The Rajabaie Tower, Bombay University.] [Sidenote: 14.
The Same, more distant view.] [Sidenote: 15.
P. & O. Offices, Bombay.] [Sidenote: 16.
Carmac Bund, Bombay.] [Sidenote: 17.
Victoria Terminus, G.I.P., Bombay.] [Sidenote: 18.
The Same: another view.] [Sidenote: 19.
Municipal Buildings, Bombay.] [Sidenote: 20.
Esplanade Road, Bombay.] [Sidenote: 21.
Fountain in Esplanade Road, Bombay.] [Sidenote: 22.
Statue of Queen Victoria.] Now let us walk through the city, and realise
its grandeur. Here we are down by the western façade of the University.
The great tower rises above us from which we just now obtained our
views. That tower is called the Rajabaie Tower, in memory of the mother
of the founder of the building. This is a rather more distant picture of
the same building. We have next the offices of the P. and O. Company,
and then a wharfside with steamers about to start for Goa, the old
Portuguese capital midway along the west coast of India southward of
Bombay. Here we have the great Victoria Terminus of the G.I.P. Railway,
with a central dome and an elaborately carved façade. Bombay claims that
it is the finest railway station in the world. This is another view of
the same building, with bullocks passing in front of it. Here are the
Municipal Buildings with another fine dome. They are a combination of
gothic with oriental architecture, and were opened about fifteen years
ago. Notice the electric tramway wires above. Then we see another fine
street, the Esplanade Road. The National Bank is to the left, and
further along is the Bombay Club. Here is a fountain in the Esplanade
Road, with a bullock passing in front of it, and here is the Statue of
the Queen-Empress Victoria, unveiled in 1872. On the canopy are the rose
of England and the lotus of India.
Bombay has a population only a little smaller than that of Calcutta,
and, like Calcutta and Madras, it is a new city, as time goes in the
Immemorial East. The island on which it stands was presented to King
Charles II. as part of the dower of his Portuguese Queen, and in order
to enable the British the better to co-operate with the Portuguese in
resisting the aggressions and encroachments of the Dutch. When handed
over by the Portuguese, there was but a small settlement on the island.
In 1668, however, Bombay was ceded to the East India Company, and the
Company transferred thither the centre of its trade on the west coast of
India, which had up to that time been at Surat, a hundred miles north of
Bombay. Gradually the commerce of the port increased, although for a
long time it was far outdistanced by Calcutta, whose great riverway
extends, as we have seen, through densely peopled plains for a thousand
miles inland. Eastward of Bombay, on the other hand, is the mountain
face of the Western Ghats, barring easy access to the interior. The
greatness of Bombay came only with the opening of the Suez Canal and of
the railway lines up the Bhor and Thal Ghats, northeastward and
southeastward into India.
[Sidenote: 23.
Exterior of Caves of Elephanta.] [Sidenote: 24.
Caves of Elephanta.] [Sidenote: 25.
The Same, showing the Trimurti.] [Sidenote: 26.
Villagers of Elephanta.] In Bombay Harbour there is a small island,
about six miles from the city, which is called Elephanta. It contains
carved rock temples whose antiquity contrasts strangely with the modern
city close by. We have here the entry to these temple caves, and here a
view within. This is another picture, showing a three-faced image. The
carving is some twenty feet high, and represents Brahma the Creator,
Siva the Destroyer, and Vishnu the Preserver. The nature of these gods
was described in the first of these lectures. Here we have a little
group of the villagers of Elephanta. The village has some seven hundred
inhabitants. It is known as Elephanta because there was formerly
conspicuous among the rock carvings of the temple a great elephant,
which, however, decayed and fell some fifty years ago. The native name
of the island means “the town of excavations.”
[Sidenote: 27.
Map of Bombay Presidency, Nizam’s Territory, and Maratha Country.]
[Sidenote: 28.
The Satara Hills, Maratha Country.] [Sidenote: 29.
Native Plough, Maratha Country.] Now let us journey inland, up the
Ghats, through their thick forests, and if it be the rainy season, past
rushing waterfalls, until surmounting the brink top we come out on to
the plain of the tableland, and into the relative drought of the upper
climate. This is the Maratha country, and here we have a typical view of
the open landscape which it presents. The hills in the distance are the
Satara hills, extending west and east through the heart of India. Here
is another view in this same Maratha Country. It shows a native plough
at work, and in the background one of the table-topped mountains, which
are studded over the surface of the generally level plateau, not unlike
the kopjes of South Africa. These steep-sided isolated mountain blocks
have often served as strongholds in warfare, and many of them are noted
in connection with the Maratha wars, waged in this part of India a
little more than a century ago under the lead of Sir Arthur Wellesley,
afterwards the great Duke of Wellington. At the foot of the mountain may
just be seen one of the Towers of Silence of the Parsis.
