_Shows that there may be Poetry in a Bank, and attempts to show the
Wonders of the Palace of Boondi._
“This is a devil’s place you have come to, Sahib. No grass for the
horses, and the people don’t understand anything, and their dirty pice
are no good in Nasirabad. Look here!” And Ram Baksh wrathfully exhibited
a handful of lumps of copper. The nuisance of taking a native out of his
own beat is that he forthwith regards you not only as the author of his
being, but of all his misfortunes as well. He is as hampering as a
frightened child and as irritating as a man. “_Padre Martum Sahib_ never
came here,” said Ram Baksh, with the air of one who had been led against
his will into bad company.
A story about a rat that found a piece of turmeric and set up a bunnia’s
shop had sent the one-eyed munshi away, but a company of lesser munshis,
runners and the like, were in attendance, and they said that money might
be changed at the Treasury, which was in the Palace. It was quite
impossible to change it anywhere else--there was no _hookum_. From the
Sukh Mahal to the Palace the road ran through the heart of the city, and
by reason of the continual shouting of the munshis, not more than ten
thousand of the fifty thousand people of Boondi knew for what purpose
the Sahib was journeying through their midst. Cataract was the most
prevalent affliction, cataract in its worst forms, and it was,
therefore, necessary that men should come very close to look at the
stranger. They were in no sense rude, but they stared devoutly. “He has
not come for _shikar_, and he will not take petitions. He has come to
see the place, and God knows what he is.” The description was quite
correct, as far as it went; but, somehow or another, when shouted out at
four cross-ways in the midst of a very pleasant little gathering it did
not seem to add to dignity or command respect.
It has been written “the _coup d’oeil_ of the castellated Palace of
Boondi, from whichever side you approach it, is perhaps the most
striking in India. Whoever has seen the Palace of Boondi can easily
picture to himself the hanging gardens of Semiramis.” This is true--and
more too. To give on paper any adequate idea of the Boondi-ki-Mahal is
impossible. Jeypore Palace may be called the Versailles of India;
Udaipur’s House of State is dwarfed by the hills round it and the spread
of the Pichola lake; Jodhpur’s House of Strife, grey towers on red rock,
is the work of giants; but the Palace of Boondi, even in broad
day-light, is such a Palace as men build for themselves in uneasy
dreams--the work of goblins more than the work of men. It is built into
and out of hill side, in gigantic terrace on terrace, and dominates the
whole of the city. But a detailed description of it were useless. Owing
to the dip of the valley in which the city stands, it can only be well
seen from one place, the main road of the city; and from that point
seems like an avalanche of masonry ready to rush down and whelm the
gorge. Like all the other Palaces of Rajputana, it is the work of many
hands, and the present Raja has thrown out a bastion of no small size on
one of the lower levels, which has been four or five years in the
building. Only by scaling this annex, and, from the other side of the
valley, seeing how insignificant is its great bulk in the entire scheme,
is it possible to get some idea of the stupendous size of the Palace. No
one knows where the hill begins and where the Palace ends. Men say that
there are subterranean chambers leading into the heart of the hills,
and passages communicating with the extreme limits of Taragarh, the
giant fortress that crowns the hill and flanks the whole of the valley
on the Palace side. They say that there is as much room under as above
ground, and that none know the whole extent of the Palace. Looking at it
from below, the Englishman could readily believe that nothing was
impossible for those who had built it. The dominant impression was of
height--height that heaved itself out of the hillside and weighed upon
the eyelids of the beholder. The steep slope of the land had helped the
builders in securing this effect. From the main road of the city a steep
stone-paved ascent led to the first gate--name not communicated by the
zealous following. Two gaudily painted fishes faced each other over the
arch, and there was little except glaring colour ornamentation visible.
This gate gave into what they called the _chowk_ of the Palace, and one
had need to look twice ere realising that this open space, crammed with
human life, was a spur of the hill on which the Palace stood, paved and
built over. There had been little attempt at levelling the ground. The
foot-worn stones followed the contour of the ground, and ran up to the
walls of the Palace smooth as glass. Immediately facing the Gate of the
Fish was the Quarter-Guard barracks, a dark and dirty room, and here,
in a chamber hollowed out in a wall, were stored the big drums of State,
the _nakarras_. The appearance of the Englishman seemed to be the signal
for smiting the biggest of all the drums, and the dull thunder rolled up
the Palace _chowk_, and came back from the unpierced Palace walls in
hollow groaning. It was an eerie welcome--this single, sullen boom. In
this enclosure, four hundred years ago, if the legend be true, a son of
the great Rao Bando, who dreamed a dream as Pharaoh did and saved Boondi
from famine, left a little band of Haras to wait his bidding while he
went up into the Palace and slew his two uncles who had usurped the
throne and abandoned the faith of their fathers. When he had pierced one
and hacked the other, as they sat alone and unattended, he called out to
his followers, who made a slaughter-house of the enclosure and cut up
the usurpers’ adherents. At the best of times men slip on these smooth
stones; and when the place was swimming in blood, foothold must have
been treacherous indeed.
