discipline. All over Burma there are schools conducted by Buddhist
monastic orders at which instruction is gratuitously given to boys in
the vernacular of the country, and one rarely finds a native of Burma
who cannot read and write his own language. It is also part of the
religious discipline of every Burman boy that he should become a novice
in a monastic order and live for a time the life of a monk. The aim of
this training is to teach obedience and self-control, and thus in these
days of change, when strange and disintegrating influences are at work
in the East, the Burman retains, to a certain extent at all events, his
simplicity and his kindly faith. To appreciate the influence of Buddhism
in Burma let us remember that a Buddhist priest is supported entirely by
gifts in kind, and never touches a coin.
For some centuries Buddhism made great progress in India, the land of
its birth; but in the end Hinduism re-asserted itself, and to-day there
are very few Buddhists in India proper, though in Burma nearly all the
people are of that faith. This is the chief cause of the difference in
almost every respect between Burma and India. In the Ananda Temple, as
we have seen, there are four images of Buddha, for it is the tradition
of the religion that before Gautama there were in former ages of the
world three other teachers who reached enlightenment and were therefore
called Buddha.
[Sidenote: 57.
The Wilderness of Bricks, Pagan.] [Sidenote: 58.
Gadawpalin Temple, Pagan.] [Sidenote: 59.
Vultures on a ruined Temple at Pagan.] [Sidenote: 60.
Cactus at Pagan.] [Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 6.] Here, still at Pagan, is
the so-called Wilderness of Bricks, with the Ananda Temple in the
distance to the right. Then we have the entry to one of the other
temples, and then yet another Pagan ruin with vultures on the summit.
Finally we have a scene of tall cactus growth, also at Pagan, for this
city stands in what is known as the Dry Belt of Burma. The map shows us
that two ranges of mountains extend northward, respectively to east and
west of the Irawaddy valley. The winds of summer and autumn blow from
the southwest, from the sea, bringing moisture which falls in heavy
rains on the west sides of the mountains and over the delta. At Rangoon
there is an annual rainfall of over one hundred inches, or more than
three times the rainfall of London. To the east of the western range,
however, as we leave the delta on our journey up the river, there is a
low-lying district near Pagan, which is screened from the sea winds by
the continuous mountain ridge, and here the rainfall is small, as little
as twenty inches in the year, but the climate is hot and evaporation is
rapid. In this district, therefore, cactus is the typical vegetation,
but elsewhere in Burma are rich crops or the most luxuriant forests of
leafy trees. These forests supply the teak wood, which is floated down
the river. They are full of game, and the haunt of poisonous snakes.
Wild peacocks come from the woods to feed on the rice when it is ripe,
and tigers are not unknown in the villages. Only a few years ago a tiger
was shot on one of the ledges of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda in the midst of
Rangoon.
Notwithstanding the age of some of its temples and pagodas, Burma is in
the main a new country, in which Nature is still masterful. It is the
largest of the provinces under the Government of India, but all told it
contains but ten million people—Burmese, Chinese, Hindus, and the Hill
Tribes.
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LECTURE III.
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=BENGAL.=
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THE MONSOONS.
[Sidenote: 1.
Map of Bengal.] From Burma we take steamer again and cross the sea to
Bengal, the Metropolitan Province of India. The heart of Bengal is one
of the largest deltas in the world, a great plain of moist silt brought
down by the rivers Ganges and Brahmaputra from the Himalaya mountains.
But along the borders of the Province, and especially to the west, much
hill country is included.
The map shows to the north the high tableland of Tibet, edged by the
Himalaya range, whose southern slopes descend steeply, but with many
foot hills, to the level, low-lying plains of the two great river
valleys. Eastward of Bengal there is a ridge, rising to heights of more
than six thousand feet, densely forested, which separates the Irawaddy
valley of Burma from the plains of India. This ridge throws out a spur
westward, which near its end rises a little into the Garo hills. The
deeply trenched narrow valley of the Brahmaputra, known as the Assam
Valley, lies between the Garo hills and the Himalayas. Away in the west
of Bengal is another hill spur, bearing the name of Rajmahal, which
forms the northeastern point of the plateau of Southern India. The
Ganges flows through the plain bounded southward by this plateau and
northward by the Himalayas. A broad lowland gateway is left between the
Garo and the Rajmahal hills, and through this, on either hand, the
Brahmaputra and Ganges rivers turn southward and converge gradually
until they join to form the vast Megna estuary. The country which lies
west of the Megna is the Ganges delta, traversed by many minor channels
which branch from the right bank of the river before it enters the
Megna. East of the Megna is another deltaic land whose silt is derived
in the main from the Garo hills. It is said that the highest rainfall in
the world occurs in these hills, when the monsoon sweeps northward from
the Bay of Bengal and blows against their southern face. The rainfall on
a single day in the rainy season is often as great as the whole annual
rainfall of London. Little wonder that there is abundance of silt for
the formation of the fertile plains below.