[Sidenote: 30.
Maratha Soldier.] [Sidenote: 31.
Map of the Maratha Dominions at their greatest extent.] The Marathas are
a people of Hindu religion and Marathi language, which is akin, as we
learned in the last lecture, to the Hindi of the United Provinces. Some
four generations ago they raided most of India from their home on this
high plateau of the Western Deccan, and the troops of the East India
Company had to wage three successive wars with them. Had it not been for
the British victory, there can be little doubt that the Marathas would
have established an Empire in India. Their homeland round the city of
Poona now forms the main portion of the Province of Bombay, but Maratha
princes still rule large conquered countries as feudatories of the
King-Emperor. This map shows us the dominion of the Marathas at its
greatest extent, near the end of the eighteenth century, when they were
the dominant warlike race of India. Their original home was not far from
Poona. As they spread, five principal officers of court and state took
the place of the dynasty of the Rajas, which became decrepit. These were
the Peshwa, the Gaikwar, Sindhia, Holkar, and the Bhonsla. These five
great chiefs conquered far and wide through all the heart of India.
Sindhia’s dominions extended northward to Delhi, and Bhonsla’s eastward
to Orissa on the east coast. The Peshwa was on the plateau round Poona.
Holkar was seated at Indore between the Peshwa and Sindhia, and the
Gaikwar at Baroda, in the fertile lowland round the head of the gulf of
Cambay. At times there was rivalry and war between them, but with the
exception of the Peshwa they were united by French intrigue in the time
of Napoleon, with the result that we had to fight between the years 1803
and 1805 the most widespread war which we have ever fought in India. Our
generals were Lake and Wellesley. The most brilliant victory was that of
Assaye, in the plateau country just north of Poona. There, with three
thousand troops, Wellesley defeated Sindhia’s army of twenty thousand
men, organised by French officers, and captured an artillery of a
hundred guns. Peace was made with the conquered Marathas about the time
when Trafalgar was fought, and it was stipulated that they were for the
future to allow no European influence in their States except the
British. There was a subsequent Maratha war, but the great war just
referred to was the most serious crisis through which the British rule
in India has had to pass, perhaps not even excepting the Mutiny of 1857.
The Marathas are of Hindu religion, but the caste system is not with
them carried to the extreme that prevails among other Hindus. They
present, in fact, the nearest approach to a national caste. As we shall
learn presently, Sindhia, Holkar, and the Gaikwar still rule great
territories as Feudatory Princes, but Nagpur, the Bhonsla’s capital, is
now the chief town of the Central Provinces of British India, and Poona,
the capital of the Peshwa, is the seat of the Bombay Government during
part of the year.
[Sidenote: 32.
Political Map of Bombay Province and Central India.] In contrast with
the last map, showing the extent of the former Maratha Dominions, we
have here a map of the central parts of India as they are to-day, with
the Province of Bombay ruled directly by the British Government marked
in red, and also the Central Provinces under direct British rule from
Nagpur, but in addition it will be seen that in blue colour there are
two patches of territory northeastward of Bombay, which bear the
inscription Central India, a term to be carefully distinguished from the
Central Provinces.
[Sidenote: 33.
Scene near Hyderabad.] [Sidenote: 34.
Street Scene, in Hyderabad.] [Sidenote: 35.
The Nizam’s Palace, Hyderabad.] Central India consists of Native
Feudatory States, which acknowledge the British suzerainty, but are
immediately ruled by their own Maharajas, of whom the two most important
are the Maratha princes Holkar at Indore, and Sindhia at Gwalior. There
is another larger patch of blue, southeastward of Bombay. This is the
State of Hyderabad, ruled under British suzerainty by the Nizam. This
great prince is however no Maratha, but a Musulman. His people for the
most part speak the Dravidian language Telugu, and are Hindu by
religion. Thus we see that none of these large states, each as important
as one of the smaller European kingdoms, has for its ruler a man of the
same race as the people. Sindhia and Holkar are Marathas ruling Hindi
populations; the Nizam is a Musulman ruling Telugu-speaking Hindus. The
Gaikwar of Baroda, it may be added, who governs a small but very rich
and populous territory, is a Maratha ruling a Gujrati population. We
have here a typical landscape in the Nizam’s territory, and see that it
is not very different from the Maratha landscapes. It is on the same
open Deccan plateau. This is a scene in Hyderabad itself, showing a
procession of elephants, and then we see the Nizam’s Palace.
