_The Comedy of Errors and the Exploitation of Boondi. The Castaway
of the Dispensary and the Children of the Schools. A Consideration
of the Shields of Rajasthan and other trifles._
It is high time that a new treaty were made with Maha Rao Raja Ram
Singh, Bahadur, Raja of Boondi. He keeps the third article of the old
one too faithfully, which says that he “shall not enter into
negotiations with anyone without the consent of the British Government.”
He does not negotiate at all. Arrived at Boondi Gate, the Englishman
asked where he might lay his head for the night, and the Quarter Guard
with one accord said:--“The Sukh Mahal, which is beyond the city,” and
the tonga went thither through the length of the town, of which more
presently, till it arrived at a pavilion on a lake--a place of two
turrets connected by an open colonnade. The “house” was open to the
winds of heaven and the pigeons of the Raj; but the latter had polluted
more than the first could purify. A snowy-bearded chowkidar crawled out
of a place of tombs which he seemed to share with some monkeys, and
threw himself into Anglo-Saxon attitudes. He was a great deal worse than
Ram Baksh, for he said that all the Officer Sahibs of Deoli came to the
Sukh Mahal for _shikar_ and--never went away again, so pleased were
they. The Sahib had brought the honour of his Presence, and he was a
very old man, and without a _purwana_ could do nothing. Then he fell
deeply asleep without warning; and there was a pause, of one hour only,
which the Englishman spent in seeing the lake. It, like the jhils on the
road, wound in and out among the hills, and, on the bund side, was
bounded by a hill of black rock crowned with a _chhatri_ of grey stone.
Below the bund was a garden as fair as eye could wish, and the shores of
the lake were dotted with little temples. Given a habitable house--a
mere dak-bungalow--it would be a delightful spot to rest in. Warned by
some bitter experiences in the past, the Englishman knew that he was in
for the demi-semi-royal or embarrassing reception, when a man, being the
unwelcome guest of a paternal State, is neither allowed to pay his way
and make himself comfortable, nor is he willingly entertained. When he
saw a one-eyed munshi, he felt certain that Ganesh had turned upon him
at last. The munshi demanded and received the _purwana_. Then he sat
down and questioned the traveller exhaustively as to his character and
profession. Having thoroughly satisfied himself that the visitor was in
no way connected with the Government or the “Agenty Sahib Bahadur,” he
took no further thought of the matter; and the day began to draw in upon
a grassy bund, an open work pavilion, and a disconsolate tonga.
At last the faithful servitor, who had helped to fight the Battle of the
Mail Bags at Udaipur, broke his silence, and vowing that all these
devil-people--not more than twelve--had only come to see the tamasha,
suggested the breaking of the munshi’s head. And, indeed, that seemed
the only way of breaking the ice; for the munshi had in the politest
possible language, put forward the suggestion that there was nothing
particular to show that the Sahib who held the _purwana_ had really any
right to hold it. The chowkidar woke up and chaunted a weird chaunt,
accompanied by the Anglo-Saxon attitudes, a new set. He was an old man,
and all the Sahib-log said so, and within the pavilion were tables and
chairs and lamps and bath-tubs, and everything that the heart of man
could desire. Even now an enormous staff of _khalassis_ were arranging
all these things for the comfort of the Sahib Bahadur and Protector of
the Poor, who had brought the honour and glory of his Presence all the
way from Deoli. What did tables and chairs and eggs and fowls and very
bright lamps matter to the Raj? He was an old man and.... “Who put the
present Raja on the guddee?” “Lake Sahib,” promptly answered the
chowkidar. “I was there. That is the news of many old years.” Now Tod
says it was he himself who installed “Lalji the beloved” in the year
1821. The Englishman began to lose faith in the chowkidar. The munshi
said nothing but followed the Englishman with his one workable eye. A
merry little breeze crisped the waters of the lake, and the fish began
to frolic before going to bed.
