 |
10. Some of Mrs. Smith's suitors entered into a combination to defraud a suitor in his court of a large sum of money, which he was to pay to Mrs. Smith as she walked in the garden. A dancing girl from the town of Jubbulpore was made to represent Mrs. Smith, and a suit of Mrs. Smith's clothes was borrowed for her from the washerman. The butler took the suitor to the garden, and introduced him to the supposed Mrs. Smith, who received him very graciously, and condescended to accept his offer of five thousand rupees in gold mohurs. The plot was afterwards discovered, and the old butler, washerman, and all, were sentenced to work in a rope on the roads. [W. H. S.]
Penal labour on the roads has been discontinued long since. Similar plots probably have often escaped detection. The whole conversation is a valuable illustration of Indian habits and modes of thought.
11. The subject of the police administration is more fully discussed post, in Chapter 69.
CHAPTER 59
Concentration of Capital and its Effects.
Kosi[1] stands on the borders of Firozpur, the estate of the late Shams-ud-din, who was hanged at Delhi on the 3rd of October, 1835, for the murder of William Fraser, the representative of the Governor- General in the Delhi city and territories.[2] The Mewatis of Firozpur are notorious thieves and robbers. During the Nawab's time they dared not plunder within his territory, but had a free licence to plunder wherever they pleased beyond it.[3] They will now be able to plunder at home, since our tribunals have been introduced to worry prosecutors and their witnesses to death by the distance they have to go, and the tediousness of our process; and thereby to secure impunity to offenders, by making it the interest of those who have been robbed, not only to bear with the first loss without complaint, but largely to bribe police officers to conceal the crimes from their master, the magistrate, when they happen to come to their knowledge. Here it was that Jeswant Rao Holkar gave a grand ball on the 14th of October, 1804, while he was with his cavalry covering the siege of Delhi by his regular brigade. In the midst of the festivity he had a European soldier of the King's 76th Regiment, who had been taken prisoner, strangled behind the curtain, and his head stuck upon a spear and placed in the midst of the assembly, where the 'nach' (nautch) girls were made to dance round it. Lord Lake reached the place the next morning in pursuit of this monster; and the gallant regiment, who here heard the story, had soon an opportunity of revenging the foul murder of their comrade in the battle of Dig, one of the most gallant passages of arms we have ever had in India.[4]
Near Kosi there is a factory in ruins belonging to the late firm of Mercer & Company. Here the cotton of the district used to be collected and screwed under the superintendence of European agents, preparatory to its embarkation for Calcutta on the river Jumna. On the failure of the firm, the establishment was broken up, and the work, which was then done by one great European merchant, is now done by a score or two of native merchants. There is, perhaps, nothing which India wants more than the concentration of capital; and the failure of a I [5] the great commercial houses in Calcutta, in the year 1833, was, unquestionably, a great calamity. They none of them brought a particle of capital into the country, nor does India want a particle from any country; but they concentrated it; and had they employed the whole, as they certainly did a good deal of it, in judiciously improving and extending the industry of the natives, they might have been the source of incalculable good to India, its people, and government.[6]
To this concentration of capital in great commercial and manufacturing establishments, which forms the grand characteristic of European in contradistinction to Asiatic societies in the present day, must we look for those changes which we consider desirable in the social and religions institutions of the people. Where land is liable to eternal subdivision by the law and the religion of both the Muhammadan and Hindoo population; where every great work that improves its productive powers, and facilitates the distribution of its produce among the people, in canals, roads, bridges, &c., is made by Government; where capital is nowhere concentrated in great commercial or manufacturing establishments, there can be no upper classes in society but those of office; and of all societies, perhaps that is the worst in which the higher classes are so exclusively composed. In India, public office has been, and must continue to be, the only road to distinction, until we have a law of primogeniture, and a concentration of capital. In India no man has ever thought himself respectable, or been thought so by others, unless he is armed with his little 'hukumat'; his 'little brief authority' under Government, that gives him the command of some public establishment paid out of the revenues of the State.[7] In Europe and America, where capital has been concentrated in great commercial and manufacturing establishments, and free institutions prevail almost as the natural consequence, industry is everything; and those who direct and command it are, happily, looked up to as the source of the wealth, the strength, the virtue, and the happiness of the nation. The concentration of capital in such establishments may, indeed, be considered, not only as the natural consequence, but as the prevailing cause of the free institutions by which the mass of the people in European countries are blessed.[8] The mass of the people were as much brutalized and oppressed by the landed aristocracy as they could have been by any official aristocracy before towns and higher classes were created by the concentration of capital.
The same observations are applicable to China. There the land all belongs to the sovereign, as in India; and, as in India, it is liable to the same eternal subdivision among the sons of those who hold it under him. Capital is nowhere more concentrated in China than in India; and all the great works that add to the fertility of the soil, and facilitate the distribution of the land labour of the country are formed by the sovereign out of the public revenue. The revenue is, in consequence, one of office;[9] and no man considers himself respectable,[10] unless invested with some office under Government, that is, under the Emperor. Subdivision of labour, concentration of capital, and machinery render an Englishman everywhere dependent upon the co-operation of multitudes; while the Chinaman, who as yet knows little of either, is everywhere independent, and able to work his way among strangers. But this very dependence of the Englishman upon the concentration of capital is the greatest source of his strength and pledge of his security, since it supports those members of the higher orders who can best understand and assert the rights and interests of the whole.[11]
If we had any great establishment of this sort in which Christians could find employment and the means of religious and secular instruction, thousands of converts would soon flock to them; and they would become vast sources of future improvement in industry, social comfort, municipal institutions, and religion. What chiefly prevents the spread of Christianity in India is the dread of exclusion from caste and all its privileges; and the utter hopelessness of their ever finding any respectable circle of society of the adopted religion, which converts, or would-be converts, to Christianity now everywhere feel. Form such circles for them, make the members of these circles happy in the exertion of honest and independent industry, let those who rise to eminence in them feel that they are considered as respectable and as important in the social system as the servants of Government, and converts will flock around you from all parts, and from all classes of the Hindoo community. I have, since I have been in India, had, I may say, at least a score of Hindoo grass-cutters turn Musalmans, merely because the grooms and the other grass-cutters of my establishment happened to be of that religion, and they could neither eat, drink, nor smoke with them. Thousands of Hindoos all over India become every year Musalmans from the same motive;[12] and we do not get the same number of converts to Christianity, merely because we cannot offer them the same advantages. I am persuaded that a dozen such establishments as that of Mr. Thomas Ashton of Hyde, as described by a physician at Manchester, and noticed in Mr. Baines's admirable work on the Cotton Manufactures of Great Britain (page 447), would do more in the way of conversion among the people of India than has ever yet been done by all the religious establishments, or ever will be done by them, without such aid.[13]