An inquiry for the place of the murder of the uncles--it is marked by a
staircase slab, or Tod, the accurate, is at fault--was met by the answer
that the Treasury was close at hand. They speak a pagan tongue in
Boondi, swallow half their words, and adulterate the remainder with
local _patois_. What can be extracted from a people who call four miles
variously _do kosh_, _do kush_, _dhi khas_, _doo-a koth_, and _diakast_,
all one word? The country-folk are quite unintelligible; which
simplifies matters. It is the catching of a shadow of a meaning here and
there, the hunting for directions cloaked in dialect, that is annoying.
Foregoing his archæological researches, the Englishman sought the
Treasury. He took careful notes; he even made a very bad drawing, but
the Treasury of Boondi defied pinning down before the public. There was
a gash in the brown flank of the Palace--and this gash was filled with
people. A broken bees’ comb with the whole hive busily at work on
repairs, will give a very fair idea of this extraordinary place--the
Heart of Boondi. The sunlight was very vivid without and the shadows
were heavy within, so that little could be seen except this clinging
mass of humanity huggling like maggots in a carcase. A stone staircase
ran up to a rough verandah built out of the wall, and in the wall was a
cave-like room, the guardian of whose snowy-carpeted depths was one of
the refined financial classes, a man with very small hands and soft, low
voice. He was girt with a sword, and held authority over the Durbar
funds. He referred the Englishman courteously to another branch of the
department, to find which necessitated a blundering progress up another
narrow staircase crowded with loungers of all kinds. Here everything
shone from constant contact of bare feet and hurrying bare shoulders.
The staircase was the thing that, seen from without, had produced the
bees’ comb impression. At the top was a long verandah shaded from the
sun, and here the Boondi Treasury worked, under the guidance of a
grey-haired old man, whose sword lay by the side of his comfortably
wadded cushion. He controlled twenty or thirty writers, each wrapped
round a huge, country paper account-book, and each far too busy to raise
his eyes.
The babble on the staircase might have been the noise of the sea so far
as these men were concerned. It ebbed and flowed in regular beats, and
spread out far into the courtyard below. Now and again the
_click-click-click_ of a scabbard tip being dragged against the wall,
cut the dead sound of trampling naked feet, and a soldier would stumble
up the narrow way into the sun-light. He was received, and sent back or
forward by a knot of keen-eyed loungers, who seemed to act as a buffer
between the peace of the Secretariat and the pandemonium of the
Administrative. Saises and grass-cutters, mahouts of elephants, brokers,
mahajuns, villagers from the district, and here and there a shock-headed
aborigine, swelled the mob on and at the foot of the stairs. As they
came up, they met the buffer-men who spoke in low voices, and appeared
to filter them according to their merits. Some were sent to the far end
of the verandah, where everything melted away in a fresh crowd of dark
faces. Others were sent back, and joined the detachment shuffling for
shoes in the _chowk_. One servant of the Palace withdrew himself to the
open, underneath the verandah, and there sat yapping from time to time
like a hungry dog:--“The grass! The grass! The grass!” But the men with
the account-books never stirred. Other men knelt down in front of them
and whispered. And they bowed their heads gravely and made entry or
erasure, turning back the rustling leaves. Not often does a reach of the
River of Life so present itself that it can without alteration be
transferred to canvas. But the Treasury of Boondi, the view up the long
verandah, stood complete and ready for any artist who cared to make it
his own. And by that lighter and less malicious irony of the Fate, who
is always giving nuts to those who have no teeth, the picture was
clinched and brought together by a winking, brass hookah-bowl of quaint
design, pitched carelessly upon a roll of dull-red cloth full in the
foreground. The faces of the accountants were of pale gold, for they
were an untanned breed, and the face of the old man their controller was
like frosted silver.
