coronation or installation of every new prince of the
house of Sindhia, orders are given to plunder a few shops in the town
as a part of the ceremony, and this they call or consider 'taking the
auspices'. Compensation is _supposed_ to be made to the proprietors,
but rarely is made. I believe the same auspices are taken at the
installation of a new prince of every other Marâthâ house. The Moghal
invaders of India were, in the same manner, obliged to allow their
armies to _take the auspices_ in the sack of a few towns, though they
had surrendered without resistance. They were given up to pillage as
a _religions duty_. Even the accomplished Bâbar was obliged to
concede this privilege to his army. [W. H. S.]
In reply to the editor's inquiries, Colonel Biddulph, officiating
Resident at Gwâlior, has kindly communicated the following
information on the subject of the above note, in a letter dated 30th
December, 1892. 'The custom of looting some "Banias'" shops on the
installation of a new Maharaja in Gwâlior is still observed. It was
observed when the present Mâdho Râo Sindhia was installed on the
_gadî_ on 3rd July, 1886, and the looting was stopped by the police
on the owners of the shops calling out "Dohai Mâdho Mahârâjkî!" five
shops were looted on the occasion, and compensation to the amount of
Rs. 427, 4, 3 was paid to the owners. My informant tells me that the
custom has apparently no connexion with religion, but is believed to
refer to the days when the period between the decease of one ruler
and the accession of his successor was one of disorder and plunder.
The maintenance of the custom is supposed to notify to the people
that they must now look to the new ruler for protection.
'According to another informant, some "banias" are called by the
palace officers and directed to open their shops in the palace
precincts, and money is given them to stock their shops. The poor
people are then allowed to loot them. No shops are allowed to be
looted in the bazaar.
'I cannot learn that any particular name is given to the ceremony,
and there appears to be some doubt as to its meaning; but the best
information seems to show that the reason assigned above is the
correct one.
'I cannot give any information as to the existence of the custom in
other Mahratta states.'
The custom was observed late in the sixth century at the birth of
King Harsha-vardhana (_Harsa-Caritâ_, transl, Cowell and Thomas, p.
111). Anthropologists classify such practices as rites de passage,
marking a transition from the old to the new.
'Bania', or 'baniyâ', means shopkeeper, especially a grain dealer;
'gadî', or 'gaddî', is the cushioned seat, also known as 'masnad',
which serves a Hindoo prince as a throne; and 'dohâi' is the ordinary
form of a cry for redress.
12. Ninety-two lâkhs of rupees were then worth more than £920,000.
The _I.G._ (1908) states the normal revenue as 150 lâkhs of rupees,
equivalent (at the rate of exchange of 1_s._ 4_d._ to the rupee, or R
15 = £1) to one million pounds sterling. The fall in exchange has
greatly lowered the sterling equivalent.
13. The Bhîl tribes are included in the large group of tribes which
have been driven back by the more cultivated races into the hills and
jungles. They are found among the woods along the banks of the
Nerbudda, Taptî, and Mahî, and in many parts of Central India and
Râjputâna. Of late years they have generally kept quiet; in the
earlier part of the nineteenth century they gave much trouble in
Khândêsh. In Râjputâna two irregular corps of Bhîls have been
organized.
14. Daughter of Mâhâdajî Sindhia. She died in 1834. See _post_,
Chapter 70.
15. 'In 1886 the fort of Gwâlior and the cantonment of Morâr were
surrendered by the Government of India to Sindhia in exchange for the
fort and town of Jhânsî. Both forts were mutually surrendered and
occupied on 10th March, 1886. As the occupation of the fort of
Gwâlior necessitated an increase of Sindhia's army, the Mahârâjâ was
allowed to add 3,000 men to his infantry' (_Letter of Officiating
Resident, dated 30th Dec._, 1892). In 1908 the Gwâlior army,
comprising all arms, including three regiments of Imperial Service
Cavalry, numbered more than 12,000 men, described as troops of 'very
fair quality' (_I.G._, 1908).
