V.

_Of the Sordidness of the Supreme Government on the Revenue Side;

and of the Palace of Jeypore--A great King’s Pleasure-House, and

the Work of the Servants of State._

Internally, there is, in all honesty, no limit to the luxury of the

Jeypore Museum. It revels in “South Kensington” cases--of the approved

pattern--that turn the beholder home-sick, and South Kensington labels,

whereon the description, measurements and price of each object, are

fairly printed. These make savage one who knows how labelling is bungled

in some of the Government Museums--those starved barns that are supposed

to hold the economic exhibits, not of little States but of great

Provinces.

The floors are of dark red chunam, overlaid with a discreet and silent

matting; the doors, where they are not plate-glass, are of carved wood,

no two alike, hinged by sumptuous brass hinges on to marble jambs and

opening without noise. On the carved marble pillars of each hall are

fixed revolving cases of the S. K. M. pattern to show textile fabrics,

gold lace and the like. In the recesses of the walls are more cases, and

on the railing of the gallery that runs round each of the three great

central rooms, are fixed low cases to hold natural history specimens and

models of fruits and vegetables.

Hear this, Governments of India from the Punjab to Madras! The doors

come true to the jamb, the cases, which have been through a hot weather,

are neither warped nor cracked, nor are there unseemly tallow-drops and

flaws in the glasses. The maroon cloth, on or against which the exhibits

are placed, is of close texture, untouched by the moth, neither stained

nor meagre nor sunfaded; the revolving cases revolve freely and without

rattling; there is not a speck of dust from one end of the building to

the other, because the menial staff are numerous enough to keep

everything clean, and the Curator’s office is a veritable office--not a

shed or a bath-room, or a loose-box partitioned from the main building.

These things are so because money has been spent on the Museum, and it

is now a rebuke to all other Museums in India, from Calcutta downwards.

Whether it is not too good to be buried away in a Native State is a

question which envious men may raise and answer as they choose. Not long

ago, the Editor of a Bombay paper passed through it, but having the

interests of the Egocentric Presidency before his eyes, dwelt more upon

the idea of the building than its structural beauties; saying that

Bombay, who professed a weakness for technical education, should be

ashamed of herself. And herein he was quite right.

The system of the Museum is complete in intention as are its

appointments in design. At present there are some fifteen thousand

objects of art, “surprising in themselves” as, Count Smaltork would say,

a complete exposition of the arts, from enamels to pottery and from

brassware to stone-carving, of the State of Jeypore. They are compared

with similar arts of other lands. Thus a Damio’s sword--a gem of

lacquer-plaited silk and stud-work--flanks the _tulwars_ of Marwar and

the _jezails_ of Tonk; and reproductions of Persian and Russian

brasswork stand side by side with the handicrafts of the pupils of the

Jeypore School of Art. A photograph of His Highness the present Maharaja

is set among the arms, which are the most prominent features of the

first or metal-room. As the villagers enter, they salaam reverently to

the photo, and then move on slowly, with an evidently intelligent

interest in what they see. Ruskin could describe the scene

admirably--pointing out how reverence must precede the study of art,

and how it is good for Englishmen and Rajputs alike to bow on occasion

before Gessler’s cap. They thumb the revolving cases of cloths do these

rustics, and artlessly try to feel the texture through the protecting

glass. The main object of the Museum is avowedly provincial--to show the

craftsman of Jeypore the best that his predecessors could do, and to

show him what foreign artists have done. In time--but the Curator of the

Museum has many schemes which will assuredly bear fruit in time, and it

would be unfair to divulge them. Let those who doubt the thoroughness of

a Museum under one man’s control, built, filled, and endowed with royal

generosity--an institution perfectly independent of the Government of

India--go and exhaustively visit Dr. Hendley’s charge at Jeypore. Like

the man who made the building, he refuses to talk, and so the greater

part of the work that he has in hand must be guessed at.