I have said that the great commercial houses of Calcutta, which in their ruin involved that of so many useful establishments scattered over India, like that of Kosi, brought no capital into the country.[14] They borrowed from one part of the civil and military servants of Government at a high interest that portion of their salary which they saved; and lent it at a higher interest to others of the same establishment, who for a time required or wished to spend more than they received; or they employed it at a higher rate of profit for great commercial and manufacturing establishments scattered over India, or spread over the ocean. Their great error was in mistaking nominal for real profits. Calculating their dividend on the nominal profits, and never supposing that there could be any such things as losses in commercial speculation, or bad debts from misfortunes and bad faith, they squandered them in lavish hospitality and ostentatious display, or allowed their retiring members to take them to England and to every other part of the world where their creditors might not find them, till they discovered that all the real capital left at their command was hardly sufficient to pay back with the stipulated interest one-tenth of what they had borrowed. The members of those houses who remained in India up to the time of the general wreck were of course reduced to ruin, and obliged to bear the burthen of the odium and indignation which the ruin of so many thousands of confiding constituents brought down upon them. Since that time the savings of civil and military servants have been invested either in Government securities at a small interest, or in banks, which make their profit in the ordinary way, by discounting bills of exchange, and circulating their own notes for the purpose, or by lending out their money at a high interest of 10 or 12 per cent. to other members of the same services.[15]
On the 16th of January we went on to Horal, ten miles over a plain, with villages numerous and large, and in every one some fine large building of olden times—sarai, palace, temple, or tomb, but all going to decay.[16] The population much more dense than in any of the native states I have seen; villages larger and more numerous; trade in the transit of cotton, salt, sugar, and grain, much brisker. A great number of hares were here brought to us for sale at threepence apiece, a rate at which they sell at this season in almost all parts of Upper India, where they are very numerous, and very easily caught in nets.
Notes:
1. Kosi is twenty-five miles north-west of Mathura.
2. The story of the murder of Mr. Fraser is fully detailed post in Chapter 64. After the execution of Shams-ud-din, the estate of the criminal was taken possession of by Government, and the town of Firozpur is now the head-quarters of a sub-collectorship of the Gurgaon district in the Panjab. The Delhi territories were placed under the government of the Lieutenant-Governor of the Panjab in 1858.
3. The Mewati depredations had gone on for centuries. The Sultan Balban (Ghias-ud-din, alias Ulugh Khan), who reigned from A.D. 1265- 87, temporarily suppressed them by punishments of awful cruelty, flaying the criminals alive, and so forth. The Mewatis now supply men to a few robber gangs, but are incapable of mischief on a large scale.
4. Delhi was most nobly defended against Holkar by a very small force under Lieutenant-Colonel Burn, who 'repelled an assault, and defended a city ten miles in circumference, and which had ever before been given up at the first appearance of an enemy at its gates'.
The battle of Dig was fought on November 13, 1804, by the division under the command of General Fraser on the one side, and Holkar's infantry and artillery on the other. 'The 76th led the way, with its wonted alacrity and determination,' and forced its way into the village in advance of its supports. The fight resulted in the total defeat of the Marathas, who lost nearly two thousand men, and eighty- seven pieces of cannon. The English loss also was heavy, amounting to upwards of six hundred and forty killed and wounded, including the brave commander, who was mortally wounded, and survived the victory only a few days.
On the night of November 17, General Lake in person routed Holkar and his cavalry, killing about three thousand men. The English loss on this occasion amounted to only two men killed, and about twenty wounded.
The fort of Dig, with a hundred guns and a considerable quantity of ammunition and military stores, was captured on December 24 of the same year. (Thornton, History of British India, pp. 316-19, 2nd ed., 1859.)
5. Transcription note. This clause is not intelligible to the transcriber. The character '1' or 'I' appears in the text. Some words appear to be missing.
6. The author was grievously mistaken in supposing that India did not require 'a particle' of foreign capital. The railways, and the great tea, coffee, indigo, and other industries, built up and developed during the nineteenth century, and still growing, owe their existence to the hundreds of millions sterling of English capital poured into the country, and could not possibly have been financed from Indian resources. The author seems not to have expected the construction of railways in India, although when he wrote a beginning of the railway system in England had been made.
7. This sentiment is still potent, and explains the eagerness often shown by wealthy landholders of high social rank to obtain official appointments, which to the European mind seem unworthy of their acceptance.
8. Few readers are likely to accept this proposition.
9. This clause is not intelligible to the editor. The word 'revenue' probably is a misprint for 'aristocracy'.
10. The original edition prints, 'No man considers himself less respectable', which is nonsense.
11. This sentiment reads oddly in these days of social democracy and continual conflict between capital and labour.
12. The steady progress of Islam in Lower and Eastern Bengal, first made apparent by the census of 1872, has been confirmed by the enumerations of 1901 and 1911. The feeling that the religion of the Prophet gives its adherent a better position in both this world and the next than Hinduism can offer to a low-caste man is the most powerful motive for conversion. See Dr. James Wise's valuable treatise, 'The Muhammadans of Eastern Bengal' (J.A.S.B., Part III (1894), pp. 28-63), and the Census Reports from 1872 to 1911.
13. The author's whimsical notion that a development of commercial and manufacturing organization in India would cause converts to flock from all parts, and from all classes of the Hindoo community, has not been verified by experience. Much capital is now concentrated in the great cities, and the number of cotton, jute, and other factories is considerable, but Christian converts are not among the goods produced.
14. The modern commercial houses bring a large proportion of their capital from Europe.
15. The three Presidency Banks, the Bank of Bengal, the Bank of Madras, and the Bank of Bombay, in which the Indian Government is interested, are the leading Indian banks. The Bank of Bengal was opened in 1806. No bank in India is allowed to issue notes. The paper money in use is issued by the Paper Currency Department of the Government of India, and the notes are known as 'currency notes'. The issue of these notes began in 1862-3. (Balfour, Cyclopaedia, 3rd ed., s.v. 'Bank and Paper Currency'). Much Indian capital is now invested in joint-stock companies of every kind.
16. More correctly, Hodal.
CHAPTER 60
Transit Duties in India—Mode of Collecting them.