16. _Ante_, Chapter 26, note 8; Chapter 32, note 9; Chapter 49, note
2.
17. In _Ramaseeana_ the author has fully described the practices of
the Thugs in taking omens, and the feelings with which they regarded
their profession. Similar information concerning other criminal
classes is copiously given in the _Report on Budhuk alias Bagree
Decoits_. See also Meadows Taylor, _Confessions of a Thug_, in any
edition.
18. These notions are still prevalent.
19. December, 1835, Christmas Day.
20. 'Overthrower of horses'; the same epithet is applied to the
Utangan river, south of the Agra district, owing to the difficulty
with which it is crossed when in flood (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, 1st ed.,
vol. vii, p. 423).
21. Sindhia's territories, measuring 25,041 square miles, are in
parts intermixed with those of other princes, and so extend over a
wide space. Gwâlior and its government have been discussed already in
Chapter 36.
CHAPTER 50
Dhôlpur, Capital of the Jât Chiefs of Gohad--Consequence of Obstacles
to the Prosecution of Robbers.
On the morning of the 26th,[1] we sent on one tent, with the
intention of following it in the afternoon; but about three o'clock a
thunder-storm came on so heavily that I was afraid that which we
occupied would come down upon us; and, putting my wife and child in a
palankeen, I took them to the dwelling of an old Bairâgî, about two
hundred yards from us. He received us very kindly, and paid us many
compliments about the honour we had conferred upon him. He was a kind
and, I think, a good old man, and had six disciples who seemed to
reverence him very much. A large stone image of Hanumân, the monkey-
god, painted red, and a good store of buffaloes, very comfortably
sheltered from the pitiless storm, were in an inner court. The
peacocks in dozens sought shelter under the walls and in the tree
that stood in the courtyard; and I believe that they would have come
into the old man's apartment had they not seen our white faces there.
I had a great deal of talk with him, but did not take any notes of
it. These old Bairâgîs, who spend the early and middle parts of life
as disciples in pilgrimages to the celebrated temples of their god
Vishnu in all parts of India, and the latter part of it as high
priests or apostles in listening to the reports of the numerous
disciples employed in similar wanderings are, perhaps, the most
intelligent men in the country. They are from all the castes and
classes of society. The lowest Hindoo may become a Bairâgî, and the
very highest are often tempted to become so; the service of the god
to which they devote themselves levelling all distinctions. Few of
them can write or read, but they are shrewd observers of men and
things, and often exceedingly agreeable and instructive companions to
those who understand them, and can make them enter into unreserved
conversation. Our tent stood out the storm pretty well, but we were
obliged to defer our march till the next day. On the afternoon of the
27th we went on twelve miles, over a plain of deep alluvion, through
which two rivers have cut their way to the Chambal; and, as usual,
the ravines along their banks are deep, long, and dreary.
