city of India, and formerly "as large as London," is the first
stopping place on the conventional tour from Bombay through the
northern part of the empire, because it contains the most perfect
and pure specimens of Saracenic architecture; and our experience
taught us that it is a place no traveler should miss. It certainly
ranks next to Agra and Delhi for the beauty and extent of its
architectural glories, and for other reasons it is worth visiting.
In the eleventh century it was the center of the Eden of India,
broad, fertile plains, magnificent forests of sweet-scented trees,
abounding in population and prosperity. It has passed through
two long periods of greatness, two of decay and one of revival.
Under the rule of Sidh Rajah, "the Magnificent," one of the noblest
and greatest of the Moguls, it reached the height of its wealth
and power at the beginning of the fifteenth century. He erected
schools, palaces and temples, and surrounded them with glorious
gardens. He called to his side learned pundits and scholarly
priests, who taught philosophy and morals under his generous
patronage. He encouraged the arts and industries. His wealth was
unlimited, and, according to local tradition, he lived in a style
of magnificence that has never been surpassed by any of the native
princes since. His jewels were the wonder of the world, and one
of the legends says that he inherited them from the gods. But,
unfortunately, his successors were weak and worthless men, and
the glory of his kingdom passed gradually away until, a century
later, his debilitated and indolent subjects were overcome and
passed under the power of a Moslem who, in the earlier part of
the sixteenth century, restored the importance of the province.
Ahmed Shah was his name.
He built a citadel of impregnable strength and imposing architecture
and surrounded it by a city with broad streets and splendid buildings
and called it after himself; for Ahmedabad means the City of Ahmed.
Where his predecessor attracted priests and scholars he brought
artists, clever craftsmen, skilled mechanics and artisans in gold,
silver, brass and clay; weavers of costly fabrics with genius to
design and skill to execute. Architects and engineers were sent
for from all parts of the world, and merchants came from every
country to buy wares. Thus Ahmedabad became a center of trade
and manufacture, with a population of a million inhabitants, and
was the richest and busiest city in the Mogul Empire. Merchants
who had come to buy in its markets spread its reputation over
the world and attracted valuable additions to its trades and
professions. Travelers, scholars and philosophers came to study
the causes of its prosperity, and marvelous stories are told by
them in letters and books they wrote concerning its palaces,
temples and markets. An envoy from the Duke of Holstein gives
us a vivid account of the grandeur of the city and the splendor
of the court, and tells of a wedding, at which the daughter of
Ahmed Shah married the second son of the grand mogul. She carried
to Delhi as her dower twenty elephants, a thousand horses and
six thousand wagons loaded with the richest stuffs of whatever
was rare in the country. The household of the rajah, he says,
consisted of five hundred persons, and cost him five thousand
pounds a month to maintain, "not comprehending the account of his
stables, where he kept five hundred horses and fifty elephants."
When this traveler visited the rajah he was sitting in a pavilion
in his garden, clad in a white vestment, according to the Indian
code, over which he had a cloak of gold "brocade," the ground
color being carnation lined with white satin, and above it was
a collar of sable, whereof the skins were sewed together so that
the tails hung over down his back.
Among the manufacturers and business men of Ahmedabad in those
days, as now, were many Jains--the Quakers of India--who belong
to the rich middle class. They believe in peace, and are so
tender-hearted that they will not even kill a mosquito or a flea.
They are great business men, however, notwithstanding their soft
hearts, and the most rapid money-makers in the empire. They built
many of the most beautiful temples in India, in which they worship
a kind and gentle god whose attributes are amiability, benevolence
and compassion. The Jains of Ahmedabad still maintain a large
"pinjrapol," or asylum for diseased and aged animals, with about
800 inmates, decrepit beasts of all species, by which they acquire
merit with their god. And about the streets, and in the outskirts
of the city, sitting on the tops of what look like telegraph
poles, are pigeon houses; some of them ornamented with carving,
other painted in gay colors and all of them very picturesque.
These are rest houses for birds, which the Jains have built,
and every day basins of food are placed in them for the benefit
of the hungry. In the groves outside of the city are thousands
of monkeys, and they are much cleaner and more respectable in
appearance than any you ever saw in a circus or a zoo. They are
as large as Italian greyhounds, and of similar color, with long
hair and uncommonly long tails, and so tame they will come up to
strangers who know enough to utter a call that they understand.
Our coachman bought a penny's worth of sweet bread in one of the
groceries that we passed, and when we reached the first grove
he uttered a cry similar to that which New England dairymen use
in calling their cattle. In an instant monkeys began to drop from
the limbs of trees that overhang the roadway, and came scampering
from the corners, where they had probably been indulging in noonday
naps. In two minutes he was surrounded by thirty-eight monkeys,
which leaped and capered around like so many dogs as he held
the sugar cake up in the air before them. It was a novel sight.