“Is nobody going to do or bring anything?” said the Englishman faintly,
wondering whether the local jail would give him a bed if he killed the
munshi. “I am an old man,” said the chowkidar, “and because of their
great respect and reverence for the Sahib in whose Presence I am only a
bearer of orders and a servant awaiting them, men, many men, are
bringing now _kanats_ which I with my own hands will wrap, here and
there, there and here, in and about the pillars of this place; and thus
you, O Sahib, who have brought the honour of your Presence to the Boondi
Raj over the road to Deoli, which is a _kutcha_ road, will be provided
with a very fine and large apartment over which I will watch while you
go to kill the tigers in these hills.”
By this time two youths had twisted _kanats_ round some of the pillars
of the colonnade, making a sort of loose-box with a two-foot air-way all
round the top. There was no door, but there were unlimited windows. Into
this enclosure the chowkidar heaped furniture on which many generations
of pigeons had evidently been carried off by cholera, until he was
entreated to desist. “What,” said he scornfully, “are tables and chairs
to this Raj? If six be not enough, let the Presence give an order, and
twelve shall be forthcoming. Everything shall be forthcoming.” Here he
filled a _chirag_ with kerosene oil and set it in a box upon a stick.
Luckily, the oil which he poured so lavishly from a quart bottle was
bad, or he would have been altogether consumed.
Night had fallen long before this magnificence was ended. The
superfluous furniture--chairs for the most part--was shovelled out into
the darkness and by the light of a flamboyant _chirag_--a merry wind
forbade candles--the Englishman went to bed, and was lulled to sleep by
the rush of the water escaping from the overflow trap and the splash of
the water-turtle as he missed the evasive fish. It was a curious sight.
Cats and dogs rioted about the enclosure, and a wind from the lake
bellied the _kanats_. The brushwood of the hills around snapped and
cracked as beasts went through it, and creatures--not jackals--made
dolorous noises. On the lake it seemed that hundreds of water-birds were
keeping a hotel, and that there were arrivals and departures throughout
the night. The Raj insisted upon providing a guard of two sepoys, very
pleasant men on four rupees a month. These said that tigers sometimes
wandered about on the hills above the lake, but were most generally to
be found five miles away. And the Englishman promptly dreamed that a one
eyed tiger came into his tent without a _purwana_. But it was only a
wild cat after all; and it fled before the shoes of civilisation.
The Sukh Mahal was completely separated from the city, and might have
been a country-house. It should be mentioned that Boondi is jammed into
a V-shaped gorge--the valley at the main entrance being something less
than five hundred yards across. As it splays out, the thickly-packed
houses follow its line, and, seen from above, seem like cattle being
herded together preparatory to a stampede through the gate. Owing to the
set of the hills, very little of the city is visible except from the
Palace. It was in search of this latter that the Englishman went abroad
and became so interested in the streets that he forgot all about it for
a time. Jeypore is a show-city and is decently drained; Udaipur is
blessed with a State Engineer and a printed form of Government; for
Jodhpur the dry sand, the burning sun, and an energetic doctor have done
a good deal, but Boondi has none of these things. The crampedness of the
locality aggravates the evil, and it can only be in the rains which
channel and furrow the rocky hill-sides that Boondi is at all swept out.
The Nal Sagar, a lovely little stretch of water, takes up the head of
the valley called the Banda Gorge, and must, in the nature of things,
receive a good deal of unholy drainage. But setting aside this weakness,
it is a fascinating place--this jumbled city of straight streets and
cool gardens, where gigantic mangoes and peepuls intertwine over
gurgling water-courses, and the cuckoo comes at mid-day. It boasts no
foolish Municipality to decree when a house is dangerous and
unhabitable. The newer shops are built into, on to, over and under,
time-blackened ruins of an older day, and the little children skip about
tottering arcades and grass-grown walls, while their parents chatter
below in the crowded bazaar. In the back slums, the same stones seem to
be used over and over again for house-building, perhaps, because there
is no space to bring up laden buffaloes. Wheeled conveyances are scarce
in Boondi City--there is scant room for carts, and the streets are paved
with knobsome stones, unpleasant to walk over. From time to time an
inroad of _Bunjaras_’ pack-bullocks sweeps the main street clear of
life, or one of the Raja’s elephants--he has twelve of them--blocks the
way. But, for the most part, the foot passengers have all the city for
their own.
