great number of his descendants, who continue to enjoy, under the
successors of Akbar, large grants of rent-free lands for their own
support, and for that of the mosque and mausoleum. These grants have,
by degrees, been nearly all resumed;[22] and, as the repair of the
buildings is now entrusted to the public officers of our government,
the surviving members of the saint's family, who still reside among
the ruins, are extremely poor. What strikes a European most in going
over these palaces of the Moghal Emperors is the want of what a
gentleman of fortune in his own country would consider elegantly
comfortable accommodations. Five hundred pounds a year would at the
present day secure him more of this in any civilized country of
Europe or America than the greatest of those Emperors could command.
He would, perhaps, have the same impression in going over the
domestic architecture of the most civilized nations of the ancient
world, Persia and Egypt, Greece and Rome.[23]
Notes:
1. The Act of 1833 (3 & 4 William IV, c. 85), which reconstituted the
government of India, provided that the upper Provinces should be
formed into a separate Presidency under the name of Agra, and Sir
Charles Metcalfe was nominated as the first Governor. On
reconsideration, this arrangement was modified, and instead of the
Presidency of Agra, the Lieutenant-Governorship of the North-Western
Provinces was formed, with head-quarters at Agra. Sir C. Metcalfe
became Lieutenant-Governor in 1836, but held the office for a short
time only, until January, 1838, when Lord Auckland, the Governor-
General, took over temporary charge. The seat of the Local Government
was moved to Allahabad in 1868. From 1877 the Lieutenant-Governor of
the North-Western Provinces was also Chief Commissioner of Oudh. The
name North-Western Provinces, which had become unsuitable and
misleading since the annexation of the Panjâb in 1849, could not be
retained after the formation of the North-West Frontier Province in
1902. Accordingly, from that year the combined jurisdiction of the
North-Western Provinces and Oudh received the new official name of
the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. The title of Chief
Commissioner of Oudh was dropped at the same time, but the legal
System and administration of the old kingdom of Oudh continued to be
distinct in certain respects.
2. The civil establishment and garrison are still nearly the same as
in the author's time. The inland customs department is now concerned
only with the restrictions on the manufacture of salt. The offices of
district magistrate and collector of land revenue have long been
combined in a single officer.
3. Akbar married the daughter of Bihârî Mal, chief of Jaipur, in A.D.
1562. There is little doubt that she, _Mariam-uz-Zamânî_, was the
mother of Jahângîr. See Blochmann, transl. _Aîn_, vol. i, p. 619. Mr.
Beveridge has given up the opinion which he formerly advocated in
_J.A.S.B._, vol. lvi (1887), Part I, pp. 164-7.
The Jodhpur princess was given the posthumous title of 'Mariam-uz-
Zamânî', or 'Mary of the age', which circumstance probably originated
the belief that Akbar had one Christian queen. Her tomb at Sikandara
is locally known simply as Rauza Maryam, 'the mausoleum of Mary', a
designation which has had much to do with the persistence of the
erroneous belief in the existence of a Christian consort of Akbar.
Mr. Beveridge holds, and I think rightly, that Jodh Bâî is not a
proper name. It seems to mean merely 'princess of Jodhpur'. The only
lady really known as Jodh Bâî was the daughter of Udai Singh (Môth
Râjâ) of Jaipur, who became a consort of Jahângîr. Sleeman's notion
that Jahângîr's mother also was called Jodh Bâî is mistaken
(Blochmann, _ut supra_).
4. It was blown up about 1832 by order of the Government, and the
materials of the gates, walls, and outer towns were used for the
building of barracks. But the mausoleum itself resisted the spoiler
and remained 'a huge shapeless heap of massive fragments of masonry'.
The building consisted of a square room raised on a platform with a
vault below. The marble tomb or cenotaph of the queen still exists in
the vault. A fine gateway formerly stood at the entrance to the
enclosure, and there was a small mosque to the west of the tomb
(_A.S.R._ vol. iv. (1874), p. 121: Muh. Latif, _Agra_, p. 192). It is
painful to be obliged to record so many instances of vandalism
committed by English officials. This tomb is the memorial of Jodh
Bâî, daughter of Udai Singh, _alias_ Môth Râjâ, who was married to
Jahângîr in A.D. 1585, and was the mother of Shâh Jahân. Her personal
names were Jagat Goshaini and Bâlmatî. She died in A.D. 1619. Akbar's
queen, Maryam-uz-Zamânî, daughter of Râjâ Bihârî Mall of Jaipur
(Ambêr), who died in A.D. 1623, is buried at Sîkandra. (See Beale,
s.v. 'Jodh Bâî' and 'Mariam Zamânî'; Blochmann, transl. _Aîn_, pp.
429, 619.) The tomb of Maryam-uz-Zamânî has been purchased by
Government from the missionaries, who had used it as a school, and
has been restored. (_Ann. Rep. A.S., India_, 1910-11, pp. 92-6.)
5. Although it may be admitted that the Râjpût strain of blood
improved the constitution of the royal family of Delhi, the decline
and fall of the Timuride dynasty cannot be truly ascribed to 'the
loss of the Râjpût blood in the veins' of the ruling princes. The
empire was tottering to its fall long before the death of Aurangzêb,
who 'had himself married two Hindoo wives; and he wedded his son
Muazzam (afterwards the Emperor Bahâdur) to a Hindoo princess, as his
forefathers had done before him'. (Lane-Poole, _The History of the
Moghul Emperors of Hindustan illustrated by their Coins_, p. xviii. )
The wonder is, not that the empire of Delhi fell, but that it lasted
so long.
6. When the author wrote the above remarks, Englishmen knew the
gallant Gûrkhas as enemies only; they now know them as worthy and
equal brethren in arms. The recruitment of Gûrkhas for the British
service began in 1838. The spelling 'Gôrkhâ' is more accurate.
7. The 'kôs' varies much in value, but in most parts of the United
Provinces it is reckoned as equal to two miles. According to the
_N.W.P. Gazetteer_ (p. 568), the nearest approximate value for the
Agra kôs is 1 3/4 mile. Three kôs would, therefore, be equal to about
5 1/4 miles. Muîn-ud-dîn died in A.D. 1236. Sleeman, on I know not
what authority, represents Akbar as resorting to Salîm Chishtî,
Shaikh of Fathpur-Sîkrî, on the advice given by a vision accorded at
Ajmêr. The _Tabaqât-i-Akbarî_ simply records that Akbar had visited
the Shaikh, the 'very holy old man' of Sleeman, several times, and
had obtained the promise of a son. That promise was fulfilled by the
birth of the princes Salîm and Murâd, who both saw the light at
Fathpur-Sîkrî. The pilgrimage of Akbar on foot to Ajmêr, which began
on Friday, Shabân (8th month) 12, A.H. 977, took place _after_ the
birth of Prince Salîm, which occurred on the 18th of Rabî-ul-auwwal
(3rd month) of the same Hijrî year. Akbar travelled at the rate of 7
or 8 _kôs_ a day, and spent about 25 days on the journey (E. & D. v.
333, 334). If he had moved at the rate stated by Sleeman he would
have been nearly three months on the road. He reached Ajmêr about the
middle of February (N.S.). Shaikh Salîm Chishtî died in A.D. 1572 (A.
H. 979) aged 96 lunar years.
8. Sir Thomas Roe was sent out by James I, and arrived at Jahângîr's
court in January, 1616. He remained there till 1618, and secured for
his countrymen the privilege of trading at Surat. The best edition of
his book is that by Mr. William Foster (Hakluyt Soc., 1899).
9. Fathpur-Sîkrî is fully described and illustrated in the late Mr.
E. W. Smith's fine work in quarto entitled _The Moghul Architecture
of Fathpur-Sîkrî_ (4 Parts, Allahabad Govt. Press, 1894-8), which
supersedes all other writings on the subject. The double name of the
town means 'Fathpur at Sîkrî' according to a familiar Indian
practice. The name Fathpur ('City of Victory') was bestowed in A.D.
1573 to commemorate the glorious campaign in Gujarât, but building on
the site had been begun in 1569. The historians usually call the town
simply Fathpur, which name also is found on the coinage, from
probably A.H. 977 (A.D. 1569-70). The mint was not in regular working
order until eight years later (A.H. 985). Coins continued to be
struck regularly at Fathpur until A.H. 989 (A.D. 1581-2). Akbar
abandoned his costly foundation a little later. The only coin from
the Fathpur mint of subsequent date is one of the first year of
Shâhjahân (Wright, _Catalogue of Coins in Indian Museum, Mughal
Emperors_, 1908, p. xlvii). But Rodgers believed in the genuineness
of a zodiacal gold coin of Jahângîr purporting to be struck at
Fathpur (_J.A.S.B._, vol. lvii (1888), Part I, p. 26).
10. Sleeman's dates and details require much correction. The mosque
was completed at some time in the year A.H. 979 (May 26, 1571, to May
13, 1572, o.s.), excepting the Buland Darwâza, which was erected in
A.H. 983 (1575-6). The 'old hermit', Shaikh Salîm, died on February
13, 1572 (Ramazân 27, A.H. 979). E. W. Smith (_op. cit._, Part IV, p.
1) gives the correct measurements as follow: 'Exclusive of the
bastions upon the angles it measures 542' from east to west to the
outside of the _lîwân_ or sanctuary, or 515' 3" to the outside of the
west main wall (which sets back from the outer wall of the lîwân) and
438' from north to south. The general plan adopted by Muhammadans for
their masjids has been followed. In the centre is a vast courtyard
open to the heavens, measuring 359' 10" by 438' 9", surrounded on the
north, south, and east sides by spacious cloisters 38' 3" in depth,
and on the west by the lîwân itself, 288' 2" in length by 65' deep.
It is said to be copied from one at Makka [Mecca], and was erected
according to a chronogram over the main arch in A.D. 1571, or at the
same time as Rajah Bir Bal's house.' The 'six years before his death'
of Sleeman's text should be 'six months' (Latif, _Agra_, p. 149).
11. The southern portal, known as the Buland Darwâza, or Lofty
Gateway, does not match the other gateways. It was built in A.D.
1575-6 (A.H. 983), and was adorned in A.D. 1601-2 (A.H. 1010) with an
inscription recording Akbar's triumphant return from his campaign in
the Deccan. The date is fixed by a chronogram, preserved in Beale's
work entitled _Miftâh-ul-tawârîkh_ (_Ann. Progr. Rep. A. S. Northern
Circle_, for 1905-6, p. 34, correcting E. W. Smith). Correct
measurements are:
From roadway below to pavement . . . 42 feet
From pavement to top of finial . . . 134 "
Breadth across main front . . . . 130 "
Breadth across back facing the mosque . . 123 "
Depth . . . . . . . . 88 1/2 feet.
Full details, with ample illustrations, are given by E. W. Smith, op.
cit., Part IV, chap. ii. In the original edition of Sleeman a
chromolithograph of the gateway is inserted. Photographs are
reproduced in _H.F.A._, Pl. xcvi, and Fergusson, _History of Indian
and E. Archit._ (ed. 1910), fig. 425.
12. Fergusson (ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 297) successfully justifies the
vast size of the gateway. 'The semi-dome is the modulus of the
design, and its scale that by which the imagination measures its
magnificence.'
The cramped staircases criticized by Sleeman are those ascending from
the pavement to the roof, one on the north-west, and the other on the
north-east side of the gate. Each flight has 123 steep steps.
13. See the 105th chapter of the Korân. 'Hast thou not seen how thy
Lord dealt with the masters of the elephant? Did he not make their
treacherous design an occasion of drawing them into error; and send
against them flocks of _swallows_ which cast down upon them stones of
baked clay, and rendered them like the leaves of corn eaten by
cattle?' [W. H. S.] The quotation is from Sale's translation, but
Sale uses the word 'birds', and not '_swallows_'. In his note, where
he tells the whole story, he speaks of 'a large flock of birds like
swallows'. The Arabic, Persian, and Hindustânî dictionaries give no
other word than 'abâbîl' for swallow. The word 'partâdîl' (purtadeel)
occurs in none of them. According to Oates, _Fauna of British India_
(London, 1890), the 'abâbîl' is the common swallow, _Hirundo
rustica_; and the 'mosque-swallow' ('masjid-abâbîl'), otherwise
called 'Sykes's striated swallow', is the _H. erythropygia, H.
Daurica_ of Balfour, _Cyclop. of India_, 3rd ed., s.v. Hirundinidae.
This latter species is the 'little piebald thing' mentioned by the
author.