These monkeys are fed regularly at the expense of the Jains, and
none of God's creatures is too insignificant or irritating to
escape their comprehensive benevolence.
One of the temples of the Jains, the Swamee Narayan, as they call
it, on the outskirts of the city, is considered the noblest modern
sacred building in all India. It is a mass of elaborate carving,
tessellated marble floors and richly colored decorations, 150
feet long by 100 feet wide, with an overhanging roof supported
by eighty columns, and no two of them are alike. They are masses
of carving-figures of men and gods, saints and demons, animals,
insects, fishes, trees and flowers, such as are only seen in the
delirium of fever, are portrayed with the most exquisite taste
and delicacy upon all of the surface exposed. The courtyard is
inclosed by a colonnade of beautifully carved columns, upon which
open fifty shrines with pagoda domes about twelve feet high, and
in each of them are figures of Tirthankars, or saints of the
calendar of the Jains. The temple is dedicated to Dharmamath, a
sort of Jain John the Baptist, whose image, crowned with diamonds
and other jewels, sits behind a beautiful gilded screen.
Ahmedabad now has a population of about 130,000. The ancient
walls which inclose it are in excellent preservation and surround
an area of about two square miles. There are twelve arched gateways
with heavy teakwood doors studded with long brass spikes as a
defense against elephants, which in olden times were taught to
batter down such obstructions with their heads. The commerce of
the city has declined of late years, but the people are still
famous for objects of taste and ornament, and, according to the
experts, their "chopped" gold is "the finest archaic jewelry in
India," almost identical in shape and design with the ornaments
represented upon sculptured images in Assyria. The goldsmiths
make all kinds of personal adornments; necklaces, bracelets,
anklets, toe, finger, nose and ear rings, girdles and arm-bands
of gold, silver, copper and brass, and this jewelry is worn by the
women of India as the best of investments. They turn their money
into it instead of patronizing banks. As Mr. Micawber would have
expressed it, they convert their assets into portable property.
The manufacture of gold and silver thread occupies the attention
of thousands of people, and hundreds more are engaged in weaving
this thread with silk into brocades called "kincobs," worn by
rich Hindus and sold by weight instead of by measure. They are
practically metallic cloth. The warp, or the threads running
one way, is all either gold or silver, while the woof, or those
running the other, are of different colored silks, and the patterns
are fashioned with great taste and delicacy. These brocades wear
forever, but are very expensive. A coat such as a rajah or a rich
Hindu must wear upon an occasion of ceremony is worth several
thousand dollars. Indeed, rajahs have had robes made at Ahmedabad
for which the cloth alone cost $5,000 a yard. The skill of the
wire drawers is amazing. So great is their delicacy of touch
that they can make a thousand yards of silver thread out of a
silver dollar; and if you will give one of them a sovereign, in
a few moments he will reel off a spool of gold wire as fine as
No. 80 cotton, and he does it with the simplest, most primitive
of tools.
Nearly all the gold, silver and tin foil used in India is made
at Ahmedabad, also in a primitive way, for the metal is spread
between sheets of paper and beaten with a heavy hammer. The town
is famous for its pottery also, and for many other manufactured
goods.
The artisans are organized into guilds, like those of Europe in
ancient times, with rules and regulations as strict as those of
modern trades unions. The nagar-seth, or Lord Mayor, of Ahmedabad,
is the titular head of all the guilds, and presides over a central
council which has jurisdiction of matters of common interest. But
each of the trades has its own organization and officers. Membership
is hereditary; for in India, as in all oriental countries, it
is customary for children to follow the trade or profession of
their father. If an outsider desires to join one of the guilds
he is compelled to comply with very rigid regulations and pay a
heavy fee. Some of the guilds are rich, their property having
been acquired by fines, fees and legacies, and they loan money
to their own members. A serious crisis confronts the guilds of
Ahmedabad in the form of organized capital and labor-saving
machinery. Until a few years ago all of the manufacturing was
done in the households by hand work. Within recent years five
cotton factories, representing a capital of more than $2,500,000,
have been established, and furnish labor for 3,000 men, women and
children. This innovation was not opposed by the guilds because
its products would come into direct competition only with the
cotton goods of England, and would give employment to many idle
people; but now that silk looms and other machinery are proposed
the guilds are becoming alarmed and are asking where the intrusions
are likely to stop.
The tombs of Ahmed, and Ganj Bhash, his chaplain, or spiritual
adviser, a saintly mortal who admonished him of his sins and kept
his feet in the path that leads to paradise, are both delightful,
if such an adjective can apply, and are covered with exquisite
marble embroidery, almost incredible in its perfection of detail.