The approach to the coast, as may be concluded from this geographical
description, presents little of interest. As you enter the Hooghly
river, the westernmost of the deltaic channels, you see broad grey mud
banks, with here and there a palm tree. From time to time, as the ship
passes some more solid ground, there are villages of thatched huts
surrounded by banana plantations with tall broad green leaves.
[Sidenote: 2.
Approaching Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 3.
Coolie Emigrant Ship on the Hooghly.] [Sidenote: 4.
The Hooghly at Calcutta, showing the High Court.] [Sidenote: 5.
The Same.] Calcutta, the chief port and capital of India, is placed no
less than eighty miles up the Hooghly, on the eastern bank. As we
approach it we pass mills and factories with tall chimneys throwing out
black smoke. A steamer crosses us, outward bound, carrying, as we are
told, coolies going to work in South Africa; for the basin of the
Ganges, unlike Burma, is one of the most densely peopled lands in the
world, and sends forth annually some thousand emigrants. At last we find
ourselves amid a throng of shipping, and our steamer ties up to a buoy
in the turbid river, with the great city of Calcutta on the eastern
bank, and the large industrial town of Howrah on the western bank, and
not a hill in sight round all the horizon, only the great dome of the
Post Office rising white in the sunshine.
[Sidenote: 6.
Plan of Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 7.
Palm Avenue, Calcutta Botanical Gardens.] Let us examine the plan of
this mighty city with more than a million inhabitants, second in the
Empire in population, and one of the twelve largest towns in the world.
The Hooghly flows southward. On its eastern bank stands Fort William, a
fortress which with its outworks occupies a space of nearly a thousand
acres. Around, to the north, the east, and the south of the fort, is a
wide green plain, the Maidan, separating the fort from the city. From
north to south the Maidan extends for some two miles, and it is about a
mile broad from east to west. In its southern end is the racecourse,
where are held at Christmas time the races, the principal social event
of Calcutta life. To the east of the Maidan is the European quarter,
with its hotels, and clubs, and private houses. To the north, in a
garden, is Government House, the residence of the Viceroy of India.
Beside Government House, and also facing the Maidan, are the High Court
of Justice and the Town Hall. Behind Government House is Dalhousie
Square, occupied by a green, in the centre of which is a large tank.
Facing this square is the Bengal Government Secretariat, between which
and the river are the Post Office and the Customs House. Away to the
north is the great native city. One bridge only connects Calcutta with
the industrial town of Howrah, where are jute mills and great
engineering works. In Howrah also is the terminus of the East Indian
Railway. A hundred years ago Howrah was but a small village; to-day it
contains some 160,000 people. Finally to the south of Howrah on the west
bank of the river are the celebrated Botanical Gardens, containing many
great palms, and most notable of all a banyan tree whose circumference
measures nearly a thousand feet. North of Calcutta, and on the east bank
of the Hooghly, is Barrackpur, with the country house of the Viceroy of
India. There is a military cantonment at Barrackpur, and also a garrison
in Fort William.
[Sidenote: 8.
The Howrah Bridge, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 9.
Scene from the Howrah Bridge.] Nothing impresses the stranger in
Calcutta more than the density of life in this populous city, the focus
of a great and fertile province. At no spot is it more evident than on
the Howrah Bridge, where from morning to night a close throng crosses
and re-crosses. From the approach to the bridge we look down on a crowd
bathing in the muddy but sacred water. Cheek by jowl with the busy
commercial traffic of the bridge, we have here the religion of the East.
Purified by the bath, and clothed again, the bather sits in the crowd
while for a few pies, or say a farthing, his sect mark is painted afresh
on his forehead.
[Sidenote: 10.