About half-way we were overtaken by one of the heaviest showers of
rain I ever saw; it threatened us from neither side, but began to
descend from an apparently small bed of clouds directly over our
heads, which seemed to spread out on every side as the rain fell, and
fill the whole vault of heaven with one dark and dense mass. The wind
changed frequently; and in less than half an hour the whole surface
of the country over which we were travelling was under water. This
dense mass of clouds passed off in about two hours to the east; but
twice, when the sun opened and beamed divinely upon us in a cloudless
sky to the west, the wind changed suddenly round, and rushed back
angrily from the east, to fill up the space which had been quickly
rarefied by the genial heat of its rays, till we were again enveloped
in darkness, and began to despair of reaching any human habitation
before night. Some hail fell among the rain, but not large enough to
hurt any one. The thunder was loud and often startling to the
strongest nerves, and the lightning vivid, and almost incessant. We
managed to keep the road because it was merely a beaten pathway below
the common level of the country, and we could trace it by the greater
depth of the water, and the absence of all shrubs and grass. All
roads in India soon become watercourses--they are nowhere metalled;
and, being left for four or five months every year without rain,
their soil is reduced to powder by friction, and carried off by the
winds over the surrounding country.[2] I was on horseback, but my
wife and child were secure in a good palankeen that sheltered them
from the rain. The bearers were obliged to move with great caution
and slowly, and I sent on every person I could spare that they might
keep moving, for the cold blast blowing over their thin and wet
clothes seemed intolerable to those who were idle. My child's
playmate, Gulâb, a lad of about ten years of age, resolutely kept by
the side of the palankeen, trotting through the water with his teeth
chattering as if he had been in an ague. The rain at last ceased, and
the sky in the west cleared up beautifully about half an hour before
sunset. Little Gulâb threw off his stuffed and quilted vest, and got
a good dry English blanket to wrap round him from the palankeen. We
soon after reached a small village, in which I treated all who had
remained with us to as much coarse sugar (_gur_) as they could eat;
and, as people of all castes can eat of sweetmeats from the hands of
confectioners without prejudice to their caste, and this sugar is
considered to be the best of all good things for guarding against
colds in man or beast, they all ate very heartily, and went on in
high spirits. As the sun sank below us on the left, a bright moon
shone out upon us from the right, and about an hour after dark we
reached our tents on the north bank of the Kuârî river, where we
found an excellent dinner for ourselves, and good fires, and good
shelter for our servants. Little rain had fallen near the tents, and
the river Kuârî, over which we had to cross, had not, fortunately,
much swelled; nor did much fall on the ground we had left; and, as
the tents there had been struck and laden before it came on, they
came up the next morning early, and went on to our next ground.
On the 28th, we went on to Dhôlpur, the capital of the Jât chiefs of
Gohad,[3] on the left bank of the Chambal, over a plain with a
variety of crops, but not one that requires two seasons to reach
maturity. The soil excellent in quality and deep, but not a tree
anywhere to be seen, nor any such thing as a work of ornament or
general utility of any kind. We saw the fort of Dhôlpur at a distance
of six miles, rising apparently from the surface of the level plain,
but in reality situated on the summit of the opposite and high bank
of a large river, its foundation at least one hundred feet above the
level of the water. The immense pandemonia of ravines that separated
us from this fort were not visible till we began to descend into them
some two or three miles from the bed of the river. Like all the
ravines that border the rivers in these parts, they are naked,
gloomy, and ghastly, and the knowledge that no solitary traveller is
ever safe in them does not tend to improve the impression they make
upon us. The river is a beautiful clear stream, here flowing over a
bed of fine sand with a motion so gentle, that one can hardly
conceive it is she who has played such fantastic tricks along the
borders, and made such 'frightful gashes' in them. As we passed over
this noble reach of the river Chambal in a ferry-boat, the boatman
told us of the magnificent bridge formed here by the Baiza Bâî for
Lord William Bentinck in 1832, from boats brought down from Agra for
the purpose. 'Little', said they, 'did it avail her with the
Governor-General in her hour of need.[4]
The town of Dhôlpur lies some short way in from the north bank of the
Chambal, at the extremity of a range of sandstone hills which runs
diagonally across that of Gwâlior. This range was once capped with
basalt, and some boulders are still found upon it in a state of rapid
decomposition. It was quite refreshing to see the beautiful mango
groves on the Dhôlpur side of the river, after passing through a
large tract of country in which no tree of any kind was to be seen.
