LIFE IN THE ZENĀNA.
“SHE WHO IS BELOVED, IS THE WIFE[37].”
Zenāna of the King of Oude—Regiment of Females—The Favourite
Wife—The English Begam—The Princess of Delhi, _the_ Begam
_par excellence_—Colonel Gardner—Mirza Sulimān Sheko and his
fifty-two Children—The forty Princesses—Mootee, the Pearl of
the Desert—Hunting Season at Papamhow—Jackals and Foxes—A
Suttee at Prāg—Report of a Suttee—An ill-starred Horse.
_Oct. 1828._—A letter just received from a lady, a friend of mine, at
Lucnow, is so amusing and so novel, I must make an extract:—
“The other day, (Oct. 18th,) was the anniversary of the King of Oude’s
coronation; and I went to see the ceremony, one I had never witnessed
before, and with which I was much gratified. But the greatest treat was
a visit to the begam’s afterwards, when the whole of the wives, aunts,
cousins, &c., were assembled in state to receive us.
“The old begam (the king’s mother), was the _great lady_, of course,
and in her palace were we received; the others being considered her
guests, as well as ourselves. It was a most amusing sight, as I had never
witnessed the interior of a zenāna before, and so many women assembled
at once I had never beheld. I suppose from first to last we saw some
thousands. _Women-bearers_ carried our tanjans; a regiment of female
gold and silver-sticks, dressed in male costume, were drawn up before
the entrance; and those men, chiefly _Africans_, who were employed inside
the zenāna (and there were abundance of these frightful creatures),
were all of the same class as the celebrated Velluti. The old begam was
without jewels or ornaments, likewise a very pretty and favourite wife of
the late king, their state of widowhood precluding their wearing them.
But the present king’s wives were most superbly dressed, and looked like
creatures of the Arabian tales. Indeed, one was so beautiful, that I
could think of nothing but Lalla Rookh in her bridal attire.
“I never saw any one so lovely, either black or white. Her features were
perfect; and such eyes and eyelashes I never beheld before. She is the
favourite queen at present, and has only been married a month or two: her
age about fourteen; and such a little creature, with the smallest hands
and feet, and the most _timid_, _modest_ look imaginable. You would have
been charmed with her, she was so graceful and fawn-like. Her dress was
of gold and scarlet brocade, and her hair was literally strewed with
pearls, which hung down upon her neck in long single strings, terminating
in large pearls, which mixed with and hung _as low_ as her hair, which
was curled on each side her head in long ringlets, like Charles the
Second’s beauties.
“On her forehead she wore a small gold circlet, from which depended (and
hung half-way down her forehead) large pear-shaped pearls, interspersed
with emeralds. The pearls were of this size and form, and had a very
becoming effect, close upon the forehead, between the eyes. Above this
was a paradise plume, from which strings of pearls were carried over the
head, as we turn _our hair_.
[Illustration]
“I fear you will not understand me. Her ear-rings were immense
gold-rings, with pearls and emeralds suspended all round in long strings,
the pearls increasing in size. She had a nose-ring also, with large
round pearls and emeralds; and her necklaces, &c., were too numerous to
be described. She wore long sleeves, open at the elbow; and her dress
was a full petticoat, some dozen yards wide, with a tight body attached,
and only open at the throat. She had several persons to bear her train
when she walked; and her women stood behind her couch to arrange her
head-dress, when in moving her pearls got entangled in the immense
dopatta of scarlet and gold she had thrown around her. How I wished for
you when we were seated! you would have been delighted with the whole
scene. This beautiful creature is the envy of all the other wives, and
the favourite, at present, of the king and his mother, both of whom have
given her titles—the king’s is after the favourite wife of one of the
celebrated kings of Delhi, ‘Tajmahŭl,’ and Nourmahŭl herself could not
have been more lovely.