They do not hurry themselves. They sit in the sun and think, or put on
all the arms in the family, and, hung with ironmongery, parade before
their admiring friends. Other men, lean, dark men, with bound jaws and
only a tulwar for weapon, dive in and out of the dark alleys, on errands
of State. It is a blissfully lazy city, doing everything in the real,
true, original native way, and it is kept in very good order by the
Durbar. There either is or is not an order for everything. There is no
order to sell
[Illustration: Page 202--“One of the Raja’s elephants--he has twelve of
them--blocks the way.”]
fishing-hooks, or to supply an Englishman with milk, or to change for
him Currency Notes. He must only deal with the Durbar for whatever he
requires; and wherever he goes he must be accompanied by at least two
men. They will tell him nothing, for they know or affect to know nothing
of the city. They will do nothing except shout at the little innocents
who joyfully run after the stranger and demand _pice_, but there they
are, and there they will stay till he leaves the city, accompanying him
to the gate, and waiting there a little to see that he is fairly off and
away. Englishmen are not encouraged in Boondi. The intending traveller
would do well to take a full suit of Political uniform with the
sun-flowers, and the little black sword to sit down upon. The local god
is the “Agenty Sahib,” and he is an incarnation without a name--at least
among the lower classes. The educated, when speaking of him, always use
the courtly “Bahadur” affix: and yet it is a mean thing to gird at a
State which, after all, is not bound to do anything for intrusive
Englishmen without any visible means of livelihood. The King of this
fair city should declare the blockade absolute, and refuse to be
troubled with anyone except “Colon-nel Baltah Agenty Sahib Bahadur” and
the Politicals. If ever a railway is run through Kotah, as men on the
Bombay side declare it must be, the cloistered glory of Boondi will
depart, for Kotah is only twenty miles easterly of the city and the road
is moderately good. In that day the Globe-Trotter will pry about the
place, and the Charitable Dispensary--a gem among dispensaries--will be
public property.
The Englishman was hunting for the statue of a horse, a great horse
hight Hunja, who was a steed of Irak, and a King’s gift to Rao Omeda,
one time monarch of Boondi. He found it in the city square as Tod had
said; and it was an unlovely statue, carven after the dropsical fashion
of later Hindu art. No one seemed to know anything about it. A little
further on, one cried from a bye-way in rusty English:--“Come and see my
Dispensary.” There are only two men in Boondi who speak English. One is
the head, and the other the assistant, teacher of the English side of
Boondi Free School. This third was, some twenty years ago, a pupil of
the Lahore Medical College when that institution was young; and he only
remembered a word here and there. He was head of the Charitable
Dispensary; and insisted upon, then and there, organising a small
durbar, and pulling out all his books for inspection. Escape was
hopeless: nothing less than a formal inspection and introduction to all
the native Baids would serve. There were sixteen beds in and about the
courtyard, and between twenty and thirty out-patients stood in
attendance. Making allowances for untouched Orientalism, the Dispensary
is a good one, and must relieve a certain amount of human misery. There
is no other in all Boondi. The operation-book, kept in English, showed
the principal complaints of the country. They were:--“Asthama,”
“Numonia,” “Skin-diseas,” “Dabalaty,” and “Loin-bite.” This last item
occurred again and again--three and four cases per week--and it was not
until the Doctor said--“_Sher se mara_” that the Englishman read it
aright. It was “lion-bite,” or tiger, if you insist upon zoological
accuracy. There was one incorrigible idiot, a handsome young man, naked
as the day, who sat in the sunshine, shivering and pressing his hands to
his head. “I have given him blisters and setons--have tried native and
English treatment for two years, but it is no use. He is always as you
see him, and now he stays here by the favour of the Durbar, which is a
very good and pitiful Durbar,” said the Doctor. There were many such
pensioners of the Durbar--men afflicted with chronic “asthama” who
stayed “by favour,” and were kindly treated. They were resting in the
sunshine, their hands on their knees, sure that their daily dole of
grain and tobacco and opium would be forthcoming. “All folk, even little
children, eat opium here,” said the Doctor, and the diet-book proved it.
