_Touching the Children of the Sun and their City, and the
Hat-marked Caste and their Merits, and a Good Man’s Works in the
Wilderness._
It was worth a night’s discomfort and a revolver-bed to sleep upon--this
city of the Suryavansi, hidden among the hills that encompass the great
Pichola lake. Truly, the King who governs to-day is wise in his
determination to have no railroad to his capital. His predecessor was
more or less enlightened, and had he lived a few years longer, would
have brought the iron horse through the Dobarri--the green gate which is
the entrance of the Girwa or girdle of hills round Udaipur; and, with
the train, would have come the tourist who would have scratched his name
upon the Temple of Garuda and laughed horse-laughs upon the lake. Let
us, therefore, be thankful that the capital of Mewar is hard to reach,
and go abroad into a new and a strange land rejoicing.
Each man who has any claims to respectability walks armed, carrying his
tulwar sheathed in his hand, or hung by a short sling of cotton passing
over the shoulder, under his left armpit. His matchlock, or smooth-bore
if he has one, is borne naked on the shoulder.
Now it is possible to carry any number of lethal weapons without being
actually dangerous. An unhandy revolver, for instance, may be worn for
years, and, at the end, accomplish nothing more noteworthy than the
murder of its owner. But the Rajput’s weapons are not meant for display.
The Englishman caught a camel-driver who talked to him in Mewari, which
is a heathenish dialect, something like Multani to listen to; and the
man, very gracefully and courteously, handed him his sword and
matchlock, the latter a heavy stump-stock arrangement without pretence
of sights. The blade was as sharp as a razor, and the gun in perfect
working order. The coiled fuse on the stock was charred at the end, and
the curled ram’s-horn powder-horn opened as readily as a whisky-flask
that is much handled. Unfortunately, ignorance of Mewari prevented
conversation; so the camel-driver resumed his accoutrements and jogged
forward on his beast--a superb black one, with the short curled
_hubshee_ hair--while the Englishman went to the City, which is built on
hills on the borders of the lake. By the way, everything in Udaipur is
built on a hill. There is no level ground in the place, except the
Durbar Gardens, of which more hereafter. Because colour holds the eye
more than form, the first thing noticeable was neither temple nor fort,
but an ever-recurring picture, painted in the rudest form of native art,
of a man on horseback armed with a lance, charging an elephant-of-war.
As a rule, the elephant was depicted on one side the house-door and the
rider on the other. There was no representation of an army behind. The
figures stood alone upon the whitewash on house and wall and gate, again
and again and again. A highly intelligent priest grunted that it was a
_tazwir_; a private of the Maharana’s regular army suggested that it was
a _hathi_; while a wheat-seller, his sword at his side, was equally
certain that it was a Raja. Beyond that point, his knowledge did not go.
The explanation of the picture is this. In the days when Raja Maun of
Amber put his sword at Akbar’s service and won for him great kingdoms,
Akbar sent an army against Mewar, whose then ruler was Pertap Singh,
most famous of all the princes of Mewar. Selim, Akbar’s son, led the
army of the Toork; the Rajputs met them at the pass of Huldighat and
fought till one-half of their bands were slain. Once, in the press of
battle, Pertap, on his great horse, “Chytak,” came within striking
distance of Selim’s elephant, and slew the _mahout_, but Selim escaped,
to become Jehangir afterwards, and the Rajputs were broken. That was
three hundred years ago, and men have reduced the picture to a sort of
diagram that the painter dashes in, in a few minutes, without, it would
seem, knowing what he is commemorating. Elsewhere, the story is drawn in
line even more roughly.
Thinking of these things, the Englishman made shift to get at the City,
and presently came to a tall gate, the gate of the Sun, on which the
elephant-spikes, that he had seen rotted with rust at Amber, were new
and pointed and effective. The City gates are said to be shut at night,
and there is a story of a Viceroy’s Guard-of-Honour which arrived before
daybreak, being compelled to crawl ignominiously man by man through a
little wicket gate, while the horses had to wait without till sunrise.