“The other newly-made queen is nearly _European_, but not a whit fairer
than Tajmahŭl. She is, in my opinion, plain, but is considered by the
native ladies very handsome; and she was the king’s favourite until he
saw Tajmahŭl.
“She was more splendidly dressed than even Tajmahŭl; her head-dress was
a coronet of diamonds, with a fine crescent and plume of the same. She
is the daughter of an European merchant, and is accomplished for an
inhabitant of a zenāna, as she writes and speaks Persian fluently, as
well as Hindostani, and it is said she is teaching the king _English_;
though, when we spoke to her in English, she said she had forgotten it,
and could not reply. She was, I fancy, afraid of the old begam, as she
evidently understood us; and when asked if she liked being in the zenāna,
she shook her head and looked quite melancholy. Jealousy of the new
favourite, however, appeared the cause of her discontent, as, though they
sat on the same couch, they never addressed each other. And now you must
be as tired of the begams, as I am of writing about them.
“The mother of the king’s children, Mulka Zumanee, did not visit us at
the old queen’s, but we went to see her at her own palace: she is, _after
all_, the person of the most political consequence, being the mother of
the heir-apparent; and she has great power over her royal husband, whose
ears she boxes occasionally.
“The Delhi princess, to whom the king was betrothed and married by his
father, we did not see; she is in disgrace, and confined to her own
palace. The old begam talked away to us, but appeared surprised I should
admire Tajmahŭl more than the English begam, as she is called,—_my
country-woman_ as they styled her!
“Poor thing, I felt ashamed of the circumstance, when I saw her chewing
pān with all the gusto of a regular Hindostanee.”
The above letter contains so charming an account of Lucnow, that I cannot
refrain from adding an extract from another of the same lady.
“At the residency, on such a day as this, the thermometer is seldom short
of 100°!
“Did you ever hear of Colonel Gardner? he is married to a native
princess. The other day he paid Lucnow a visit. His son’s wife is sister
to the _legal_ queen of our present worthy sovereign of Oude. Colonel
Gardner came on a visit to the begam’s father, Mirza Sulimān Sheko, a
prince of the house of Delhi, blessed with fifty-two children, twelve
sons and forty daughters! Did you ever hear of such enormity? the poor
papa is without a rupee, his pension from government of 5000 rupees a
month is mortgaged to his numerous creditors. He has quarrelled with his
illustrious son-in-law, the king of Oude; and Colonel Gardner has come
over with the laudable purpose of removing his family from Oude to Delhi,
where they will have a better chance of being provided for.
“Indeed, the other day, seventeen of the daughters were betrothed to
seventeen princes of Delhi: this is disposing of one’s daughters by
wholesale! is it not? Colonel Gardner, who is a very gentlemanlike
person, I hear, of the old school, was educated in France some fifty
years ago. He gave a description of his sojourn amongst this _small
family_ in the city, in these words,—‘I slept every night with the
thermometer at 100°, and surrounded by 500 females!’
“What a situation! I do not know which would be the most overpowering,
the extreme heat, or the incessant clack of the forty princesses and
their attendants. It reminds me of the old fairy tale of the ‘Ogre’s
forty daughters with golden crowns on their heads.’”
_On dit_, the English begam was the daughter of a half caste and
an English officer; her mother afterwards married a native buniyā
(shop-keeper). She had a sister; both the girls lived with the mother,
and employed themselves in embroidering saddle-cloths for the horses
of the rich natives. They were both very plain; nevertheless, one of
them sent her picture to his majesty, who, charmed with the portrait,
married the lady. She had money in profusion at her command: she made her
father-in-law her treasurer, and pensioned her mother and sister.
THE SUTTEE.
A rich buniyā, a corn chandler, whose house was near the gate of our
grounds, departed this life; he was an Hindoo. On the 7th of November,
the natives in the bazār were making a great noise with their tom-toms,
drums, and other discordant musical instruments, rejoicing that his widow
had determined to perform suttee, _i.e._ to burn on his funeral-pile.