At Horal[1] resides a Collector of Customs with two or three uncovenanted European assistants as patrol officers.[2] The rule now is to tax only the staple articles of produce from the west on their transit down into the valley of the Jumna and Ganges, and to have only one line on which these articles shall be liable to duties.[3] They are free to pass everywhere else without search or molestation. This has, no doubt, relieved the people of these provinces from an infinite deal of loss and annoyance inflicted upon them by the former System of levying the Customs duties, and that without much diminishing the net receipts of Government from this branch of its revenues. But the time may come when Government will be constrained to raise a greater proportion of its collective revenues than it has hitherto done from indirect taxation, and when this time comes, the rule which confines the impost to a single line must of course be abandoned.[4] Under the former system, one great man, with a very high salary, was put in to preside over a host of native agents with very small salaries, and without any responsible intermediate agent whatever to aid him, and to watch over them. The great man was selected without any reference to his knowledge of, or fitness for, the duties entrusted to him, merely because he happened to be of a certain standing in a certain exclusive service, which entitled him to a certain scale of salary, or because he had been found unfit for judicial or other duties requiring more intellect and energy of character. The consequence was that for every one rupee that went into the public treasury, ten were taken by these harpies from the merchants, or other people over whom they had, or could pretend to have, a right of search.[5]
Some irresponsible native officer who happened to have the confidence of the great man (no matter in what capacity he served him) sold for his own profit, and for that of those whose goodwill he might think it worth while to conciliate, the offices of all the subordinate agents immediately employed in the collection of the duties. A man who was to receive an avowed salary of seven rupees a month would give him three or four thousand for his post, because it would give him charge of a detached post, in which he could soon repay himself with a handsome profit. A poor 'peon', who was to serve under others, and could never hope for an independent charge, would give five hundred rupees for an office which yielded him avowedly only four rupees a month. All arrogated the right of search, and the state of Indian society and the climate were admirably suited to their purpose. A person of any respectability would feel himself dishonoured were the females of his family to be seen, much less touched, while passing along the road in their palanquin or covered carnage; and to save himself from such dishonour he was everywhere obliged to pay these custom-house officers. Many articles that pass in transit through India would suffer much damage from being opened along the road at any season, and be liable to be spoiled altogether during that of the rains; and these harpies could always make the merchants open them, unless they paid liberally for their forbearance. Articles were rated to the duty according to their value; and articles of the same weight were often, of course, of very different values. These officers could always pretend that packages liable to injury from exposure contained within them, among the articles set forth in the invoice, others of greater value in proportion to their weight. Men who carried pearls, jewels, and other articles very valuable compared with their bulk, always depended for their security from robbers and thieves on their concealment; and there was nothing which they dreaded so much as the insolence and rapacity of these custom-house officers, who made them pay large bribes, or exposed their goods. Gangs of thieves had members in disguise at such stations, who were soon able to discover through the insolence of the officers, and the fears and entreaties of the merchants, whether they had anything worth taking or not.
A party of thieves from Datiya, in 1882, followed Lord William Bentinck's camp to the bank of the river Jumna near Mathura, where they found a poor merchant humbly entreating an insolent custom-house officer not to insist upon his showing the contents of the little box he carried in his carriage, lest it might attract the attention of thieves, who were always to be found among the followers of such a camp, and offering to give him anything reasonable for his forbearance. Nothing he could be got to offer would satisfy the rapacity of the man; the box was taken out and opened. It contained jewels which the poor man hoped to sell to advantage among the European ladies and gentlemen of the Governor-General's suite. He replaced his box in his carriage; but in half an hour it was travelling post-haste to Datiya, by relays of thieves who had been posted along the road for such occasions. They quarrelled about the division; swords were drawn, and wounds inflicted. One of the gang ran off to the magistrate at Sagar, with whom he had before been acquainted;[6] and he sent him back with a small party, and a letter to the Datiya Raja requesting that he would get the box of jewels for the poor merchant. The party took the precaution of searching the house of the thieves before they delivered the letter to their friend the minister, and by this means recovered about half the jewels, which amounted in all to about seven thousand rupees. The merchant was agreeably surprised when he got back so much of his property through the magistrate of Mathura, and confirmed the statement of the thief regarding the dispute with the custom-house officer which enabled them to discover the value of the box.
Should Government by and by extend the System that obtains in this single line to the Customs all over India they may greatly augment their revenue without any injury, and with but little necessary loss and inconvenience to merchants. The object of all just taxation is to make the subjects contribute to the public burthen in proportion to their means, and with as little loss and inconvenience to themselves as possible. The people who reside west of this line enjoy all their salt, cotton, and other articles which are taxed on crossing the line without the payment of any duties, while those to the east of it are obliged to pay. It is, therefore, not a just line. The advantages are, first, that it interposes a body of most efficient officers between the mass of harpies and the heads of the department, who now virtually superintend the whole System, whereas they used formerly to do so merely ostensibly. They are at once the tapis of Prince Husain and the telescope of Prince Ali; they enable the heads of departments to be everywhere and see everything, whereas before they were nowhere and saw nothing.[7] Secondly, it makes the great staple articles of general consumption alone liable to the payment of duties, and thereby does away in a great measure with the odious right of search.
At Kosi our friend, Charles Fraser, left us to proceed through Mathura to Agra. He is a very worthy man and excellent public officer, one of those whom one always meets again with pleasure, and of whose society one never tires. Mr. Wilmot, the Collector of Customs, and Mr. Wright, one of the patrol officers, came to dine with us. The wind blew so hard all day that the cook and khansaman (butler) were long in despair of being able to give us any dinner at all. At last we managed to get a tent, closed at every crevice to keep out the dust, for a cook-room; and they were thus able to preserve their master's credit, which, no doubt, according to their notions, depended altogether on the quality of his dinner.
Notes:
1. The place is a small town in the Gurgaon District, Panjab.
2. The term 'uncovenanted' may require explanation for readers not familiar with the details of Indian administration. The Civil Service of India, commonly called Indian Civil Service, which supplies most of the higher administrative and judicial officers, used to be known as the Covenanted service, because its members sign a covenant with the Secretary of State. All the other departmental services—Public Works, Postal and the rest—were grouped together as uncovenanted. In accordance with the Report of the Public Service Commission (1886-7) the terms 'covenanted' and 'uncovenanted' have been disused.