But a civilised yearning for the utmost advantages of octroi, and not a
fierce fear of robbery and wrong, is at the bottom of the continuance of
this custom. The walls of the City are loopholed for musketry, but there
seem to be no mountings for guns, and the moat without the walls is dry
and gives cattle pasture. Coarse rubble in concrete faced with stone,
makes the walls moderately strong.
Internally, the City is surprisingly clean, though with the exception of
the main street, paved after the fashion of Jullundur, of which, men
say, the pavement was put down in the time of Alexander and worn by
myriads of naked feet into deep barrels and grooves. In the case of
Udaipur, the feet of the passengers have worn the rock veins that crop
out everywhere, smooth and shiny; and in the rains the narrow gullies
must spout like fire-hoses. The people have been untouched by cholera
for four years--proof that Providence looks after those who do not look
after themselves, for Neemuch Cantonment, a hundred miles away, suffered
grievously last summer. “And what do you make in Udaipur?” “Swords,”
said the man in the shop, throwing down an armful of _tulwars_,
_kuttars_ and _khandas_ on the stones. “Do you want any? Look here!”
Hereat, he took up one of the commoner swords and flourished it in the
sunshine. Then he bent it double, and, as it sprang straight, began to
make it “speak.” Arm-vendors in Udaipur are a genuine race, for they
sell to people who really use their wares. The man in the shop was
rude--distinctly so. His first flush of professional enthusiasm abated,
he took stock of the Englishman and said calmly:--“What do _you_ want
with a sword?” Then he picked up his goods and retreated, while certain
small boys, who deserved a smacking, laughed riotously from the coping
of a little temple hard by. Swords seem to be the sole manufacture of
the place. At least, none of the inhabitants the Englishman spoke to
could think of any other.
There is a certain amount of personal violence in and about the State,
or else where would be the good of the weapons? There are occasionally
dacoities more or less important; but these are not often heard of and,
indeed, there is no special reason why they should be dragged into the
light of an unholy publicity, for the land governs itself in its own
way, and is always in its own way, which is by no means ours, very
happy. The Thakurs live, each in his own castle on some rock-faced hill,
much as they lived in the days of Tod; though their chances of
distinguishing themselves, except in the school, sewer, and dispensary
line, are strictly limited. Nominally, they pay _chutoond_, or a sixth
of their revenues to the State, and are under feudal obligations to
supply their Head with so many horsemen per thousand rupees; but whether
the _chutoond_ justifies its name and what is the exact extent of the
“tail” leviable, they, and perhaps the Rajputana Agency, alone know.
They are quiet, give no trouble except to the wild boar, and personally
are magnificent men to look at. The Rajput shows his breeding in his
hands and feet, which are almost disproportionately small, and as well
shaped as those of women. His stirrups and sword-handles are even more
unusable by Westerns than those elsewhere in India, while the Bhil’s
knife-handle gives as large a grip as an English one. Now the little
Bhil is an aborigine which is humiliating to think of. His tongue, which
may frequently be heard in the City, seems to possess some variant of
the Zulu click; which gives it a weird and unearthly character. From the
main gate of the City the Englishman climbed uphill towards the Palace
and the Jugdesh Temple built by one Jaggat Singh at the beginning of the
last century. This building must be--but ignorance is a bad guide--Jain
in character. From basement to the stone socket of the temple
flag-staff, it is carved in high relief with friezes of elephants, men,
gods, and monsters in wearying profusion.
The management of the temple have daubed a large portion of the building
with whitewash, for which their revenues should be “cut” for a year or
two. The main shrine holds a large brazen image of Garuda, and, in the
corners of the courtyard of the main pile, are shrines to Mahadeo, and
the jovial, pot-bellied Ganesh. There is no repose in this architecture,
and the entire effect is one of repulsion; for the clustered figures of
man and brute seem always on the point of bursting into unclean,
wriggling life. But it may be that the builders of this form of house
desired to put the fear of all their many gods into the heart of the
worshippers.
From the temple whose steps are worn smooth by the feet of men, and
whose courts are full of the faint smell of stale flowers and old
incense, the Englishman went to the Palaces which crown the highest hill
overlooking the City. Here, too, whitewash had been unsparingly applied,
but the excuse was that the stately fronts and the pierced screens were
built of a perishable stone which needed protection against the weather.
