The town of Dholpur lies some short way in from the north bank of the Chambal, at the extremity of a range of sandstone hills which runs diagonally across that of Gwalior. This range was once capped with basalt, and some boulders are still found upon it in a state of rapid decomposition. It was quite refreshing to see the beautiful mango groves on the Dholpur side of the river, after passing through a large tract of country in which no tree of any kind was to be seen. On returning from a long ride over the range of sandstone hills the morning after we reached Dholpur, I passed through an encampment of camels taking rude iron from some mines in the hills to the south towards Agra. They waited here within the frontier of a native state for a pass from the Agra custom house,[5] lest any one should, after they enter our frontier, pretend that they were going to smuggle it, and thus get them into trouble. 'Are you not', said I, 'afraid to remain here so near the ravines of the Chambal, when thieves are said to be so numerous?' 'Not at all,' replied they. 'I suppose thieves do not think it worth while to steal rude iron?' 'Thieves, sir, think it worth while to steal anything they can get, but we do not fear them much here.' 'Where, then, do you fear them much?' 'We fear them when we get into the Company's territories.' 'And how is this, when we have good police establishments, and the Dholpur people none?' 'When the Dholpur people get hold of a thief, they make him disgorge all that he has got of our property for us, and they confiscate all the rest that he has for themselves, and cut off his nose or his hands, and turn him adrift to deter others. You, on the contrary, when you get hold of a thief, worry us to death in the prosecution of your courts; and, when we have proved the robbery to your satisfaction, you leave all this ill-gotten wealth to his family,[6] and provide him with good food and clothing for himself, while he works for you a couple of years on the roads.[7] The consequence is, that here fellows are afraid to rob a traveller, if they find him at all on his guard, as we generally are, while in your districts they rob us where and when they like.'

'But, my friends, you are sure to recover what we do get of your property from the thieves.' 'Not quite sure of that neither,' said they, 'or the greater part is generally absorbed on its way back to us through the officers of your court; and we would always rather put up with the first loss than run the risk of a greater by prosecution, if we happen to get robbed within the Company's territories.'

The loss and annoyances to which prosecutors and witnesses are subject in our courts are a source of very great evil to the country. They enable police-officers everywhere to grow rich upon the concealment of crimes. The man who has been robbed will bribe them to conceal the robbery, that he may escape the further loss of the prosecution in our courts, generally very distant; and the witnesses will bribe them to avoid attending to give evidence; the whole village communities bribe them, because every man feels that they have the power of getting him summoned to the court in some capacity or other, if they like; and that they will certainly like to do so, if not bribed.

The obstacles which our system opposes to the successful prosecution of robbers of all denominations and descriptions deprive our Government of all popular support in the administration of criminal justice; and this is considered everywhere to be the worst, and, indeed, the only radically bad feature of our government. No magistrate hopes to get a conviction against one in four of the most atrocious gang of robbers and murderers of his district, and his only resource is in the security laws, which enable him to keep them in jail under a requisition of security for short periods. To this an idle or apathetic magistrate will not have recourse, and under him these robbers have a free licence.

In England, a judicial acquittal does not send back the culprit to follow the same trade in the same field, as in India; for the published proceedings of the court bring down upon him the indignation of society—the moral and religions feelings of his fellow men are arrayed against him, and from these salutary checks no flaw in the indictment can save him. Not so in India. There no moral or religions feelings interpose to assist or to supply the deficiencies of the penal law. Provided he eats, drinks, smokes, marries, and makes his offerings to his priest according to the rules of his caste, the robber and the murderer incurs no odium in the circle in which he moves, either religious or moral, and this is the only circle for whose feelings he has any regard.[8]

The man who passed off his bad coin at Datiya, passed off more at Dholpur while my advanced people were coming in, pretending that he wanted things for me, and was in a great hurry to be ready with them at my tents by the time I came up. The bad rupees were brought to a native officer of my guard, who went with the shopkeepers in search of the knave, but he could nowhere be found. The gates of the town were shut up all night at my suggestion, and in the morning every lodging-house in the town was searched for him in vain—he had gone on. I had left some sharp men behind me, expecting that he would endeavour to pass off his bad money immediately after my departure; but in expectation of this he was now evidently keeping a little in advance of me. I sent on some men with the shopkeepers whom he had cheated to our next stage, in the hope of overtaking him; but he had left the place before they arrived without passing any of his bad coin, and gone on to Agra. The shopkeepers could not be persuaded to go any further after him, for, if they caught him, they should, they said, have infinite trouble in prosecuting him in our courts, without any chance of recovering from him what they had lost.

On the 29th, we remained at Dholpur to receive and return the visits of the young Raja, or, as he is called, the young Rana, a lad of about fifteen years of age, very plain, and very dull. He came about ten in the forenoon with a very respectable and well-dressed retinue, and a tolerable show of elephants and horses. The uniforms of his guards were made after those of our own soldiers, and did not please me half so much as those of the Datiya guards, who were permitted to consult their own tastes; and the music of the drums and fifes seemed to me infinitely inferior to that of the mounted minstrels of my old friend Parichhit.[9] The lad had with him about a dozen old public servants entitled to chairs, some of whom had served his father above thirty years; while the ancestors of others had served his grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and I could not help telling the lad in their presence that 'these were the greatest ornament of a prince's throne and the best signs and pledges of a good government'. They were all evidently much pleased at the compliment, and I thought they deserved to be pleased, from the good character they bore among the peasantry of the country. I mentioned that I had understood the boatmen of the Chambal at Dholpur never caught or ate fish. The lad seemed embarrassed, and the minister took upon himself to reply that 'there was no market for it, since the Hindoos of Dholpur never ate fish, and the Muhammadans had all disappeared'. I asked the lad whether he was fond of hunting. He seemed again confounded, and the minister said that 'his highness never either hunted or fished, as people of his caste were prohibited from destroying life'. 'And yet', said I, 'they have often showed themselves good soldiers in battle.' They were all pleased again, and said that they were not prohibited from killing tigers; but that there was no jungle of any kind near Dholpur, and, consequently, no tigers to be found. The Jats are descendants of the Getae, and were people of very low caste, or rather of no caste at all, among the Hindoos, and they are now trying to raise themselves by abstaining from killing and eating animals.[10] Among Hindoos this is everything; a man of low caste is 'sab kuchh khata', sticks at nothing in the way of eating; and a man of high caste is a man who abstains from eating anything but vegetable or farinaceous food; if, at the same time, he abstains from using in his cook-room all woods but one, and has that one washed before he uses it, he is canonized.[11] Having attained to military renown and territorial dominion in the usual way by robbery, the Jats naturally enough seek the distinction of high caste to enable them the better to enjoy their position in society.

It had been stipulated that I should walk to the bottom of the steps to receive the Rana, as is the usage on such occasions, and carpets were accordingly spread thus far. Here he got out of his chair, and I led him into the large room of the bungalow, which we occupied during our stay, followed by all his and my attendants. The bungalow had been built by the former Resident at Gwalior, the Honourable R. Cavendish, for his residence during the latter part of the rains, when Gwalior is considered to be unhealthy. At his departure the Rana purchased this bungalow for the use of European gentlemen and ladies passing through his capital.

In the afternoon, about four o'clock, I went to return his visit in a small palace not yet finished, a pretty piece of miniature fortification, surrounded by what they call their 'chhaoni', or cantonments. The streets are good, and the buildings neat and substantial; but there is nothing to strike or particularly interest the stranger. The interview passed off without anything remarkable; and I was more than ever pleased with the people by whom this young chief is surrounded. Indeed, I had much reason to be pleased with the manners of all the people on this side of the Chambal. They are those of a people well pleased to see English gentlemen among them, and anxious to make themselves useful and agreeable to us. They know that their chief is indebted to the British Government for all the country he has, and that he would be swallowed up by Sindhia's greedy army, were not the sevenfold shield of the Honourable Company spread over him. His establishments, civil and military, like those of the Bundelkhand chiefs, are raised from the peasantry and yeomanry or the country; who all, in consequence, feel an interest in the prosperity and independent respectability of their chief. On the Gwalior side, the members of all the public establishments know and feel that it is we who interpose and prevent their master from swallowing up all his neighbours, and thereby having increased means of promoting their interest and that of their friends; and they detest us all most cordially in consequence. The peasantry of the Gwalior territory seem to consider their own government as a kind of minotaur, which they would be glad to see destroyed, no matter how or by whom; since it gives no lucrative or honourable employment to any of their members, so as to interest either their pride or their affections; nor throws back among them for purposes of local advantage any of the produce of their land and labour which it exacts. It is worthy of remark that, though the Dholpur chief is peculiarly the creature of the British Government, and indebted to it for all he has or ever will have, and though he has never had anything, and never can have, or can hope to have, anything from the poor pageant of the house of Timur, who now sits upon the throne of Delhi;[12] yet, on his seal of office he declares himself to be the slave and creature of that imperial 'warrior for the faith of Islam'. As he abstains from eating the good fish of the river Chambal to enhance his claim to caste among Hindoos, so he abstains from acknowledging his deep debt of gratitude to the Honourable Company, or the British Government, with a view to give the rust of age to his rank and title. To acknowledge himself a creature of the British Government were to acknowledge that he was a man of yesterday; to acknowledge himself the slave of the Emperor is to claim for his poor veins 'the blood of a line of kings'. The petty chiefs of Bundelkhand, who are in the same manner especially dependent on the British Government, do the same thing.

At Dholpur, there are some noble old mosques and mausoleums built three hundred years ago, in the reign of the Emperor Humayun, by some great officers of his government, whose remains still rest undisturbed among them, though the names of their families have been for many ages forgotten, and no men of their creed now live near to demand for them the respect of the living. These tombs are all elaborately built and worked out of the fine freestone of the country and the trellis-work upon some of their stone screens is still as beautiful as when first made. There are Persian and Arabic inscriptions upon all of them, and I found from them that one of the mosques had been built by the Emperor Shah Jahan in A.D. 1634,[13] when he little dreamed that his three sons would here meet to fight the great fight for the throne while he yet sat upon it.[14]

Notes:

1. December, 1835.

2. The author's remark that in India the roads are 'nowhere metalled' must seem hardly credible to a modern traveller, who sees the country intersected by thousands of miles of metalled road. The Grand Trunk Road from Calcutta to Lahore, constructed in Lord Dalhousie's time, alone measures about 1,200 miles. The development of roads since 1850 ha been enormous, and yet the mileage of good roads would have to be increased tenfold to put India on an equality with the more advanced countries of Europe.