3. The text refers to what was known as the 'customs hedge'. Before the establishment of the British supremacy each of the innumerable native jurisdictions levied transit duties on many kinds of goods at each of its frontiers, to the infinite vexation of traders. Such duties were gradually abolished in British territory, and few, if any, are now enforced by native states. Salt cannot be manufactured in British India without a licence, and the Salt (formerly called Inland Customs) Department is charged with the duty of preventing the manufacture or sale of illicit salt. In its later developments the Customs hedge was used for the collection of the salt duty only. Sir John Strachey took a leading part in its abolition. To secure the levy of the duty on salt, he writes, 'there grew up gradually a monstrous system, to which it would be almost impossible to find a parallel in any tolerably civilized country. A Customs line was established which stretched across the whole of India, which in 1869 extended from the Indus to the Mahanadi in Madras, a distance of 2,300 miles; and it was guarded by nearly 12,000 men and petty officers, at an annual cost of L162,000. It would have stretched from London to Constantinople. . . . It consisted principally of an immense impenetrable hedge of thorny trees and bushes . . . A similar line, 280 miles in length, was maintained in the north-eastern part of the Bombay Presidency from Dohud to the Runn of Cutch.' In 1878 the salt duties were revised, and the necessary arrangements with the native states were made. With effect from the 1st April, 1879, the whole Customs line was abolished, with the exception of a small portion on the Indus. (Sir J. Strachey, The Finances and Public Works of India, 1869-81, London, 1882, pp. 219, 220, 225.) Great mines of rock salt are worked near the Indus.
4. Most people who know India intimately are of opinion that indirect taxation is more suitable to the circumstances of the country than direct taxation. For municipal purposes, indirect taxation, under the name of octroi, is levied by most considerable towns, and notwithstanding its inconveniences, is far less unpopular and far more productive than any form of direct taxation. The people have been accustomed to indirect taxation of divers kinds from the most remote times, and hate income tax or any other direct impost, however reasonable it may be in theory. Since 1895 the general customs duty is 5 per cent. ad valorem on commodities imported into British India by sea. (See I.G., 1907, vol. iv, chapter 8). The above remarks on the suitability of indirect taxation for India are not intended as a defence of the barbarous device of the 'Customs hedge', which was indefensible.
5. That unsound System prevailed in all departments during the early years of the nineteenth century. 'In Bengal, the monopoly of salt in one form or other dates at least from the establishment of the Board of Trade there in 1765. The strict monopoly of salt commenced in 1780, under a System of agencies. The System introduced in 1780 continued in force with occasional modifications till 1862, when the several salt agencies were gradually abolished, leaving the Supply of salt, whether by importations or excise manufacture, to private enterprise. Since then, for Bengal Proper, the supply of the condiment has been obtained chiefly by importation, but in part by private manufacture under a System of excise.' (Balfour, Cyclopaedia, 3rd ed., s.v. Salt.) At present the Salt Department is controlled by a single Commissioner with the Government of India, The fee payable for a licence to manufacture salt is fifty rupees. It is inaccurate to describe the limitation imposed on the manufacture of salt as a monopoly. Any one can sell salt, but it can be made only under licence.
6. The author.
7. The same observations, mutatis mutandis, are applicable to the magistracy of the country; and the remedy for all the great existing evils must be sought in the same means, the interposition of a body of efficient officers between the magistrate and the 'thanadars', or present head police officers of small divisions. [W. H. S.] Much has been done to carry out this advice. The 'most efficient officers' of the inland Customs department alluded to in the text were the European or Eurasian 'uncovenanted' Collectors of Customs and their assistants. The allusion to Prince Husain and Prince Ali refers to the well-known tale in the Arabian Nights, 'The story of Prince Ahmad and the Fairy Peri-Banu'. It is omitted, I believe, from Lane's version.
CHAPTER 61
Peasantry of India attached to no existing Government—Want of Trees in Upper India [1]—Cause and Consequence—Wells and Groves.
What strikes one most after crossing the Chambal is, I think, the improved size and bearing of the men; they are much stouter, and more bold and manly, without being at all less respectful. They are certainly a noble peasantry, full of courage, spirit, and intelligence; and heartily do I wish that we could adopt any system that would give our Government a deep root in their affections, or link their interests inseparably with its prosperity; for, with all its defects, life, property, and character are certainly more secure, and all their advantages more freely enjoyed under our Government than under any other they have ever heard of, or that exists at present in any other part of the country. The eternal subdivision of the landed property reduces them too much to one common level, and prevents the formation of that middle class which is the basis of all that is great and good in European societies—the great vivifying spirit which animates all that is good above it in the community.[2] It is a singular fact that the peasantry, and, I may say, the landed interest of the country generally, have never been the friends of any existing government, have never considered their interests and that of their government the same; and, consequently, have never felt any desire for its success or its duration.[3]
The towns and villages all stand upon high mounds formed of the debris of former towns and villages, that have been accumulating, most of them, for thousands of years. They are for the most part mere collections of wretched hovels built of frail materials, and destined only for a brief period.
Man wants but little here below, Nor wants that little long.[4]
And certainly there is no climate in the world where man wants less than in this of India generally, and Upper India particularly. The peasant lives in the open air; and a house to him is merely a thing to eat and sleep in, and to give him shelter in the storm, which comes upon him but seldom, and never in a pitiless shape. The society of his friends he enjoys in the open air, and he never furnishes his house for their reception or for display. The peasantry of India, in consequence of living and talking so much in the open air, have all stentorian voices, which they find it exceedingly difficult to modulate to our taste when they come into our rooms.
Another thing in this part of India strikes a traveller from other parts—the want of groves of fruit-trees around the villages and along the roads. In every other part of India he can at every stage have his tents pitched in a grove of mango-trees, that defend his followers from the direct rays of the sun in the daytime, and from the cold dews at night; but in the district above Agra, he may go for ten marches without getting the shelter of a grove in one.[5] The Sikhs, the Marathas, the Jats, and the Pathans destroyed them all during the disorders attending the decline of the Muhammadan empire; and they have never been renewed, because no man could feel secure that they would be suffered to stand ten years. A Hindoo believes that his soul in the next world is benefited by the blessings and grateful feelings of those of his fellow creatures who unmolested eat the fruit and enjoy the shade of the trees he has planted during his sojourn in this world; and, unless he can feel assured that the traveller and the public in general will be permitted to do so, he can have no hope of any permanent benefit from his good work. It might as well be cut down as pass into the hands of another person who had no feeling of interest in the eternal repose of the soul of the planter. That person would himself have no advantage in the next world from giving the fruit and the shade of the trees to the public, since the prayers of those who enjoyed them would be offered for the soul of the planter, and not for his—he, therefore, takes all their advantage to himself in this world, and the planter and the public are defrauded. Our Government thought they had done enough to encourage the renewal of these groves, when by a regulation they gave to the present lessees of villages the privilege of planting them themselves, or permitting others to plant them; but where they held their leases for a term of only five years, of course they would be unwilling to plant them. They might lose their lease when the term expired, or forfeit it before; and the successor would have the land on which the trees stood, and would be able to exclude the public, if not the proprietor, from the enjoyment of any of their advantages. Our Government has, in effect, during the thirty-five years that it has held the dominion of the North-Western Provinces,[6] prohibited the planting of mango groves, while the old ones are every year disappearing. On the resumption of rent-free lands, even the ground on which the finest of these groves stand has been recklessly resumed, and the proprietors told me that they may keep the trees they have, but cannot be allowed to renew them, as the lands are become the property of Government. The lands of groves that have been the pride of families for a century and a half have been thus resumed. Government is not aware of the irreparable mischief they do the country they govern by such measures.[7]
On my way back from Meerut, after the conversation already related with the farmer of a small village (ante, chapter 58, text at [7]), my tents were one day pitched, in the month of December, amidst some very fine garden cultivation in the district of Aligarh;[8] and in the evening I walked out as usual to have some talk with the peasantry. I came to a neighbouring well at which four pair of bullocks were employed watering the surrounding fields of wheat for the market, and vegetables for the families of the cultivators. Four men were employed at the well, and two more in guiding the water into the little embanked squares into which they divide their fields.