14. Muh. Latif (Agra, pp. 146, 147) gives the text and English
rendering of the inscription, which is in Persian, except the
_logion_ ascribed to Jesus, which is in Arabic. His translation of
the Jesus saying is as follows:
'So said Jeans, on whom be peace! "The world is a bridge; pass over
it, but build no house on it. He who reflected on the distresses of
the Day of Judgement gained pleasure everlasting.
'"Worldly pleasures are but momentary; spend, then, thy life in
devotion and remember that what remains of it is valueless".'
Like the author, I am unable to trace the source of the quotation.
The inscription probably was recorded after Akbar's breach with
Islam, which may be dated from 1579 or 1580. When he built the
mosque, in 1571-5, he was still a devout Musalman, although
entertaining liberal opinions. He died on October 25, 1605 (N.S.;
October 15, O.S.)
15. For a full account of the exquisite sepulchre of Shaikh Salîm,
see E. W. Smith, op. cit.. Part III, chap. ii. An inscription over
the doorway is dated A.H. 979 = 1571-2, the year of the saint's
death. The building, constructed regardless of expense, must be
somewhat later. 'As originally built by Akbar, the tomb was of red
sandstone, and the marble trellis-work, the chief ornament of the
tomb, was erected subsequently by the Emperor Jahângîr' (Latif,
_Agra_, p. 144).
16. The first plundering of Akbar's tomb at Sikandra by the Jâts
occurred in 1691 according to Manucci (_ante_, chapter 51, note 29.).
The outrages at Fathpur-Sîkrî seem to have been later in date, and to
have happened after the capture of Agra in 1761 by Sûraj Mall, the
famous Râjâ of Bhurtpore (Bharatpur). The Jâts retained possession of
Agra until 1774 (_I.G._, 1908, vol. viii, p. 76). That is the period
while they reigned, to use the author's words. Tradition affirms that
daring that time they shot away the tops of the minarets at the
entrance to the Sikandra park; took the armour and books of Akbar
from his tomb, and sent them to Bharatpur, and also melted down two
silver doors at the Tâj, which had cost Shâh Jahân more than 125,000
rupees (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, 1st ed., vol. vii, p. 619)
17. We besieged and took Bharatpur in order to rescue the young
prince, our ally, from his uncle, who had forcibly assumed the office
of prime minister to his nephew. As soon as we got possession, all
the property we found, belonging either to the nephew or the uncle,
was declared to be prize-money, and taken for the troops. The young
prince was obliged to borrow an elephant from the prize agents to
ride upon. He has ever since enjoyed the whole of the revenue of his
large territory. [W. H. S.] The final siege and capture of Bharatpur
by Lord Combermere took place in January, 1826. The plundering, as
Metcalfe observed, 'has been very disgraceful, and has tarnished our
well-earned honours'. All the state treasures and jewels, amounting
to forty-eight lâkhs of rupees, or say half a million of pounds
sterling, which should have been made over to the rightful Râjâ, were
treated as lawful prize, and at once distributed among the officers
and men. Lord Combermere himself took six lâkhs (Marshman, _History
of India_, ed., 1869, vol. ii, p. 409).
18. The 'little dingy mosque' was built over the cave in which the
saint dwelt, and was presented to him by the local quarry-men. It is
therefore called The Stone-cutters' Mosque. It is fully described by
E. W. Smith, op. cit., Part IV. chap. iii. It is earlier in date than
any of Akbar's buildings, having been built in A. H. 945 (A.D. 1538-
9), a year after the saint had settled in the 'dangerous jungle'
(_Progr. Rep. A. S. N. Circle_, 1905-6, p. 35).
19. The people of India no doubt owed much of the good they enjoyed
under the long reign of Akbar to this most excellent woman, who
inspired not only her husband but the most able Muhammadan minister
that India has ever had, with feelings of universal benevolence. It
was from her that this great minister, Abûl Fazl, derived the spirit
that dictated the following passages in his admirable work, the Aîn-
i-Akbarî; 'Every sect becomes infatuated with its particular
doctrines; animosity and dissension prevail, and each man deeming the
tenets of his sect to be the dictates of truth itself, aims at the
destruction of all others, vilifies reputation, stains the earth with
blood, and has the vanity to imagine that he is performing
meritorious actions. Were the voice of reason attended to, mankind
would be sensible of their error, and lament the weaknesses which led
them to interfere in the religious concerns of each other.
Persecution, after all, defeats its own end; it obliges men to
conceal their opinions, but produces no change in them.
'Summarily, the Hindoos are religious, affable, courteous to
strangers, prone to inflict austerities on themselves, lovers of
justice, given to retirement, able in business, grateful, admirers of
truth, and of unbounded fidelity in all their dealings.
'This character shines brightest in adversity. Their soldiers know
not what it is to fly from the field of battle; when the success of
the combat becomes doubtful, they dismount from their horses, and
throw away their lives in payment of the debt of valour. They have
great respect for their tutors; and make no account of their lives
when they can devote them to the service of their God.
'They consider the Supreme Being to be above all labour, and believe
Brahmâ to be the creator of the world, Vishnu its preserver, and Siva
its destroyer. But one sect believes that God, who hath no equal,
appeared on earth under the three above-mentioned forms, without
having been thereby polluted in the smallest degree, in the same
manner as the Christians speak of the Messiah; others hold that all
these were only human beings, who, on account of their sanctity and
righteousness, were raised to these high dignities.' [W. H. S.] The
passage quoted is from Gladwin's translation, vol. ii, p. 318 (4th
ed., London, 1800). The wording varies in different editions of
Gladwin's work. A better version will be found in Jarrett, transl.
_Âîn_ (Calcutta, 1894), vol. iii, p. 8.
There is no substantial foundation for the author's statement that
Abûl Fazl learned his charity and toleration from the Hindoo mother
of Jahângîr. The influences which really moulded the opinions of both
Abûl Fazl and his royal master are well known. When Akbar and Abûl
Fazl are compared with Elizabeth and Burleigh, Philip II and Alva, or
the other sovereigns and ministers of the age in Europe, it seems to
be little less than a miracle that the Indian statesmen should have
held and practised the noble philosophy expounded in the above
quotation from the 'Institutes of Akbar'. No man has deserved better
than Akbar the stately eulogy pronounced by Wordsworth on a hero now
obscure:
A meteor wert thou in a darksome night;
Yet shall thy name, conspicuous and sublime,
Stand in the spacious firmament of time,
Fixed as a star: such glory is thy right.
(_Sonnets dedicated to Liberty_, Part Second, No. XVII.)
20. The story is absurd, the saint having died early in 1572, when
the Fathpur-Sîkrî buildings were in progress.
'The city . . . is enclosed on three sides by high embattlemented
stone walls pierced by. . . gateways protected by heavy and grim
semi-circular bastions of rubble masonry. The fourth side was
protected by a large lake.' There were nine gateways (E. W. Smith,
op. cit., pp. 1, 59; pl. xci, xciii). The Sangîn Burj, or Stone
Tower, is a fine unfinished fortification (ibid., p. 34). The dam of
the lake burst in the 27th year of the reign, A.D. 1582 (Latif,
_Agra_, p. 159). The circumference of the town is variously stated as
either six or seven miles.
21. Akbar began the works at the fort of Agra in A.H. 972,
corresponding to A.D. 1564-65, several years before he began those at
Fathpur in A.D. 1569-70 (E. & D., vol. v, pp. 295, 332); and the
buildings at Agra and Fathpur were carried on concurrently. He
continued building at Fathpur nearly to the close of his reign. Agra
was never 'an unpeopled waste' during Akbar's reign. Sikandar Lodî
had made it his capital in A.D. 1501.
22. That is to say, the grantees have now to pay land revenue, or
rent, to the state.
23. No good general description of the buildings at Agra, Sikandra,
and Fathpur-Sîkrî exists. The following list indicates the beat
treatises available.
(1) Syad Muhammad Latif--_Agra, Historical and Descriptive., &c._;
8vo, Calcutta, 1896, Useful, but crude and badly illustrated.
(2) E. W. Smith--_The Moghul Architecture of Fathpur-Sikri_; 4 Parts,
4to, Government Press, Allahabad, 1894-8.
(3) Same author--_Moghul Colour Decoration of Agra_; 4to, Government
Press, Allahabad, 1901.
(4) Same author--_Akbar's Tomb, Sikandarah_; posthumous; 4to,
Allahabad Government Press, 1909.
The three works by Mr. E. W. Smith are magnificently illustrated and
worthy of the subject.
(5) Nûr Baksh--'The Agra Fort and its Buildings', in _A.S. Annual
Report_ for 1903-4, pp. 164-93.
(6) Moin-ud-din--_The History of the Taj, &c._; thin 8vo, 116 pp.;
Moon Press, Agra, 1905. Useful, as being the only book devoted to the
Tâj and connected buildings, but crude and inadequate.
The Archaeological Survey of India, since its reorganization, has not
had time to study the Tâj buildings, except for conservation
purposes. The report by Mr. Carlleyle on the minor remains at and
near Agra in _A.S.R._, vol. iv, 1874, is almost worthless.
In 1873 Major Cole prepared a handsome volume entitled _Illustrations
of Buildings near Muttra and Agra, &c._
Some information, to be used with caution, is to be found in
gazetteers of different dates.
The brief observations in Fergusson's _History of Indian and Eastern
Architecture_ (ed. 1910) are of permanent value. The plan of the
editor's work, _A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon_ (H. F.
A.), Oxford, 1911, does not permit of detailed descriptions. The
well-known little Handbook by Mr. H. G. Keene contains many errors
and is unworthy of the author's reputation as an historian.
A good guide-book, prepared with knowledge and accuracy, is badly
wanted. It would be difficult to find an author possessed of the
needful local knowledge and sufficiently well read to compile a
satisfactory book. An adequate illustrated history of the Tâj
buildings on the lines of Mr. E. W. Smith's work on Fathpur-Sîkrî is
much to be desired, but would be a formidable undertaking, and is not
likely to be written for a long time to come. Perhaps some wealthy
admirer of Akbar and his achievements may appear and provide the
considerable funds required for the preparation of the desired
treatise. The Christian antiquities of Agra also deserve systematic
treatment. At present the information on record is in a chaotic
state.
CHAPTER 55
Bharatpur--Dîg--Want of employment for the Military and the Educated
Classes under the Company's Rule.
Our old friends, Mr. Charles Fraser, the Commissioner of the Agra
Division, then on his circuit, and Major Godby, had come on with us
from Agra and made our party very agreeable. On the 9th, we went
fourteen miles to Bharatpur, over a plain of alluvial, but seemingly
poor, soil, intersected by one low range of sandstone hills running
north-east and south-west. The thick belt of jungle, three miles
wide, with which the chiefs of Bharatpur used to surround their
fortress while they were freebooters, and always liable to be brought
into collision with their neighbours, has been fast diminishing since
the capture of the place by our troops in 1826; and will very soon
disappear altogether, and give place to rich sheets of cultivation,
and happy little village communities. Our tents had been pitched
close outside the Mathurâ gate, near a small grove of fruit-trees,
which formed the left flank of the last attack on this fortress by
Lord Combermere.[1] Major Godby had been present during the whole
siege; and, as we went round the place in the evening on our
elephants, he pointed out all the points of attack, and told all the
anecdotes of the day that were interesting enough to be remembered
for ten years. We went through the town, out at the opposite gate,
and passed along the line of Lord Lake's attack in 1805.[2] All the
points of his attack were also pointed out to us by our cicerone, an
old officer in the service of the Râjâ. It happened to be the
anniversary of the first attempt to storm, which was made on the 9th
of January, thirty-one years before. One old officer told us that he
remembered Lord Lake sitting with three other gentlemen on chairs not
more than half a mile from the ramparts of the fort.
The old man thought that the men of those days were quite a different
sort of thing to the men of the present day, as well those who
defended, as those who attacked the fort; and, if the truth must be
told, he thought that the European lords and gentlemen had fallen off
in the same scale as the rest.