3. Ante, Chanter 36, notes 26 & 27.

4. The Baiza Bai was the widow of Daulat Rao Sindhia. He had died on March 21, 1827. With the consent of the Government of India, she adopted a boy as his successor, but, being an ambitions and intriguing woman, she tried to keep all power in her own hands. The young Maharaja fled from her, and took refuge in the Residency in October, 1832. In December of the same year Lord William Bentinck visited Gwalior, and assumed an attitude of absolute neutrality. The result was that trouble continued, and seven months later the Maharaja again fled to the Residency. The troops then revolted against the Baiza Bai, and compelled her to retire to Dholpur. This event put an end to her political activity. Ultimately she was allowed to return to Gwalior, and died there in 1862 (Malleson, The Native States of India, pp. 160-4). The author wrote an unpublished history of Baiza Bai (ante, Bibliography).

5. Long since abolished.

6. The law now permits the person injured to be compensated out of any fine realized.

7. The system of employing gangs of prisoners on the roads was open to great abuses, and has been long given up. The prisoners are now, as a rule, employed only on the jail promises, and cannot be utilized for outside work, except under special circumstances by special sanction.

8. The notes to this edition have recorded many changes in India, but no change has taken place in the difficulties which beset the administration of criminal law. They are still those which the author describes, and Police Commissions cannot remove them. The power to exact security for good behaviour from known bad characters still exists, and, when discreetly used, is of great value. The conviction of atrocious robbers and murderers is, perhaps, less rare than it was in the author's time, though many still escape even the minor penalty of arrest. The want of a sound moral public opinion is the fundamental difficulty in Indian police administration—a truth fully Understood by the author, but rarely realized by members of Parliament.

9. The title of the Dholpur chief is now Maharaja Rana. In 1905 his reduced army numbered 1,216 of all ranks (I. G., 1908). The force is not of serious military value.

10. The identification of the Jats, or Jats, with the Getae is not even probable. The anchor exaggerates the lowness of the social rank of the Jats, who cannot properly be described as people of 'very low caste'. They are, and have long been, numerous and powerful in the Panjab and the neighbouring countries. It is true that they hate Brahmans, care little for Brahman notions of propriety, either as regards food or marriage, and to a certain extent stand outside the orthodox Hindoo system; but they are heterodox rather than low-caste. The Rajas of Bharatpur, Dholpur, Nabha, Patiala, and Jind are all Jats. The Jats are a fine and interesting people, who seem to suffer little deterioration from the notorious laxity of their matrimonial arrangements. They are skilled and industrious cultivators. A saying has been current in Upper India that, if the British power is ever broken, the succession will pass to the Jats.

11. This is the Brahman and Baniya theory. A high-spirited Rajput of Rajputana, full of pride in his long ancestry, and yet fond of wild boar's flesh, would indeed be wroth if denounced as a low-caste man. It is, however, unfortunately, quite true that all races which become entangled in the meshes of Hinduism tend to gradually surrender their freedom, and to become proud of submission to the senseless formalities and restrictions which the Brahman loves.

12. Akbar II. He was titular emperor from A.D. 1806 to 1837, and was succeeded by Bahadur Shah II, the last of his line. The portrait of Akbar II is the frontispiece to volume i of the original edition of this work, and a miniature portrait of him is given in the frontispiece of volume ii.

13. One of these tombs, namely, that of Bibi Zarina, dated A.H. 942 = A.D. 1535-6, is described by Cunningham (A.S.R., xx, p. 113, pl. xxxvii), who notes that according to an obviously false local popular story, the lady was a daughter of Shah Jahan, who lived a century later. This story seems to have misled the author. No inscription of the reign of Shah Jahan at Dholpur is recorded.

14. The three sons were Dara Shikoh, Aurangzeb, and Murad Baksh.



CHAPTER 51

Influence of Electricity on Vegetation—Agra and its Buildings.

On the 30th and 31st,[1] we went twenty-four miles over a dry plain, with a sandy soil covered with excellent crops where irrigated, and a very poor one where not. We met several long strings of camels carrying grain from Agra to Gwalior. A single man takes charge of twenty or thirty, holding the bridle of the first, and walking on before its nose. The bridles of all the rest are tied one after the other to the saddles of those immediately preceding them, and all move along after the leader in single file. Water must tend to attract and to impart to vegetables a good deal of electricity and other vivifying powers that would otherwise he dormant in the earth at a distance. The mere circumstance of moistening the earth from within reach of the roots would not be sufficient to account for the vast difference between the crops of fields that are irrigated, and those that are not. One day, in the middle of the season of the rains, I asked my gardener, while walking with him over my grounds, how it was that some of the fine clusters of bamboos had not yet begun to throw out their shoots. 'We have not yet had a thunderstorm, sir,' replied the gardener. 'What in the name of God has the thunderstorm to do with the shooting of the bamboos?' asked I in amazement. 'I don't know, sir,' said he, 'but certain it is that no bamboos begin to throw out their shoots well till we get a good deal of thunder and lightning.' The thunder and lightning came, and the bamboo shoots soon followed in abundance. It might have been a mere coincidence; or the tall bamboo may bring down from the passing clouds, and convey to the roots, the electric fluid they require for nourishment, or for conductors of nourishment.[2]

In the Isle of France,[3] people have a notion that the mushrooms always come up best after a thunderstorm. Electricity has certainly much more to do in the business of the world than we are yet aware of, in the animal, mineral, and vegetable developments.[4]

At our ground this day, I met a very respectable and intelligent native revenue officer who had been employed to settle some boundary disputes between the yeomen of our territory and those of the adjoining territory of Dholpur.

'The Honourable Company's rights and those of its yeomen must', said he, 'be inevitably sacrificed in all such cases; for the Dholpur chief, or his minister, says to all their witnesses, "You are, of course, expected to speak the truth regarding the land in dispute; but, by the sacred stream of the Ganges, if you speak so as to lose this estate one inch of it, you lose both your ears"—and most assuredly would they lose them,' continued he, 'if they were not to swear most resolutely that all the land in question belonged to Dholpur. Had I the same power to cut off the ears of witnesses on our side, we should meet on equal terms. Were I to threaten to cut them off, they would laugh in my face.' There was much truth in what the poor man said, for the Dholpur witnesses always make it appear that the claims of their yeomen are just and moderate, and a salutary dread of losing their ears operates, no doubt, very strongly. The threatened punishment of the prince is quick, while that of the gods, however just, is certainly very slow—

Ut sit magna, tamen certe lenta ira deorum est.

On the 1st of January, 1836, we went on sixteen miles to Agra, and, when within about six miles of the city, the dome and minarets of the Taj opened upon us from behind a small grove of fruit-trees, close by us on the side of the road. The morning was not clear, but it was a good one for a first sight of this building, which appeared larger through the dusty haze than it would have done through a clear sky. For five-and-twenty years of my life had I been looking forward to the sight now before me. Of no building on earth had I heard so much as of this, which contains the remains of the Emperor Shah Jahan and his wife, the father and mother of the children whose struggles for dominion have been already described. We had ordered our tents to be pitched in the gardens of this splendid mausoleum, that we might have our fill of the enjoyment which everybody seemed to derive from it; and we reached them about eight o'clock. I went over the whole building before I entered my tent, and, from the first sight of the dome and minarets on the distant horizon to the last glance back from my tent-ropes to the magnificent gateway that forms the entrance from our camp to the quadrangle in which they stand, I can truly say that everything surpassed my expectations. I at first thought the dome formed too large a portion of the whole building; that its neck was too long and too much exposed; and that the minarets were too plain in their design; but, after going repeatedly over every part, and examining the tout ensemble from all possible positions, and in all possible lights, from that of the full moon at midnight in a cloudless sky to that of the noonday sun, the mind seemed to repose in the calm persuasion that there was an entire harmony of parts, a faultless congregation of architectural beauties, on which it could dwell for ever without fatigue.

After my quarter of a century of anticipated pleasure, I went on from part to part in the expectation that I must by and by come to something that would disappoint me; but no, the emotion which one feels at first is never impaired; on the contrary, it goes on improving from the first coup d'oeil of the dome in the distance to the minute inspection of the last flower upon the screen round the tomb. One returns and returns to it with undiminished pleasure; and though at every return one's attention to the smaller parts becomes less and less, the pleasure which he derives from the contemplation of the greater, and of the whole collectively, seems to increase; and he leaves with a feeling of regret that he could not have it all his life within his reach, and of assurance that the image of what he has seen can never be obliterated from his mind 'while memory holds her seat'. I felt that it was to me in architecture what Kemble and his sister, Mrs. Siddons, had been to me a quarter of a century before in acting—something that must stand alone—something that I should never cease to see clearly in my mind's eye, and yet never be able clearly to describe to others.[5]

The Emperor and his Queen he buried side by side in a vault beneath the building, to which we descend by a flight of steps. Their remains are covered by two slabs of marble; and directly over these slabs, upon the floor above, in the great centre room under the dome, stand two other slabs, or cenotaphs, of the same marble exquisitely worked in mosaic. Upon that of the Queen, amid wreaths of flowers, are worked in black letters passages from the Koran, one of which, at the end facing the entrance, terminates with 'And defend us from the tribe of unbelievers'; that very tribe which is now gathered from all quarters of the civilized world to admire the splendour of the tomb which was raised to perpetuate her name.[6] On the slab over her husband there are no passages from the Koran—merely mosaic work of flowers with his name and the date of his death.[7] I asked some of the learned Muhammadan attendants the cause of this difference, and was told that Shah Jahan had himself designed the slab over his wife, and saw no harm in inscribing the words of God upon it; but that the slab over himself was designed by his more pious son, Aurangzeb, who did not think it right to place these holy words upon a stone which the foot of man might some day touch, though that stone covered the remains of his own father. Such was this 'man of prayers', this 'Namazi' (as Dara called him), to the last. He knew mankind well, and, above all, that part of them which he was called upon to govern, and which he governed for forty years with so much ability.[8]

The slab over the Queen occupies the centre of the apartments above and in the vault below, and that over her husband lies on the left as we enter. At one end of the slab in the vault her name is inwrought, 'Mumtaz-i-mahal Banu Begam', the ornament of the palace, Banu Begam, and the date of her death, 1631. That of her husband and the date of his death, 1666, are inwrought upon the other.[9]

She died in giving birth to a daughter, who is said to have been heard crying in the womb by herself and her other daughters. She sent for the Emperor, and told him that she believed no mother had ever been known to survive the birth of a child so heard, and that she felt her end was near. She had, she said, only two requests to make; first, that he would not marry again after her death, and get children to contend with hers for his favour and dominions; and, secondly, that he would build for her the tomb with which he had promised to perpetuate her name. She died in giving birth to the child, as might have been expected when the Emperor, in his anxiety, called all the midwives of the city, and all his secretaries of state and privy counsellors to prescribe for her. Both her dying requests were granted. Her tomb was commenced upon immediately. No woman ever pretended to supply her place in the palace; nor had Shah Jahan, that we know of, children by any other.[10] Tavernier saw this building completed and finished; and tells us that it occupied twenty thousand men for twenty-two years.[11] The mausoleum itself and all the buildings that appertain to it cost 3,17,48,026—three karor, seventeen lakhs, forty-eight thousand and twenty-six rupees, or 3,174,802 pounds sterling;—three million one hundred and seventy- four thousand eight hundred and two![12] I asked my wife, when she had gone over it, what she thought of the building. 'I cannot', said she, 'tell you what I think, for I know not how to criticize such a building, but I can tell you what I feel. I would die to-morrow to have such another over me.' This is what many a lady has felt, no doubt.