I soon discovered that the most intelligent of the four was a Jat; and I had a good deal of conversation with him as he stood landing the leather buckets, as the two pair of bullocks on his side of the well drew them to the top, a distance of forty cubits from the surface of the water beneath.
'Who built this well?' I began.
'It was built by one of my ancestors, six generations ago.'
'How much longer will it last?'
'Ten generations more, I hope; for it is now just as good as when first made. It is of 'pakka' bricks without mortar cement.'[9]
'How many waterings do you give?'
'If there should be no rain, we shall require to give the land six waterings, as the water is sweet; had it been brackish four would do. Brackish water is better for wheat than sweet water; but it is not so good for vegetables or sugar-cane.'
'How many "bighas" are watered from this well?'
'We water twenty "bighas", or one hundred and five "jaribs", from this well.'[10]
'And you pay the Government how much?'
'One hundred rupees, at the rate of five rupees the bigha. But only the five immediately around the well are mine, the rest belong to others.'
'But the well belongs to you; and I suppose you get from the proprietors of the other fifteen something for your water?'
'Nothing. There is more water for my five bighas, and I give them what they require gratis; they acknowledge that it is a gift from me, and that is all I want.'
'And what does the land beyond the range of your water of the same quality pay?'
'It pays at the rate of two rupees the bigha, and it is with difficulty that they can be made to pay that. Water, sir, is a great thing, and with that and manure we get good crops from the land.'[11]
'How many returns of the seed?'
'From these twenty bighas with six waterings, and cross ploughing, and good manure, we contrive to get twenty returns; that is, if God is pleased with us and blesses our efforts.'
'And you maintain your family comfortably out of the return from your five?'
'If they were mine I could; but we had two or three bad seasons seven years ago, and I was obliged to borrow eighty rupees from our banker at 24 per cent., for the subsistence of my family. I have hardly been able to pay him the interest with all I can earn by my labour, and I now serve him upon two rupees a month.'
'But that is not enough to maintain you and your family?'
'No; but he only requires my services for half the day, and during the other half I work with others to get enough for them.'
'And when do you expect to pay off your debt?'
'God only knows; if I exert myself, and keep a good "niyat" (pure mind or intentions), he will enable me or my children to do so some day or other. In the meantime he has my five bighas of land in mortgage, and I serve him in the cultivation.'
'But under those misfortunes, you could surely venture to demand something from the proprietors of the other fifteen bighas for the water of your well?'
'Never, sir; it would be said all over the country that such an one sold God's water for his neighbours' fields, and I should be ashamed to show my face. Though poor, and obliged to work hard, and serve others, I have still too much pride for that.'
'How many bullocks are required for the tillage of these twenty bighas watered from your well?'
'These eight bullocks do all the work; they are dear now. This was purchased the other day on the death of the old one, for twenty-six rupees. They cost about fifty rupees a pair—the late famine has made them dear.'[12]
'What did the well cost in making?'
'I have heard that it cost about one hundred and twenty rupees; it would cost about that sum to make one of this kind in the present day, not more.'
'How long have the families of your caste been settled in these parts?'
'About six or seven generations; the country had before been occupied by a peasantry of the Kalar caste. Our ancestors came, built up mud fortifications, dug wells, and brought the country under cultivation; it had been reduced to a waste; for a long time we were obliged to follow the plough with our swords by our sides, and our friends around us with their matchlocks in their hand, and their matches lighted.'
'Did the water in your well fail during the late seasons of drought?'
'No, sir, the water of this well never fails.'
'Then how did bad seasons affect you?'
'My bullocks all died one after the other from want of fodder, and I had not the means to till my lands; subsistence became dear, and to maintain my family, I was obliged to contract the debt for which my lands are now mortgaged. I work hard to get them back, and, if I do not succeed, my children will, I hope, with the blessing of God.'[13]
The next morning I went on to Kaka, fifteen miles; and finding tents, people, and cattle, without a tree to shelter them, I was much pleased to see in my neighbourhood a plantation of mango and other fruit-trees. It had, I was told, been planted only three years ago by Hiraman and Motiram, and I sent for them, knowing that they would be pleased to have their good work noticed by any European gentleman. The trees are now covered with cones of thatch to shelter them from the frost. The merchants came, evidently much pleased, and I had a good deal of talk with them.
'Who planted this new grove?'
'We planted it three years ago.'
'What did your well cost you, and how many trees have you?'
'We have about four hundred trees, and the well has cost us two hundred rupees, and will cost us two hundred more.'
'How long will you require to water them?'
'We shall require to water the mango and other large trees ten or twelve years; but the orange, pomegranate, and other small trees will always require watering.'
'What quantity of ground do the trees occupy?'
'They occupy twenty-two "bighas" of one hundred and five "jaribs". We place them all twelve yards from each other, that is, the large trees; and the small ones we plant between them.'
'How did you get the land?'
'We were many years trying in vain to get a grant from the Government through the collector; at last we got him to certify on paper that, if the landholder would give us land to plant our grove upon, the Government would have no objection. We induced the landholder, who is a constituent of ours, to grant us the land; and we made our well, and planted our trees.'
'You have done a good thing; what reward do you expect?'