The magistrate sent for the woman, used every argument to dissuade her,
and offered her money. Her only answer was, dashing her head on the
floor, and saying, “If you will not let me burn with my husband, I will
hang myself in your court of justice.” The shāstrs say, “The prayers
and imprecations of a suttee are never uttered in vain; the great gods
themselves cannot listen to them unmoved.”
If a widow touch either food or water from the time her husband expires
until she ascend the pile, she cannot, by Hindoo law, be burned with
the body; therefore the magistrate kept the corpse _forty-eight_ hours,
in the hope that hunger would compel the woman to eat. Guards were set
over her, but she never touched any thing. My husband accompanied the
magistrate to see the suttee: about 5000 people were collected together
on the banks of the Ganges: the pile was then built, and the putrid
body placed upon it; the magistrate stationed guards to prevent the
people from approaching it. After having bathed in the river, the widow
lighted a brand, walked round the pile, set it on fire, and then mounted
cheerfully: the flame caught and blazed up instantly; she sat down,
placing the head of the corpse on her lap, and repeated several times the
usual form, “Ram, Ram, suttee; Ram, Ram, suttee,” _i.e._ “God, God, I am
chaste.”
As the wind drove the fierce fire upon her, she shook her arms and limbs
as if in agony; at length she started up and approached the side to
escape. An Hindoo, one of the police who had been placed near the pile
to see she had fair play, and should not be burned by force, raised his
sword to strike her, and the poor wretch shrank back into the flames. The
magistrate seized and committed him to prison. The woman again approached
the side of the blazing pile, sprang fairly out, and ran into the Ganges,
which was within a few yards. When the crowd and the brothers of the dead
man saw this, they called out, “Cut her down, knock her on the head with
a bamboo; tie her hands and feet, and throw her in again;” and rushed
down to execute their murderous intentions, when the gentlemen and the
police drove them back.
The woman drank some water, and having extinguished the fire on her red
garment, said she would mount the pile again and be burned.
The magistrate placed his hand on her shoulder (which rendered her
impure), and said, “By your own law, having once quitted the pile you
cannot ascend again; I forbid it. You are now an outcast from the
Hindoos, but I will take charge of you, the Company will protect you, and
you shall never want food or clothing.”
He then sent her, in a palanquin, under a guard, to the hospital. The
crowd made way, shrinking from her with signs of horror, but returned
peaceably to their homes; the Hindoos annoyed at her escape, and the
Mussulmans saying, “It was better that she should escape, but it was a
pity we should have lost the _tamāshā_ (amusement) of seeing her burnt to
death.”
Had not the magistrate and the English gentlemen been present, the
Hindoos would have cut her down when she attempted to quit the fire; or
had she leapt out, would have thrown her in again, and have said, “She
performed suttee of _her own accord_, how could _we_ make her? it was
the will of God.” As a specimen of their religion the woman said, “I
have transmigrated six times, and have been burned six times with six
different husbands; if I do not burn the seventh time, it will prove
unlucky for me!” “What good will burning do you?” asked a bystander. She
replied, “The women of my husband’s family have all been suttees, why
should I bring disgrace upon them? I shall go to heaven, and afterwards
re-appear on earth, and be married to a very rich man.” She was about
twenty or twenty-five years of age, and possessed of some property, for
the sake of which her relatives wished to put her out of the world.