The building stands upon the north side of a large quadrangle, looking down into the clear blue stream of the river Jumna, while the other three sides are enclosed with a high wall of red sandstone.[13] The entrance to this quadrangle is through a magnificent gateway in the south side opposite the tomb; and on the other two sides are very beautiful mosques facing inwards, and corresponding exactly with each other in size, design, and execution. That on the left, or west, side is the only one that can be used as a mosque or church; because the faces of the audience, and those of all men at their prayers, must be turned towards the tomb of their prophet to the west. The pulpit is always against the dead wall at the back, and the audience face towards it, standing with their backs to the open front of the building. The church on the east side is used for the accommodation of visitors, or for any secular purpose, and was built merely as a 'jawab' (answer) to the real one.[14] The whole area is laid out in square parterres, planted with flowers and shrubs in the centre, and with fine trees, chiefly the cypress, all round the borders, forming an avenue to every road. These roads are all paved with slabs of freestone, and have, running along the centre, a basin, with a row of jets d'eau in the middle from one extremity to the other. These are made to play almost every evening, when the gardens are much frequented by the European gentlemen and ladies of the station, and by natives of all religions and sects. The quadrangle is from east to west nine hundred and sixty-four feet, and from north to south three hundred and twenty-nine.[l5]

The mausoleum itself, the terrace upon which it stands, and the minarets, are all formed of the finest white marble, inlaid with precious stones. The wall around the quadrangle, including the river face of the terrace, is made of red sandstone, with cupolas and pillars of the same white marble. The insides of the churches and apartments in and upon the walls are all lined with marble or with stucco work that looks like marble; but, on the outside, the red sandstone resembles uncovered bricks. The dazzling white marble of the mausoleum itself rising over the red wall is apt, at first sight, to make a disagreeable impression, from the idea of a whitewashed head to an unfinished building; but this impression is very soon removed, and tends, perhaps, to improve that which is afterwards received from a nearer inspection. The marble was all brought from the Jeypore territories upon wheeled carriages, a distance, I believe, of two or three hundred miles; and the sandstone from the neighbourhood of Dholpur and Fathpur Sikri.[16] Shah Jahan is said to have inherited his partiality for this colour from his grandfather, Akbar, who constructed almost all his buildings from the same stone, though he might have had the beautiful white freestone at the same cost. What was figuratively said of Augustus may be most literally said of Shah Jahan; he found the cities (Agra and Delhi) all brick, and left them all marble; for all the marble buildings, and additions to buildings, were formed by him.[17]

This magnificent building and the palaces at Agra and Delhi were, I believe, designed by Austin de Bordeaux, a Frenchman of great talent and merit, in whose ability and integrity the Emperor placed much reliance. He was called by the natives 'Ustan [sic] Isa, Nadir-ul- asr', 'the wonderful of the age'; and, for his office of 'naksha navis', or plan-drawer, he received a regular salary of one thousand rupees a month, with occasional presents, that made his income very large. He had finished the palace at Delhi, and the mausoleum and palace of Agra; and was engaged in designing a silver ceiling for one of the galleries in the latter, when he was sent by the Emperor to settle some affairs of great importance at Goa. He died at Cochin on his way back, and is supposed to have been poisoned by the Portuguese, who were extremely jealous of his influence at court. He left a son by a native, called Muhammad Sharif, who was employed as an architect on a salary of five hundred rupees a month, and who became, as I conclude from his name, a Musalman. Shah Jahan had commenced his own tomb on the opposite side of the Jumna; and both were to have been united by a bridge.[18] The death of Austin de Bordeaux, and the wars between his [scil. Shah Jahan's] sons that followed prevented the completion of these magnificent works.[19]

We were encamped upon a fine green sward outside the entrance to the south, in a kind of large court, enclosed by a high cloistered wall, in which all our attendants and followers found shelter. Colonel and Mrs. King, and some other gentlemen, were encamped in the same place, and for the same purpose; and we had a very agreeable party. The band of our friend Major Godby's regiment played sometimes in the evening upon the terrace of the Taj; but, of all the complicated music ever heard upon earth, that of a flute blown gently in the vault below, where the remains of the Emperor and his consort repose, as the sound rises to the dome amidst a hundred arched alcoves around, and descends in heavenly reverberations upon those who sit or recline upon the cenotaphs above the vault, is, perhaps, the finest to an inartificial car. We feel as if it were from heaven, and breathed by angels; it is to the ear what the building itself is to the eye; but, unhappily, it cannot, like the building, live in our recollections. All that we can, in after life, remember is that it was heavenly, and produced heavenly emotions.

We went all over the palace in the fort, a very magnificent building constructed by Shah Jahan within fortifications raised by his grandfather Akbar.[20]

The fretwork and mosaic upon the marble pillars and panels are equal to those of the Taj; or, if possible, superior; nor is the design or execution in any respect inferior, and yet a European feels that he could get a house much more commodious, and more to his taste, for a much less sum than must have been expended upon it. The Marquis of Hastings, when Governor-General of India, broke up one of the most beautiful marble baths of this palace to send home to George IV of England, then Prince Regent, and the rest of the marble of the suite of apartments from which it had been taken, with all its exquisite fretwork and mosaic, was afterwards sold by auction, on account of our Government, by order of the then Governor-General, Lord W. Bentinck. Had these things fetched the price expected, it is probable that the whole of the palace, and even the Taj itself, would have been pulled down, and sold in the same manner.[21]

We visited the Moti Masjid or Pearl Mosque. It was built by Shah Jahan, entirely of white marble; and completed, as we learn from an inscription on the portico, in the year A.D. 1656.[22] There is no mosaic upon any of the pillars or panels of this mosque; but the design and execution of the flowers in bas-relief are exceedingly beautiful. It is a chaste, simple, and majestic building;[23] and is by some people admired even more than the Taj, because they have heard less of it; and their pleasure is heightened by surprise. We feel that it is to all other mosques what the Taj is to all other mausoleums, a facile princeps.

Few, however, go to see the 'mosque of pearls' more than once, stay as long as they will at Agra; and when they go, the building appears less and less to deserve their admiration; while they go to the Taj as often as they can, and find new beauties in it, or new feelings of pleasure from it, every time[24]

I went out to visit this tomb of the Emperor Akbar at Sikandara, a magnificent building, raised over him by his son, the Emperor Jahangir. His remains he deposited in a deep vault under the centre, and are covered by a plain slab of marble, without fretwork or mosaic. On the top of the building, which is three or four stories high, is another marble slab, corresponding with the one in the vault below.[25] This is beautifully carved, with the 'nau nauwe nam'-the ninety-nine names, or attributes of the Deity, from the Koran.[26] It is covered by an awning, not to protect the tomb, but to defend the 'words of God' from the rain, as my cicerone assured me.[27] He told me that the attendants upon this tomb used to have the hay of the large quadrangle of forty acres in which it stands,[28] in addition to their small salaries, and that it yielded them some fifty rupees a year; but the chief native officer of the Taj establishment demanded half of the sum, and when they refused to give him so much, he persuaded his master, the European engineer, with much difficulty, to take all this hay for the public cattle. 'And why could you not adjust such a matter between you, without pestering the engineer?' 'Is not this the way', said he, with emotion, 'that Hindustan has cut its own throat, and brought in the stranger at all times? Have they ever had, or can they ever have, confidence in each other, or let each other alone to enjoy the little they have in peace?' Considering all the circumstances of time and place, Akbar has always appeared to me among sovereigns what Shakespeare was among poets; and, feeling as a citizen of the world, I reverenced the marble slab that covers his bones more, perhaps, than I should that over any other sovereign with whose history I am acquainted.[29]



Notes:

1. December, 1835.

2. It is not, perhaps, generally known, though it deserves to be so, that the bamboo seeds only once, and dies immediately after seeding. All bamboos from the same seed die at the same time, whenever they may have been planted. The life of the common large bamboo is about fifty years. [W. H. S.] The period is said to vary between thirty and sixty years. Bamboo seed is eaten as rice when obtainable. The author's theories about electricity are more ingenious than satisfactory.

3. Better known as the Mauritius.

4. This proposition may be accepted with confidence. Electricity is a great mystery, which becomes more mysterious the more it is studied.

5. A letter of the author's, dated 13th March, 1809, is extant, in which he gives a full description of the performance of Macbeth at the Haymarket by Kemble and Mrs. Siddons on Saturday, 11th March. The author sailed in the Devonshire on the 24th March.

6. No European had ever before, I believe, noted this, [W. H. S.] Moin-ud-din (p. 49) says that this phrase, 'Thou art our patron, help as therefore against the unbelieving nations,' is from the long chapter 2 ('The Cow') of the Koran, but I have not succeeded in finding the exact words in Sale's version of that chapter. I suspect that the words have been misread. Moin-ud-din gives as the words at the north side of the tomb, script characters 'the unbelieving nations', whereas Muh. Latif (Agra, p. 111) says that the words 'on the head of the sarcophagus' are script characters 'He is the everlasting. He is sufficient.' It will be observed that the characters in the two readings are almost identical.