It is such as modern sculptors have neither the audacity or the
imagination to design nor the skill or patience to execute. But
they are not well kept. The rozah, or courtyard, in which the
great king lies sleeping, surrounded by his wives, his children
and other members of his family and his favorite ministers, is
not cared for. It is dirty and dilapidated.
[Illustration: HUTHI SINGH'S TOMB--AHMEDABAD]
This vision of frozen music, as some one has described it, is a
square building with a dome and walls of perforated fretwork in
marble as delicate as Jack Frost ever traced upon a window pane.
It is inclosed by a crumbling wall of mud, and can be reached only
through a narrow and dirty lane obstructed by piles of rubbish,
and the enjoyment of the visitor is sometimes destroyed and always
seriously interfered with by the importunities of priests, peddlers
and beggars who pursue him for backsheesh.
The lane from the mausoleum leads into the courtyard of the Jumma
Musjid, a mosque erected by Ahmed Shah at the height of his power
and glory. It is considered one of the most stately and satisfactory
examples of Saracenic architecture.
The most beautiful piece of carving, however, in this great
collection is a window in a deserted mosque called Sidi Sayid.
Perhaps you are familiar with it. It has been photographed over
and over again, and has been copied in alabaster, marble, plaster
and wax; it has been engraved, photographed and painted, and is used
in textbooks on architecture as an illustration of the perfection
reached by the sculptors of India. The design is so complicated
that I cannot describe it, but the central features are trees,
with intertwining boughs, and the Hindu who made it could use
his chisel with as free and delicate a hand as Raphael used his
brush. Fergusson, who is recognized as the highest authority on
architecture, says that it is "more like a work of nature than
any other architectural detail that has yet been designed, even
by the best masters of Greece or the middle ages." Yet the mosque
which this precious gem made famous is abandoned and deserted,
and the courtyard is now a cow pasture.
X
JEYPORE AND ITS MAHARAJA
A board of geographic names, similar to that we have in Washington,
is badly needed in India to straighten out discrepancies in the
nomenclature on the maps. I was told that only three towns in
all the vast empire have a single spelling; all the rest have
several; some have many; and the name of one town--I have forgotten
which--is given in sixty-five different ways. Jeypore, for example,
is given in fifteen. The sign over the entrance to the railway
station reads "Jeypure;" on the lamps that light the platform
it is painted "Jeypoor"; on the railway ticket it was "Jaypur";
on the bill of fare in the refreshment-room of the station it
was "Jaipor"; on a telegram delivered by the operator at the
station it was spelled "Jaiphur." If the employes about a single
establishment in the town can get up that number of spells, what
are we to expect from the rest of the inhabitants of a city of
150,000 people, and Jeypore is one of the simplest and easiest
names in the gazetteer. The neighboring city of Jodpore, capital
of the adjoining native state of Marwar, offers an even greater
variety of orthoepy, for it appears in a different spelling on each
of the three maps I carried around--a railway map, a government
map, and the map in Murray's Guide Book. This is a fair illustration
of the dissensions over nomenclature, which are bewildering to
a stranger, who never knows when he gets the right spelling,
and sometimes cannot even find the towns he is looking for.
Jodpore is famous for its forts, which present an imposing appearance
from a wide spreading plain, as they are perched at the top of a
rocky hill three hundred feet high, with almost perpendicular
sides. The only way to reach it is by a zigzag road chiseled
out of the cliff, which leads to a massive gateway. The walls
are twenty-eight feet high, twenty-eight feet thick, and are
crowned with picturesque towers. During ascent you are shown
the impressions of the hands of the fifteen wives of one of the
rajahs who were all burned in one grand holocaust upon his funeral
pyre. I don't know why they did it, but the marks are there.
Within the walls are some very interesting old palaces, built
in the fifteenth century, of pure Hindu architecture, and the
carvings and perforated marble work are of the most delicate
and beautiful designs. The treasury, which contains the family
jewels and plate, is the chief object of tourist curiosity, and
they are a collection worth going far to see. The pearls and
emeralds are especially fine, and are worth millions. The saddles,
bridles, harness and other stable equipments are loaded with gold
and silver ornaments set with precious stones, and the trappings
for elephants are covered with the most gorgeous gold and silver
embroidery.
About half a mile outside the city walls is a temple called the
Maha Mandir, whose roof is supported by a hundred richly decorated
columns. On each side of it are palaces intended exclusively
for the use of spirits of former rulers of the country. Their
beds are laid out with embroidery coverings and lace, sheltered
by golden canopies and curtains of brocade, but are never slept
in by living people, being reserved for the spirits of the dead.
This is the only exhibition of the kind to be seen in India,
and why the dead and gone rulers of Marwar should need lodgings
when those of the other Indian states do not, is an unsolved
mystery.