[Sidenote: 36.
Golkonda Fort.] Next we have a view of Golkonda Fort, placed on one of
the usual flat-topped hills, and defended on one side by a large sheet
of water. Golkonda is in the neighbourhood of Hyderabad, the capital of
the Nizam’s dominions. Its name has become proverbial as indicative of
immense wealth. Formerly it was the great Indian centre of diamond
cutting and polishing, or in other words the Amsterdam of India. The
diamonds were not found in the immediate neighbourhood, but in the
extreme southeastern corner of the Nizam’s territory.
[Sidenote: 37.
The Same, nearer view.] [Sidenote: 38.
A Bastion at the top of Golkonda Fort.] [Sidenote: 39.
View from Golkonda Fort, looking Northeast.] [Sidenote: 40.
Hindu Temple, Golkonda Fort.] [Sidenote: 41.
Musulman Mosque, Golkonda Fort.] Here is a nearer view of Golkonda Fort,
and here a view over the plain, from the bastion at the top of the Fort,
from which can be seen the Tombs of the Kings about half a mile away.
These kings belonged to a great Musulman dynasty which ruled here during
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, until it was overthrown by
Aurangzeb. Next we have, near the summit of the Fort, the ruins of a
Hindu temple, and close by, shown in the following slide, the remains of
a Muhammadan mosque. The Fort, therefore, in its ruins, records the
essential history of the country, first the Hindu civilization, and then
two successive Musulman conquests.
[Sidenote: 42.
Mahbub College, Secunderabad.] [Sidenote: 43.
Ploughing at Agricultural School at Aurangabad.] [Sidenote: 44.
A Queen’s Boy at the same School.] Some of these Feudatory Native States
do not lag far behind the territories directly ruled by British
officials. Western civilization is permeating all India under the
British suzerainty. At Secunderabad and Aurangabad, places in the
Nizam’s Dominions, are, for instance, Agricultural and Industrial
Schools. Here is a group of students at the Mahbub College,
Secunderabad, and here a view taken at the Agricultural School at
Aurangabad, which shows some of the students ploughing. One of the
gentlemen in the foreground is the Director of Public Instruction in the
Nizam’s State, and by his side is the Superintendent of the School. Then
we see an orphan student, a “Queen’s boy.” He will probably settle down
in a year or two’s time, very likely marrying one of the “Queen’s
girls.” With a portion of his scholarship saved up for him, he will
purchase the necessary bullocks and plough. He came to the college from
the Victoria Memorial Orphanage, where each child is trained in his own
religion.
[Sidenote: 45.
Kinkob Loom, Secunderabad.] [Sidenote: 46.
Carpenters at Aurangabad.] In the midst, however, of this rapid advance
we still find the older methods. Here at Secunderabad is a Kinkob loom
of the old pattern. Kinkob work is made of gold and silver thread. The
boy sitting above is controlling the threads, and helps to make the
pattern by raising or lowering them in the warp. The boy sitting below
in the well is working the shuttles. This is a street scene in
Aurangabad showing natives of the carpenter caste sawing timber.
[Sidenote: 47.
The Tomb of the Saint, Roza.] [Sidenote: 48.
Roza Fair.] [Sidenote: 49.
The Same.] [Sidenote: 50.
Daulatabad, from the Road to Roza.] Another aspect of life in the Deccan
of India is shown in the next slide, where round the tomb of a saint at
a place called Roza is gathered the camp of a fair. A saint of great
renown among the Musulmans was buried here in the fourteenth century,
and deposited within the shrine are some hairs alleged to be from
Muhammad’s beard. There follow two slides showing the usual amusements
of the fair, in the latter of which we see a merry-go-round not at all
unlike those typical of the country fairs of England. Next we have a
view taken on the road from Roza, and in the distance can be seen the
hill fort of Daulatabad, built in the thirteenth century on a great
isolated mass of granite about five hundred feet high. In this fort was
imprisoned and died the last King of Golkonda, and it became the
favourite summer resort of his Mogul conqueror, Aurangzeb.
[Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 27.] The upland which fills most of the centre
of India and bears in its midst the Nizam’s Dominions is in most parts
of no great fertility. Over large areas it is fitted rather for the
pasture of horses and cattle than for the plough. Agriculture is
naturally best in the river valleys, but there is one large district
lying on the plateau top east of Bombay, and on the hill tops about the
Narbada valley east of Baroda, which is of a most singular fertility.
The usually granitic and schistose rocks of the plateau have here been
overlaid by great sheets of basaltic lava. Detached portions of these
lava beds form the table tops of the hills in the country rendered
famous by Wellesley’s Maratha campaigns. The lava disintegrates into a
tenacious black soil, which does not fall into dust during the dry
season, but cracks into great blocks, which remain moist. As the dry
season advances these blocks shrink, and the cracks grow broader, so
that finally it is dangerous for a horse to gallop over the plain lest
its hoof should be caught in one of these openings of the ground.
This remarkable earth is known as the Black Cotton Soil. The cotton
seeds are sown after the rains, and as the young plant grows a clod of
earth forms round its roots, which is separated from the next similar
clod by cracks. Wheat is grown on this soil in the same manner, being
sown after the rainy season and reaped in the beginning of the hot
season, so that from beginning to end the crop is produced without
exposure to rain, being drawn up by the brilliant sunshine and fed at
the root by the moisture preserved in the heavy soil.
Thus in the part of India which lies immediately east, northeast, and
north of Bombay the lowlands and the uplands are alike fertile—the
lowlands round Ahmadabad and Baroda and in the valleys of the Narbada
and Tapti Rivers because of their alluvial soil, and the uplands round
Poona and Indore because they are clothed with the volcanic cotton soil.
Just within the northwestern corner of the Nizam’s territory are the
famous rock temples of Ellora, perhaps the most magnificent of their
kind in the world. The sculpture is of Brahman, Buddhist, and Jain
dates, the monuments of various religions being thus as it were imposed
upon one another.
[Sidenote: 51.
Entry to Jain Caves, Ellora.] [Sidenote: 52.
Jain Caves, Ellora.] [Sidenote: 53.
The Juggernath Temple, Jain Caves, Ellora.] [Sidenote: 54.
The Same.] [Sidenote: 55.
The Kailas Caves, Ellora.] [Sidenote: 56.
The Same.] [Sidenote: 57.
Buddhist Temple, Ellora Caves.] [Sidenote: 58.
The Carpenter Cave, Ellora.] This is the entry to the Jain part of the
Ellora caves, and this is the interior of one of the Jain caves, story
above story. The niches are full of statues, many of them in perfect
condition. Here we have two views of the magnificent Juggernath Temple.
Next, in the dim light, we realize something of the internal structure
of the Brahman section of the caves. Notice the two men whose height
enables you to judge of the scale. These are among the finest of all the
monuments of antiquity in India. Here is a view taken on the floor of
the Buddhist Temple, with large figures of Buddha seated on a throne,
and there follows a view in another cave showing the beautifully carved
roof. It will be seen then that in these Ellora caves several religions
have contributed, the Jain no less than the Buddhist and the Hindu.
The Jains rose in the time of Buddha, five hundred years before Christ.
That was a time of religious stir in India, which resulted in various
revolts against the Brahmanical system. The Jain tenets are not unlike
those of the Buddhists. They believe in the universal soul, and in the
transmigration of souls, so that a man’s soul may pass into an animal.
Their regard for animal life, for this reason so general in India, is
carried to an extreme. The Jains were strongest in Western India, and
they are still present there, although now in a very small minority.
They probably total to-day not more than a million and a half, and are
perhaps most numerous at Ahmadabad. Of their great temples at Mount Abu
we shall hear presently.
[Sidenote: 59.
The Mecca Gate, Aurangabad.] [Sidenote: 60.
The Mausoleum of Rubia-ud-Daurani.] In order to complete the range of
the architectures of India, there follow two specimens of the Muhammadan
buildings of the state of Hyderabad. First we see the Mecca Gate at
Aurangabad, with the Mecca Bridge underneath it, and then we have the
Mausoleum of Rubia-ud-Daurani, the wife of Aurangzeb. The door of the
gateway is of brass and all the domes are of marble. The building has
recently been restored by the Government of the Nizam, and is now
probably second only to the Taj Mahal at Agra among the Muhammadan
buildings of India.
[Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 32.] Finally, we must note that a portion of
the Bombay Presidency lies far away to the northwest, detached from the
remainder. This is the province of Sind, for the most part a desert
area, but containing the delta of the river Indus, which is a second
Egypt in fertility, for there the alluvium brought down by the great
river from the distant Himalaya mountains is deposited, and water is
available by irrigation from the same distant source. Curiously, Sind
resembles Egypt in its human settlements. At the head of the delta where
the distributaries divide, and therefore at the lowest convenient
crossing place of the river, is situated the city of Hyderabad,
corresponding to Cairo, and on the sea front westward of the deltaic
mouths is Karachi, corresponding to Alexandria.
[Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 27.] Sind was conquered by Sir Charles Napier
in 1843. The Sindi population is for the most part Musulman, and engaged
in agriculture, but the significance of Sind has altered since it was
first added to the directly ruled British territories. At first
communication with the Punjab was relatively difficult, for the Indus is
not navigated with the same ease as is the Ganges. In the days before
railways it was therefore natural that the new province should be
administered from Bombay by means of sea communications. To-day,
however, with the construction of the North Western Railway from Karachi
up the river Indus, the commercial relations of Sind have come to be
with the Punjab, of which Karachi is now the great port, although it is
still subordinate to Bombay for purposes of government.
It is interesting and significant to observe that the coastline of all
India is now under direct British rule, except for the little States of
Cochin and Travancore, in the far south, near Cape Comorin, and the
peninsula of Kathiawar and the island of Cutch, which are divided among
a multitude of petty chieftains subordinate to the Government of Bombay.
Thus the larger Native States, being isolated from the sea, there is
little fear of foreign intrigue in India such as we had to contend with
during the French wars. There are a few diminutive scraps of territory
belonging to the French and Portuguese Governments, but these are too
insignificant to break the general rule, and moreover they are engirt
landward by directly ruled British territory. The largest of them is at
Goa, on the west coast, south of Bombay, the last remnant of the great
Portuguese dominion in the Indies.
--------------
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LECTURE VI.
---
=RAJPUTANA.=
---
THE FEUDATORY STATES.
[Sidenote: 1.
Map of India, Distinguishing Rajputana.] In the centre of northwestern
India is a group of large native States known as Rajputana, of the
greatest historical interest. These States are inhabited by ancient
Hindu Aryan tribes, collectively known as Rajputs, which literally means
“of princely descent.” They represent the purest and most ancient Indian
stock, and here, almost alone of the larger native States, the Chiefs
belong to the same race as their people. Rajputana suffered much from
the Musulmans, but was never completely conquered by them, a fact in
part due to the physical character of the country.
[Sidenote: 2.
Map of Northwestern India.] Through the centre of Rajputana, diagonally
from the southwest northeastward, there runs the range of the Aravalli
hills for a distance of fully three hundred miles, its northern
extremity being the Ridge at Delhi on the Jumna River. At the southern
end of the Aravallis, but separated from the main range by a hollow, is
the isolated Mount Abu, the highest point in Rajputana, standing up
conspicuously above the surrounding plains to a height of some five
thousand feet. The top is a rugged plateau measuring fourteen miles by
four. On this little upland, are the signs both of the antiquity and
modernity of Rajputana—on the one hand, the world-famed ruins of Jain
temples, and on the other, round the beautiful Gem Lake, the residences
of the Agent of the Governor-General and his staff, who maintain the
suzerainty of the King-Emperor in Rajputana. East of the Aravalli hills,
in the basin of the Chambal tributary of the Jumna-Ganges, is the more
fertile part of Rajputana, with the cities of Jaipur, Ajmer, Udaipur,
and the old fortress of Chitor. Beyond the Chambal River itself, but
within its basin, may be seen on the map the positions of Indore and
Gwalior, the seats of the Maratha princes Holkar and Sindhia. Indore and
Gwalior, however, belong to the Central Indian Agency and not to
Rajputana. West of the Aravalli hills is the great Indian Desert,
prolonged seaward by the salt and partly tidal marsh known as the Rann
of Cutch. In oases of this desert are some of the smaller Rajput
capitals, notably Bikaner. Beyond the desert flows the great Indus
river, through a dry although not wholly desert land, in the midst of
which, from Hyderabad to the sea, is the delta of Sind, as was said in
the last lecture, a second Egypt, fertile and thickly peopled. South of
Mount Abu, where the rivers descend from the end of the Aravalli hills
to the Gulf of Cambay is another fertile lowland, with the beautiful
city of Ahmadabad in the centre of it, but this city is in British
territory, being in the Province of Bombay, and therefore outside the
Tributary States of Rajputana. Ajmer, beside the Aravalli hills, is in
an island of directly ruled British territory completely surrounded by
Feudatory Rajputana.