If every suttee were conducted in this way, very few would take place in
India. The woman was not much burned, with the exception of some parts
on her arms and legs. Had she performed suttee, they would have raised
a little cenotaph, or a mound of earth by the side of the river, and
every Hindoo who passed the place returning from bathing would have made
sālām to it; a high honour to the family. While we were in Calcutta,
many suttees took place; but as they were generally on the other side
of the river, we only heard of them after they had occurred. Here the
people passed in procession, flags flying, and drums beating, close by
our door. I saw them from the verandah; the widow, dressed in a red
garment, was walking in the midst. My servants all ran to me, begging to
be allowed to go and see the tamāshā (fun, sport), and having obtained
permission, they all started off, except one man, who was pulling the
pankhā, and he looked greatly vexed at being obliged to remain. The sāhib
said, the woman appeared so perfectly determined, he did not think she
would have quitted the fire. Having performed suttee according to her
own account six times before, one would have thought from her miraculous
incombustibility, she had become asbestos, only purified and not consumed
by fire. I was glad the poor creature was not murdered; but she will be
an outcast; no Hindoo will eat with her, enter her house, or give her
assistance; and when she appears they will point at her and give her
abuse. Her own and her husband’s family would lose caste if they were
to speak to her: but, as an example, it will prevent a number of women
from becoming suttees, and do infinite good: fortunately, she has no
children. And these are the people called in Europe the “mild inoffensive
Hindoos!”
The woman was mistress of a good house and about 800 rupees; the brothers
of her deceased husband would, after her destruction, have inherited the
property.
The burning of the widow is not commanded by the shāstrs: to perform
suttee is a proof of devotion to the husband. The mountain Himalaya,
being personified, is represented as a powerful monarch: his wife,
Mena; their daughter is called Parvuti, or mountain-born, and Doorga,
or difficult of access. She is said to have been married to Shivŭ in
a _pre-existing_ state when she was called Sŭtēē. After the marriage,
Shivŭ on a certain occasion offended his father-in-law, King Dŭkshŭ, by
refusing to make sālām to him as he entered the circle in which the king
was sitting.
To be revenged, the monarch refused to invite Shivŭ to a sacrifice
which he was about to perform. Sŭtēē, the king’s daughter, however, was
resolved to go, though uninvited and forbidden by her husband. On her
arrival, Dŭkshŭ poured a torrent of abuse on Shivŭ, which affected Sŭtēē
so much that she died.
In memory of this proof of great affection, a Hindoo widow burning with
her husband on the funeral-pile, is called a Sŭtēē.
The following passages are from the Hindoo Shāstrs:—
“There are 35,000,000 hairs on the human body. The woman who ascends the
pile with her husband, will remain so many years in heaven.”
“As the snake draws the serpent from its hole, so she, rescuing her
husband (from hell), rejoices with him.”
“The woman who expires on the funeral-pile of her husband, purifies the
family of her mother, her father, and her husband.”
“So long as a woman, in her successive transmigrations, shall decline
burning herself, like a faithful wife, on the same fire with her deceased
lord, so long shall she not be exempted from springing again to life in
the body of some female animal.”
[Illustration: TEMPLE OF BHAWĀNĪ AND SUTTEES ALOPEE BĀGH.
On Stone by Major Parlby.
Sketched on the Spot by فاني پارکس]
“There is no virtue greater than a chaste woman burning herself with
her husband:” the term Sŭtēē, here rendered “chaste” is thus explained;
“commiserating with her husband in trouble, rejoicing in his joys,
neglecting herself when he is gone from home, and dying at his death.”
“By the favour of a chaste woman the universe is preserved, on which
account she is to be regarded by kings and people as a goddess.”
“If the husband be out of the country when he dies, let the virtuous wife
take his slippers (or any thing else which belongs to his dress) and
binding them, or it, on her breast, after purification, enter a separate
fire.”
Mothers collect the cowries strewn by a sŭtēē as she walks round the
pile, ere she fires it, and hang them round the necks of their sick
children as a cure for disease.
In the plate entitled “Superstitions of the Natives,” fig. 3 represents
the cowrie shells. (Cypræa moneta.)
The suttee took place on the banks of the Ganges, under the Bund between
the Fort and Raj Ghat, a spot reckoned very holy and fortunate for the
performance of the rite.
Several of our friends requested me, in case another suttee occurred,
to send them timely notice. Five days afterwards, I was informed that a
rānee[38] was to be burned. Accordingly I sent word to all my friends.