7. The Empress had been a good deal exasperated against the Portuguese and Dutch by the treatment her husband received from them when a fugitive, after an unsuccessful rebellion against his father; and her hatred to them extended, in some degree, to all Christians, whom she considered to be included in the term 'Kafir', or unbeliever. [W. H. S.] Prince Shah Jahan (Khurram) rebelled against his father, Jahangir, in A.D. 1623, and submitted in A.D. 1625. The terrible punishment inflicted by Shah Jahan when Emperor on the Portuguese of Hugli (Hooghly) is related by Bernier (Constable's ed., pp. 177, 287). The Emperor had previously destroyed the Jesuits' church at Lahore completely, and the greater part of the church at Agra.

8. The cleverness, astuteness, energy, and business capacity of Aurangzeb are undoubted, and yet his long reign was a disastrous failure. The author reflects the praises of Muhammadans who cherish the memory of the 'namazi'. The Emperor himself knew better when, in his old ago, he wrote to his son Azam the pathetic words, 'I have not done well by the country or its people. My years have gone by profitless' (Lane-Poole's version in Aurangzib (Rulers of India), p. 203. Letter No. 72 in Bilimoria, Letters of Aurungzbe, Bombay, 1908. Another version in E. and D. vii, 562.) His reign lasted for almost forty-nine years, from June 1658 to February 1707, and not for only forty years.

9. The real tombs are in the vault below. Beautiful cenotaphs stand under the dome. The inscription on the tomb of the Empress is exactly repeated on her cenotaph, and runs thus:- 'The splendid sepulchre of Arjumand Bano Begam, entitled Mumtaz Mahall, deceased in the year 1040 Hijri.'

The epitaph on Shah Jahan's tomb is as follows:- 'The sacred sepulchre of His Moat Exalted Majesty, nesting in Paradise, the Second Lord of the Conjunction, Shah Jahan, the Emperor. May his mausoleum ever flourish. Year 1076 Hijri.'

The inscription on Shah Jahan's cenotaph adds more titles and gives the exact date of death as 'the night of Rajab 28, A.H. 1076'. 1040 Hijri corresponds with the period from July 31, A.D. 1630 to July 19, 1631; and 1076 Hijri with the period July 4, A. D. 1665 to June 23, 1666, Old Style. The dates in New Style would be ten days later.

The epithet 'nesting in Paradise' (firdaus ashiyani) was the official posthumous title of Shah Jahan, frequently used by historians instead of his name.

The title 'Second Lord of the Conjunction' means that Shah Jahan was held to have been born under the fortunate conjunction of Venus and Jupiter, as his ancestor Timur had been.

10. The details in the text are inaccurate. Arjumand Bano Begam, daughter of Asaf Khan, brother of Nur Jahan, the queen of Jahangir, was born in A.D. 1592, married in 1612, and died July 7, 1631 (o.s.), at Burhanpur in the Deccan. After a delay of six months her remains were removed to Agra, and there rested six months longer at a spot in the Taj gardens still remembered, until her tomb was sufficiently advanced for the final interment. Her titles were Mumtaz-i-Mahall, 'Exalted in the Palace'; Qudsia Begam, and Nawab Aliya Begam. She bore her husband eight sons and six daughters, fourteen children in all, of whom seven were alive at the time of her death. The child whose birth cost the mother's life was Gauharara Begam, who survived for many years (Irvine, Storia do Mogor, iv. 425). Beale wrongly gives her name as Dahar Ara.

Shah Jahan, two years before his union with Arjumand Bano Begam, had been married to a Persian princess, by whom he had a daughter who died young. Five and a half years after his marriage to Arjumand Bano Begam, he espoused a third wife, daughter of Shah Nawaz Khan, by whom he had a son, who died in infancy. This third marriage was dictated by motives of policy, and did not impair the Emperor's devotion to his favourite consort (Muh. Latif, Agra, p. 101).

11. The testimony of Tavernier is doubtless correct if understood as referring to the whole complex of buildings connected with the mausoleum. He visited Agra several times. He left India in January, 1654, returning to the country in 1659. Work on the Taj began in 1632, and so appears to have been completed about the close of, 1653 (Tavernier, Travels, transl. Ball, vol. i, pp. xxi, xxii, 25, 110, 142, 149). The latest dated inscription, that of the calligraphist Amanat Khan at the entrance to the domed mausoleum, was recorded in the twelfth year of the reign, A.H. 1048, equivalent to A.D. 1638-9. That year may be taken as the date of the completion of the mausoleum itself, as distinguished from the great mass of supplementary structures.

12. Various records of the cost differ enormously, apparently because they refer to different things. If all the buildings and the vast value of the materials be included, the highest estimate, namely, four and a half millions of pounds sterling, in round numbers, is not excessive (H.F.A., 1911, p. 415) The figures are recorded with minute accuracy as 411 lakhs, 48,826 rupees, 7 annas, and 6 pies. A karor (crore) is 100 lakhs, or 10 millions.

13. The enclosure occupies a space of more than forty-two acres.

14. This statement, though commonly made, is erroneous. The building is named the 'assembly house' (jama'at khana), or 'guest-house' (mihman khana) and was intended as the place for the congregation to assemble before prayers, or on the anniversaries of the deaths of the Emperor Shah Jahan or his consort. Taj Mahal (Muh. Latif, Agra, p. 113). Of course, it also serves as an architectural balance for the mosque.

15. The gardens of the Taj have been much improved since the author's time, and are now under the care of a skilled European superintendent, and full of beautiful shrubs and trees. The author's measurements of the quadrangle seem to be wrong. Different figures are given by Moin-ud-din (Hist. of the Taj, p. 29) and Fergusson (ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 313). No official survey is available.

16. The white marble that forms the substance of the building came, Mr. Keene thinks, from Makrana near Jaipur, but according to Mr. Hacket (Records of the Geographical Survey of India, x. 84), from Raiwala in Jaipur, near the Alwar border [note]. The account of these marbles given in the Rajputana Gazetteer, 1st ed. (ii. 127) favours Mr. Keene's view' (N.W.P. Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. vii, p. 707). The ornamental stones used for the inlay work in the Taj are lapis lazuli, jasper, heliotrope, Chalcedon agate, chalcedony, cornelian, sarde, plasma (or quartz and chlorite), yellow and striped marble, clay slate, and nephrite, or jade (Dr. Voysey, in Asiatic Researches, vol. xv, p. 429, quoted by V. Bail in Records of the Geological Survey of India, vii. 109). Moin-ud-din (pp. 27-9) gives a longer list, from the custodians' Persian account.

17. There is some exaggeration in this statement. Shah Jahan's concern was with his wife's tomb, and his fortified palaces, more than with 'the cities'.

18. Sleeman's talk about Austin de Bordeaux is wholly based on his misreading of Ustan for Ustad, meaning 'Master', in the Persian account, which names Muhammed-i-Isa Afandi (Effendi) as the chief designer. He had the title of Ustad, and some versions represent Muhammad Sharif, the second draughtsman, as his son. Muhammad, the son of Isa ('Jesus'), apparently was a Turk. He had the Turkish title of 'Effendi', and the Persian MS. used by Moin-ud-din asserts that he came from Turkey. The same authority states that Muhammad Sharif was a native of Samarkand.

Austin de Bordeaux was wholly distinct from Muhammad-i-Isa, Ustad Afandi, and there is no reason to suppose that he had anything to do with the Taj. Sleeman's story about his work at Agra and his death comes from Tavernier (i. 108, transl. Ball: see next note). Austin was in the service of Jahangir as early as 1621, and probably came out to India from Persia in 1614. He is described as an engineer (ingenieur), and is recorded to have made a golden throne for Jahangir (J.R.A.S., 1910, pp. 494, 1343-5). Sleeman's misreading of ustad as ustan, and his consequent blunders, have misled innumerable writers. In cursive Persian the misreading is easy and natural. He took Ustan as intended for 'Austin'. Certain marks in the garden on the other side of the river indicate the spot where Shah Jahan had begun work on his own tomb. Aurangzeb, as Tavernier observes, was 'not disposed to complete it' (see A.S.R., iv. 180).

For a summary of the controversy concerning the alleged share of Geronimo Veroneo in the design of the Taj, see H.F.A., 1911, pp. 416-18. Personally, I am of opinion, as I was more than twenty years ago, that 'the incomparable Taj is the product of a combination of European and Asiatic genius'. That opinion makes some people very angry.

19. I would not be thought very positive upon this point, I think I am right, but feel that I may be wrong. Tavernier says that Shah Jahan was obliged to give up his intention of completing a silver ceiling to the great hall in the palace, because Austin de Bordeaux had been killed, and no other person could venture to attempt it. Ustan [sic] Isa, in all the Persian accounts, stands first among the salaried architects. [W. H. S.] Tavernier's words are, 'Shah Jahan had intended to cover the arch of a great gallery which is on the right hand with silver, and a Frenchman, named Augustin de Bordeaux, was to have done the work. But the Great Mogul, seeing there was no one in his kingdom who was more capable to send to Goa to negotiate an affair with the Portuguese, the work was not done, for, as the ability of Augustin was feared, he was poisoned on his return from Cochin.' (Tavernier, transl. Ball, vol. i, p. 108. ) The statement that Austin had 'finished the palace at Delhi, and the mausoleum and palace of Agra' is not warranted by any evidence known to the editor.

20. Akbar erected his works on the site of an older fort, named Badalgarh, presumably of Hindu origin, 'which was of brick, and had become ruinous.' No existing building within the precincts can be referred with certainty to an earlier date than that of Akbar. The erection began in A.H. 972, corresponding to A.D. 1564-5, and the work continued for eight (or, according to another authority, four) years, costing 3,500,000 rupees, or about L350,000 sterling. The walls are of rubble, faced with red sandstone. The best account is the article by Nur Baksh, entitled 'The Agra Fort and its Buildings', in A.S. Ann. Rep., 1903-4, pp. 164-93.