'We hope that those who enjoy the shade, the water, and the fruit, will think kindly of us when they are gone. The names of the great men who built the castles, palaces, and tombs at Delhi and Agra have been almost all forgotten, because no one enjoys any advantage from them; but the names of those who planted the few mango groves we see are still remembered and blessed by all who eat of their fruit, sit in their shade, and drink of their water, from whatever part of the world they come. Even the European gentlemen remember their names with kindness; indeed, it was at the suggestion of a European gentleman, who was passing this place many years ago, and talking with us as you are now, that we commenced this grove. "Look over this plain," said he, "it has been all denuded of the fine groves with which it was, no doubt, once studded; though it is tolerably well cultivated, the traveller finds no shelter in it from the noonday sun—even the birds seem to have deserted you, because you refuse them the habitations they find in other parts of India." We told him that we would have the grove planted, and we have done so; and we hope God will bless our undertaking.'
'The difficulty of getting land is, I suppose, the reason why more groves are not planted, now that property is secure?'
'How could men plant without feeling secure of the land they planted upon, and when Government would not guarantee it? The landholder could guarantee it only during the five years of lease;[14] and, if at the end of that time Government should transfer the lease of the estate to another, the land of the grove would be transferred with it. We plant not for worldly or immediate profits, but for the benefit of our souls in the next world—for the prayers of those who may derive benefit from our works when we are gone. Our landholders are good men, and will never resume the lands they have given us; and if the lands be sold at auction by Government, or transferred to others, we hope the certificate of the collector will protect us from his grasp.'[15]
'You like your present Government, do you not?'
'We like it much. There has never been a Government that gave so much security to life and property; all we want is a little more of public service, and a little more of trade; but we have no cause to complain; it is our own fault if we are not happy.'
'But I have been told that the people find the returns from the soil diminishing, and attribute it to the perjury that takes place in our courts occasionally.'
'That, sir, is no doubt true; there has been a manifest falling off in the returns; and people everywhere think that you make too much use of the Koran and the Ganges water in your courts. God does not like to hear lies told upon one or other, and we are apt to think that we are all punished for the sins of those who tell them. May we ask, sir, what office you hold?'
'It is my office to do the work which God assigns to me in this world.'
'The work of God, sir, is the greatest of all works, and those are fortunate who are chosen to do it.'
Their respect for me evidently increased when they took me for a clergyman. I was dressed in black.
'In the first place, it is my duty to tell you that God does not punish the innocent for the guilty, and that the perjury in courts has nothing to do with the diminution of returns from the soil. Where you apply water and manure, and alternate your crops, you always get good returns, do you not?'
'Very good returns; but we have had several bad seasons that have carried away the greater part of our population; but a small portion of our lands can be irrigated for want of wells, and we had no rain for two or three years, or hardly any in due season; and it was this deficiency of rain which the people thought a chastisement from heaven.'
'But the wells were not dried up, were they?'
'No.'
'And the people whose fields they watered had good returns, and high prices for produce?'
'Yes, they had; but their cattle died for want of food, for there was no grass any where to be found.'
'Still they were better off than those who had no wells to draw water from for their fields; and the only way to provide against such evils in future is to have a well for every field. God has given you the fields, and he has given you the water; and when it does not come from the clouds, you must draw it from your wells.'[16]
'True, sir, very true; but the people are very poor, and have not the means to form the wells they require.'
'And if they borrow the money from you, you charge them with interest?'
'From one to two per cent. a month according to their character and circumstances; but interest is very often merely nominal, and we are in most cases glad to get back the principal alone.'[17]
'And what security have you for the land of your grove in case the landholder should change his mind, or die and leave sons not so well disposed.'
'In the first place, we hold his bonds for a debt of nine thousand rupees which he owes us, and which we have no hopes of his ever paying. In the next, we have on stamped paper his deed of gift, in which he declares that he has given us the land, and that he and his heirs for ever shall be bound to make good the rents, should Government sell the estate for arrears of revenue. We wanted him to write this document in the regular form of a deed of sale; but he said that none of his ancestors had ever yet sold their lands, and that he would not be the first to disgrace his family, or record their disgrace on stamped paper—it should, he was resolved, be a deed of gift.'
'But, of course, you prevailed upon him to take the price?'
'Yes, we prevailed upon him to take two hundred rupees for the land, and got his receipt for the same; indeed, it is so mentioned in the deed of gift; but still the landlord, who is a near relation of the late chief of Hatras, would persist in having the paper made out as a deed, not of sale, but of gift. God knows whether, after all, our grove will be secure—we must run the risk now we have begun upon it.'
Notes:
1. This phrase is misleading. There is no want of trees in Upper India generally; only certain limited areas are ill wooded. Most of the districts in the plains of the Ganges and Jumna are well wooded.
2. This is a favourite doctrine of the author, often reiterated. The absence of a powerful middle class is a characteristic, not of India only, but of all Oriental despotisms, and the subdivision of landed property is only one of the causes of the non-existence of such a class.
3. This is quite true. The rural population want two things, first a light assessment, secondly the minimum of official interference, They do not care a straw who the ruler is, and they like best that ruler, be his name or nationality what it may, who worries them least, and takes least money from them.
4. Goldsmith, 'The Hermit' (in chapter 8 of The Vicar of Wakefield).
5. Groves are still scarce in the Agra country, but much planting has been done on the roads.
6. Gorakhpur, Azamgarh, and some other districts, forming half of the old province of Oudh, ceded by the ruler of Oudh in 1801, were long known as the Ceded Provinces. The western districts of the North- Western Provinces, known as the Conquered Provinces, were taken from the Marathas in 1803-5. The Province of Benares became British territory in 1775. The hill districts of the Kumaun Division were annexed in 1816, at the close of the war with Nepal. All the regions named are now included in the Agra Province of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, in which the editor served for twenty-nine years.
7. The author's remarks are not readily intelligible to readers unversed in the technicalities of Indian revenue administration. The author writes on the assumption that Government was the proprietor of the soil. While he was writing, the settlements under Regulation IX of 1833 were in progress. Those settlements, or revenue contracts, were ordinarily sanctioned for periods of thirty years, and the landholders, whom the author calls 'lessees', have gradually changed into 'proprietors', with full power over their land, subject only to the State lien for the 'land revenue' (Crown rent, or State share of the produce), and to the laws of inheritance and succession. The 'resumption of rent-free lands' simply means the subjection of those lands to the payment of 'land revenue'. It is inaccurate to say that the lands are become 'the property of Government' by reason of their being assessed. Even when land generally was regarded as the property of the State, and the landholders were considered to be only lessees, no objection would have been made to the planting of groves if payment of the 'land revenue' had been continued for the planted area as for cultivated land. Now that landholders have been recognized as proprietors, there is nothing to prevent them from planting as much land as they like with trees, although the State has not always been willing to exempt the whole planted area from assessment. No one ever objected to the renewal of trees except on the ground that the area under trees might be excluded from assessment. For many years past the Government of India has been most anxious to encourage tree- planting, and has sanctioned liberal rules respecting the exemption of grove land from assessment to 'land revenue', or 'rent', as the author calls it. The Government of the United Provinces certainly is not now liable to reproach for indifference to the value of groves. Enormous progress in the planting of road avenues has also been made. The deficiency of trees in the country about Agra is partly due to nature, much of the ground being cut up by ravines, and unfavourable for planting.