It was a strange Treasury, but no other could have suited the Palace.
The Englishman watched open-mouthed, blaming himself because he could
not catch the meaning of the orders given to the flying chaprassies, nor
make anything of the hum in the verandah and the tumult on the stairs.
The old man took the commonplace Currency Note and announced his
willingness to give change in silver. “We have no small notes here,” he
said. “They are not wanted. In a little while, when you next bring the
Honour of your Presence this way, you shall find the silver.”
The Englishman was taken down the steps and fell into the arms of a
bristled giant who had left his horse in the courtyard, and the giant
spoke at length, waving his arms in the air, but the Englishman could
not understand him and dropped into the hub-bub at the Palace foot.
Except the main lines of the building there is nothing strange or
angular about it. The rush of people seems to have rounded and softened
every corner, as a river grinds down boulders. From the lowest tier, two
zigzags, all of rounded stones sunk in mortar, took the Englishman to a
gate where two carved elephants were thrusting at each other over the
arch; and, because neither he nor any one round him could give the gate
a name, he called it the “Gate of the Elephants.” Here the noise from
the Treasury was softened, and entry through the gate brought him into a
well-known world, the drowsy peace of a King’s Palace. There was a
court-yard surrounded by stables, in which were kept chosen horses, and
two or three _saises_ were sleeping in the sun. There was no other life
except the whirr and coo of the pigeons. In time--though really there is
no such a thing as time off the line of railway--an official appeared
begirt with the skewer-like keys that open the native bayonet-locks each
from six inches to a foot long. Where was the Raj Mahal in which,
sixty-six years ago, Tod formally installed Ram Singh, “who is now in
his eleventh year, fair and with a lively intelligent cast of face”? The
warden made no answer, but led to a room, overlooking the court-yard, in
which two armed men stood before an empty throne of white marble. They
motioned silently that none must pass immediately before the _takht_ of
the King, but go round, keeping to the far side of the double row of
pillars. Near the walls were stone slabs pierced to take the butts of
long, venomous, black bamboo lances; rude coffers were disposed about
the room, and ruder sketches of Ganesh adorned the walls. “The men,”
said the warden, “watch here day and night because this place is the
Rutton Daulat.” That, you will concede, is lucid enough. He who does not
understand it, may go to for a thick-headed barbarian.
From the Rutton Daulat the warden unlocked doors that led into a hall of
audience--the Chutter Mahal--built by Raja Chutter Lal, who was killed
more than two hundred years ago in the latter days of Shah Jehan for
whom he fought. Two rooms, each supported on double rows of pillars,
flank the open space, in the centre of which is a marble reservoir. Here
the Englishman looked anxiously for some of the atrocities of the West,
and was pleased to find that, with the exception of a vase of artificial
flowers and a clock, both hid in _mihrabs_, there was nothing that
jarred with the exquisite pillars, and the raw blaze of colour in the
roofs of the rooms. In the middle of these impertinent observations,
something sighed--sighed like a distressed ghost. Unaccountable voices
are at all times unpleasant, especially when the hearer is some hundred
feet or so above ground in an unknown Palace in an unknown land. A gust
of wind had found its way through one of the latticed balconies, and had
breathed upon a thin plate of metal, some astrological instrument, slung
gong-wise on a tripod. The tone was as soft as that of an Aeolian harp,
and, because of the surroundings, infinitely more plaintive.
There was an inlaid ivory door, set in lintel and posts crusted with
looking-glass--all apparently old work. This opened into a darkened room
where there were gilt and silver charpoys, and portraits, in the native
fashion, of the illustrious dead of Boondi. Beyond the darkness was a
balcony clinging to the sheer side of the Palace, and it was then that
the Englishman realised to what a height he had climbed without knowing
it. He looked down upon the bustle of the Treasury and the stream of
life flowing into and out of the Gate of the Fishes where the big
_nakarras_ lie. Lifting his eyes, he saw how Boondi City had built
itself, spreading from west to east as the confined valley became too
narrow and the years more peaceable. The Boondi hills are the barrier
that separates the stony, uneven ground near Deoli from the flats of
Kotah, twenty miles away. From the Palace balcony the road to the eye is
clear to the banks of the Chumbul river, which was the Debatable Ford in
times gone by and was leaped as all rivers with any pretensions to a
pedigree have been, by more than one magic horse. Northward and easterly
the hills run out to Indurgarh, and southward and westerly to territory
marked “disputed” on the map in the present year of grace. From this
balcony the Raja can see to the limit of his territory eastward, like
the good King of Yves his empire is all under his hand. He is, or the
politicals err, that same Ram Singh who was installed by Tod in 1821,
and for whose success in killing his first deer, Tod was, by the
Queen-Mother of Boondi, bidden to rejoice. To-day the people of Boondi
say:--“This Durbar is very old, so old that few men remember its
beginning, for they were in our father’s time.” It is related also of
Boondi that, on the occasion of the Queen’s Jubilee, they said proudly
that their ruler had reigned for sixty years, and he was a man. They saw
nothing astonishing in the fact of a woman having reigned for fifty.