21. It is difficult to understand how men like the Marquis of Hastings and Lord William Bentinck could have been guilty of such barbarous stupidity. But the fact is beyond doubt, and numberless officials of less exalted rank must share the disgrace of the ruin and spoliation, which, both at Agra and Delhi, have destroyed two noble palaces, and left but a few disconnected fragments. Fergusson's indignant protests (History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 312, &c.) are none too strong. Sir John Strachey, who was Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces in 1876, is entitled to the credit of having done all that lay in his power to remedy the effects of the parsimony and neglect of his predecessors. The buildings which remain at both Agra and Delhi are now well cared for, and large sums are spent yearly on their reparation and conservation. The credit for the modern policy of reverence for the ancient monuments is due to Lord Curzon more than to any one else.

22. This date is erroneous. The inscription is dated A.H. 1063, in the 26th year of Shah Jahan, equivalent practically to A.D. 1653. It is given in full, with both text and translation, in A.S. Ann. Rep. for 1903-4, p. 183. It states that the building was erected in the course of seven years at a cost of 300,000 rupees, which = L33,750, at the rate of 2s. 3d. to the rupee current at the time. Errors on the subject disfigure most of the guide-books and other works commonly read.

23. The beauty of the Moti Masjid, like that of most mosques, is all internal. The exterior is ugly. The interior deserves all praise. Fergusson describes this mosque as 'one of the purest and most elegant buildings of its class to be found anywhere', and truly observes that 'the moment you enter by the eastern gateway the effect of its courtyard is surpassingly beautiful'. 'I hardly know anywhere', he adds, 'of a building so perfectly pure and elegant.' (Ind. and E. Arch., ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 317. See also H.F.A., p. 412, fig. 242.)

24. I would, however, here enter my humble protest against the quadrille and tiffin [scil. lunch] parties, which are sometimes given to the European ladies and gentlemen of the station at this imperial tomb; drinking and dancing are, no doubt, very good things in their season, even in a hot climate, but they are sadly out of place in a sepulchre, and never fail to shock the good feelings of sober-minded people when given there. Good church music gives us great pleasure, without exciting us to dancing or drinking; the Taj does the same, at least to the sober-minded. [W. H. S.] The regulations now in force prevent any unseemly proceedings. The gardens at the Taj, of Itimad-ud-daula's tomb, of Akbar's mausoleum at Sikandara, and the Ram Bagh, are kept up by means of income derived from crown lands, aided by liberal grants from Government.

25. The anthor's curiously meagre description of the magnificent mausoleum of Akbar is, in the original edition, supplemented by coloured plates, prepared apparently from drawings by Indian artists. The structure is absolutely unique, being a square pyramid of five stories, the uppermost of which is built of pure white marble, while the four lower ones are of red sandstone. All earlier descriptions of the building have been superseded by the posthumous work of E. W. Smith, a splendidly illustrated quarto, entitled, Akbar's Tomb, Sikandarah, Agra, Allahabad Government Press, 1909, being vol. xxxv of A. S. India. Work had been begun in the lifetime of Akbar. The lower part of the enclosing wall of the park dates from his reign. The whole of the mausoleum itself probably is to be assigned to the reign of Jahangir, who in 1608 disapproved of the structure which had been three or four years in course of erection, and caused the design to be altered to please himself. The work was finished in 1613 at a cost of five millions of rupees (50 lakhs, more than half a million of pounds sterling). The exquisitely carved cenotaph on the top story is inadequately described by Sleeman as 'another marble slab'. It is a single block of marble 3 1/4 feet high. The tomb in the vault 'is perfectly plain with the exception of a few mouldings'.

26. The ninety-nine names of God do not occur in the Koran. They are enumerated in chapter 1 of Book X of the 'Mishkat-ul-Masabih' (see note 10, Chapter 5 ante): 'Abu Hurairah said, "Verily there are ninety-nine names for God; and whoever counts them shall enter into paradise. He is Allaho, than which there is no other; Al-Rahman-ul- Rahimo, the compassionate and merciful," &c., &c.' (Matthews, vol. i, p. 542.) The list is reproduced in the introduction to Palmer's translation of the Koran, and in Bosworth-Smith, Muhammad and Muhammadanism.

27. The court, 70 feet square, of the topmost story, is open to the sky, but the original intention was to provide a light dome, presumably similar to that built a little later to crown the mausoleum of Itimad-ud-daula. Finch, the traveller, who was at Agra about 1611, was informed that the cenotaph was 'to be inarched over with the most curious white and speckled marble, and to be seeled all within with pure sheet gold, richly inwrought.' The reason for omitting the dome is not recorded.

28. The area is much larger than 40 acres, being really about 150 acres. Each side is approximately 3 1/2 furlongs.

29. This remarkable eulogium is quoted with approval by another enthusiastic admirer of Akbar, Count von Noer (Prince Frederick Augustus of Schleswig-Holstein), who observes that 'as Akbar was unique amongst his contemporaries, so was his place of burial among Indian tombs—indeed, one may say with confidence, among the sepulchres of Asia.' (The Emperor Akbar, a Contribution towards the History of India in the 16th Century, by Frederick Augustus, Count of Noer; edited from the Author's papers by Dr. Gustav von Buchwald; translated from the German by Annette S. Beveridge. Calcutta, 1890.) This work of Count von Noer, unsatisfactory though it is in many respects, is still the best exiting modern account of Akbar's reign. The competent scholar who will undertake the exhaustive treatment of the life and reign of Akbar will be in possession of perhaps the finest great historical subject as yet unappropriated. The editor long cherished the idea of writing such an exhaustive work, but if he should now attempt to deal with the fascinating theme, he must be content with a less ambitions performance. Colonel Malleson's little book in the 'Rulers of India' series, although serviceable as a sketch, adds nothing to the world's knowledge. Akbar's reign (1556- 1605) was almost exactly coincident with that of Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603). The character and deeds of the Indian monarch will bear criticism as well as those of his great English contemporary. 'In dealing', observes Mr. Lane-Poole, 'with the difficulties arising in the Government of a peculiarly heterogeneous empire, he stands absently supreme among Oriental sovereigns, and may even challenge comparison with the greatest of European rulers.'

Unhappily, there is reason to believe that the marble slab no longer covers the bones of Akbar. Manucci states positively that 'During the time that Aurangzeb was actively at war with Shiva Ji [scil. the Marathas], the villagers of whom I spoke before broke into the mausoleum in the year 1691 [in words], and after stealing all the stones and all the gold work to be found, extracted the king's bones and had the temerity to throw them on a fire and burn them' (Storia do Mogor, i. 142). The statement is repeated with some additional particulars in a later passage, which concludes with the words: 'Dragging out the bones of Akbar, they threw them angrily into the fire and burnt them' (ibid. ii. 320). Irvine notes that the plundering of the tomb by the Jats is mentioned in detail by only one other writer, Ishar Das Nagar, author of the Fatuhat-I-Alamgiri, a manuscript in the British Museum. Manucci seems to be the sole authority for the alleged burning of Akbar's bones. I should be glad to disbelieve him, but cannot find any reason for doing so.



CHAPTER 52

Nur Jahan, the Aunt of the Empress Nur Mahal, over whose Remains the Taj is built.[1]

I crossed over the river Jumna one morning to look at the tomb of Itimad-ud-daula, the most remarkable mausoleum in the neighbourhood after those of Akbar and the Taj. On my way back, I asked one of the boatmen who was rowing me who had built what appeared to me a new dome within the fort. 'One of the Emperors, of course,' said he. 'What makes you think so?'

'Because such things are made only by Emperors,' replied the man quietly, without relaxing his pull at the oar.

'True, very true,' said an old Musalman trooper, with large white whiskers and moustachios, who had dismounted to follow me across the river, with a melancholy shake of the head, 'very true; who but Emperors could do such things as these?'

Encouraged by the trooper, the boatman continued:—'The Jats and the Marathas did nothing but pull down and destroy while they held their accursed dominion here; and the European gentlemen who now govern seem to have no pleasure in building anything but factories, courts of justice, and jails.'

Feeling as an Englishman, as we all must sometimes do, be where we will, I could hardly help wishing that the beautiful panels and pillars of the bath-room had fetched a better price, and that palace, Taj, and all at Agra, had gone to the hammer—so sadly do they exalt the past at the expense of the present in the imaginations of the people.

The tomb contains in the centre the remains of Khwaja Ghias,[2] one of the most prominent characters of the reign of Jahangir, and those of his wife. The remains of the other members of his family repose in rooms all round them; and are covered with slabs of marble richly cut. It is an exceedingly beautiful building, but a great part of the most valuable stones of the mosaic work have been picked out and stolen, and the whole is about to be sold by auction, by a decree of the civil court, to pay the debt of the present proprietor, who is entirely unconnected with the family whose members repose under it, and especially indifferent as to what becomes of their bones. The building and garden in which it stands were, some sixty years ago, given away, I believe, by Najif Khan, the prime minister, to one of his nephews, to whose family it still belongs.[3] Khwaja Ghias, a native of Western Tartary, left that country for India, where he had some relations at the imperial court, who seemed likely to be able to secure his advancement. He was a man of handsome person, and of good education and address. He set out with his wife, a bullock, and a small sum of money, which he realized by the sale of all his other property. The wife, who was pregnant, rode upon the bullock, while he walked by her side. Their stock of money had become exhausted, and they had been three days without food in the great desert, when she was taken in labour, and gave birth to a daughter. The mother could hardly keep her seat on the bullock, and the father had become too exhausted to afford her any support; and in their distress they agreed to abandon the infant. They covered it over with leaves, and towards evening pursued their journey. When they had gone on about a mile, and had lost sight of the solitary shrub under which they had left their child, the mother, in an agony of grief, threw herself from the bullock upon the ground, exclaiming, 'My child, my child!' Ghias could not resist this appeal. He went back to the spot, took up his child, and brought it to its mother's breast. Some travellers soon after came up, and relieved their distress, and they reached Lahore, where the Emperor Akbar then held his court.[4]

Asaf Khan, a distant relation of Ghias, held a high place at court, and was much in the confidence of the Emperor. He made his kinsman his private secretary. Much pleased with his diligence and ability, Asaf soon brought his merits to the special notice of Akbar, who raised him to the command of a thousand horse, and soon after appointed him master of the household. From this he was promoted afterwards to that of Itimad-ud-daula, or high treasurer, one of the first ministers.[5]

The daughter who had been born in the desert became celebrated for her great beauty, parts, and accomplishments, and won the affections of the eldest son of the Emperor, the Prince Salim, who saw her unveiled, by accident, at a party given by her father. She had been betrothed before this to Sher Afgan, a Turkoman gentleman of rank at court, and of great repute for his high spirit, strength, and courage.[6] Salim in vain entreated his father to interpose his authority to make him resign his claim in his favour; and she became the wife of Sher Afgan. Salim dare not, during his father's life, make any open attempt to revenge himself; but he, and those courtiers who thought it their interest to worship the rising sun, soon made his [Afgan's] residence at the capital disagreeable, and he retired with his wife to Bengal, where he obtained from the governor the superintendency of the district of Bardwan.