8. The Aligarh district lies to the north and east of the Mathura district. The fort of Aligarh is fifty-five miles north of Agra, and eighty-four miles south-east of Delhi.
9. 'pakka' here means 'burned in a kiln', as distinguished from 'sun- dried'.
10. The 'bigha' is the unit of superficial land measure, varying, but often taken as five-eighths of an acre. The 'jarib' is a smaller measure.
11. The rules now in force require assessing officers to make allowance for permanent improvements, such as the well described in the text, so as to give the fair benefit of the improvement to the maker. In the early settlements this important matter was commonly neglected.
12. Tolerable bullocks, fit for use at the well and in the plough, would now cost much more. This conversation appears to have taken place in the year 1839, The famine alluded to is that of 1837-8.
13. This conversation gives a very vivid and truthful picture of rural life in Northern India. Most revenue officers have held similar conversations with rustics, but the author is almost the only writer on Indian affairs who has perceived that exact notes of casual chats in the fields would be found interesting and valuable.
14. The early settlements were made for short terms.
15. The certificate would not be of much avail in a civil court.
16. The Aligarh district is now irrigated by canals.
17. This is the lender's view of his business; the borrowers might have a different story.
CHAPTER 62
Public Spirit of the Hindoos—Tree Cultivation and Suggestions for extending it.
I may here be permitted to introduce as something germane to the matter of the foregoing chapter a recollection of Jubbulpore, although we are now far past that locality.
My tents are pitched where they have often been before, on the verge of a very large and beautiful tank in a fine grove of mango-trees, and close to a handsome temple. There are more handsome temples and buildings for accommodation on the other side of the tank, but they are gone sadly out of repair. The bank all round this noble tank is beautifully ornamented by fine banyan and pipal trees, between which and the water's edge intervene numerous clusters of the graceful bamboo. These works were formed about eighty years ago by a respectable agricultural capitalist who resided at this place, and died about twenty years after they were completed. No relation of his can now be found in the district, and not one in a thousand of those who drink of the water or eat of the fruit knows to whom he is indebted. There are round the place some beautiful 'baolis', or large wells with flights of stone steps from the top to the water's edge, imbedded in clusters of beautiful trees. They were formed about the same time for the use of the public by men whose grandchildren have descended to the grade of cultivators of the soil, or belted attendants upon the present native collectors, without the means of repairing any of the injury which time is inflicting upon these magnificent works. Three or four young pipal-trees have begun to spread their delicate branches and pale green leaves rustling in the breeze from the dome of this fine temple; which these infant Herculeses hold in their deadly grasp and doom to inevitable destruction. Pigeons deposit the seeds of the pipal-tree, on which they chiefly feed, in the crevices of buildings.
No Hindoo dares, and no Christian or Muhammadan will condescend, to lop off the heads of these young trees, and if they did, it would only put off the evil and inevitable day; for such are the vital powers of their roots, when they have once penetrated deeply into a building, that they will send out their branches again, cut them off as often as you may, and carry on their internal attack with undiminished vigour.[1] No wonder that superstition should have consecrated this tree, delicate and beautiful as it is, to the gods. The palace, the castle, the temple, and the tomb, all those works which man is most proud to raise to spread and to perpetuate his name, crumble to dust beneath her withering grasp. She rises triumphant over them all in her lofty beauty, bearing high in air amidst her light green foliage fragments of the wreck she has made, to show the nothingness of man's greatest efforts.
While sitting at my tent-door looking out upon this beautiful sheet of water, and upon all the noble works around me, I thought of the charge, so often made against the people of this fine land, of the total want of public spirit among them, by those who have spent their Indian days in the busy courts of law, and still more busy commercial establishments of our great metropolis.
If by the term public spirit be meant a disposition on the part of individuals to sacrifice their own enjoyments, or their own means of enjoyment for the common good, there is perhaps no people in the world among whom it abounds so much as among the people of India. To live in the grateful recollections of their countrymen for benefits conferred upon them in great works of ornament and utility is the study of every Hindoo of rank and property.[2] Such works tend, in his opinion, not only to spread and perpetuate his name in this world, but, through the good wishes and prayers of those who are benefited by them, to secure the favour of the Deity in the next.
According to their notions, every drop of rain-water or dew that falls to the ground from the green leaf of a fruit-tree, planted by them for the common good, proves a refreshing draught for their souls in the next [world]. When no descendant remains to pour the funeral libations in their name, the water from the trees they have planted for the public good is destined to supply its place. Everything judiciously laid out to promote the happiness of their fellow creatures will in the next world be repaid to them tenfold by the Deity.
In marching over the country in the hot season, we every morning find our tents pitched on the green sward amid beautiful groves of fruit- trees, with wells of 'pakka' (brick or stone) masonry, built at great expense, and containing the most delicious water; but how few of us ever dream of asking at whose cost the trees that afford us and our followers such agreeable shade were planted, or the wells that afford us such copious streams of fine water in the midst of dry, arid plains were formed! We go on enjoying all the advantages which arise from the noble public spirit that animates the people of India to benevolent exertions, without once calling in question the truth of the assertion of our metropolitan friends that 'the people of India have no public spirit'.