After laborious investigation of everything, down to the last indent to
Bombay for Europe medicines, the Englishman was suffered to depart.
“Sir, I thank....” began the Native Doctor, but the rest of the sentence
stuck. Sixteen years in Boondi does not increase knowledge of English;
and he went back to his patients, gravely conning over the name of the
Principal of the Lahore Medical School--a College now--who had taught
him all he knew, and to whom he intended to write. There was something
pathetic in the man’s catching at news from the outside world of men he
had known as Assistant and House Surgeons who are now Rai Bahadurs, and
his parade of the few shreds of English that still clung to him. May he
treat “loin-bites” and “catrack” successfully for many years. In the
happy, indolent, fashion that must have merits which we cannot
understand, he is doing a good work, and the Durbar allows his
Dispensary as much as it wants.
Close to the Dispensary stood the Free School, and thither an
importunate munshi steered the Englishman who, by this time, was
beginning to persuade himself that he really was an accredited agent of
Government sent to report on the progress of Boondi. From a
peepul-shaded courtyard came a clamour of young voices. Thirty or forty
little ones, from five to eight years old, were sitting in an open
verandah learning _hissab_ and Hindustani, said the teacher. No need to
ask from what castes they came, for it was written on their faces that
they were Mahajans, Oswals, Aggerwals, and in one or two cases it
seemed, Sharawaks of Guzerat. They were learning the business of their
lives and, in time, would take their fathers’ places, and show in how
many ways money may be manipulated. Here the profession-type came out
with startling distinctness. Through the chubbiness of almost babyhood,
or the delicate suppleness of mature years, in mouth and eyes and hands,
it betrayed itself. The Rahtor, who comes of a fighting-stock, is a fine
animal and well-bred; the Hara, who seems to be more compactly-built, is
also a fine animal; but for a race that show blood in every line of
their frame, from the arch of the instep to the modelling of the head,
the financial--trading is too coarse a word--the financial class of
Rajputana appears to be the most remarkable. Later in life many become
clouded with fat on jowl and paunch; but in his youth, his quick-eyed,
nimble youth, the young Marwar, to give him his business-title, is
really a thing of beauty. Also his manners are courtly. The bare ground
and a few slates sufficed for the children who were merely learning the
ropes that drag States; but the English class, of boys from ten to
twelve, was supplied with benches and forms and a table with a cloth
top. The assistant teacher, for the head was on leave, was a self-taught
man of Boondi, young and delicate looking, who preferred reading to
speaking English. His youngsters were supplied with “The Third English
Reading Book,” and were painfully thumbing their way through a doggerel
poem about an “old man with hoary hair.” One boy, bolder than the rest,
slung an English sentence at the visitor and collapsed. It was his
little stock-in-trade, and the rest regarded him enviously. The Durbar
supports the school, which is entirely free and open; a just distinction
being maintained between the various castes. The old race prejudice
against payment for knowledge came out in a reply to question.--“You
must not sell teaching,” said the teacher, and the class murmured
applausively:--“You must not sell teaching.”