Salim succeeded his father on the throne;[7] and, no longer restrained by his (scil. Akbar's) rigid sense of justice, he recalled Sher Afgan to court at Delhi. He was promoted to high offices, and concluded that time had removed from the Emperor's mind all feelings of love for his wife, and of resentment against his successful rival—but he was mistaken; Salim had never forgiven him, nor had the desire to possess his wife at all diminished. A Muhammadan of such high feeling and station would, the Emperor knew, never survive the dishonour, or suspected dishonour, of his wife; and to possess her he must make away with the husband. He dared not do this openly, because he dreaded the universal odium in which he knew it would involve him; and he made several unsuccessful attempts to get him removed by means that might not appear to have been contrived or executed by his orders. At one time he designedly, in his own presence, placed him in a situation where the pride of the chief made him contend, single-handed, with a large tiger, which he killed; and, at another, with a mad elephant, whose proboscis he cut off with his sword; but the Emperor's motives in all these attempts to put him foremost in situations of danger became so manifest that Sher Afgan solicited, and obtained, permission to retire with his wife to Bengal.

The governor of this province, Kutb,[8] having been made acquainted with the Emperor's desire to have the chief made away with, hired forty ruffians, who stole into his house one night. There happened to be nobody else in the house; but one of the party, touched by remorse on seeing so fine a man about to be murdered in his sleep, called out to him to defend himself. He seized his sword, placed himself in one corner of the room, and defended himself so well that nearly one-half of the party are said to have been killed or wounded. The rest all made off, persuaded that he was endowed with supernatural force. After this escape he retired from Tanda, the capital of Bengal,[9] to his old residence of Bardwan. Soon after, Kutb came to the city with a splendid retinue, on pretence of making a tour of inspection through the provinces under his charge, but in reality for the sole purpose of making away with Sher Afgan, who as soon as he heard of his approach, came out some miles to meet him on horseback, attended by only two followers. He was received with marks of great consideration, and he and the governor rode on for some time side by side, talking of their mutual friends, and the happy days they had spent together at the capital. At last, as they were about to enter the city, the governor suddenly called for his elephant of state, and mounted, saying it would be necessary for him to pass through the city on the first visit in some state. Sher sat on horseback while he mounted, but one of the governor's pikemen struck his horse, and began to drive him before them. Sher drew his sword, and, seeing all the governor's followers with theirs ready drawn to attack him, he concluded at once that the affront had been put upon him by the orders of Kutb, and with the design to provoke him to an unequal fight. Determined to have his life first, he spurred his horse upon the elephant, and killed Kutb with his spear. He now attacked the principal of officers, and five noblemen of the first rank fell by his sword. All the crowd now rolled back, and formed a circle round Sher and his two companions, and galled them with arrows and musket balls from a distance. His horse fell under him and expired; and, having received six balls and several arrows in his body, Sher himself at last fell exhausted to the ground; and the crowd, seeing the sword drop from his grasp, rushed in and cut him to pieces.[l0]

His widow was sent, 'nothing loth', to court, with her only child, a daughter. She was graciously received by the Emperor's mother, and had apartments assigned her in the palace; but the Emperor himself is said not to have seen her for four years, during which time the fame of her beauty, talents, and accomplishments filled the palace and city. After the expiration of this time the feelings, whatever they were, which prevented his seeing her, subsided; and when he at last surprised her with a visit, he found her to exceed all that his imagination had painted since their last separation. In a few days their marriage was celebrated with great magnificence;[11] and from that hour the Emperor resigned the reins of government almost entirely into her hands; and, till his death, under the name first of Nur Mahall, 'Light of the Palace', and afterwards of Nur Jahan, 'Light of the World ', she ruled the destinies of this great empire. Her father was now raised from the station of high treasurer to that of prime minister. Her two brothers obtained the titles of Asaf Jah and Itikad Khan; and the relations of the family poured in from Tartary in search of employment, as soon as they heard of their success.[12] Nur Jahan had by Sher Afgan, as I have stated, one daughter; but she had never any child by the Emperor Jahangir.[13]

Asaf Jah became prime minister on the death of his father; and, in spite of his sister, he managed to secure the crown to Shah Jahan, the third son of Jahangir, who had married his daughter, the lady over whose remains the Taj was afterwards built. Jahangir's eldest son, Khusru, had his eyes put out by his father's orders for repeated rebellions, to which he had been instigated by a desire to revenge his mother's murder, and by the ambition of her brother, the Hindoo prince, Man Singh,[14] who wished to see his own nephew on the throne, and by his wife's father, the prime minister of Akbar, Khan Azam.[15] Nur Jahan had invited the mother of Khusru, the sister of Raja Man Singh, to look with her down a well in the courtyard of her apartments by moonlight, and as she did so she threw her in. As soon as she saw that she had ceased to struggle she gave the alarm, and pretended that she had fallen in by accident.[16]

By the murder of the mother of the heir-apparent she expected to secure the throne to a creature of her own. Khusru was treated with great kindness by his father, after he had been barbarously deprived of sight;[17] but when his brother, Shah Jahan, was appointed to the government of Southern India, he pretended great solicitude about the comforts of his poor blind brother, which he thought would not be attended to at court, and took him with him to his government in the Deccan, where he got him assassinated, as the only sure mode of securing the throne to himself.[18] Parwiz, the second son, died a natural death;[19] so also did his only son; and so also Daniyal, the fourth son of the Emperor.[20] Nur Jahan's daughter by Sher Afgan had married Shahryar, a young son of the Emperor by a concubine; and, just before his death he (the Emperor), at the instigation of Nur Jahan, named this son as his successor in his will. He was placed upon the throne, and put in possession of the treasury, and at the head of a respectable army;[21] but the Empress's brother, Asaf, designed the throne for his own son-in-law, Shah Jahan; and, as soon as the Emperor died, he put up a puppet to amuse the people till he could come up with his army from the Deccan—Bulaki, the eldest son of the deceased Khusru. Shahryar's troops were defeated; he was taken prisoner, and had his eyes put out forthwith, and the Empress was put into close confinement. As Shah Jahan approached Lahore with his army, Asaf put his puppet, Bulaki, and his younger brother, with the two young sons of Daniyal, into prison, where they were strangled by a messenger sent on for the purpose by Shah Jahan, with the sanction of Asaf.[22] This measure left no male heir alive of the house of Timur (Tamerlane) in Hindustan, save Shah Jahan himself and his four sons. Dara was then thirteen years of age, Shuja twelve, Aurangzeb ten, and Murad four;[23] and all were present to learn from their father this sad lesson—that such of them who might be alive on his death, save one, must, with their sons, be hunted down and destroyed like mad dogs, lest they might get into the hands of the disaffected, and be made the tools of faction.

Monsieur de Thevenot, who visited Agra, as I have before stated, in 1666, says, 'Some affirm that there are twenty-five thousand Christian families in Agra; but all do not agree in that. The Dutch have a factory in the town, but the English have now none, because it did not turn to account.' The number must have been great, or so sober a man as Monsieur Thevenot would not have thought such an estimate worthy to be quoted without contradiction.[24] They were all, except those connected with the single Dutch factory, maintained from the salaries of office; and they gradually disappeared as their offices became filled with Muhammadans and Hindoos. The duties of the artillery, its arsenals, and foundries, were the chief foundation upon which the superstructure of Christianity then stood in India. These duties were everywhere entrusted exclusively to Europeans, and all Europeans were Christians, and, under Shah Jahan, permitted freely to follow their own modes of worship. They were, too. Roman Catholic, and spent the greater part of their incomes in the maintenance of priests. But they could never forget that they were strangers in the land, and held their offices upon a precarious tenure; and, consequently, they never felt disposed to expend the little wealth they had in raising durable tombs, churches, and other public buildings, to tell posterity who or what they were. Present physical enjoyment, and the prayers of their priests for a good berth in the next world, were the only objects of their ambition. Muhammadans and Hindoos soon learned to perform duties which they saw bring to the Christians so much of honour and emolument; and, as they did so, they necessarily sapped the walls of the fabric. Christianity never became independent of office in India, and, I am afraid, never will; even under our rule, it still mainly rests upon that foundation.[25]



Notes:

1. The names and titles of the empress 'over whose remains the Taj is built' were Nawab Aliya Begam, Arjumand Banu, Mumtaz-i-Mahall. The title Nur Mahall, as applied to her, is without authority: it properly belongs to her aunt. 'It is usual in this country', Bernier observes, 'to give similar names to the members of the reigning family. Thus the wife of Chah-Jehan—so renowned for her beauty, and whose splendid mausoleum is more worthy of a place among the wonders of the world than the unshapen masses and heaps of stones in Egypt—was named Tage Mehalle [Mumtaz-i-Mahall], or the Crown of the Seraglio; and the wife of Jehan-Guyre, who so long wielded the sceptre, while her husband abandoned himself to drunkenness and dissipation, was known first by the name of Nour Mehalle, the Light of the Seraglio, and afterwards by that of Nour-Jehan-Begum, the Light of the World.' (Bernier, Travels, ed. Constable, and V. A. Smith, 1914, p. 5.)

2. Properly, Ghias-ud-din, meaning 'succourer of religion'. The word Ghias cannot stand as a name by itself.

3. The author's slight description of Itimad-ud-daula's exquisite sepulchre is, in the original edition, illustrated by two coloured plates, one of the exterior, and the other of the interior (restored). The lack of grandeur in this building is amply atoned for by its elegance and marvellous beauty of detail. An inscription, dated A.H. 1027 = A.D. 1618, alleged to exist in connexion with the building, has not, apparently, been published. (N.W.P. Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. vii, p. 687.)