Calcutta from Howrah across the Hooghly.] The buildings of Calcutta are
worthy of the capital rank of the city, but they are of European design,
for Calcutta is a modern city. Fort William was so named from King
William III., in whose reign, little more than two centuries ago, Job
Charnock, a factor or commercial representative of the East India
Company, bought the little village Kalikata, probably so named from a
local shrine of the goddess Kali. There he built, on the site of the
present Customs House, the first Fort William. Within ten years the
population had grown to some ten thousand, and it has never ceased
growing to this day, although at one time, in the middle of the
eighteenth century, there was an episode in the history of the place
which for a time somewhat checked its advance. Suraj-ud-Daulah, the
Nawab of Bengal, quarrelled with the English at Fort William, and
finally attacked them. Most of them escaped down the river, but a
hundred and forty-six were taken prisoners when Fort William fell, and
were confined for a night in a small cell measuring 22 feet by 14 feet,
and some 18 feet high. It was at the end of the hot season, and only
twenty-three of the prisoners came out alive the next morning. This
tragedy is known in history as the Black Hole of Calcutta. Soon
afterwards Colonel Clive, the same Clive who as a Captain defended Arcot
in the south of India, arrived with reinforcements and recaptured
Calcutta. Fort William was rebuilt on a larger scale, and in a position
a little south of the original site.
Suraj-ud-Daulah quarrelled with the East India Company again, and Clive
led an army against him into the north of Bengal, and defeated him and
his French allies in the famous battle of Plassey. The British force
amounted to only three thousand men, of whom but two hundred were
English, whereas the Nawab had an army of nearly forty thousand. In 1765
the whole of Bengal was annexed by the East India Company, and from 1772
was ruled from Calcutta. Suraj-ud-Daulah’s capital had been at a place
called Murshidabad, a hundred miles to the north of Calcutta.
[Sidenote: 11.
Black Hole Monument, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 12.
The Marble Pavement, Black Hole, Calcutta.] Here, at the corner of
Dalhousie Square, is the Black Hole Monument, erected by Lord Curzon
when Viceroy of India, in the year 1902, upon the site of the original
monument which was set up by one of the twenty-three survivors; and here
is a marble pavement marking the exact position of the Black Hole.
[Sidenote: 13.
Bengal Government Office, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 14.
The High Court, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 15.
Eastern Gateway, Government House, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 16.
Government House, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 17.
The Same.] [Sidenote: 18.
Imperial Museum, Calcutta.] We have next the great red brick building in
Dalhousie Square known as the Bengal Secretariat. Not far away are the
public offices of the Government of India, but most of the staff are
removed to Simla in the hills during the hot and rainy seasons. Here,
facing the Maidan, is the frontage of the Supreme Court of Justice, with
a fine tower nearly two hundred feet high, which we saw just now from
the Hooghly. Next is the eastern gateway to the grounds of Government
House, and here is Government House itself, with the Union Jack flying
above it, and Indian sentries on guard. It was built a little more than
a hundred years ago, and contains the throne of Tippu Sultan, the tyrant
of Mysore, of whom we heard in the first lecture. Opposite Government
House, on the Maidan, is the Jubilee Statue of Victoria, the
Queen-Empress of India, which was unveiled in the year 1902. Here we
have a more distant view of Government House, as seen from the Maidan,
with a statue of one of the Viceroys in the foreground. Next, in
Chowringhee road, is the Imperial Museum, a fine building with a
valuable Gallery of Antiquities.
[Sidenote: 19.
Musulmans at Prayer in the Maidan.] [Sidenote: 20.
Ochterlony Monument, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 21.
Calcutta from the Ochterlony Monument.] [Sidenote: 22.
Race Course, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 23.
St. Paul’s Cathedral, Calcutta.] [Sidenote: 24.
Tiretta Bazaar Street, Calcutta.] Let us walk round the Maidan, and note
the curiously mingled life upon it. Here, for instance, are Musulmans at
prayer, an impressive sight that may be witnessed every evening. Here we
are at the foot of the Ochterlony monument, a column erected in honour
of Sir David Ochterlony, a successful general in the wars with Nepal.
From the top of it we have a fine view over the city. Notice Government
House and the High Court. At the other end of the Maidan is the
racecourse and polo ground, to which we have already referred, and here
amid the trees in the southeastern corner, beside the tank, is the spire
of the English Cathedral. Here, in contrast, is a view in the native
city. The streets are with a few exceptions very narrow, as in most
southern cities where the sunshine is dreaded and where shade is
essential to comfort.