Eight thousand people were assembled on the suttee-ground, who waited
from mid-day to sunset: then a cry arose—“The mem sāhiba sent us here!
the mem sāhiba said it was to take place to-day! see, the sun has set,
there can now be no suttee!” The people dispersed. My informant told
me what he himself believed, and I mystified some 8000 people most
unintentionally.
TEMPLE OF BHAWĀNĪ AND SUTTEES, ALOPEE BAGH.
In Alopee Bagh, in the centre of a large plantation of mango-trees, is
a small temple dedicated to Bhawānī; there is no image in it, merely a
raised altar, on which victims were, I suppose, formerly sacrificed. Each
of the small buildings on the right contains the ashes of a suttee;
there are seven suttee-graves of masonry on this, and six of earth on the
other side, near the temple, in the mango tope. The largest suttee-tomb
contains the ashes of a woman who was burnt in 1825, _i.e._ six years
ago. The ashes are always buried near a temple sacred to Bhāwanī, and
_never_ by any other. Families too poor to raise a tomb of masonry in
memory of the burnt-sacrifice, are contented to raise a mound of earth,
and place a kulsa of red earthenware to mark the spot. In the sketch of
“The Kulsas[39],” Fig. 8 is one of this description, which I carried away
from these suttee-mounds.
The temple of Bhawānī is shaded by a most beautiful peepul-tree, from
the centre of which a fakīr’s flag was flying; it stands in a plantation
of mango-trees. I desired an Hindoo, who was present when I sketched the
temple, to count the suttee-graves around it. As he counted them, he
repeatedly made sālām to each mound.
The kulsa, Fig. 8, is made of common unglazed red pottery: there are
five points—one at the top, the others placed at equal spaces around it;
between the points are two figures of human beings, and two emblems like
a moon and a crescent, see Fig. 9. The kulsa is hollow, and has five
holes, through which the points, which are of solid earthenware, are
introduced before baking, see Fig. 10: height, ten inches and a half;
circumference just below the points, twenty-six inches; diameter at
bottom, six inches. The kulsa, Fig. 7, is another from a large suttee at
the same spot, of a different form; they call it a topee walla kulsa. The
suttees in the sketch of the temple of Bhawānī are all of masonry; the
mounds are invisible, lying at the back of the temple.
_Nov._—My beautiful Arab, Mootee, after taking a most marvellous quantity
of blue vitriol and opium, has recovered, but will be unfit for my
riding; the sinews of his fore-leg are injured; besides which, he is
rather too playful; he knocked down his sā’īs yesterday, tore his clothes
to pieces, bit two bits of flesh out of his back, and would perhaps have
killed him, had not the people in the bazār interfered and rescued the
man. It was an odd freak, he is such a sweet-tempered animal, and I never
knew him behave incorrectly before.
We spent the month of December, our hunting season, at Papamhow; and
purchased several couple of the Berkeley hounds, from the Calcutta
kennel, for the pack at Allahabad. I received a present of an excellent
little black horse with a long tail; and, mounted on him, used to go
out every day after the jackals and foxes. I am rich in riding-horses,
and the dark brown stud Arab Trelawny bids fair to rival Mootee in
my affections. Returning from chasing a jackal one evening, it was
very dark, and as Captain A⸺ S⸺ was cantering his Arab across the
parade-ground, the animal put his foot into a deep hole, and fell;
our friend thought nothing of it, and refused to be bled; a few days
afterwards the regiment quitted Allahabad, and he died the second day, on
the march to Benares. He was an ill-fated animal, that little horse of
his: they called him an Arab pony, but no good caste animal would have
been so vicious; he had one fault, a trick of biting at the foot of his
rider—he bit off the toe of his former master, mortification ensued, and
the man died. I often wished to mount him, but they would never allow me:
the creature was very handsome, and remarkably well formed; doubtless
a native would have found unlucky marks upon him—at that time I was
ignorant respecting samāt, or unlucky marks on horses.