'But', said the old man, 'all these things are matter of destiny and
providence. Upon that very bastion (pointing to the right point of
Lord Lake's attack) stood a large twenty-four pounder, which was
loaded and discharged three times by supernatural agency during one
of your attacks--not a living soul was near it.' We all smiled,
incredulous; and the old man offered to bring a score of witnesses to
the fact, men of unquestionable veracity. The left point of Lord
Lake's attack was the Baldêo bastion, so called alter Baldêo Singh,
the second son of the then reigning chief, Ranjît Singh. The feats
which Hector performed in the defence of Troy sink into utter
insignificance before those which Baldêo performed in the defence of
Bharatpur, according to the best testimony of the survivors of that
great day. 'But', said the old man, 'he was, of course, acting under
supernatural influence; he condescended to measure swords only with
Europeans'; and their bodies filled the whole bastion in which he
stood, according to the belief of the people, though no European
entered it, I believe, during the whole siege. They pointed out to us
where the different corps were posted. There was one corps which had
signalized itself a good deal, but of which I had never before heard,
though all around me seemed extremely well acquainted with it--this
was the _Antâ Gurgurs_. At last Godby came to my side, and told me
this was the name by which the Bombay troops were always known in
Bengal, though no one seemed to know whence it came. I am disposed to
think that they derive it from the peculiar form of the caps of their
sepoys, which are in form like the common hookah, called a 'gurgurî',
with a small ball at the top, like an 'antâ', or tennis, or billiard
ball; hence 'Antâ Gurgurs'. The Bombay sepoys were, I am told, always
very angry when they heard that they were known by this term--they
have always behaved like good soldiers, and need not be ashamed of
this or any other name.[3]
The water in the lake, about a mile to the west of Bharatpur, stands
higher than the ground about the fortress; and a drain had been
opened, through which the water rushed in and filled the ditch all
round the fort and great part of the plain to the south and east,
before Lord Lake undertook the siege in 1805.[4] This water might, I
believe, have been taken off to the eastward into the Jumna, had the
outlet been discovered by the engineers. An attempt was made to cut
the same drain on the approach of Lord Combermere in 1826; but a
party went on, and stopped the work before much water had passed, and
the ditch was almost dry when the siege began.
The walls being all of mud, and now dismantled, had a wretched
appearance;[5] and the town which is contained within them is, though
very populous, a mere collection of wretched hovels; the only
respectable habitation within is the palace, which consists of three
detached buildings--one for the chief, another for the females of his
family, and the third for his court of justice, I could not find a
single trace of the European officers who had been killed there,
either at the first or second siege, though I had been told that a
small tomb had been built in a neighbouring grove over the remains of
Brigadier-General Edwards, who fell in the last storm. It is, I
believe, the only one that has ever been raised. The scenes of
battles fought by the Muhammadan conquerors of India were commonly
crowded with magnificent tombs, built over the slain, and provided
for a time with the means of maintaining holy men who read the Korân
over their graves. Not that this duty was necessary for the repose of
their souls, for every Muhammadan killed in fighting against men who
believed not in his prophet went, as a matter of course, to paradise;
and every unbeliever, killed in the same action, went as surely to
hell. There are only a few hundred men, exclusive of the prophets,
who, according to Muhammad, have the first place in paradise--those
who shared in one or other of his first three battles, and believed
in his holy mission before they had the evidence of a single victory
over the unbelievers to support it. At the head of these are the men
who accompanied him in his flight from Mecca to Medina, when he had
no evidence either from _victories_ or _miracles_. In all such
matters the less the evidence adduced in proof of a mission the
greater the merit of those who believe in it, according to the person
who pretends to it; and unhappily, the less the evidence a man has
for his faith, the greater is his anger against other men for not
joining in it with him. No man gets very angry with another for not
joining with him in his faith in the demonstration of a problem in
mathematics. Man likes to think that he is on the way to heaven upon
such easy terms; but gets angry at the notion that others won't join
him, because they may consider him an imbecile for thinking that he
is so. The Muhammadan generals and historians are sometimes almost as
concise as Caesar himself in describing very conscientiously a battle
of this kind; instead of 'I came, I saw, I conquered', it is 'Ten
thousand Musâlmâns on that day tasted of the blessed fruit of
paradise, after sending fifty thousand unbelievers to the flames of
hell'.
On the 10th we came on twelve miles to Kumbhîr, over a plain of poor
soil, much impregnated with salt, and with some works in which salt
is made, with solar evaporation. The earth is dug up, water is
filtered through it, and drawn off into small square beds, where it
is evaporated by exposure to the solar heat. The gate of this fort
leading out to the road we came is called, modestly enough, after
Kumbhîr, a place only ten miles distant; that leading to Mathurâ,
three or four stages distant, is called the Mathurâ gate. At Delhi,
the gates of the city walls are called ostentatiously after distant
places--the _Kashmîr_, the _Kâbul_, the _Constantinople_ gates.
Outside the Kumbhîr gate, I saw, for the first time in my life, the
well peculiar to Upper India. It is built up in the form of a round
tower or cylindrical shell of burnt bricks, well cemented with good
mortar, and covered inside and out with good stucco work, and let
down by degrees, as the earth is removed by men at work in digging
under the light earthy or sandy foundation inside and out. This well
is about twenty feet below and twenty feet above the surface, and had
to be built higher as it was let into the ground.[6]
On the 11th we came on twelve miles to Dîg (Deeg), over a plain of
poor and badly cultivated soil, which must be almost all under water
in the rains. This was, and still is, the country seat of the Jâts of
Bharatpur, who rose, as I have already stated, to wealth and power by
aggressions upon their immediate neighbours, and the plunder of
tribute on its way to the imperial capital, and of the baggage of
passing armies during the contests for dominion that followed the
death of the Emperors, and during the decline and fall of the empire.
The Jâts found the morasses with which they were surrounded here a
source of strength. They emigrated from the banks of the Indus about
Multân, and took up their abode by degrees on the banks of the Jumna,
and those of the Chambal, from their confluence upwards, where they
became cultivators and robbers upon a small scale, till they had the
means to build garrisons, when they entered the lists with princes,
who were only robbers upon a large scale. The Jâts, like the
Marâthâs, rose, by a feeling of nationality, among a people who had
none. Single landholders were every day rising to principalities by
means of their gangs of robbers; but they could seldom be cemented
under one common head by a bond of national feeling.
They have a noble quadrangular garden at Dîg, surrounded by a high
wall. In the centre of each of the four faces is one of the most
beautiful Hindoo buildings for accommodation that I have ever seen,
formed of a very fine sandstone brought from the quarries of Rûpbâs,
which he between thirty and forty miles to the south, and eight or
ten miles west of Fathpur-Sîkrî. These stones are brought in in flags
some sixteen feet long, from two to three feet wide, and one thick,
with sides as flat as glass, the flags being of the natural thickness
of the strata. The garden is four hundred and seventy-five feet long,
by three hundred and fifty feet wide; and in the centre is an
octagonal pond, with openings on the four sides leading up to the
four buildings, each opening having, from the centre of the pond to
the foot of the flight of steps leading into them, an avenue of _jets
d'eau_.
Dîg as much surpassed, as Bharatpur fell short of, my expectations. I
had seen nothing in India of architectural beauty to be compared with
the buildings in this garden, except at Agra. The useful and the
elegant are here everywhere happily blended; nothing seems
disproportionate, or unsuitable to the purpose for which it was
designed; and all that one regrets is that so beautiful a garden
should be situated in so vile a swamp.[7] There was a general
complaint among the people of the town of a want of 'rozgâr'
(employment), and its fruit, subsistence; the taking of Bharatpur
had, they said, produced a sad change among them for the worse. Godby
observed to some of the respectable men about us, who complained of
this, that happily their chief had now no enemy to employ them
against. 'But what', said they, 'is a prince without an army? and why
do you keep up yours now that all your enemies have been subdued?'
'We want them', replied Godby, 'to prevent our friends from cutting
each other's throats, and to defend them all against a foreign
enemy.' 'True,' said they, 'but what are we to do who have nothing
but our swords to depend upon, now that our chief no longer wants us,
and you won't take us?' 'And what,' said some shopkeepers, 'are we to
do who provided these troops with clothes, food, and furniture, which
they can no longer afford to pay for?' _Company ke amal men kuchh
rozgâr nahîn_ ('Under the Company's dominion there is no
employment'). This is too true; we do the soldiers' work with one-
tenth of the soldiers that had before been employed in it over the
territories we acquire, and turn the other nine-tenths adrift. They
all sink into the lowest class of religions mendicants, or retainers;
or live among their friends as drones upon the land; while the
manufacturing, trading, and commercial industry that provided them
with the comforts, conveniences, and elegancies of life while they
were in a higher grade of service is in its turn thrown out of
employment; and the whole frame of society becomes, for a time,
deranged by the local diminution in the demand _for the services of
men and the produce of their industry_.
I say we do the soldiers' work with one-tenth of the numbers that
were formerly required for it. I will mention an anecdote to
illustrate this. In the year 1816 I was marching with my regiment
from the Nepâl frontier, after the war, to Allahabad. We encamped
about four miles from a mud fort in the kingdom of Oudh, and heard
the guns of the Amil, or chief of the district, playing all day upon
this fort, from which his batteries were removed at least two miles.
He had three regiments of infantry, a corps or two of cavalry, and a
good park of artillery; while the garrison consisted of only about
two hundred stout Râjpût landholders and cultivators, or yeomen. In
the evening, just as we had sat down to dinner, a messenger came to
the commanding officer, Colonel Gregory, who was a member of the
mess, from the said Amil, and begged permission to deliver his
message in private. I, as the senior staff officer, was requested to
hear what he had to say.
'What do you require from the commanding officer?'
'I require the loan of the regiment.'
'I know the commanding officer will not let you have the regiment.'
'If the Amil cannot get more, he will be glad to get two companies;
and I have brought with me this bag of gold, containing some two or
three hundred gold mohurs.'
I delivered the message to Colonel Gregory, before all the officers,
who desired me to say that he could not spare a single man, as he had
no authority to assist the Amil, and was merely marching through the
country to his destination, I did so. The man urged me to beg the
commanding officer, if he could do no more, merely to halt the next
day where he was, and lend the Amil the use of one of his drummers.
'And what will you do with him?'
'Why, just before daylight, we will take him down near one of the
gates of the fort, and make him beat his drum as hard as he can; and
the people within, thinking the whole regiment is upon them, will
make out as fast as possible at the opposite gate.'
'And the bag of gold--what is to become of that?'
'You and the old gentleman can divide it between you, and I will
double it for you, if you like.'
I delivered the message before all the officers to their great
amusement; and the poor man was obliged to carry back his bag of gold
to the Amil. The Amil is the collector of revenues in Oudh, and he is
armed with all the powers of government, and has generally several
regiments and a train of artillery with him.
The large landholders build these mud forts, which they defend by
their Râjpût cultivators, who are among the bravest men in the world.
One hundred of them would never hesitate to attack a thousand of the
king's regular troops, because they know the Amil would be ashamed to
have any noise made about it at court; but they know also that, if
they were to beat one hundred of the Company's troops, they would
soon have a thousand upon them; and, if they were to beat one
thousand, they would soon have ten. They provide for the maintenance
of those who are wounded in their fight, and for the widows and
orphans of those who are killed. Their prince provides for neither,
and his soldiers are, consequently, somewhat chary of fighting. It is
from this peasantry, the military cultivators of Oudh, that our
Bengal native infantry draws three out of four of its recruits, and
finer young men for soldiers can hardly anywhere be found.[8]
The advantage which arises to society from doing the soldiers' duty
with a smaller number has never been sufficiently appreciated in
India; but it will become every day more manifest, as our dominion
becomes more and more stable--for men who have lived by the sword do
not in India like to live by anything else, or to see their children
anything but soldiers. Under the former government men brought their
own arms and horses to the service, and took them away with them
again when discharged. The supply always greatly exceeded the demand
for soldiers, both in the cavalry and the infantry, and a very great
portion of the men armed and accoutred as soldiers were always
without service, roaming over the country in search of it. To such
men the profession next in rank after that of the soldier robbing in
the service of the sovereign was that of the robber plundering on his
own account. '_Materia munificentiae per bella et raptus. Nec arare
terram, aut expectare annum, tam facile persuaseris, quam vocare
hostes et vulnera mereri; pigrum quinimmo et iners videtur sudore
acquirere, quod possis sanguine parare._' 'War and rapine supply the
prince with the means of his munificence. You cannot persuade the
German to cultivate the fields and wait patiently for the harvest so
easily as you can to challenge the enemy, and expose himself to
honourable wounds. They hold it to be base and dishonourable to earn
by the sweat of their brow what they might acquire by their
blood.'[9]
The equestrian robber had his horse, and was called 'ghurâsî', horse-
robber, a term which he never thought disgraceful. The foot-robber
under the native government stood in the same relation to the horse-
robber as the foot-soldier to the horse-soldier, because the trooper
furnished his own horses, arms, and accoutrements, and considered
himself a man of rank and wealth compared with the foot-soldier;
both, however, had the wherewithal to rob the traveller on the
highway; and, in the intervals between wars, the high roads were
covered with them. There was a time in England, it is said, when the
supply of clergymen was so great compared with the demand for them,
from the undue stimulus given to clerical education, that it was not
thought disgraceful for them to take to robbing on the highway; and
all the high roads were, in consequence, infested by them.[10] How
much more likely is a soldier to consider himself justified in this
pursuit, and to be held so by the feelings of society in general,
when he seeks in vain for regular service under his sovereign and his
viceroys.