[Sidenote: 25.
Jute Mills, Howrah.] [Sidenote: 26.
A Workshop in Iron Foundry at Howrah.] [Sidenote: 27.
The same, Plate Girders.] [Sidenote: 28.
Workpeople bathing at Howrah.] Now we cross to Howrah, to the great jute
mills, where the jute fibre grown up country is spun and woven in
competition with the jute manufacture of Dundee. In these mills you will
find that the machinery bears the names of Dundee and Leeds makers, for
the industry is relatively new in India, and has not yet reached the
stage of manufacturing its own machinery. Next we pass into the
engineering works of Messrs. Burn and Co., where some five thousand
natives and some sixty Europeans are employed in the steel industry.
Here are plate girders made in these works for railway bridge building,
and here in this same industrial town of Howrah are people bathing after
work in the jute mills.
Let us recount the essence of what we have seen—the Hooghly channel from
the ocean, bearing inward the European ships; the Shrine of the Goddess
Kali; the Fort which protected the factory of the East India Company;
the Monument of the Black Hole; Government House and the Secretariat,
whence the vast empire is ruled; the Cathedral and the Racecourse of the
white rulers; the Courts of Justice, which, more than any military
power, betoken the essence of British rule in India; the Native City
with its narrow ways and crowded life drawn from the surrounding
agricultural plain; the Howrah Bridge with the steel and jute mills
beyond, which imply a vast incoming change in the economic life of this
eastern land; and the Botanic Gardens with their wealth of vegetation
typifying the ultimate resources of India—the tropical sunshine and the
torrential rains.
[Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 1.] Now let us run northward by the East
Bengal Railway for some three hundred miles to Darjeeling, the hill
station of Calcutta, as Ootacamund is the hill station of Madras. We
traverse the dead level of the plain with its thickly set villages and
tropical vegetation. There are some seven hundred and fifty thousand
villages in India, and these village communities are the real India, for
only about ten per cent. of the total population is contained in the
cities. Yet Bengal in its present limits, which exclude Eastern Bengal,
has a population of more than fifty millions, on an area slightly
smaller than that of the United Kingdom. Now the total population of the
United Kingdom is only some forty-four millions, and of these forty-four
millions fully one-third inhabit some forty large cities. Britain is
therefore mainly industrial, whereas India is mainly agricultural,
nine-tenths of all the people in India being supported by occupations
connected with agriculture. From such statistics some idea may be gained
of the density of the agricultural population of Bengal, a Province with
one great city only, as greatness of cities is measured in our British
Islands.
The rule of these village-dotted plains is the main daily business of
the Indian Government. A great Province like Bengal is divided into
Districts, each of them about as large as the English county of
Lincolnshire or a little larger. On the average each of them contains
from half a million to a million and a half of population. There are
some 250 of such Districts in British India, that is to say in that
greater part of India which is administered directly by British
officials. In each District there is a chief executive officer, styled
the Collector or Deputy Commissioner. He is the head of the District
administration, and he is also the principal Magistrate in the District.
Under the Collector there is a staff of Executive Officers, British and
Indian, of whom the chief are the Assistant Collector, the Deputy
Collector, the Superintendent of Police, the Engineer, and the Civil
Surgeon. The Collector is so called because in the days of the old East
India Company his main function was to collect revenue. In his other
capacity of Magistrate, he is the head of the Magisterial Courts of the
District. The laws which he and his assistants administer are made by
the Viceroy in Council, and in a subordinate way by the
Lieutenant-Governors and their Councils in the various Provinces. The
Collector does not decide civil suits. These, as well as all serious
criminal cases, come before Civil Judges of different grades, who are
independent of the Collector.
Therefore we find in India that essential division of the Legislature,
Judicature, and Executive which is the chief security of freedom in all
British communities. Subject to the law and to the instructions of the
superior Provincial Officers, the District Collector is, however,
supreme, except in the Civil Courts of his District. He it is who alone
for the vast majority of the Indian population represents the Raj or
Rule of the King-Emperor. Between the Collectors and the
Lieutenant-Governors are intermediate controlling officers known as
Commissioners, who superintend Divisions or groups of several Districts.