Fergusson's description and just criticism deserve quotation. 'The tomb known as that of Itimad-ud-daula, at Agra, . . . cannot be passed over, not only from its own beauty of design, but also because it marks an epoch in the style to which it belongs. It was erected by Nur-Jahan in memory of her father, who died in 1621, and [it] was completed in 1628. It is situated on the left bank of the river, in the midst of a garden surrounded by a wall measuring 540 feet on each side. In the centre of this, on a raised platform, stands the tomb itself, a square measuring 69 feet on each side. It is two stories in height, and at each angle is an octagonal tower, surmounted by an open pavilion. The towers, however, are rather squat in proportion, and the general design of the building very far from being so pleasing as that of many less pretentious tombs in the neighbourhood. Had it, indeed, been built in red sandstone, or even with an inlay of white marble like that of Humayun, it would not have attracted much attention, its real merit consists in being wholly in white marble, and being covered throughout with a mosaic in 'pietra dura'—the first, apparently, and certainly one of the most splendid, examples of that class of ornamentation in India....

'As one of the first, the tomb of Itimad-ud-daula was certainly one of the least successful specimens of its class. The patterns do not quite fit the places where they are put, and the spaces are not always those best suited for this style of decoration. [Altogether I cannot help fancying that the Italians had more to do with the design of this building than was at all desirable, and they are to blame for its want of grace.[a]] But, on the other hand, the beautiful tracery of the pierced marble slabs of its Windows, which resemble those of Salim Chishti's tomb at Fatehpur Sikri, the beauty of its white marble walls, and the rich colour of its decorations, make up so beautiful a whole, that it is only on comparing it with the works of Shah Jahan that we are justified in finding fault.' (Indian and Eastern Architecture, ed. 1910, pp. 305-7.) Further details will be found in Syad Muhammad Latif, Agra (Calcutta, 1896); A.S.R. iv, pp. 137-41 (Calcutta, 1874); and more satisfactorily, in E. W. Smith, Moghul Colour Decoration of Agra (Allahabad, 1901), pp. 18-20, pl. lxv-lxxvii. Mr. E. W. Smith, if he had lived, would have produced a separate volume descriptive of this unique building.

The building is now carefully guarded and kept in repair. The restoration of the inlay of precious stones is so enormously expensive that much progress in that branch of the work is impracticable. The mausoleum contains seven tombs.

a. This sentence has been deleted by Dr. Burgess in his edition, 1910.

4. This tale is mythical. The alleged circumstances could not be known to any person besides the father and mother, neither of whom would be likely to make them public. Blochmann (transl. Ain, i. 508) gives a full account of Itimad-ud-daula and his family. The historians state that Nur Jahan was born at Kandahar, on the way to India. Her father was the son of a high Persian official, but for some reason or other was obliged to quit Persia with his family. He was a native of Teheran, not of 'Western Tartary'. The personal name of Nur Jahan was Mihr-un-nisa.

5. This story is erroneous, and inconsistent with the correct statement in the heading of the chapter that Nur Jahan, daughter of Ghias-ud-din, was aunt of the Lady of the Taj. The author makes out Ghias-ud-din (whom he corruptly calls Aeeas) to be a distant relation of Asaf Khan. In reality, Asaf Khan (whose original name was Mirza Abul Hasan) was the second son of Ghias-ud-din, and was elder brother of Nur Jahan, The genealogy, so far as relevant, is best shown in a tabular form, thus:—

Mirza Ghias-ud-din Beg (alias Itimad-ud-daula). - Muhammad Asaf Khan *Nur Mahall* Sharif. (alias Mirza (alias *Nurjaahan*), Abul Hasan). *Empress of Jahangir* (and widow of Sher Afgan). *Mumtaz-i-Mahall* (alias Arjumand Banu Begam, alias Nawab Aliya Begam), *Empress of Shah Jahan*.



6. Ali Quli Beg, from Persia entered Akbar's service, and in the war with the Rana of Chitor, served under Prince Salim (Jahangir), who gave him the title of Sher Afgan, 'tiger-thrower', with reverence to his deeds of prowess. The spelling afgan is correct. The word is the radical of the Persian verb afgandan, 'to throw down'.

7. In October, 1605.

8. Properly Kutb-ud-din Khan. He was foster-brother of Prince Salim (Jahangir), and his appointment as viceroy alarmed Sher Afgan, and caused the latter to throw up his appointment in Bengal. The word Kutb (Qutb) cannot stand alone as a name. Kutb (Qutb)-ud-din means 'pole-star of religion'.

9. Tandan, or Tanra. Ancient town, now a petty village, in Malda District, Bengal, the capital of Bengal after the decadence of Gaur. Its history is obscure, and the very site of the city has not been accurately determined. It is certain that it was in the immediate neighbourhood of Gaur, and south-west of that town beyond the Bhagirathi. Old Tandan has been utterly swept away by the changes in the course of the Pagla. It was occupied by the Afghan king of Bengal in A.D. 1564, and is not mentioned after 1660. (I.G., 1908.)

10. This narrative, notwithstanding all the minute details with which it is garnished, cannot be accepted as sober history; and I do not know from what source the author obtained it. 'This lady, whose maiden name was Muhr-un-Nisa, or "Seal of Womankind", had attracted the admiration of Jahangir when he was crown prince, but Akbar married her to a young Turkoman and settled them in Bengal. After Jahangir's accession the husband was killed in a quarrel with the governor of the province, and the wife was placed under the care of one of Akbar's widows, with whom she remained four years, and then married Jahangir (1610). There is nothing to justify a suspicion of the Emperor's connivance in the husband's death; nor do Indian historians corroborate the invidious criticisms of "Normal" by European travellers; on the contrary, they portray Nur-Mahall as a pattern of all the virtues, and worthy to wield the supreme influence which she obtained over the Emperor.' (Lane-Poole, The History of the Moghul Emperors of Hindustan illustrated by their Coins, p. xix.) The authorities on which this statement is founded are given in E. & D., vol. vi, pp. 397 and 402-5. See also Blochmann, Ain, vol. i, pp. 496, 524. Details of such stories in the various chronicles always differ. Jahangir openly rejoiced in the death of Sher Afgan, and it is by no means clear that he was not responsible for the event. He was not troubled by nice scruples. The first element in the lady's personal name seems to be Mihr, 'sun', not Muhr, 'seal'. The words are identical in ordinary Persian writing.

11. The long interval which elapsed between Sher Afgan's death and the marriage with the Emperor is a fact opposed to the assumptions which the author adopts that Nur Mahall was 'nothing loth', and that the death of her first husband was contrived by Jahangir.

12. Quaint Sir Thomas Herbert thus expresses himself: 'Meher Metzia [Mihr-un-nisa] is forthwith espoused with all solemnity to the King, and her name changed to Nourshabegem [Nur Shah Begam], or Nor-mahal, i.e., Light or Glory of the Court; her Father upon this affinity advanced upon all the other Umbraes ['umara', or nobles]; her brother, Assaph-Chan [Asaf Khan], and most of her kindred, smiled upon, with the addition of Honours, Wealth, and Command. And in this Sun-shine of content Jangheer [Jahangir] spends some years with his lovely Queen, without regarding ought save Cupid's Currantoes' (Travels, ed. 1677, p. 74). Authority exists for the title Asaf Jah, as well as for the variant Asaf Khan.

Coins were struck in the joint names of Jahangir and his consort, bearing a rhyming Persian couplet to the effect that

'By command of Jahangir the King, from the name of Nur Jahan his Queen, gold gained a hundred beauties.'

The Queen's administration is censured by some of the European travellers who visited India during Jahangir's reign as being venal and inefficient, and she is accused of cruelty and perfidy. She died on the 18th December (N.S.), 1645, and was buried by the aide of Jahangir in his mausoleum at Lahore. At her death she was in her 72nd year, according to the Muhammadan lunar reckoning, and would thus have been thirty-four solar years of age when the Emperor married her in 1610 (Beale: Blochmann).

13. According to Sir Thomas Herbert (Travels, ed. 1677, p. 99), 'Queen Normahal and her three daughters' were confined by order of Shah Jahan in A.D. 1628.

14. Son of Bhagwan Das, of Amber or Jaipur, in Rajputana, and one of the greatest of Akbar's officers.

15. Also known as Aziz Kokah, a foster-brother of Akbar.

16. This story may or may not be true; but a charge of this kind is absolutely incapable of proof, and would be readily generated in the palace atmosphere.

17. According to a contemporary authority, the blinding was only partial, and the prince recovered the sight of one eye (E. & D. vi. 448). With regard to such details the discrepancies in the histories are innumerable.

18. A.H. 1031 = A.D. 1621-2. The charge seems to be true.

19. A.H. 1036 = A.D. 1626-7.

20. This is a blunder. Jahangir's fourth son was named Jahandar, and died in or about A.H. 1035 = A.D. 1625-6. Daniyal was third son of Akbar, and younger brother of Jahangir. He died from delirium tremens in A.D. 1605, a few months before the death of Akbar,

21. Jahangir died, when returning from Kashmir, on the 8th November, A.D. 1627 (N.S.), and was buried near Lahore. The fight with Shahryar took place at Lahore.

22. Bulaki assumed the title of Dawar Baksh during his short reign, and struck coins at Lahore. He 'vanished—probably to Persia—after his three months' pretence of royalty; and on 25th January, 1628 (18 Jumada I, 1037), Shah-Jahan ascended at Agra the throne which he was to occupy for thirty years'. Shahryar was known by the nickname of Na-shudani, or 'Good-for-nothing' (Lane-Poole, The History of the Moghul Emperors of Hindustan, illustrated by their Coins, p. xxiii). The two nephews of Jahangir, the sons of Daniyal, slaughtered at this time, had been, according to Herbert, baptized as Christians (Travels, ed. 1677, pp. 74, 98). There are great discrepancies in the accounts given by various authorities concerning the fate of Bulaki and the other victims of Shah Jahan. A dissuasion of the evidence would take too much apace, and must be inconclusive, the fact being that the proceedings were secret, and pains were taken to conceal the truth.

23. The dates of birth are, in Old Style:-Dara Shikoh, March 20, 1615; Sultan Shuja, May 12, 1616; Aurangzeb, October 10, 1619; and Murad Baksh, not stated (Beale).