The individual soldiers not only armed, accoutred, and mounted
themselves, but they generally ranged themselves under leaders, and
formed well-organized bands for any purpose of war or plunder. They
followed the fortunes of such leaders whether in service or out of
it; and, when dismissed from that of their sovereign, they assisted
them in robbing on the highway, or in pillaging the country till the
sovereign was compelled to take them back, or give them estates in
rent-free tenure for their maintenance and that of their followers.
All this is reversed under our government. We do the soldiers' work
much better than it was ever before done with one-tenth--nay, I may
say, one-fiftieth--part of the numbers that were employed to do it by
our predecessors; and the whole number of the soldiers employed by us
is not equal to that of those who were under them actually in the
transition state, or on their way from the place where they had lost
service to the place where they hoped to find it; extorting the means
of subsistence either by intimidation or by open violence. Those who
are in this transition state under us are neither armed, accoutred,
nor mounted; we do not disband en masse, we only dismiss individuals
for offences, and they have no leaders to range themselves under.
Those who come to seek our service are the sons of yeomen, bred up
from their infancy with all those feelings of deference for superiors
which we require in soldiers. They have neither arms, horses, nor
accoutrements; and, when they leave us permanently or temporarily,
they take none with them--they never rob or steal--they will often
dispute with the shopkeepers on the road about the price of
provisions, or get a man to carry their bundles gratis for a few
miles, but this is the utmost of their transgressions, and for these
things they are often severely handled by our police.
It is extremely gratifying to an Englishman to hear the general
testimony borne by all classes of people to the merits of our rule in
this respect; they all say that no former government ever devoted so
much attention to the formation of good roads and to the protection
of those who travel on them; and much of the security arises from the
change I have here remarked in the character and number of our
military establishments. It is equally gratifying to reflect that the
advantages must go on increasing, as those who have been thrown out
of employment in the army find other occupations for themselves and
their children; for find them they must or turn mendicants, if India
should be blessed with a long interval of peace. All soldiers under
us who have served the government faithfully for a certain number of
years, are, when no longer fit for the active duties of their
profession, sent back with the means of subsistence in honourable
retirement for the rest of their lives among their families and
friends, where they form, as it were, fountains of good feeling
towards the government they have served. Under former governments, a
trooper was discharged as soon as his horse got disabled, and a foot-
soldier as soon as he got disabled himself--no matter how--whether in
the service of the prince, or otherwise; no matter how long they had
served, whether they were still fit for any other service or not.
Like the old soldier in _Gil Blas_, they tumed robbers on the
highway, where they could still present a spear or a matchlock at a
traveller, though no longer deemed worthy to serve in the ranks of
the army. Nothing tended so much to the civilization of Europe as the
substitution of standing armies for militia; and nothing has tended
so much to the improvement of India under our rule.
The troops to which our standing armies in India succeeded were much
the same in character as those licentious bodies to which the
standing armies of the different nations of Europe succeeded; and the
result has been, and will, I hope, continue to be the same, highly
beneficial to the great mass of the people.
By a statute of Elizabeth it was made a capital offence, felony
without benefit of clergy, for soldiers or sailors to beg on the high
roads without a pass; and I suppose this statute arose from their
frequently robbing on the highways in the character of beggars.[11]
There must at that time have been an immense number of soldiers in
the transition state in England; men who disdained the labours of
peaceful life, or had by long habit become unfitted for them.
Religions mendicity has hitherto been the great safety valve through
which the unquiet transition spirit has found vent under our strong
and settled government. A Hindoo of any caste may become a religious
mendicant of the two great monastic orders--of Gosâins, who are
disciples of Siva, and Bairâgîs, who are disciples of Vishnu; and any
Muhammadan may become a Fakîr; and Gosâins, Bairâgîs, and Fakîrs, can
always secure, or extort, food from the communities they visit.[12]
Still, however, there is enough of this unquiet transition spirit
left to give anxiety to a settled government; for the moment
insurrection breaks out at any point, from whatever cause, to that
point thousands are found flocking from north, east, west, and south,
with their arms and their horses, if they happen to have any, in the
hope of finding service either under the local authorities or the
insurgents themselves; as the troubled winds of heaven rush to the
point where the pressure of the atmosphere has been diminished.[13]
Notes:
1. On the sieges of Bharatpur see _ante_, chapter 17, note 9.
2. In the original edition the year is misprinted 1804, though the
correct date is indicated by the phrase 'thirty-one years before'.
The operations on January 9, 1805, are described in considerable
detail in Thornton's history, and Pearse, _The Life and Military
Services of Viscount Lake_ (Blackwood, 1908). Dîg was taken on
December 24, 1804, and Lord Lake's army moved from Mathurâ towards
Bharatpur on January 1, 1805.
3. The Bombay column joined Lord Lake on February 11, and took part
in the third and fourth assaults on the fortress.
4. As in the previous passage, this date is printed 1804 in the
original edition.
5. They have been repaired to some extent, and the town has improved
much since the author's time.
6. That is to say, the well-cylinder is gradually sunk by its own
weight, aided, if necessary, by heavy additional weights piled upon
it. The sinking often takes many months, and is continued till a
suitable resting-place is found. The cylinder is built on a strong
ring of timber. Indian bridge-piers commonly rest on wells of this
kind. The ring is sometimes made of iron. Such a method of sinking is
possible only in deep alluvium, free from rock, and consequently had
not been seen in the Sâgar and Nerbudda territories.
7. In the original edition Dîg is illustrated by four coloured
plates. The buildings are all the work of Sûraj Mal, the virtual
founder of the Bharatpur dynasty, between A.D. 1725 and 1763. The
palace wants, say Fergusson, 'the massive character of the fortified
palaces of other Râjpût states, but for grandeur of conception and
beauty of detail it surpasses them all. . . . The greatest defect of
the palace is that the style, when it was erected, was losing its
true form of lithic propriety. The forms of its pillars and their
ornaments are better suited for wood or metal than for stone
architecture.' It is a 'fairy creation'. (_History of Indian and
Eastern Architecture_, ed. 1910, vol. ii, pp. 178-81.)
8. On these topics see the 'Journey through the Kingdom of Oude',
_passim_. The composition of the Bengal army has been much changed.
9. The quotation is from the end of chapter 14 of the _Germania_ of
Tacitus.
10. This picture of English roads infested by clergymen turned
highwaymen is not to be found in the ordinary histories.
11. The Act alluded to probably is 14 Elizabeth, c. 5. Other Acts of
the same reign dealing with vagrancy and the first poor-law are 39
Elizabeth, c. 3, and 43 Elizabeth, c. 2 (A.D. 1601). In 1595 vagrancy
had assumed such alarming proportions in London that a provost-
marshal was appointed to give the wanderers the short shrift of
martial law. The course of legislation on the subject is summarized
in the article 'Poor Laws' in Chambers's _Encyclopaedia_ (1904), and
the articles 'Poor-Law and Vagrancy' in the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_, 11th ed., 1910. See also the chapter entitled 'The
England of Elizabeth' in Green's History of the English People.
12. As already observed, chapter 29, note 12, the term Gosâin is by
no means restricted to the special devotees of Siva; many Gosâins--
for example, those in Bengal and those at Gokul in the Mathurâ
district--are followers of Vishnu. The term 'fakîr' is vaguely used,
and often applied to Hindoos.
13. Even still, something of this unquiet spirit hovers about India,
and the incompatibility between the ideas of twentieth-century
Englishmen and those of Indian peoples whose mental attitude
approaches that of Europeans of the twelfth century is a perennial
source of unrest.
CHAPTER 56
Govardhan, the Scene of Krishna's Dalliance with the Milkmaids.
On the 10th[1] we came on ten miles over a plain to Govardhan, a
place celebrated in ancient history as the birthplace of Krishna, the
seventh incarnation of the Hindoo god of preservation, Vishnu, and
the scene of his dalliance with the milkmaids (_gôpîs_); and, in
modern days, as the burial--or burning-place of the Jât chiefs of
Bharatpur and Dîg, by whose tombs, with their endowments, this once
favourite abode of the god is prevented from being entirely
deserted.[2] The town stands upon a narrow ridge of sandstone hills,
about ten miles long, rising suddenly out of an alluvial plain and
running north-east and south-west. The population is now very small,
and composed chiefly of Brahmans, who are supported by the endowments
of these tombs, and the contributions of a few pilgrims. All our
Hindoo followers were much gratified as we happened to arrive on a
day of peculiar sanctity; and they were enabled to bathe and perform
their devotions to the different shrines with the prospect of great
advantage. This range of hills is believed by Hindoos to be part of a
fragment of the Himâlaya mountains which Hanumân, the monkey general
of Râma, the sixth incarnation of Vishnu, was taking down to aid his
master in the formation of his bridge from the continent to the
island of Ceylon, when engaged in the war with the demon king of that
island for the recovery of his wife Sîtâ. He made a false step by
some accident in passing Govardhan, and this small bit of his load
fell off. The rocks begged either to be taken on to the god Râma, or
back to their old place; but Hanumân was hard pressed for time, and
told them not to be uneasy, as they would have a comfortable resting-
place, and be worshipped by millions in future ages--thus, according
to popular belief, foretelling that it would become the residence of
a future incarnation, and the scene of Krishna's miracles. The range
was then about twenty miles long, ten having since disappeared under
the ground. It was of full length during Krishna's days; and, on one
occasion, he took up the whole upon his little finger to defend his
favourite town and its milkmaids from the wrath of Indra, who got
angry with the people, and poured down upon them a shower of burning
ashes.
As I rode along this range, which rises gently from the plains at
both ends and abruptly from the sides, with my groom by my side, I
asked him what made Hanumân drop all his burthen here.
'_All_ his burthen!' exclaimed he with a smile; 'had it been all,
would it not have been an immense mountain, with all its towns and
villages? while this is but an insignificant belt of rock. A mountain
upon the back of men of former days, sir, was no more than a bundle
of grass upon the back of one of your grass-cutters in the present
day.'
Nathû, whose mind had been full of the wonders of this place from
his infancy, happened to be with us, and he now chimed in.
'It was night when Hanumân passed this place, and the lamps were seen
burning in a hundred towns upon the mountain he had upon his back--
the people were all at their usual occupations, quite undisturbed;
this is a mere fragment of his great burthen.'
'And how was it that the men of those towns should have been so much
smaller than the men who carried them?' 'God only knew; but the fact
of the men of the plains having been so large was undisputed--their
beards were as many miles long as those of the present day are
inches. Did not Bhîm throw the forty-cubit stone pillar, that now
stands at Eran,[3] a distance of thirty miles, after the man who was
running away with his cattle?'
I thought of poor Father Gregory at Agra, and the heavy sigh he gave
when asked by Godby what progress he was making among the people in
the way of conversion.[4] The faith of these people is certainly
larger than all the mustard-seeds in the world.
I told a very opulent and respectable Hindoo banker one day that it
seemed to us very strange that Vishnu should come upon the earth
merely to sport with milkmaids, and to hold up an umbrella, however
large, to defend them from a shower. 'The earth, sir,' said he, 'was
at that time infested with innumerable demons and giants, who
swallowed up men and women as bears swallow white ants; and his
highness, Krishna, came down to destroy them. His own mother's
brother, Kans, who then reigned at Mathurâ over Govardhan, was one of
these horrible demons. Hearing that his sister would give birth to a
son that was to destroy him, he put to death several of her progeny
as soon as they were born.[5] When Krishna was seven days old, he
sent a nurse, with poison on her nipple, to destroy him likewise; but
his highness gave such a pull at it, that the nurse dropped down
dead. In falling, she resumed her real shape of a she-demon, and her
body covered no less than six square miles, and it took several
thousand men to cut her up and burn her, to prevent the pestilence
that must have followed. His uncle then sent a crane, which caught up
his highness, who always looked very small for his age, and swallowed
him as he would swallow a frog. But his highness kicked up such a
rumpus in the bird's stomach that he was immediately thrown up again.
When he was seven years old his uncle invited him to a feast, and got
the largest and most ferocious elephant in India to tread him to
death as he alighted at the door. His highness, though then not
higher than my waist, took the enormous beast by one tusk, and, after
whirling him round in the air with one hand half a dozen times, he
dashed him on the ground and killed him.[6] Unable any longer to
stand the wickedness of his uncle, he seized him by the beard,
dragged him from his throne, and dashed him to the ground in the same
manner.'
I thought of poor old Father Gregory and the mustard-seeds again, and
told my rich old friend that it all appeared to us indeed passing
strange.