The population of Boondi seems more obviously mixed than that of the
other States. There are four or five thousand Mahomedans within its
walls and a sprinkling of aborigines of various varieties, besides the
human raffle that the Bunjaras bring in their train, with Pathans and
sleek Delhi men. The new heraldry of the State is curious--something
after this sort. _Or_, a demi-man, _sable_, issuant of flames, holding
in right hand a sword and in the left a bow--_all proper_. In chief, a
dagger of the _second_, sheathed _vest_, fessewise over seven arrows in
sheaf of the _second_. This latter blazon Boondi holds in commemoration
of the defeat of an Imperial Prince who rebelled against the Delhi
Throne in the days of Jehangir, when Boondi, for value received, took
service under the Mahomedan. It might be, but here there is no
certainty, the memorial of Rao Rutton’s victory over Prince Khoorm, when
the latter strove to raise all Rajputana against Jehangir his father; or
of a second victory over a riotous lordling who harried Mewar a little
later. For this exploit, the annals say, Jehangir gave Rao Rutton
honorary flags and kettle-drums which may have been melted down by the
science of the Herald’s College into the blazon aforesaid. All the
heraldry of Rajputana is curious and, for such as hold that there is
any worth in the “Royal Science,” interesting. Udaipur’s shield is,
naturally _gules_, a sun in splendor, as befits the “children of the sun
and fire,” and one of the most ancient houses in India. Her crest is the
straight Rajput sword, the _khanda_; for an account of the worship of
which very powerful divinity read Tod. The supporters are a Bhil and a
Rajput, attired for the forlorn-hope; commemorating not only the
defences of Chitor, but also the connection of the great Bappa Rawul
with the Bhils who even now play the principal part in the Crown-Marking
of a Rana of Udaipur. Here, again, Tod explains the matter at length.
Banswara claims alliance with Udaipur and carries a sun, with a label of
difference of some kind. Jeypore has the five-coloured flag of Amber
with a sun, because the House claim descent from Rama, and her crest is
a kuchnar tree, which is the bearing of Dasaratha, father of Rama. The
white horse, which faces the tiger as supporter, may or may not be the
memorial of the great _aswamedha yuga_ or horse sacrifice that Jey
Singh, who built Jeypore, did _not_ carry out.
Jodhpur has the five-coloured flag, with a falcon, in which shape Durga,
the patron Goddess of the State, has been sometimes good enough to
appear. She has perched in the form of a wagtail on the howdah of the
Chief of Jeysulmir, whose shield is blazoned with “forts in a desert
land,” and a naked left arm holding a broken spear, because, the legend
goes, Jeysulmir was once galled by a horse with a magic spear. They tell
the story to-day, but it is a long one. The supporters of the
shield--this is canting heraldry with a vengeance!--are antelopes of the
desert spangled with gold coin, because the State was long the refuge of
the wealthy bankers of India.
Bikanir, a younger House of Jodhpur, carries three white hawks on the
five-coloured flag. The patron Goddess of Bikanir once turned the thorny
jungle round the city to fruit-trees, and the crest therefore is a green
tree--strange emblem for a desert principality. The motto, however, is a
good one. When the greater part of the Rajput States were vassals of
Akbar, and he sent them abroad to do his will, certain Princes objected
to crossing the Indus, and asked Bikanir to head the mutiny because his
State was the least accessible. He consented, on condition that they
would all for one day greet him thus:--“_Jey Jangal dar Badshah!_”
History shows what became of the objector and Bikanir’s motto:--“Hail to
the King of the Waste!” proves that the tale _must_ be true. But from
Boondi to Bikanir is a long digression, bred by blissful idleness on the
bund of the Burra. It would have been sinful not to let down a line into
those crowded waters, and the Guards, who were Mahomedans, said that if
the Sahib did not eat fish, they did. And the Sahib fished luxuriously,
catching two and three pounders, of a perch-like build, whenever he
chose to cast. He was wearied of schools and dispensaries, and the
futility of heraldry accorded well with laziness--that is to say Boondi.
It should be noted, none the less, that in this part of the world the
soberest mind will believe anything--believe in the ghosts by the Gow
Mukh, and the dead Thakurs, who get out of their tombs and ride round
the Burra Talao at Boondi--will credit every legend and lie that rises
as naturally as the red flush of sunset, to gild the dead glories of
Rajasthan.