On returning from a long ride over the range of sandstone hills the
morning after we reached Dhôlpur, I passed through an encampment of
camels taking rude iron from some mines in the hills to the south
towards Agra. They waited here within the frontier of a native state
for a pass from the Agra custom house,[5] lest any one should, after
they enter our frontier, pretend that they were going to smuggle it,
and thus get them into trouble. 'Are you not', said I, 'afraid to
remain here so near the ravines of the Chambal, when thieves are said
to be so numerous?' 'Not at all,' replied they. 'I suppose thieves do
not think it worth while to steal rude iron?' 'Thieves, sir, think it
worth while to steal anything they can get, but we do not fear them
much here.' 'Where, then, do you fear them much?' 'We fear them when
we get into the Company's territories.' 'And how is this, when we
have good police establishments, and the Dhôlpur people none?' 'When
the Dhôlpur people get hold of a thief, they make him disgorge all
that he has got of our property for us, and they confiscate all the
rest that he has for themselves, and cut off his nose or his hands,
and turn him adrift to deter others. You, on the contrary, when you
get hold of a thief, worry us to death in the prosecution of your
courts; and, when we have proved the robbery to your satisfaction,
you leave all this ill-gotten wealth to his family,[6] and provide
him with good food and clothing for himself, while he works for you a
couple of years on the roads.[7] The consequence is, that here
fellows are afraid to rob a traveller, if they find him at all on his
guard, as we generally are, while in your districts they rob us where
and when they like.'
'But, my friends, you are sure to recover what we do get of your
property from the thieves.' 'Not quite sure of that neither,' said
they, 'or the greater part is generally absorbed on its way back to
us through the officers of your court; and we would always rather put
up with the first loss than run the risk of a greater by prosecution,
if we happen to get robbed within the Company's territories.'
The loss and annoyances to which prosecutors and witnesses are
subject in our courts are a source of very great evil to the country.
They enable police-officers everywhere to grow rich upon the
concealment of crimes. The man who has been robbed will bribe them to
conceal the robbery, that he may escape the further loss of the
prosecution in our courts, generally very distant; and the witnesses
will bribe them to avoid attending to give evidence; the whole
village communities bribe them, because every man feels that they
have the power of getting him summoned to the court in some capacity
or other, if they like; and that they will certainly like to do so,
if not bribed.
The obstacles which our system opposes to the successful prosecution
of robbers of all denominations and descriptions deprive our
Government of all popular support in the administration of criminal
justice; and this is considered everywhere to be the worst, and,
indeed, the only radically bad feature of our government. No
magistrate hopes to get a conviction against one in four of the most
atrocious gang of robbers and murderers of his district, and his only
resource is in the security laws, which enable him to keep them in
jail under a requisition of security for short periods. To this an
idle or apathetic magistrate will not have recourse, and under him
these robbers have a free licence.
In England, a judicial acquittal does not send back the culprit to
follow the same trade in the same field, as in India; for the
published proceedings of the court bring down upon him the
indignation of society--the moral and religions feelings of his
fellow men are arrayed against him, and from these salutary checks no
flaw in the indictment can save him. Not so in India. There no moral
or religions feelings interpose to assist or to supply the
deficiencies of the penal law. Provided he eats, drinks, smokes,
marries, and makes his offerings to his priest according to the rules
of his caste, the robber and the murderer incurs no odium in the
circle in which he moves, either religious or moral, and this is the
only circle for whose feelings he has any regard.[8]
The man who passed off his bad coin at Datiyâ, passed off more at
Dhôlpur while my advanced people were coming in, pretending that he
wanted things for me, and was in a great hurry to be ready with them
at my tents by the time I came up. The bad rupees were brought to a
native officer of my guard, who went with the shopkeepers in search
of the knave, but he could nowhere be found. The gates of the town
were shut up all night at my suggestion, and in the morning every
lodging-house in the town was searched for him in vain--he had gone
on. I had left some sharp men behind me, expecting that he would
endeavour to pass off his bad money immediately after my departure;
but in expectation of this he was now evidently keeping a little in
advance of me. I sent on some men with the shopkeepers whom he had
cheated to our next stage, in the hope of overtaking him; but he had
left the place before they arrived without passing any of his bad
coin, and gone on to Agra. The shopkeepers could not be persuaded to
go any further after him, for, if they caught him, they should, they
said, have infinite trouble in prosecuting him in our courts, without
any chance of recovering from him what they had lost.