The orthodox belief among the Muhammadans is that Moses was sixty
yards high; that he carried a mace sixty yards long; and that he
sprang sixty yards from the ground when he aimed the fatal blow at
the giant Ûj, the son of Anak, who came from the land of Canaan, with
a mountain on his back, to crush the army of Israelites. Still, the
head of his mace could reach only to the ankle-bone of the giant.
This was broken with the blow. The giant fell, and was crushed under
the weight of his own mountain. Now a person whose ankle-bone was one
hundred and eighty yards high must have been almost as prodigious as
he who carried the fragment of the Himâlaya upon his back; and he who
believes in the one cannot fairly find fault with his neighbour for
believing in the other.[7] I was one day talking with a very sensible
and respectable Hindoo gentleman of Bundêlkhand about the accident
which made Hanumân drop this fragment of his load at Govardhan. 'All
doubts upon that point,' said the old gentleman, 'have been put at
rest by holy writ. It is related in our scriptures.
'Bharat, the brother of Râma, was left regent of the kingdom of
Ajodhya,[8] during his absence at the conquest of Ceylon. He happened
at night to see Hanumân passing with the mountain upon his back, and
thinking he might be one of the king of Ceylon's demons about
mischief, he let fly one of his blunt arrows at him. It hit him on
the leg, and he fell, mountain and all, to the ground. As he fell, he
called out in his agony, 'Râm, Râm', from which Bharat discovered his
mistake. He went up, raised him in his arms, and with his kind
attentions restored him to his senses. Learning from him the object
of his journey, and fearing that his wounded brother Lachhman would
die before he could get to Ceylon with the requisite remedy, he
offered to send Hanumân on upon the barb of one of his arrows,
mountain and all. To try him Hanumân took up his mountain and seated
himself with it upon the barb of the arrow as desired. Bharat placed
the arrow to the string of his bow, and drawing it till the barb
touched the bow, asked Hanumân whether he was ready. 'Quite ready,'
said Hanumân, 'but I am now satisfied that you really are the brother
of our prince, and regent of his kingdom, which was all I desired.
Pray let me descend; and be sure that I shall be at Ceylon in time to
save your wounded brother.' He got off, knelt down, placed his
forehead on Bharat's feet in submission, resumed his load, and was at
Ceylon by the time the day broke next morning, leaving behind him the
small and insignificant fragment, on which the town and temples of
Govardhan now stand.
'While little Krishna was frisking about among the milkmaids of
Govardhan,' continued my old friend, 'stealing their milk, cream, and
butter, Brahmâ, the creator of the universe, who had heard of his
being an incarnation of Vishnu, the great preserver of the universe,
visited the place, and had some misgivings, from his size and
employment, as to his real character. To try him, he took off through
the sky a herd of cattle, on which some of his favourite playmates
were attending, old and young, boys and all. Krishna, knowing how
much the parents of the boys and owners of the cattle would be
distressed, created, in a moment, another herd and other attendants
so exactly like those that Brahmâ had taken, that the owners of the
one, and the parents of the other, remained ignorant of the change.
Even the new creations themselves remained equally ignorant; and the
cattle walked into their stalls, and the boys into their houses,
where they recognized and were recognized by their parents, as if
nothing had happened.
'Brahmâ was now satisfied that Krishna was a true incarnation of
Vishnu, and restored to him the real herd and attendants. The others
were removed out of the way by Krishna, as soon as he saw the real
ones coming back.'
'But,' said I to the good old man, who told me this with a grave
face, 'must they not have suffered in passing from the life given to
death; and why create them merely to destroy them again?'
'Was he not God the Creator himself?' said the old man; 'does he not
send one generation into the world after another to fulfil their
destiny, and then to return to the earth from which they came, just
as he spreads over the land the grass and corn? All is gathered in
its season, or withers as that passes away and dies.' The old
gentleman might have quoted Wordsworth:
We die, my friend,
Nor we alone, but that which each man loved
And prized in his peculiar nook of earth
Dies with him, or is changed; and very soon,
Even of the good is no memorial left.[9]
I was one day out shooting with my friend, the Râjâ of Maihar,[10]
under the Vindhya range, which rises five or six hundred feet, almost
perpendicularly. He was an excellent shot with an English double-
barrel, and had with him six men just as good. I asked him whether we
were likely to fall in with any hares, using the term 'khargosh', or
'ass-eared'.
'Certainly not,' said the Râjâ, 'if you begin by abusing them with
such a name; call them "lambkanâs", sir, "long-eared", and we shall
get plenty.'
He shot one, and attributed my bad luck to the opprobrious name I had
used. While he was reloading, I took occasion to ask him how this
range of hills had grown up where it was.
'No one can say,' replied the Râjâ, 'but we believe that when Râma
went to recover his wife Sîtâ from the demon king of Ceylon, Râvan,
he wanted to throw a bridge across from the continent to the island,
and sent some of his followers up to the Himâlaya mountains for
stones. He had completed his bridge before they all returned, and a
messenger was sent to tell those who had not yet come to throw down
their burdens, and rejoin him in all haste. Two long lines of these
people had got thus far on their return when the messenger met them.
They threw down their loads here, and here they have remained ever
since, one forming the Vindhya range to the north of this valley, and
the other the Kaimûr range to the south.'
The Vindhya range extends from Mirzapore, on the Ganges, nearly to
the Gulf of Cambay, some six or seven hundred miles, so that my
sporting friend's faith was as capacious as any priest could well
wish it; and those who have it are likely never to die, or suffer
much, from an over stretch of the reasoning faculties in a hot
climate.
The town stands upon the belt of rocks, about two miles from its
north-eastern extremity; and in the midst is the handsome tomb of
Ranjit Singh, who defended Bharatpur so bravely against Lord Lake's
army.[11] The tomb has on one side a tank filled with water, and, on
the other, another much deeper than the first, but without any water
at all. We were surprised at this, and asked what the cause could be.
The people told us, with the air of men who had never known what it
was to feel the uneasy sensation of doubt, that 'Krishna, one hot
day, after skying with the milkmaids, had drunk it all dry; and that
no water would ever stay in it, lest it might be quaffed by less
noble lips'. No orthodox Hindoo would ever for a moment doubt that
this was the real cause of the phenomenon. Happy people! How much do
they escape of that pain which in hot climates wears us all down in
our efforts to trace moral and physical phenomena to their real
causes and sources! Mind! mind! mind! without any of it, those
Europeans who eat and drink moderately might get on very well in this
climate. Much of it weighs them down.
Oh, sir, the good die first, and those whose hearts (_brains_)
Are dry as summer dust burn to the socket.[12]
One is apt sometimes to think that Muhammad, Manu, and Confucius
would have been great benefactors in saving so many millions of their
species from the pain of thinking too much in hot climates, if they
had only written their books in languages less difficult of
acquirement. Their works are at once 'the bane and antidote' of
despotism--the source whence it comes, and the shield which defends
the people from its consuming fire.
The tomb of Sûraj Mall, the great founder of the Jât power at
Bharatpur, stands on the north-east extremity of this belt of rocks,
about two miles from the town, and is an extremely handsome building,
conceived in the very best taste, and executed in the very best
style.[13] With its appendages of temples and smaller tombs, it
occupies the whole of one side of a magnificent tank full of clear
water; and on the other side it looks into a large and beautiful
garden. All the buildings and pavements are formed of the fine white
sandstone of Rûpbâs, scarcely inferior either in quality or
appearance to white marble. The stone is carved in relief with
flowers in good taste. In the centre of the tomb is the small marble
slab covering the grave, with the two feet of Krishna carved in the
centre, and around them the emblems of the god, the discus, the
skull, the sword, the rosary. These emblems of the god are put on
that people may have something godly to fix their thoughts upon. It
is by degrees, and with fear and trembling, that the Hindoos imitate
the Muhammadans in the magnificence of their tombs. The object is
ostensibly to keep the ground on which the bodies have been burned
from being defiled; and generally Hindoos have been content to raise
small open terraces of brick and stucco work over the spot, with some
image or emblem of the god upon it. The Jâts here, like the princes
and Gosâins in Bundêlkhand, have gone a stage beyond this, and raised
tombs equal in costliness and beauty to those over Muhammadans of the
highest rank; still they do not venture to leave it without a divine
image or emblem, lest the gods might become jealous, and revenge
themselves upon the souls of the deceased and the bodies of the
living. On one side of Sûraj Mall's tomb is that of his wife, or some
other female member of his family; and upon the slab over her grave,
that is, over the precise spot where she was burned, are the same
emblems, except the sword, for which a necklace is substituted. At
each end of this range of tombs stands a temple dedicated to Baldêo,
the brother of Krishna; and in one of them I found his image, with
large eyes, a jet black complexion, and an _African countenance_. Why
is this that Baldêo should be always represented of this countenance
and colour, and his brother Krishna, either white, or of an azure
colour, and the _Caucasian countenance_?[14] The inside of the tomb
is covered with beautiful snow-white stucco work that resembles the
finest marble; but this is disfigured by wretched paintings,
representing, on one side of the dome, Sûraj Mall in 'darbâr',
smoking his hookah, and giving orders to his ministers; in another,
he is at his devotions; on the third, at his sports, shooting hogs
and deer; and on the fourth, at war, with some French officers of
distinction figuring before him. He is distinguished by his portly
person in all, and by his favourite light-brown dress in three
places. At his devotions he is standing all in white before the
tutelary god of his house, Hardêo.[15] In various parts, Krishna is
represented at his sports with the milkmaids. The colours are gaudy,
and apparently as fresh as when first put on eighty years ago; but
the paintings are all in the worst possible taste and style.[16]
Inside the dome of Ranjît Singh's tomb the siege of Bharatpur is
represented in the same rude taste and style. Lord Lake is
dismounted, and standing before his white horse giving orders to his
soldiers. On the opposite side of the dome, Ranjît Singh, in a plain
white dress, is standing erect before his idol at his devotions, with
his ministers behind him. On the other two sides he is at his
favourite field sports. What strikes one most in all this is the
entire absence of priestcraft. He wanted all his revenue for his
soldiers; and his tutelary god seems, in consequence, to have been
well pleased to dispense with the mediatory services of priests.[17]
There are few temples anywhere to be seen in the territories of these
Jât chiefs; and, as few of their subjects have yet ventured to follow
them in this innovation upon the old Hindoo usages of building
tombs,[18] the countries under their dominion are less richly
ornamented than those of their neighbours. Those who build tombs or
temples generally surround them with groves of mango and other fine
fruit-trees, with good wells to supply water for them, and, if they
have the means, they add tanks, so that every religions edifice, or
work of ornament, leads to one or more of utility. So it was in
Europe; often the Northern hordes swept away all that had grown up
under the institution of the Romans and the Saracens; for almost all
the great works of ornament and utility, by which these countries
became first adorned and enriched, had their origin in church
establishments. That portion of India, where the greater part of the
revenue goes to the priesthood, will generally be much more studded
with works of ornament and utility than that in which the greater
part goes to the soldiery. I once asked a Hindoo gentleman, who had
travelled all over India, what part of it he thought most happy and
beautiful. He mentioned some part of Southern India, about Tanjore, I
think, where you could hardly go a mile without meeting some happy
procession, or coming to a temple full of priests, or find an acre of
land uncultivated.
The countries under the Marâthâ Government improved much in
appearance, and in happiness, I believe, after the mayors of the
palace, who were Brahmans, assumed the Government, and put aside the
Sâtârâ Rajas, the descendants of the great Sivâjî.[19] Wherever they
could, they conferred the Government of their distant territories
upon Brahmans, who filled all the high offices under them with men of
the same caste, who spent the greater part of their incomes in tombs,
temples, groves, and tanks, that embellished and enriched the face of
the country, and thereby diffused a taste for such works generally
among the people they governed. The appearance of those parts of the
Marâthâ dominion so governed is infinitely superior to that of the
countries governed by the leaders of the military class, such as
Sindhia, Holkâr, and the Bhonslâ, whose capitals are still mere
standing camps--a collection of hovels, and whose countries are
almost entirely devoid of all those works of ornament and utility
that enrich and adorn those of their neighbours.[20] They destroyed
all they found in those countries when they conquered them; and they
have had neither the wisdom nor the taste to raise others to supply
their places. The Sikh Government is of exactly the same character;
and the countries they governed have, I believe, the same wretched
appearance--they are swarms of human locusts, who prey upon all that
is calculated to enrich and embellish the face of the land they
infest, and all that can tend to improve men in their social
relations, and to link their affection to their soil and their
government.[21] A Hindoo prince is always running to the extreme; he
can never take and keep a middle course. He is either ambitious, and
therefore appropriates all his revenues to the maintenance of
soldiers, to pour out in inroads upon his neighbours; or he is
superstitions, and devotes all his revenue to his priesthood, who
embellish his country at the same time that they weaken it, and
invite invasion, as their prince becomes less and less able to repel
it.