History does not say whether they jubilated; for there are no Englishmen
in Boondi to write accounts of demonstrations and foundation-stones
laying to the daily newspapers, and then Boondi is very, very small. In
the early morning you may see a man being pantingly chased out of the
city by another man with a naked sword. This is the dak and the dak
guard; and the effect is as though runner and swordsman lay under a
doom--the one to fly with the fear of death always before him, as men
fly in dreams, and the other to perpetually fail of his revenge. But
this leaves us still in the swallow nest balcony.
The warden unlocked more doors and led the Englishman still higher, but
into a garden--a heavily timbered garden with a tank for gold fish in
the midst! For once the impassive following smiled when they saw that
the Englishman was impressed. “This,” said they, “is the Rang Bilas.”
“But who made it?” “Who knows? It was made long ago.” The Englishman
looked over the garden-wall, a foot high parapet, and shuddered. There
was only the flat side of the Palace, and a drop on to the stones of the
zigzags scores of feet below. Above him was the riven hillside and the
decaying wall of Taragarh, and behind him this fair garden, hung like
Mahomet’s coffin, full of the noise of birds and the talking of the wind
in the branches. The warden entered into a lengthy explanation of the
nature of the delusion, showing how--but he was stopped before he had
finished. His listener did not want to know “how the trick was done.”
Here was the garden, and there were three or four storeys climbed to
reach to it. _Bus._ At one end of the garden was a small room, under
treatment by native artists who were painting the panels with historical
pictures, in distemper. Theirs was florid polychromatic art, but
skirting the floor was a series of frescoes in red, black and white, of
combats with elephants, bold and temperate as good German work. They
were worn and defaced in places; but the hand of some bye-gone limner,
who did not know how to waste a line, showed under the bruises and
scratches, and put the newer work to shame.
Here the tour of the Palace ended; and it must be remembered that the
Englishman had not gone the depth of three rooms into one flank. Acres
of building lay to the right of him, and above the lines of the terraces
he could see the tops of green trees. “Who knew how many gardens, such
as the Rang Bilas, were to be found in the Palace?” No one answered
directly, but all said that there were many. The warden gathered up his
keys, and locking each door behind him as he passed, led the way down to
earth. But before he had crossed the garden, the Englishman heard, deep
down in the bowels of the Palace, a woman’s voice singing, and the voice
rang as do voices in caves. All Palaces in India excepting dead ones,
such as that of Amber, are full of eyes. In some, as has been said, the
idea of being watched is stronger than in others. In Boondi Palace it
was overpowering--being far worse than in the green shuttered corridors
of Jodhpur. There were trap-doors on the tops of terraces, and windows
veiled in foliage, and bull’s eyes set low in unexpected walls, and many
other peep-holes and places of vantage. In the end, the Englishman
looked devoutly at the floor, but when the voice of the woman came up
from under his feet, he felt that there was nothing left for him but to
go. Yet, excepting only this voice, there was deep silence everywhere,
and nothing could be seen.
The warden returned to the Chutter Mahal to pick up a lost key. The
brass table of the planets was sighing softly to itself as it swung to
and fro in the wind. That was the last view of the interior of the
Palace, the empty court, and the swinging sighing _jantar_.
About two hours afterwards, when he had reached the other side of the
valley and seen the full extent of the buildings, the Englishman began
to realise first that he had not been taken through one-tenth of the
Palace; and secondly, that he would do well to measure its extent by
acres, in preference to meaner measures. But what made him blush hotly,
all alone among the tombs on the hill side, was the idea that he with
his ridiculous demands for eggs, firewood, and sweet drinking water,
should have clattered and chattered through any part of it at all.
He began to understand why Boondi does not encourage Englishmen.