At one point, indeed, the Curator was taken off his guard. A huge map of

the kingdom showed in green the portions that had been brought under

irrigation, while blue circles marked the towns that owned dispensaries.

“I want to bring every man in the State within twenty miles of a

dispensary, and I’ve nearly done it,” said he. Then he checked himself,

and went off to food-grains in little bottles as being neutral and

colourless things. Envy is forced to admit that the arrangement of the

Museum--far too important a matter to be explained offhand--is

Continental in its character, and has a definite end and bearing--a

trifle omitted by many institutions other than Museums. But--in fine,

what can one say of a collection whose very labels are gilt-edged!

Shameful extravagance? Nothing of the kind--only finish, perfectly in

keeping with the rest of the fittings--a finish that we in _kutcha_

India have failed to catch. That is all!

From the Museum go out through the city to the Maharaja’s

Palace--skilfully avoiding the man who would show you the Maharaja’s

European billiard-room, and wander through a wilderness of sunlit,

sleepy courts, gay with paint and frescoes, till you reach an inner

square, where smiling grey-bearded men squat at ease and play

_chaupur_--just such a game as cost the Pandavs the fair Draupadi--with

inlaid dice and gaily lacquered pieces. These ancients are very polite

and will press you to play, but give no heed to them, for _chaupur_ is

an expensive game--expensive as quail-fighting, when you have backed the

wrong bird and the people are laughing at your inexperience. The

Maharaja’s Palace is arrogantly gay, overwhelmingly rich in candelabra,

painted ceilings, gilt mirrors and other evidences of a too hastily

assimilated civilisation; but, if the evidence of the ear can be

trusted, the old, old game of intrigue goes on as merrily as of yore. A

figure in saffron came out of a dark arch into the sunlight, almost

falling into the arms of one in pink. “Where have you come from?” “I

have been to see ----” the name was unintelligible. “That is a lie: you

have _not_!” Then, across the court, some one laughed a low croaking

laugh. The pink and saffron figures separated as though they had been

shot, and disappeared into separate boltholes. It was a curious little

incident, and might have meant a great deal or just nothing at all. It

distracted the attention of the ancients bowed above the _chaupur_

cloth.

In the Palace-gardens there is even a greater stillness than that about

the courts, and here nothing of the West, unless a hypercritical soul

might take exception to the lamp-posts. At the extreme end lies a

lake-like tank swarming with _muggers_. It is reached through an opening

under a block of zenana buildings. Remembering that all beasts by the

palaces of Kings or the temples of priests in this country would answer

to the name of “Brother,” the Englishman cried with the voice of faith

across the water, in a key as near as might be to the melodious howl of

the “monkey faquir” on the top of Jakko. And the mysterious freemasonry

did not fail. At the far end of the tank rose a ripple that grew and

grew and grew like a thing in a nightmare, and became presently an aged

_mugger_. As he neared the shore, there emerged, the green slime thick

upon his eyelids, another beast, and the two together snapped at a

cigar-butt--the only reward for their courtesy. Then, disgusted, they

sank stern first with a gentle sigh. Now a _mugger’s_ sigh is the most

suggestive sound in animal speech. It suggested first the zenana

buildings overhead, the walled passes through the purple hills beyond, a

horse that might clatter through the passes till he reached the Man

Sagar Lake below the passes, and a boat that might row across the Man

Sagar till it nosed the wall of the Palace-tank and then--then uprose

the _mugger_ with the filth upon his forehead and winked one horny

eyelid--in truth he did!--and so supplied a fitting end to a foolish

fiction of old days and things that might have been. But it must be

unpleasant to live in a house whose base is washed by such a tank.