The more popular belief regarding this range of sandstone hills at
Govardhan is that Lachhman, the brother of Râma, having been wounded
by Râvan, the demon king of Ceylon, his surgeon declared that his
wound could be cured only by a decoction of the leaves of a certain
tree, to be found in a certain hill in the Himâlaya mountains.
Hanumân volunteered to go for it, but on reaching the place he found
that he had entirely forgotten the description of the tree required;
and, to prevent mistake, he took up the whole mountain upon his back,
and walked off with it to the plains. As he passed Govardhan, where
Bharat and Charat, the third and fourth brothers of Râma, then
reigned, he was seen by them.[22] It was night; and, thinking him a
strange sort of fish, Bharat let fly one of his arrows at him. It hit
him in the leg, and the sudden jerk caused this small fragment of his
huge burden to fall off. He called out in his agony, 'Râm, Râm', from
which they learned that he belonged to the army of their brother, and
let him pass on; but he remained lame for life from the wound. This
accounts very satisfactorily, according to popular belief, for the
halting gait of all the monkeys of that species;[23] those who are
descended lineally from the general inherit it, of course; and those
who are not, adopt it out of respect for his memory, as all the
soldiers of Alexander contrived to make one shoulder higher than the
other, because one of his happened to be so. When he passed,
thousands and tens of thousands of lamps were burning upon his
mountain, as the people remained entirely unconscious of the change,
and at their usual occupations. Hanumân reached Ceylon with his
mountain, the tree was found upon it, and Lachhman's wound cured.[24]
Govardhan is now within the boundary of our territory, and a native
collector resides here from Agra.[25]
Notes:
1. January, 1836.
2. See note on Govardhan, _ante_, chapter 53, note 1.
3. _Ante_, chapter 9, note 8.
4. _Ante_, beginning of chapter 53.
5. This Hindoo version of the Massacre of the Innocents necessarily
recalls to mind the story in St. Matthew's Gospel. Numerous incidents
of the Gospel narrative, including the birth among the cattle, the
stable, the manger, and the imperial census, are repeated in the
Indian legends of Krishna. The exact channel of communication is not
known, but the intercourse between Alexandria and India is, in
general terms, the explanation of the coincidences (Weber, _Die
Griechen in Indien_, 1890, and _Abh. über Krishna's Geburtfest_,
1868).
6. This story may be an adaptation of the similar Buddhist tale.
7. Ûj is the Og, King of Bashan, of the Hebrew version of the legend.
The extravagant stories quoted in the text are not in the Korân, but
are the inventions of the commentators. Sale gives references in his
notes to chap. 5 of the Korân.
8. The kingdom included the modern Oudh (Awadh). The capital was the
ancient city, also named Ajodhya, adjoining Fyzabad, which is still a
very sacred place of pilgrimage.
9. It is, I think, absolutely impossible for the most sympathetic
European to understand, or enter into, the mental position of the
learned and devout Hindoo who implicitly believes the wild myth
related in the text, and sees no incongruity in the congeries of
inconsistent ideas which are involved in the story. We may dimly
apprehend that Brahmâ is conceived as a [Greek text], or Architect of
the Universe, working in subordination to an impersonal higher power,
and not as the infinite, omniscient, omnipotent Creator whom the
Hebrews reverenced, but we shall still be a long way from attaining
the Hindoo point of view. The relations of Krishna, Vishnu, Brahma,
Râma, Siva, and all the other deities, with one another and with
mankind, seem to be conceived by the Hindoo in a manner so confused
and contradictory that every attempt at elucidation or explanation
must necessarily fail. A Hindoo is born, not made, and the
'inwardness' of Hinduism is not to be penetrated, even by the most
learned of 'barbarian' pundits.
10. _Ante_, chapter 20, note 6.
11. Râjâ of Bharatpur, not to be confounded with the Lion of the
Panjâb.
12. Wordsworth, _Excursion_, Book I.
13. The original edition gives a coloured plate of this tomb, which
is not noticed by Fergusson. That author's remarks on the palace at
Dîg would apply to this tomb also; the style is good, but not quite
the best. Sûraj Mall was killed in a skirmish in 1763.
14. Baldêo, or in Sanskrit Bâladeva, Bâlabhadra, or Bâlarâma, was the
elder brother of Krishna. His myth in some respects resembles that of
Herakles, as that of Krishna is related to the myths of Apollo. The
editor is not able to solve the queries propounded by the author.
15. i.e. Hari deva, a form of Vishnu. The temple of Hari deva at
Govardhan was built about A.D. 1560. (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, 1st ed.,
vol. viii, p. 94.)
16. Modern India shows little appreciation of good art, and the
paintings ordinarily executed for decorative purposes are as crude as
those described by the author. A school of clever artists in Bengal
is doing something to raise the public taste. The high merit of the
ancient Indian paintings at Ajantâ and elsewhere is now fully
recognized. A great revival of pictorial art took place about A.D.
1570 in the reign of Akbar. From that date the Indo-Persian and
Indian schools of painting maintained a high standard of excellence,
especially in portraiture, for a century approximately. During the
eighteenth century marked deterioration may be observed. See _A
History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon_, Oxford, 1911.
17. The Jâts detest Brahmans. The members of a Jât deputation
complained one day to the editor when in the Muzaffarnagar district
that they suffered many evils by reason of the Brahmans.
18. The author's meaning seems to be that building tombs is not an
old Hindoo usage.
19. Sivâjî, the indomitable opponent of Aurangzêb in the Deccan,
belonged to the agricultural Kunbî caste. He was born in May A.D.
1627, and died in April 1680. The Brahman ministers of the Râjâs of
Sâtârâ were known by the title of Peshwâ. Bâjî Râo I, who died in
1740, the second Peshwâ, was the first who superseded in actual power
his nominal master. The last of the Peshwâs was Bâjî Râo II, who
abdicated in 1818, after the termination of the great Marâthâ war,
and retired to Bithûr near Cawnpore. His adopted son was the
notorious Nânâ Sâhib. The Marquis of Hastings, in 1818, drew the Râjâ
of Sâtârâ from captivity, and re-established his dignity and power.
In 1839 the Râjâ's treachery compelled the Government of India to
depose him. His territory is now a district of the Bombay Presidency.
See Mânkar, _The Life and Exploits of Shivâji_, 2nd ed., Bombay,
Nirnayasâgar Press, 1886.
20. The Râjâ of Berâr, also known as the Râjâ of Nâgpur, was called
the Bhonslâ. The misrule of Gwâlior has been described _ante_, in
chapters 36 and 49. The condition of Gwâlior and Indore, the capitals
of Sindhia and Holkâr respectively, is now very different. The
Bhonslâ has vanished.
21. Since the annexation of the Panjâb in 1849, the Sikhs have justly
earned so much praise as loyal and gallant soldiers, the flower of
the Indian army, that their earlier less honourable reputation has
been effaced, Captain Francklin, writing in 1803, and apparently
expressing the opinion of George Thomas, declares that 'the Seiks are
false, sanguinary, and faithless; they are addicted to plunder and
the acquirement of wealth by any means, however nefarious'.
(_Military Memoirs of Mr. George Thomas, London reprint_, p. 112.)
The Sikh states of the Panjâb are now sufficiently well governed.
22. I know of no authority for the name Charat (Churut), which seems
to be a blunder for Satrughna. The sons of Dasaratha were Râma, by
the chief queen; Bharat, by a second; and Lachhman (Lakshmana), and
Satrughna by a third consort.
23. The species referred to is the long-tailed monkey called
'Hanumân', and 'langûr' in Hindi, the _Presbytis entellus_ of Jerdon
(=_P. anchises_, Elliot; = _Semnopithecus_, Cuvier).
24. The author seems to have forgotten that he has already told this
story, _ante_, this chapter following [8] in the text.
25. It is in the Mathurâ district. The town of Mathurâ (Muttra)
became the head-quarters of a separate District in 1832. The official
at Govardhan in 1836 must, therefore, have been subordinate to
Mathurâ, not to Agra.
CHAPTER 57
Veracity.
The people of Britain are described by Diodorus Siculus (Book V,
chap. 2) as in a very simple and rude state, subsisting almost
entirely on the produce of the land, but as being 'a people of much
integrity and sincerity, far from the craft and knavery of men among
us, contented with plain and homely fare, and strangers to the
luxuries and excesses of the rich'. In India we find strict veracity
most prevalent among the wildest and half-savage tribes of the hills
and jungles in Central India, or the chain of the Himâlaya mountains;
and among those where we find it prevail most, we find cattle-
stealing most common; the men of one tribe not deeming it to be any
disgrace to _lift_, or steal, the cattle of another. I have known the
man among the Gonds of the woods of Central India, whom nothing could
induce to tell a lie, join a party of robbers to lift a herd of
cattle from the neighbouring plains for nothing more than as much
spirits as he could enjoy at one bout. I asked a native gentleman of
the plains, in the valley of the Nerbudda, one day, what made the
people of the woods to the north and south more disposed to speak the
truth than those more civilized of the valley itself. 'They have not
yet learned the value of a lie,' said he, with the greatest
simplicity and sincerity, for he was a very honest and plain-spoken
man.
Veracity is found to prevail most where there is least to tempt to
falsehood, and most to be feared from it. In a very rude state of
society, like that of which I have been speaking, the only shape in
which property is accumulated is in cattle; things are bartered for
each other without the use of a circulating medium, and one member of
a community has no means of concealing from the other the articles of
property he has. If they were to steal from each other, they would
not be able to conceal what they stole--to steal, therefore, would be
no advantage. In such societies every little community is left to
govern itself; to secure the rights, and enforce the duties, of all
its several members in their relations with each other; they are too
poor to pay taxes to keep up expensive establishments, and their
Governments seldom maintain among them any for the administration of
justice, or the protection of life, property, or character. All the
members of all such little communities will often unite in robbing
the members of another community of their flocks and herds, the only
kind of property they have, or in applauding those who most
distinguish themselves in such enterprises; but the well-being of the
community demands that each member should respect the property of the
others, and be punished by the odium of all if he does not.[1]
It is equally necessary to the well-being of the community that every
member should be able to rely upon the veracity of the other upon the
very few points where their rights, duties, and interests clash. In
the very rudest state of society, among the woods and hills of India,
the people have some deity whose power they dread, and whose name
they invoke when much is supposed to depend upon the truth of what
one man is about to declare. The 'pîpal' tree (_Ficus religiosa_) is
everywhere sacred to the gods, who are supposed to sit among its
leaves and listen to the music of their rustling. The deponent takes
one of these leaves in his hand, and invokes the god who sits above
him to crush him, or those dear to him, as he crushes the leaf in his
hand, if he speak anything but the truth; he then plucks and crushes
the leaf, and states what he has to say.[2]
The large cotton-tree is, among the wild tribes of India, the
favourite seat of gods still more terrible,[3] because their
superintendence is confined exclusively to the neighbourhood; and
having their attention less occupied, they can venture to make a more
minute scrutiny into the conduct of the people immediately around
them. The 'pîpal' is occupied by one or other of the Hindoo triad,
the god of creation, preservation, or destruction, who have the
affairs of the universe to look after;[4] but the cotton and other
trees are occupied by some minor deities, who are vested with a local
superintendence over the affairs of a district, or perhaps, of a
single village.[5] These are always in the view of the people, and
every man knows that he is every moment liable to be taken to their
court, and to be made to invoke their vengeance upon himself, or
those dear to him, if he has told a falsehood in what he has stated,
or tells one in what he is about to state. Men so situated adhere
habitually, and I may say religiously, to the truth; and I have had
before me hundreds of cases in which a man's property, liberty, or
life has depended upon his telling a lie, and he has refused to tell
it to save either; as my friend told me, 'they had not learned the
value of a lie', or rather, they had not learned with how much
impunity a lie could be told in the tribunals of civilized society.