The Higher Civil Service of India, recruited by competitive examination
in England, consists of some twelve hundred officials—the Commissioners,
the Collectors of the Districts, and some of the Assistant Collectors.
The seniors of the Civil Service man the Provincial and Supreme
Governments of India. Only the Governor-General and the Governors of
Madras and Bombay are selected from outside the Indian Civil Service and
sent out from Britain.
The Collector is constantly touring his District, in order that he may
know it from personal investigation. A good Collector may become very
popular, and may do much to make his District prosperous. It is a great
position which may thus be held by young Englishmen of, say, thirty
years of age. They are rulers of a million people at an age when their
brothers of the professional classes at home are struggling to establish
themselves as young barristers or doctors or clergymen.
It must not be thought, however, that the Government of India, either in
its Legislative, Judicial, or Executive capacities, is wholly British,
and alien from the subject population. The Legislative Councils of the
Governor-General and also of the Lieutenant-Governors in the Provinces
contain elected Indian representatives, both Hindu and Musulman. The
provincial Councils have, in fact, non-official majorities. Only in the
Council of the Governor-General is there an official majority. Many of
the Judges even of the High Courts are Indian, either Hindu or Musulman.
In the Executive some of the Collectors of Districts are Indian, and
also the great majority of the assistant officials, who in the aggregate
are an immense number.
[Sidenote: 29.
Darjeeling Railway, Chinbatti Loop.] [Sidenote: 30.
Darjeeling Railway, Loop No. 4.] [Sidenote: 31.
Darjeeling.] As we think over these things we are continuing our journey
northward. We must change from train to steamer as we cross the Ganges.
The passage of the river occupies about twenty minutes from one
low-lying bank to the other. Then, as we traverse the endless rice
fields with their clumps of graceful bamboo, the hills become visible
across the northern horizon. We run into a belt of jungle, and change to
the mountain railway, which carries us up the steep hill front with many
a turn and twist. There is tall forest on the lower slopes, of teak and
other great trees, hung thickly with creepers. Presently the wood
becomes smaller, and we enter the tea plantations with their trim rows
of green bushes. Far below us, at the foot of the steep forest, spreads
to the southern horizon the vast cultivated plain. Trees of the fir
tribe now take the place of leafy trees, and we rise to the ridge top on
which is placed Darjeeling, a settlement of detached villas in compounds
or enclosures, hanging on the steep hill slopes. Darjeeling is about
seven thousand feet above sea level, on a ridge overlooking northward
the gorge of the Rungeet River.
[Sidenote: 32.
Kinchinjunga, from Darjeeling.] [Sidenote: 33.
The Himalaya.] [Sidenote: 34.
Mount Everest.] In the early morning, if we are fortunate in the weather
and rise before the sun, we may see from Darjeeling, over the valley to
north of the hill ridge on which we stand, and over successive ridge
tops beyond, the mighty snow range of the Himalayas, fifty miles away,
with the peak of Kinchinjunga, more than five miles high, dominating the
landscape. Behind it, a little to the west, and visible from Tiger Hill
near Darjeeling, though not from Darjeeling itself, is Mount Everest,
the highest mountain in the world, five and half miles high. The
glittering wall of white mountains, visible across the vast chasm and
bare granite summits in the foreground, seems to hang in the sky as
though belonging to another world. The broad distance, and the sudden
leap to supreme height, give to this scene a mysterious and almost
visionary grandeur. It is, however, only occasionally that the
culminating peaks can be seen, for they are often veiled in cloud.
[Sidenote: 35.
Tibetan Woman.] [Sidenote: 36.
Nepali Ladies.] The people of Sikkim in the hills beyond Darjeeling are
Highlanders of Mongolian stock and not Indian. They are of Buddhist
religion like the Burmans, and not Hindu or Musulman like the
inhabitants of India. They are small, sturdy folk, with oblique cut
eyes, and a Chinese expression, and they have the easy-going humorous
character of the Burmans, though not the delicacy and civilization of
those inhabitants of the sunny lowland. They and the kindred and
neighbour Tibetans rarely wash, and the women anoint their faces with a
mixture of pigs’ blood, which gives them a dark and mottled appearance.
Here we have in colour a portrait of a Tibetan woman, and then a group
of Nepali ladies, with various head ornaments.