And so back as Pepys says, through the chu-named courts, and among the

gentle sloping paths between the orange trees, up to an entrance of the

Palace guarded by two rusty brown dogs from Kabul, each big as a man,

and each requiring a man’s charpoy to sleep upon. Very gay was the front

of the Palace, very brilliant were the glimpses of the damask-couched,

gilded rooms within, and very, very civilised were the lamp-posts with

Ram Singh’s monogram, devised to look like V. R., at the bottom, and a

coronet, as hath been shown, at the top. An unseen brass band among the

orange-bushes struck up the overture of the _Bronze Horse_. Those who

know the music will see at once that that was the only tune which

exactly and perfectly fitted the scene and its surroundings. It was a

coincidence and a revelation.

In his time and when he was not fighting, Jey Singh the Second, who

built the city, was a great astronomer--a royal Omar Khayyam, for he,

like the tent-maker of Nishapur, reformed a calendar, and strove to

wring their mysteries from the stars with instruments worthy of a King.

But in the end he wrote that the goodness of the Almighty was above

everything, and died; leaving his observatory to decay without the

Palace-grounds.

From the _Bronze Horse_ to the grass-grown enclosure that holds the

Yantr Samrat, or Prince of Dials, is rather an abrupt passage. Jey Singh

built him a dial with a gnomon some ninety feet high, to throw a shadow

against the sun, and the gnomon stands to-day, though there is grass in

the kiosque at the top and the flight of steps up the hypotenuse is

worn. He built also a zodiacal dial--twelve dials upon one platform--to

find the moment of true noon at any time of the year, and hollowed out

of the earth place for two hemispherical cups, cut by belts of stone,

for comparative observations.

He made cups for calculating eclipses, and a mural quadrant and many

other strange things of stone and mortar, of which people hardly know

the names and but very little of the uses. Once, said the keeper of two

tiny elephants, _Indur_ and _Har_, a _Sahib_ came with the _Burra Lat

Sahib_, and spent eight days in the enclosure of the great neglected

observatory, seeing and writing things in a book. But _he_ understood

Sanskrit--the Sanskrit upon the faces of the dials, and the meaning of

the gnoma and pointers. Now-a-days no one understands Sanskrit--not even

the Pundits; but without doubt Jey Singh was a great man.

The hearer echoed the statement, though he knew nothing of astronomy,

and of all the wonders in the observatory was only struck by the fact

that the shadow of the Prince of Dials moved over its vast plate so

quickly that it seemed as though Time, wroth at the insolence of Jey

Singh, had loosed the Horses of the Sun and were sweeping

everything--dainty Palace-gardens and ruinous instruments--into the

darkness of eternal night. So he went away chased by the shadow on the

dial, and returned to the hotel, where he found men who said--this must

be a catch-word of Globe-Trotters--that they were “much pleased at”

Amber. They further thought that “house-rent would be cheap in those

parts,” and sniggered over the witticism. Jey Singh, in spite of a few

discreditable _laches_, was a temperate and tolerant man; but he would

have hanged those Globe-Trotters in their trunk-straps as high as the

Yantr Samrat.

Next morning, in the grey dawn, the Englishman rose up and shook the

sand of Jeypore from his feet, and went with Master Coryatt and Sir

Thomas Roe to “Adsmir,” wondering whether a year in Jeypore would be

sufficient to exhaust its interest, and why he had not gone out to the

tombs of the dead Kings and the passes of Gulta and the fort of Motee

Dungri. But what he wondered at most--knowing how many men who have in

any way been connected with the birth of an institution, do, to the end

of their days, continue to drag forward and exhume their labours and the

honours that did _not_ come to them--was the work of the two men who,

together for years past, have been pushing Jeypore along the

stone-dressed paths of civilisation, peace and comfort. “Servants of the

Raj” they called themselves, and surely they have served the Raj past

all praise. The pen and tact of a Wilfred Blunt are needed to fitly lash

their reticence. But the people in the city and the camel-driver from

the sand-hills told of them. They themselves held their peace as to what

they had done, and, when pressed, referred--crowning baseness--to

reports. Printed ones!