In their own tribunals, under the pîpal-tree or cotton-tree,
imagination commonly did what the deities, who were supposed to
preside, had the credit of doing; if the deponent told a lie, he
believed that the deity who sat on the sylvan throne above him, and
searched the heart of man, must know it; and from that moment he knew
no rest--he was always in dread of his vengeance; if any accident
happened to him, or to those dear to him, it was attributed to this
offended deity; and if no accident happened, some evil was brought
about by his own disordered imagination.[6]
In the tribunals we introduce among them, such people soon find that
the judges who preside can seldom search deeply into the hearts of
men, or clearly distinguish truth from falsehood in the declarations
of deponents; and when they can distinguish it, it is seldom that
they can secure their conviction for perjury. They generally learn
very soon that these judges, instead of being, like the judges of
their own woods and wilds, the only beings who can search the hearts
of men, and punish them for falsehood, are frequently the persons, of
all others, most blind to the real state of the deponent's mind, and
the degree of truth and falsehood in his narrative; that, however
well-intentioned, they are often labouring in the 'darkness visible'
created by the native officers around them. They not only learn this,
but they learn what is still worse, that they may tell what lies they
please in these tribunals; and that not one of them shall become
known to the circle in which they move, and whose good opinion they
value. If, by his lies told in such tribunals, a man has robbed
another, or caused him to be robbed, of his property, his character,
his liberty, or his life, he can easily persuade the circle in which
he resides that it has arisen, not from any false statements of his,
but from the blindness of the judge, or the wickedness of the native
officers of his court, because all circles consider the blindness of
the one, and the wickedness of the other, to be everywhere very
great.
Arrian, in speaking of the class of supervisors in India, says: 'They
may not be guilty of falsehood; and indeed none of the Indians were
ever accused of that crime.'[7] I believe that as little falsehood is
spoken by the people of India, in their village communities, as in
any part of the world with an equal area and population. It is in our
courts of justice where falsehoods prevail most, and the longer they
have been anywhere established, the greater the degree of falsehood
that prevails in them. Those entrusted with the administration of a
newly-acquired territory are surprised to find the disposition among
both principals and witnesses in cases to tell the plain and simple
truth. As magistrates, they find it very often difficult to make
thieves and robbers tell lies, according to the English fashion, to
avoid running a risk of criminating themselves. In England, this
habit of making criminals tell lies arose from the severity of the
penal code, which made the punishment so monstrously disproportionate
to the crime, that the accused, however clear and notorious his
crimes, became an object of general sympathy.[8] In India,
punishments have nowhere been, under our rule, disproportionate to
the crimes; on the contrary, they have generally been more mild than
the people would wish them to be, or think they ought to be, in order
to deter from similar crimes; and, in newly-acquired territories,
they have generally been more mild than in our old possessions. The
accused are, therefore, nowhere considered as objects of public
sympathy; and in newly-acquired territories they are willing to tell
the truth, and are allowed to do so, in order to save the people whom
they have injured, and their neighbours generally, the great loss and
annoyance unavoidably attending upon a summons to our courts. In the
native courts, to which ours succeed, the truth was seen through
immediately, the judges who presided could commonly distinguish truth
from falsehood in the evidence before them, almost as well as the
sylvan gods who sat in the pîpal- or cotton-trees; though they were
seldom supposed by the people to be quite so just in their decisions.
When we take possession of such countries, they, for a time at least,
give us credit for the same sagacity, with a little more integrity.
The prisoner knows that his neighbours expect him to tell the truth
to save them trouble, and will detest him if he does not; he supposes
that we shall have the sense to find out the truth whether he tells
it or not, and then humanity to visit his crime with the punishment
it merits, and no more.
The magistrate asks the prisoner what made him steal; and the
prisoner enters at once into an explanation of the circumstances
which reduced him to the necessity of doing so, and offers to bring
witnesses to prove them; but never dreams of offering to bring
witnesses to prove that he did not steal, if he really had done so;
because the general feeling would be in favour of his doing the one,
and against his doing the other. Tavernier gives an amusing sketch of
Amîr Jumla presiding in a court of justice, during a visit he paid
him in the kingdom of Golconda, in the year 1648. (See Book I, Part
II, chap. 11.)[9]
I asked a native law officer, who called on me one day, what he
thought would be the effect of an Act to dispense with oaths on the
Korân and Ganges water, and substitute a solemn declaration made in
the name of God, and under the same penal liabilities, as if the
Korân or Ganges water had been in the deponent's hand. 'I have
practised In the courts thirty years, sir,' said he, 'and during that
time I have found only three kinds of witnesses--two of whom would,
by such an Act, be left precisely where they were, while the third
would be released by it from a very salutary check.' 'And, pray, what
are the three classes into which you divide the witnesses in our
courts?'
'First, sir, are those who will always tell the truth, whether they
are required to state what they know in the form of an oath or not.'
'Do you think this a large class?'
'Yes, I think it is; and I have found among them many whom nothing on
earth could make to swerve from the truth; do what you please, you
could never frighten or bribe them into a deliberate falsehood. The
second are those who will not hesitate to tell a lie when they have a
motive for it, and are not restrained by an oath. In taking an oath
they are afraid of two things, the anger of God and the odium of men.
Only three days ago, 'continued my friend,' I required a power of
attorney from a lady of rank, to enable me to act for her in a case
pending before the court in this town. It was given to me by her
brother, and two witnesses came to declare that she had given it.
"Now," said I, "this lady is known to live under the curtain; and you
will be asked by the judge whether you saw her give this paper; what
will you say?" They both replied: "If the judge asks us the question
without an oath, we will say yes--it will save much trouble, and we
know that she did give this paper, though we did not really see her
give it; but if he puts the Korân into our hands we must say no, for
we should otherwise be pointed at by all the town as perjured
wretches--our enemies would soon tell everybody that we had taken a
false oath." Now,' my friend went on, 'the form of an oath is a great
check upon this sort of persons. The third class consists of men who
will tell lies whenever they have sufficient motive, whether they
have the Korân or Ganges water in their hands or not. Nothing will
ever prevent their doing so; and the declaration which you propose
would be just as well as any other for them.'
'Which class do you consider the most numerous of the three?'
'I consider the second the most numerous, and wish the oath to be
retained for them.'
'That is of all the men you see examined in our courts, you think the
most come under the class of those who will, under the influence of
strong motives, tell lies if they have not the Korân or Ganges water
in their hands?'
'Yes.'
'But do not a great many of those, whom you consider to be included
among the second class, come from the village communities--the
peasantry of the country?'
'Yes.'
'And do you not think that the greatest part of those men who tell
lies in the court, under the influence of strong motives, unless they
bear the Korân or Ganges water in their hands, would refuse to tell
lies, if questioned before the people of their villages among the
circle in which they live?'
'Of course I do; three-fourths of those who do not scruple to lie in
our courts, would be ashamed to be before their neighbours, or the
elders of their village.'
'You think that the people of the village communities are more
ashamed to tell lies before their neighbours than the people of
towns?'
'Much more[10] here is no comparison.'
'And the people of towns and cities bear in India but a small
proportion to the people of the village communities?'
'I should think a very small proportion indeed.'
'Then you think that in the mass of the population of India out of
our courts, and in their own circles, the first class, or those who
speak truth, whether they have the Korân or Ganges water in their
hands or not, would be found more numerous than the other two?'
'Certainly I do; if they were always to be questioned before their
neighbours or elders, or so that they could feel that their
neighbours and elders would know what they say.'
This man is a very worthy and learned Muhammadan, who has read all
the works on medicine to be found in Persian and Arabia; gives up his
time from sunrise in the morning till nine, to the indigent sick of
the town, whom he supplies gratuitously with his advice and
medicines, that cost him thirty rupees a month, out of about one
hundred and twenty that he can make by his labours all the rest of
the day.
There can be no doubt that, even in England, the fear of the odium of
society, which is sure to follow the man who has perjured himself,
acts more powerfully in making men tell the truth, when they have the
Bible in their hands before a competent and public tribunal, and with
a strong worldly motive to tell a lie, than the fear of punishment by
the Deity in the next world for having 'taken his name in vain' in
this. Christians, as well as other people, are too apt to think that
there is yet abundance of time to appease the Deity by repentance and
reformation; but they know that they cannot escape the odium of
society, with a free press and high tone of moral and religions
feeling, like those of England, if they deliberately perjure
themselves in open court, whose proceedings are watched with so much
jealousy. They learn to dread the name of 'perjured villain' or
'perjured wretch', which would embitter the rest of their lives, and
perhaps the lives of their children.[11]
In a society much advanced in arts and the refinements of life,
temptations to falsehood become very great, and require strong checks
from law, religion, or moral feeling. Religion is seldom of itself
found sufficient; for, though men cannot hope to conceal their
transgressions from the Deity, they can, as I have stated, always
hope in time to appease Him. Penal laws are not alone sufficient, for
men can always hope to conceal their trespasses from those who are
appointed to administer them, or at least to prevent their getting
that measure of judicial proof required for their conviction; the
dread of the indignation of their circle of society is everywhere the
more efficient of the three checks; and this check will generally be
found most to prevail where the community is left most to self-
government--hence the proverb, 'There is honour among thieves'. A
gang of robbers, who are outlaws, are, of course, left to govern
themselves; and, unless these could rely on each other's veracity and
honour in their relations with each other, they could do nothing. If
Governments were to leave no degree of self-government to the
communities of which the society is composed, this moral check would
really cease--the law would undertake to secure every right, and
enforce every duty; and men would cease to depend upon each other's
good opinion and good feelings.[12]
There is perhaps no part of the world where the communities of which
the society is composed have been left so much to self-government as
in India. There has seldom been any idea of a reciprocity of duties
and rights between the governing and the governed; the sovereign who
has possession feels that he has a right to levy certain taxes from
the land for the maintenance of the public establishments, which he
requires to keep down rebellion against his rule, and to defend his
dominions against all who may wish to intrude and seize upon them;
and to assist him in acquiring the dominions of other princes when
favourable opportunities offer; but he has no idea of a reciprocal
duty towards those from whom he draws his revenues. The peasantry
from whom the prince draws his revenues feel that they are bound to
pay that revenue; that, if they do not pay it, he will, with his
strong arm, turn them out and give to others their possessions--but
they have no idea of any right on their part to any return from him.
The village communities were everywhere left almost entirely to self-
government; and the virtues of truth and honesty, in all their
relations with each other, were indispensably necessary to enable
them to govern themselves.[13] A common interest often united a good
many village communities in a bond of union, and established a kind
of brotherhood over extensive tracts of richly cultivated land. Self-
interest required that they should unite to defend themselves against
attacks with which they were threatened at every returning harvest in
a country where every prince was a robber upon a scale more or less
large according to his means, and took the field to rob while the
lands were covered with the ripe crops upon which his troops might
subsist; and where every man who practised robbery with open violence
followed what he called an '_imperial_ trade' (pâdshâhî kâm)--the
only trade worthy the character of a gentleman. The same interest
required that they should unite in deceiving their own prince, and
all his officers, great and small, as to the real resources of their
estates; because they all knew that the prince would admit of no
other limits to his exactions than their abilities to pay at the
harvest. Though, in their relations with each other, all these
village communities spoke as much truth as those of any other
communities in the world; still, in their relation with the
Government, they told as many lies;--for falsehood, in the one set of
relations, would have incurred the odium of the whole of their
circles of society--truth, in the other, would often have involved
the same penalty. If a man had told a lie to _cheat_ his neighbour,
he would have become an object of hatred and contempt--if he told a
lie to _save_ his neighbour's fields from an increase of rent or tax,
he would have become an object of esteem and respect.[14] If the
Government officers were asked whether there was any truth to be
found among such communities, they would say, _No, that the truth was
not in them_; because they would not cut each other's throats by
telling them the real value of each other's fields.
If the peasantry were asked, they would say there was plenty of truth
to be found everywhere except among a few scoundrels, who, to curry
favour with the Government officers, betrayed their trust, and told
the value of their neighbours' fields. In their ideas, he might as
well have gone off, and brought down the common enemy upon them in
the shape of some princely robber of the neighbourhood.