24. Ante, Chapter 2, text following [8]. The quotation is from Part III, chap. 19, p. 35 of The Travels of Monsieur de Thevenot, now made English. London, Printed in the year MDCLXXXVII. The author, in his quotation, omits between 'that' and 'The Dutch' the clause 'This indeed is certain that there are few Heathens and Parsis in respect of Mahometans there, and these surpass all the other sects in power as they do in number.'

25. During the reign of Akbar, many Christians, Portuguese, English, and others, visited Agra, and a considerable number settled there. A Roman Catholic church was built, the steeple of which was pulled down by Shah Jahan. The oldest inscriptions in the cemetery adjoining the Roman Catholic cathedral are in the Armenian character. Three Catholic cemeteries exist at or near Agra, namely

(l) the old Catholic graveyard at the village of Lashkarpur, dating from the time of Akbar, who made a grant of the site about A.D. 1600. This cemetery includes the Martyrs' Chapel, also known as the Chapel of Father Santus (Santucci), which was erected in memory of Khoja Mortenepus, an Armenian merchant, whose epitaph is dated 1611. The next oldest tombstone, that of Father Emmanuel d' Anhaya, who died in prison, bears the date August, 1633. Father Joseph de Castro, who died at Lahore, on December 15, 1646, lies in the same building.

(2) A cemetery in Padritola, the native Christian ward of the city behind the old cathedral. Father Tieffenthaler is buried there.

(3) A cemetery in an unnamed village, granted by Jahangir, and situated a mile north of Lashkarpur. An unpublished letter in the British Museum shows that Jahangir closed the churches in his dominions in 1615. Notwithstanding, the College at Agra was founded about 1617 by an Armenian who is known by his title Mirza Zul- Qarnain. The acute persecution by Shah Jahan occurred in 1631.

The artillery men in the Mogul service were not all European Christians. Turks from the Ottoman Empire were freely employed. (See Ep. Ind., ii, 132 note.)

The facts concerning the early history of Christianity in Northern India have been imperfectly studied. In this note I have used chiefly a pamphlet by Father H. Hosten, S. J., entitled Jesuit Missionaries in Northern India, &c. (Catholic Orphan Press, Calcutta, 1907), and the confused little book by Fanthome, Reminiscences of Agra (2nd ed., Thacker, Spink & Co., Calcutta, 1895). The Jesuit and Capuchin Fathers are working at the subject and hope to elucidate it. From the A.S. Progress Rep. N. Circle, Muhammadan Monuments, for 1911-12, p. 21, it appears that arrangements for the proper maintenance of the Old Catholic cemetery are in hand.

The author's observations concerning the official relations of Christianity in India do not apply at all to the very ancient churches of the South (See E.H.I., 3rd ed., 1914, App. M, pp. 245- 7). Even in the north, the modern missionary operations may claim to be 'independent of office'.



CHAPTER 53

Father Gregory's Notion of the Impediments to Conversion in India— Inability of Europeans to speak Eastern Languages.

Father Gregory, the Roman Catholic priest, dined with us one evening, and Major Godby took occasion to ask him at table, 'What progress our religion was making among the people?'

'Progress!' said he; 'why, what progress can we ever hope to make among a people who, the moment we begin to talk to them about the miracles performed by Christ, begin to tell us of those infinitely more wonderful performed by Krishna, who lifted a mountain upon his little finger, as an umbrella, to defend his shepherdesses at Govardhan from a shower of rain.[1] The Hindoos never doubt any part of the miracles and prophecies of our scripture—they believe every word of them; and the only thing that surprises them is that they should be so much less wonderful than those of their own scriptures, in which also they implicitly believe. Men who believe that the histories of the wars and amours of Ram and Krishna, two of the incarnations of Vishnu, were written some fifty thousand years before these wars and amours actually took place upon the earth, would of course easily believe in the fulfilment of any prophecy that might be related to them out of any other book;[2] and, as to miracles, there is absolutely nothing too extraordinary for their belief. If a Christian of respectability were to tell a Hindoo that, to satisfy some scruples of the Corinthians, St. Paul had brought the sun and moon down upon the earth, and made them rebound off again into their places, like tennis balls, without the slightest injury to any of the three planets [sic], I do not think he would feel the slightest doubt of the truth of it; but he would immediately be put in mind of something still more extraordinary that Krishna did to amuse the milkmaids, or to satisfy some sceptics of his day, and relate it with all the naivete imaginable.

I saw at Agra Mirza Kam Baksh, the eldest son of Sulaiman Shikoh, the eldest son of the brother of the present Emperor. He had spent a season with us at Jubbulpore, while prosecuting his claim to an estate against the Raja of Riwa. The Emperor, Shah Alam, in his flight before our troops from Bengal (1762), struck off the high road to Delhi at Mirzapore, and came down to Riwa, where he found an asylum during the season of the rains with the Riwa Raja, who assigned for his residence the village of Makanpur.[3] His wife, the Empress, was here delivered of a son, the present Emperor, of Hindustan, Akbar Shah;[4] and the Raja assigned to him and his heirs for ever the fee simple of this village. As the members of this family increased in geometrical ratio, under the new system, which gave them plenty to eat with nothing to do, the Emperor had of late been obliged to hunt round for little additions to his income; and in his search he found that Makanpur gave name to a 'pargana', or little district, of which it was the capital, and that a good deal of merchandize passed through this district, and paid heavy dues to the Raja. Nothing, he thought, would be lost by trying to get the whole district instead of the village; and for this purpose he sent down Kam Baksh, the ablest man of the whole family, to urge and prosecute his claim; but the Raja was a close, shrewd man, and not to be done out of his revenue, and Kam Baksh was obliged to return minus some thousand rupees, which he had spent in attempting to keep up appearances.

The best of us Europeans feel our deficiencies in conversation with Muhammadans of high rank and education, when we are called upon to talk upon subjects beyond the everyday occurrences of life. A Muhammadan gentleman of education is tolerably acquainted with astronomy, as it was taught by Ptolemy; with the logic and ethics of Aristotle and Plato; with the works of Hippocrates and Galen, through those of Avicenna, or, as they call him, Abu-Alisina;[5] and he is very capable of talking upon all subjects of philosophy, literature, science, and the arts, and very much inclined to do so; and of understanding the nature of the improvements that have been made in them in modern times. But, however capable we may feel of discussing these subjects, or explaining these improvements in our own language, we all feel ourselves very much at a loss when we attempt to do it in theirs. Perhaps few Europeans have mixed and conversed more freely with all classes than I have; and yet I feel myself sadly deficient when I enter, as I often do, into discussions with Muhammadan gentlemen of education upon the subject of the character of the governments and institutions of different countries—their effects upon the character and condition of the people; the arts and the sciences; the faculties and operations of the human mind; and the thousand other things which are subjects of everyday conversation among educated and thinking; men in our country. I feel that they could understand me quite well if I could find words for my ideas; but these I cannot find, though their languages abound in them, nor have I ever met the European gentleman who could. East Indians can;[6] but they commonly want the ideas as much as we want the language. The chief cause of this deficiency is the want of sufficient intercourse with men in whose presence we should be ashamed to appear ignorant—this is the great secret, and all should know and acknowledge it.

We are not ashamed to convey our orders to our native servants in a barbarous language. Military officers seldom speak to their 'sipahis' (sepoys) and native officers, about anything but arms, accoutrements, and drill; or to other natives about anything but the sports of the field; and, as long as they are understood, they care not one straw in what language they express themselves. The conversation of the civil servants with their native officers takes sometimes a wider range; but they have the same philosophical indifference as to the language in which they attempt to convey their ideas; and I have heard some of our highest diplomatic characters talking,[7] without the slightest feeling of shame or embarrassment, to native princes on the most ordinary subjects of everyday interest in a language which no human being but themselves could understand. We shall remain the same till some change of system inspire us with stronger motives to please and conciliate the educated classes of the native community. They may be reconciled, but they can never be charmed out of their prejudices or the errors of their preconceived opinions by such language as the European gentlemen are now in the habit of speaking to them.[8] We must learn their language better, or we must teach them our own, before we can venture to introduce among them those free institutions which would oblige us to meet them on equal terms at the bar, on the bench, and in the senate.[9] Perhaps two of the best secular works that were ever written upon the facilities and operations of the human mind, and the duties of men in their relations with each other, are those of Imam-ud-din Ghazzali, and Nasir-ud-din of Tus.[10] Their idol was Plato, but their works are of a more practical character than his, and less dry than those of Aristotle.

I may here mention the following, among many instances that occur to me, of the amusing mistakes into which Europeans are liable to fall in their conversation with natives.

Mr. J. W———n, of the Bengal Civil Service, commonly known by the name of Beau W———n,[11] was the Honourable Company's opium agent at Patna, when I arrived at Dinapore to join my regiment in 1810.[12] He had a splendid house, and lived in excellent style; and was never so happy as when he had a dozen young men from the Dinapore cantonments living with him. He complained that year, as I was told, that he had not been able to save more than one hundred thousand rupees that season out of his salary and commission upon the opium, purchased by the Government from the cultivators.[13] The members of the civil service, in the other branches of public service, were all anxious to have it believed by their countrymen that they were well acquainted with their duties, and able and willing to perform them; but the Honourable Company's commercial agents were, on the contrary, generally anxious to make their countrymen believe that they neither knew nor cared anything about their duties, because they were ashamed of them. They were sinecure posts for the drones of the service, or for those who had great interest and no capacity.[14] Had any young man made it appear that he really thought W———n knew or cared anything about his duties, he would certainly never have been invited to his house again; and if any one knew, certainly no one seemed to know that he had any other duty than that of entertaining his guests.

No one ever spoke the native language so badly, because no man had ever so little intercourse with the natives; and it was, I have been told, to his ignorance of the native languages that his bosom friend, Mr. P———st, owed his life on one occasion. W. sat by the sick-bed of his friend with unwearied attention, for some days and nights, after the doctors had declared his case entirely hopeless. He proposed at last to try change of air, and take him on the river Ganges. The doctors, thinking that he might as well die in his boat on the river as in his house at Calcutta, consented to his taking him on board. They got up as far as Hooghly, when P. said that he felt better and thought he could eat something. What should it be? A little roasted kid perhaps. The very thing that he was longing for! W. went out upon the deck to give orders for the kid, that his friend might not be disturbed by the gruff voice of the old 'khansama' (butler). P. heard the conversation, however.