In the royal cemetery, three miles to the north, rows of beautiful
but neglected cenotaphs mark the spots where the remains of each
of some 300 rajahs were consumed with their widows. Some of them
had more and some less, according to their taste and opportunities,
and sutti, or widow burning, was enforced in Jodpore more strictly
than anywhere else in India. You can imagine the thoughts this
extraordinary place suggests. Within its walls, in obedience
to an awful and relentless custom, not less than nine hundred
or a thousand innocent, helpless women were burned alive, for
these oriental potentates certainly must have allowed themselves
at least three wives each. That would be a very moderate estimate.
I have no doubt that some of them had forty, and perhaps four
hundred, and we know that one had fifteen. But no matter how
many times a rajah went to the matrimonial altar, every wife that
outlived him was burned upon his funeral pyre in order that he
might enjoy her society in the other world. Since widow burning was
stopped by the British government in the sixties, the spirits of
the rajahs of Jodpore have since been compelled to go to paradise
without company. But they do not take any chances of offending the
deities by neglect, for on a hill that overlooks their cemetery
they have erected a sort of sweepstakes temple to Three Hundred
Million Gods.
At the palace of the rajah of Ulwar, in a city of the same name,
sometimes spelled Alwar and in forty other different ways, which
lies about thirty miles north of Jodpore, is another collection
of jewels, ranked among the finest in India. The treasure-house
contains several great chests of teakwood, handsomely carved
and gilded, bound with gold and silver bands, and filled with
valuable plate, arms, equipment, vessels and ornaments that have
accumulated in the family during several centuries, and no matter
how severe the plague or how many people are dying of famine,
these precious heirlooms have never been disturbed. Perhaps the
most valuable piece of the collection is a drinking cup, cut from
a single emerald, as large as those used for after dinner coffee.
There is a ruby said to be one of the largest in existence and
worth $750,000; a yellow diamond valued at $100,000; several
strings of almost priceless pearls and other jewels of similar
value. There are caskets of gold and ivory in which hundreds of
thousands of dollars' worth of jewels are imbedded, perfumery
bottles of solid gold with the surfaces entirely incrusted with
pearls and diamonds, and hung upon the walls around the apartment
are shawls that are worth a thousand times their weight in gold.
The saddles, harness and elephant trappings are much more beautiful
and costly than those at Jodpore, and in the adjoining armory is
a remarkable collection of swords and other weapons with hilts
of gold, jade, enamel and jewels. A coat of mail worn by Bani
Singh, grandfather of the present rajah, is made of solid gold,
weighing sixteen and a half pounds, and is lavishly decorated
with diamonds. The library is rich in rare oriental books and
manuscripts wonderfully illuminated in colors and gold. It has
a large collection of editions of the Koran in fifty or more
different languages, and one manuscript book called "The Gulistan"
is claimed to be the most valuable volume in India. The librarian
insisted that it is worth 500,000 rupees, which is equivalent to
about $170,000, and declared that the actual cost of the gold
used in illuminating it was more than $50,000. It is a modern
manuscript copy of a religious poem, made in 1848 by a German
scribe at the order of the Maharaja Bani Singh. The miniatures
and other pictures were painted by a native artist at Delhi,
and the ornamental scroll work upon the margins of the pages and
the initial letters were done by a resident of Ulwar.
Nearly all of the capitals of the provinces of Rajputana have
similar treasures, the accumulations of centuries, and it seems
like criminal negligence to keep such enormous sums of money tied
up in jewels and useless ornaments when they might be expended or
invested to the great advantage of the people in public works and
manufactories. Some of the towns need such industries very badly
because, off the farms, there is nothing in the way of employment
for either men or women, and every branch of agriculture is
overcrowded. One may moralize about these conditions as long
as he likes; however, changes occur very slowly in India, and as
Kipling so pertinently puts it in one of his poems, it's only
a fool "Who tries to hustle the East."
Jeypore is the best, the largest and most prosperous of the twenty
Rajput capitals, and is beyond comparison the finest modern city
in India. It is also the busiest. Everybody seems to have plenty
to do, and plenty to spend. The streets are as crowded and as
busy as those of London or New York, with a bustling and stalwart
race of men and women, happy and contented, and showing more
energy than you often see in an oriental country. The climate is
cool, dry and healthful. The city stands upon a sandy and arid
plain, 1,600 feet above the sea, surrounded by stony hills and
wide wastes of desert, but, even these natural disadvantages have
contributed to its wealth and industries, for the barren hills are
filled with deposits of fine clays, rare ores and cheap jewels
like garnets, carbuncles and agates, which have furnished the
people one of their most profitable trades. Out of this material
they make an enamel which is famous everywhere, and has been the
source of great gain and fame. It is shipped in large quantities
to Europe, but the greater part is sold in the markets of India.
[Illustration: STREET CORNER--JEYPORE, INDIA]