Locke says: 'Outlaws themselves keep faith and rules of justice one
with another--they practise them as rules of convenience within their
own communities; but it is impossible to conceive that they embrace
justice as a practical principle who act fairly with their fellow
highwaymen, and at the same time plunder or kill the next honest man
they meet.' (Vol. i, p. 37.) In India, the difference between the
army of a prince and the gang of a robber was, in the general
estimation of the people, only in _degree_--they were both driving an
_imperial trade_, a 'pâdshâhî kâm'. Both took the auspices, and set
out on their expedition after the Dasahrâ, when the autumn crops were
ripening; and both thought the Deity propitiated as soon as they
found the omens favourable;[15] one attacked palaces and capitals,
the other villages and merchants' storerooms. The members of the army
of the prince thought as little of the justice or injustice of his
cause as those of the gang of the robber; the people of his capital
hailed the return of the victorious prince who had contributed so
much to their wealth, to his booty, and to their self-love by his
victory. The village community received back the robber and his gang
with the same feelings: by their skill and daring they had come back
loaded with wealth, which they were always disposed to spend
liberally with their neighbours. There was no more of truth in the
prince and his army in their relations with the princes and people of
neighbouring principalities, than in the robber and his gang in their
relations with the people robbed. The prince flatters the self-love
of his army and his people; the robber flatters that of his gang and
his village--the question is only in degree; the persons whose self-
love is flattered are blind to the injustice and cruelty of the
attack--the prince is the idol of a people, the robber the idol of a
gang. Was ever robber more atrocious in his attacks upon a merchant
or a village than Louis XIV of France in his attacks upon the
Palatine and Palatinate of the Rhine? How many thousand similar
instances might be quoted of princes idolized by their people for
deeds equally atrocious in their relations with other people? What
nation or sovereign ever found fault with their ambassadors for
telling lies to the kings, courts, and people of other countries?[16]
Rome, during the whole period of her history, was a mere den of
execrable thieves, whose feelings were systematically brutalized by
the most revolting spectacles, that they might have none of those
sympathies with suffering humanity, none of those 'compunctious
visitings of conscience', which might be found prejudicial to the
interests of the gang, and beneficial to the rest of mankind. Take,
for example, the conduct of this atrocious gang under Aemilius
Paulus, against Epirus and Greece generally after the defeat of
Perseus, all under the deliberate decrees of the senate: take that of
this gang under his son Scipio the younger, against Carthage and
Numantia; under Cato, at Cyprus--all in the same manner under the
_deliberate decrees of the senate_. Take indeed the whole of her
history as a republic, and we find it that of the most atrocious band
of robbers that was ever associated against the rest of their
species. In her relations with the rest of mankind Rome was
collectively devoid of truth; and her citizens, who were sent to
govern conquered countries, were no less devoid of truth
individually--they cared nothing whatever for the feelings or the
opinions of the people governed; in their dealings with them, truth
and honour were entirely disregarded. The only people whose
favourable opinion they had any desire to cultivate were the members
of the great gang; and the most effectual mode of conciliating them
was to plunder the people of conquered countries, and distribute the
fruits among them in presents of one kind or another. Can any man
read without shuddering that it was the practice among this atrocious
gang to have all the multitude of unhappy prisoners of both sexes,
and of all ranks and ages,--who annually graced the triumphs of their
generals, taken off and murdered just at the moment when these
generals reached the Capitol, amid the shouts of the multitude, that
their joys might be augmented by the sight or consciousness of the
sufferings of others? (See Hooke's _Roman History_, vol. iii, p. 488;
vol. iv, p. 541.) 'It was the custom that, when the triumphant
conqueror tumed his chariot towards the Capitol, he commanded the
captives to be led to prison, and there put to death, that so the
glory of the victor and the miseries of the vanquished might be in
the same moment at the utmost.' How many millions of the most
innocent and amiable of their species must have been offered up as
human sacrifices to the triumphs of the leaders of this great gang!
The women were almost as brutalized as the men; lovers met to talk
'soft nonsense', at exhibitions of gladiators. Valeria, the daughter
and sister of two of the first men in Rome, was beautiful, gay, and
lively, and of unblemished reputation. Having been divorced from her
husband, she and the monster Sylla made love to each other at one of
these exhibitions of gladiators, and were soon after married. Gibbon,
in speaking of the lies which Severus told his two competitors in the
contest for empire, says, 'Falsehood and insincerity, unsuitable as
they seem to the dignity of public transactions, offend us with a
less degrading idea of meanness than when they are found in the
intercourse of private life. In the latter, they discover a want of
courage; in the other, only a defect of power; and, as it is
impossible for the most able statesmen to subdue millions of
followers and enemies by their own personal strength, the world,
under the name of _policy_, seems to have granted them a very liberal
indulgence of craft and dissimulation.'[17]
But the weak in society are often obliged to defend themselves
against the strong by the same weapons; and the world grants them the
same liberal indulgence. Men advocate the use of the ballot in
elections that the weak may defend themselves and the free
institutions of the country, by dissimulation, against the strong who
would oppress them.[18] The circumstances under which falsehood and
insincerity are tolerated by the community in the best societies of
modern days are very numerous; and the worst society of modern days
in the civilized world, when slavery does not prevail, is
immeasurably superior to the best in ancient days, or in the Middle
Ages. Do we not every day hear men and women, in what are called the
best societies, declaring to one individual or one set of
acquaintances that the pity, the sympathy, the love, or the
admiration they have been expressing for others is, in reality, all
feigned to soothe or please? As long as the motive is not base, men
do not spurn the falsehood as such. How much of untruth is tolerated
in the best circles of the most civilized nations, in the relations
between electors to corporate and legislative bodies and the
candidates for election? between nominators to offices under
Government and the candidates for nomination? between lawyers and
clients, vendors and purchasers? (particularly of horses), between
the recruiting sergeant and the young recruit, whom he has found a
little angry with his widowed mother, whom he makes him kill by false
pictures of what a soldier may hope for in the 'bellaque matribus
detestata' to which he invites him?[19]
There is, I believe, no class of men in India from whom it is more
difficult to get the true statement of a case pending before a court
than the sepoys of our native regiments; and yet there are, I
believe, no people in the world from whom it is more easy to get it
in their own village communities, where they state it before their
relations, elders, and neighbours, whose esteem is necessary to their
happiness, and can be obtained only by adherence to truth. Every case
that comes before a regimental court involves, or is supposed to
involve, the interest or feelings of some one or other of their
companions; and the question which the deponent asks himself is-not
what religion, public justice, the interests of discipline and order,
or the wishes of his officers require, or what would appear manly and
honourable before the elders of his own little village, but what will
secure the esteem, and what will excite the hatred, of his comrades.
This will often be downright, deliberate falsehood, sworn upon the
Korân or the Ganges water before his officers.
Many a brave sepoy have I seen faint away from the agitated state of
his feelings, under the dread of the Deity if he told lies with the
Ganges water in his hands, and of his companions if he told the
truth, and caused them to be punished. Every question becomes a party
question, and the 'point of honour' requires that every witness shall
tell as many lies about it as possible.[20] When I go into a village,
and talk with the people in any part of India, I know that I shall
get the truth out of them on all subjects as long as I can satisfy
them that I am not come on the part of the Government to inquire into
the value of their fields with a view to new impositions, and this I
can always do; but, when I go among the sepoys to ask about anything,
I feel pretty sure that I have little chance of getting at the truth;
they will take the alarm and try to deceive me, lest what I learn
should be brought up at some future day against them or their
comrades. The Duke of Wellington says, speaking of the English
soldiers: 'It is most difficult to convict a prisoner before a
regimental court-martial, for, I am sorry to say, that soldiers have
little regard to the oath administered to them; and the officers who
are sworn well and truly to try and determine _according to the
evidence_, the matter before them, have too much regard to the strict
_letter_ of that administered to them.' Again: 'The witnesses being
in almost every instance common soldiers, whose conduct this tribunal
was instituted to control, the consequence is that perjury is almost
as common an offence as drunkenness and plunder, &c.'[21]
In the ordinary civil tribunals of Europe and America a man commonly
feels that, though he is removed far from the immediate presence of
those whose esteem is necessary for him, their eyes are still upon
him, because the statements he may give will find their way to them
through the medium of the press. This he does not feel in the civil
courts of India, nor in the military courts of Europe, or of any
other part of the world, and the man who judges of the veracity of a
whole people from the specimens he may witness in such courts, cannot
judge soundly.
Shaikh Sâdî, in his _Gulistân_, has the following tale: 'I have heard
that a prince commanded the execution of a captive who was brought
before him; when the captive, having no hope of life, told the prince
that he disgraced his throne. The prince, not understanding him,
tumed to one of his ministers and asked him what he had said. "He
says," replied the minister, quoting a passage from the Korân, "God
loves those who subdue their passions, forgive injuries, and do good
to his creatures." The prince pitied the poor captive, and
countermanded the orders for the execution. Another minister, who
owed a spite to the one who first spoke, said, "Nothing but truth
should be spoken by such persons as we in the presence of the prince;
the captive spoke abusively and insolently, and you have not
interpreted his words truly". The prince frowned and said, "His false
interpretation pleases me more than thy true one, because his was
given for a good, and thine for a malignant, purpose; and wise men
have said that 'a peace-making lie is better than a factious or anger
exciting truth'."'[22]
He who would too fastidiously condemn this doctrine should think of
the massacre of Thessalonica, and how much better it would have been
for the great Theodosius to have had by his side the peace-making
Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan, than the anger-exciting Rufinus, when
he heard of the offence which that city had committed.[23]
In despotic governments, where lives, characters, and liberties are
every moment at the mercy, not only of the prince but of all his
public officers from the highest to the lowest, the occasions in
which men feel authorized and actually called upon by the common
feelings of humanity to tell 'peacemaking lies' occur every day--nay,
every hour, every petty officer of government, 'armed with his little
brief authority', is a little tyrant surrounded by men whose all
depends upon his will, and who dare not tell him the truth--the
'point of honour' in this little circle demands that every one should
be prepared to tell him 'peace-making lies'; and the man who does not
do so when the occasion seems to call for it, incurs the odium of the
whole circle, as one maliciously disposed to speak 'anger-exciting or
factions truths'. Poor Cromwell and Anne Boleyn were obliged to talk
of _love_ and _duty_ toward their brutal murderer, Henry VIII, and
tell 'peace-making lies' on the scaffold to save their poor children
from his resentment. European gentlemen in India often, by their
violence surround themselves with circles of the same kind, in which
the 'point of honour' demands that every member shall be prepared to
tell 'peace-making lies', to save the others from the effects of
their master's ungovernable passions--falsehood is their only
safeguard; and, consequently, falsehood ceases to be odious.
Countenanced in the circles of the violent, falsehood soon becomes
countenanced in those of the mild and forbearing; their domestics
pretend a dread of their anger which they really do not feel; and
they gain credit for having the same good excuse among those who have
no opportunity of becoming acquainted with the real character of the
gentlemen in their domestic relations--all are thought to be more or
less _tigerish_ in these relations, particularly _before breakfast_,
because some are _known_ to be so.[24]
I have known the native officers of a judge who was really a very
mild and worthy man, but who lived a very secluded life, plead as
their excuse for all manner of bribery and corruption, that their
persons and character were never safe from his violence; and urge
that men whose tenure of office was very insecure, and who were every
hour in the day exposed to so much indignity, could not possibly be
blamed for making the most of their position. The society around
believed all this, and blamed, not the native officers, but the
judge, or the Government, who placed them in such a situation. Other
judges and magistrates have been known to do what this person was
merely reported to do, otherwise society would neither have given
credit to his officers nor have held them excused for their
malpractices.[25] Those European gentlemen who allow their passions
to get the better of their reason among their domestics do much to
lower the character of their countrymen in the estimation of the
people; but the high officials who forget what they owe to themselves
and the native officers of their courts, when presiding on the bench
of justice, do ten thousand times more; and I grieve to say that I
have known a few officials of this class.
We have in England known many occasions, particularly in the cases of
prosecutions by the officers of Government for offences against the
State, where little circles of society have made it a 'point of
honour' for some individuals to speak untruths, and for others to
give verdicts against their consciences; some occasions indeed where
those who ventured to speak the truth, or give a verdict according to
their conscience, were in danger from the violence of popular
resentment. Have we not, unhappily, in England and among our
countrymen in all parts of the world, experience of a wide difference
between what is exacted from members of particular circles of society
by the 'point of honour', and what is held to be strict religions
truth by the rest of society? Do we not see gentlemen cheating their
tradesmen, while they dare not leave a gambling debt unpaid? The
'point of honour' in the circle to which they belong demands that the
one should be paid, because the non-payment would involve a breach of
faith in their relations with each other, as in the case of the
members of a gang of robbers; but the non-payment of a tradesman's
bill involves only a breach of faith in a gentleman's relations with
a lower order. At least, some gentlemen do not feel any apprehension
of incurring the odium of the circle in which they move by cheating
of this kind. In the same manner the roué, or libertine of rank, may
often be guilty of all manner of falsehoods and crimes to the females
of the class below him, without any fear of incurring the odium of
either males or females of his own circle; on the contrary, the more
crimes he commits of this sort, the more sometimes he may expect to
be caressed by males and females of his own order. The man who would
not hesitate a moment to destroy the happiness of a family by the
seduction of the wife or the daughter, would not dare to leave one
shilling of a gambling debt unpaid--the one would bring down upon him
the odium of his circle, but the other would not; and the odium of
that circle is the only kind of odium he dreads. Appius Claudius
apprehended no odium from his own order--the patrician--from the
violation of the daughter of Virginius, of the plebeian order; nor
did Sextus Tarquinius of the royal order, apprehend any from the
violation of Lucretia, of the patrician order--neither would have
been punished by their own order, but they were both punished by the
injured orders below them.