One projecting window in the facade of the main Palace has been treated
with Minton tiles. Luckily it was too far up the wall for anything more
than the colour to be visible, and the pale blue against the pure white
was effective.
A picture of Ganesh looks out over the main courtyard which is entered
by a triple gate, and hard by is the place where the King’s elephants
fight over a low masonry wall. In the side of the hill on which the
Palaces stand, is built stabling for horses and elephants--proof that
the architects of old must have understood their business thoroughly.
The Palace is not a “show place,” and, consequently, the Englishman did
not see much of the interior. But he passed through open gardens with
tanks and pavilions, very cool and restful, till he came suddenly upon
the Pichola lake, and forgot altogether about the Palace. He found a
sheet of steel-blue water, set in purple and grey hills, bound in, on
one side, by marble bunds, the fair white walls of the Palace, and the
grey, timeworn ones of the city; and, on the other, fading away through
the white of shallow water, and the soft green of weed, marsh, and
rank-pastured river field, into the land. To enjoy open water
thoroughly, live for a certain number of years barred from anything
better than the yearly swell and shrinkage of one of the Five Rivers,
and then come upon two and a half miles of solid, restful lake, with a
cool wind blowing off it and little waves spitting against the piers of
a veritable, albeit hideously ugly, boat house. On the faith of an exile
from the Sea, you will not stay long among Palaces, be they never so
lovely, or in little rooms panelled with Dutch tiles, be these never so
rare and curious. And here follows a digression. There is no life so
good as the life of a loafer who travels by rail and road; for all
things and all people are kind to him. From the chill miseries of a
dak-bungalow where they slew one hen with as much parade as the French
guillotined Pranzini, to the well-ordered sumptuousness of the
Residency, was a step bridged over by kindly and unquestioning
hospitality. So it happened that the Englishman was not only able to go
upon the lake in a soft-cushioned boat, with everything handsome about
him, but might, had he chosen, have killed wild-duck with which the lake
swarms.
The mutter of water under a boat’s nose was a pleasant thing to hear
once more. Starting at the head of the lake, he found himself shut out
from sight of the main sheet of water in a loch bounded by a sunk,
broken bund to steer across which was a matter of some nicety. Beyond
that lay a second pool spanned by a narrow-arched bridge built, men
said, long before the City of the Rising Sun, which is little more than
three hundred years old. The bridge connects the City with Brahmapura--a
white-walled enclosure filled with many Brahmins and ringing
[Illustration: Page 77--“As a picture, a daringly insolent picture, it
would have been superb.”]
with the noise of their conches. Beyond the bridge, the body of the
lake, with the City running down to it, comes into full view; and
Providence has arranged for the benefit of such as delight in colours,
that the Rajputni shall wear the most striking tints that she can buy in
the bazaars, in order that she may beautify the ghats where she comes to
bathe.
The bathing-ledge at the foot of the City wall was lighted with women
clad in raw vermilion, dull red, indigo and sky-blue, saffron and pink
and turquoise; the water faithfully doubling everything. But the first
impression was of the unreality of the sight, for the Englishman found
himself thinking of the Simla Fine Arts Exhibition and the overdaring
amateurs who had striven to reproduce scenes such as these. Then a woman
rose up, and clasping her hands behind her head, looked at the passing
boat, and the ripples spread out from her waist, in blinding white
silver, far across the water. As a picture, a daringly insolent picture,
it would have been superb.
The boat turned aside to shores where huge turtles were lying, and a
stork had built her a nest, big as a hay-cock, in a withered tree, and a
bevy of coots were flapping and gabbling in the weeds or between great
leaves of the _Victoria Regia_--an “escape” from the Durbar Gardens.
Here were, as Mandeville hath it, “all manner of strange fowle"--divers
and waders, after their kind, kingfishers and snaky-necked birds of the
cormorant family, but no duck. They had seen the guns in the boat and
were flying to and fro in companies across the lake, or settling, wise
birds, in the glare of the sun on the water. The lake was swarming with
them, but they seemed to know exactly how far a twelve-bore would carry.
Perhaps their knowledge had been gained from the Englishman at the
Residency. Later, as the sun left the lake and the hills began to glow
like opals, the boat made her way to the shallow side of the lake,
through fields of watergrass and dead lotus-raffle that rose as high as
the bows, and clung lovingly about the rudder, and parted with the noise
of silk when it is torn. There she waited for the fall of twilight when
the duck would come home to bed, and the Englishman sprawled upon the
cushions in deep content and laziness, as he looked across to where two
marble Palaces floated upon the waters, and saw all the glory and beauty
of the City, and wondered whether Tod, in cocked hat and stiff stock,
had ever come shooting among the reeds, and, if so, how in the world he
had ever managed to bowl over.
“Duck and drake, by Jove! Confiding beasts, weren’t they? Hi! Lalla,
jump out and get them!” It was a brutal thing, this double-barrelled
murder perpetrated in the silence of the marsh when the kingly wild-duck
came back from his wanderings with his mate at his side, but--but--the
birds were very good to eat. After this and many other slaughters had
been accomplished, the boat went back in the full dusk, down narrow
water-lanes and across belts of weed, disturbing innumerable fowl on the
road, till she reached open water and “the moon like a rick afire was
rising over the dale,” and--it was not the “whit, whit, whit” of the
nightingale but the stately “_honk, honk_” of some wild geese, thanking
their stars that these pestilent _shikaris_ were going away.
If the Venetian owned the Pichola Sagar he might say with justice:--“See
it and die.” But it is better to live and go to dinner, and strike into
a new life--that of the men who bear the hat-mark on their brow as
plainly as the wellborn native carries the _trisul_ of Shiva.
They are of the same caste as the toilers on the Frontier--tough,
bronzed men, with wrinkles at the corners of the eyes, gotten by looking
across much sun-glare. When they would speak of horses they mention Arab
ponies, and their talk, for the most part, drifts Bombaywards, or to
Abu, which is their Simla. By these things the traveller may see that he
is far away from the Presidency; and will presently learn that he is in
a land where the railway is an incident and not an indispensable luxury.
Folk tell strange stories of drives in bullock-carts in the rains, of
break-downs in nullahs fifty miles from everywhere, and of elephants
that used to sink “for rest and refreshment” half-way across swollen
streams. Every place here seems fifty miles from everywhere, and the
“legs of a horse” are regarded as the only natural means of locomotion.
Also, and this to the Indian Cockney who is accustomed to the bleached
or office man is curious, there are to be found many veritable “tiger
men"--not story-spinners but such as have, in their wanderings from
Bikaneer to Indore, dropped their tiger in the way of business. They are
enthusiastic over princelings of little known fiefs, lords of austere
estates perched on the tops of unthrifty hills, hard riders and good
sportsmen. And five, six, yes fully nine hundred miles to the northward,
lives the sister branch of the same caste--the men who swear by Pathan,
Biluch and Brahui, with whom they have shot or broken bread.
There is a saying in Upper India that the more desolate the country the
greater the certainty of finding a Padre-Sahib. The proverb seems to
hold good in Udaipur, where the Scotch Presbyterian Mission have a post,
and others at Todgarh to the north and elsewhere. To arrive, under
Providence, at the cure of souls through the curing of bodies certainly
seems the most rational method of conversion; and this is exactly what
the Missions are doing. Their Padre in Udaipur is also an M. D., and of
him a rather striking tale is told. Conceiving that the City could bear
another hospital in addition to the State one, he took furlough, went
home, and there, by crusade and preaching, raised sufficient money for
the scheme, so that none might say that he was beholden to the State.
Returning, he built his hospital, a very model of neatness and comfort
and, opening the operation-book, announced his readiness to see any one
and every one who was sick. How the call was and is now responded to,
the dry records of that book will show; and the name of the Padre-Sahib
is honoured, as these ears have heard, throughout Udaipur and far
around. The faith that sends a man into the wilderness, and the secular
energy which enables him to cope with an evergrowing demand for medical
aid, must, in time, find their reward. If patience and unwearying
self-sacrifice carry any merit, they should do so soon. To-day the
people are willing enough to be healed, and the general influence of the
Padre-Sahib is very great. But beyond that.... Still it was impossible
to judge aright.