Manmor, a respectable merchant of Mirzapore, who traded chiefly in bringing cotton from the valley of the Nerbudda and Southern India through Jubbulpore to Mirzapore, and in carrying back sugar and spices in return, learning how much travellers on this great road suffered from the want of water near the Hiliya pass, under the Vindhya range of hills, commenced a work to remedy the evil in 1822. Not a drop of wholesome water was to be found within ten miles of the bottom of the pass, where the laden bullocks were obliged to rest during the hot months, when the greatest thoroughfare always took place. Manmor commenced a large tank and garden, and had laid out about twenty thousand rupees in the work, when he died. His son, Lalu Manmor, completed the work soon after his father's death, at a cost of eighty thousand rupees more, that travellers might enjoy all the advantages that his good old father had benevolently intended for them. The tank is very large, always full of fine water even in the driest part of the dry season, with flights of steps of cut freestone from the water's edge to the top all round. A fine garden and shrubbery, with temples and buildings for accommodations, are attached, with an establishment of people to attend and keep them in order.[3]
All the country around this magnificent work was a dreary solitude— there was not a human habitation within many miles on any side. Tens of thousands who passed this road every year were blessing the name of the man who had created it where it was so much wanted, when the new road from the Nerbudda to Mirzapore was made by the British Government to descend some ten miles to the north of it. As many miles were saved in the distance by the new cut, and the passage down made comparatively easy at great cost, travellers forsook the Hiliya road, and poor Manmor's work became comparatively useless. I brought the work to the notice of Lord William Bentinck, who, in passing Mirzapore some time after, sent for the son, and conferred upon him a rich dress of honour, of which he has ever since been extremely proud.[4]
Hundreds of works like this are undertaken every year for the benefit of the public by benevolent and unostentatious individuals, who look for their reward, not in the applause of newspapers and public meetings, but in the grateful prayers and good wishes of those who are benefited by them; and in the favour of the Deity in the next world, for benefits conferred upon his creatures in this.[5]
What the people of India want is not public spirit, for no men in the world have more of it than the Hindoos, but a disposition on the part of private individuals to combine their efforts and means in effecting great objects for the public good. With this disposition they will be, in time, inspired under our rule, when the enemies of all settled governments may permit us to divert a little of our intellect and our revenue from the duties of war to those of peace.[6]
In the year 1829, while I held the civil charge of the district of Jubbulpore, in this valley of the Nerbudda, I caused an estimate to be made of the public works of utility and ornament it contained. The population of the district at that time amounted to 500,000 souls, distributed among 4,053 occupied towns, villages, and hamlets. There were 1,000 villages more which had formerly been occupied, but were then deserted. There were 2,288 tanks, 209 'baolis', or large wells with flights of steps extending from the top down to the water when in its lowest stage; 1,560 wells lined with brick and stone, cemented with lime, but without stairs; 860 Hindoo temples, and 22 Muhammadan mosques. The estimated cost of these works in grain at the present price, had the labour been paid in kind at the ordinary rate, was R86,66,043 (866,604 pounds sterling).[7]
The labourer was estimated to be paid at the rate of about two-thirds the quantity of corn he would get in England if paid in kind, and corn sells here at about one-third the price it fetches in average seasons in England. In Europe, therefore, these works, supposing the labour equally efficient, would have cost at least four times the sum here estimated; and such works formed by private individuals for the public good, without any view whatever to return in profits, indicate a very high degree of public spirit.
The whole annual rent of the lands of this district amounts to R650,000 (65,000 pounds sterling), that is, 500,000 demandable by the Government, and 150,000 by those who hold the lands at lease immediately under Government, over and above what may be considered as the profits of their stock as farmers. These works must, therefore, have cost about thirteen times the amount of the annual rent of the whole of the lands of the district, or the whole annual rent for above thirteen years.[8]
But I have not included the groves of mango and tamarind, and other fine trees with which the district abounds. Two-thirds of the towns and villages are imbedded in fine groves of these trees, mixed with the banyan (Ficus Indica) and the pipal (Ficus religiosa). I am sorry they were not numbered; but I should estimate them at three thousand, and the outlay upon a mango grove is, on an average, about four hundred rupees.
The groves of fruit-trees planted by individuals for the use of the public, without any view to a return in profit, would in this district, according to this estimate, have cost twelve lakhs [12,00,000] more, or about twice the amount of the annual rent of the whole of the lands. It should be remarked that the whole of these works had been formed under former governments. Ours was established in the year 1817.[9]
The Upper Doab and the Delhi Territories were denuded of their trees in the wars that attended the decline and fall of the Muhammadan empire, and the rise and progress of the Sikhs, Jats, and Marathas in that quarter. These lawless freebooters soon swept all the groves from the face of every country they occupied with their troops, and they never attempted to renew them or encourage the renewal. We have not been much more sparing; and the finest groves of fruit-trees have everywhere been recklessly swept down by our barrack-masters to furnish fuel for their brick-kilns; and I am afraid little or no encouragement is given for planting others to supply their place in those parts of India where they are most wanted.
We have a regulation authorizing the lessee of a village to plant a grove in his grounds, but where the settlements of the land-revenue have been for short periods, as in all Upper and Central India, this authority is by no means sufficient to induce them to invest their property in such works. It gives no sufficient guarantee that the lessee for the next settlement shall respect a grant made by his predecessors; and every grove of mango-trees requires outlay and care for at least ten years. Though a man destines the fruit, the shade, and the water for the use of the public, he requires to feel that it will be held for the public in his name, and by his children and descendants, and never be exclusively appropriated by any man in power for his own use.
If the lands were still to belong to the lessee of the estate under Government, and the trees only to the planter and his heirs, he to whom the land belonged might very soon render the property in the trees of no value to the planter or his heirs.[10]
If Government wishes the Upper Doab, the Delhi, Mathura, and Agra districts again enriched and embellished with mango groves, they will not delay to convey this feeling to the hundreds, nay, thousands, who would be willing to plant them upon a single guarantee that the lands upon which the trees stand shall be considered to belong to them and their heirs as long as these trees stand upon them.[11] That the land, the shade, the fruit, and the water will be left to the free enjoyment of the public we may take for granted, since the good which the planter's soul is to derive from such a work in the next world must depend upon their being so; and all that is required to be stipulated in such grants is that mango tamarind, pipal, or 'bar' (i.e. banyan) trees, at the rate of twenty-five the English acre, shall be planted and kept up in every piece of land granted for the purpose; and that a well of 'pakka' masonry shall be made for the purpose of watering them, in the smallest, as well as in the largest, piece of ground granted, and kept always in repair.
If the grantee fulfil the conditions, he ought, in order to cover part of the expense, to be permitted to till the land under the trees till they grow to maturity and yield their fruit; if he fails, the lands, having been declared liable to resumption, should be resumed. The person soliciting such grants should be required to certify in his application that he had already obtained the sanction of the present lessee of the village in which he wishes to have his grove, and for this sanction he would, of course, have to pay the full value of the land for the period of his lease. When his lease expires, the land in which the grove is planted would be excluded from the assessment; and when it is considered that every good grove must cost the planter more than fifty times the annual rent of the land, Government may be satisfied that they secure the advantage to their people at a very cheap rate.[12]
Over and above the advantage of fruit, water, and shade for the public, these groves tend much to secure the districts that are well studded with them from the dreadful calamities that in India always attend upon deficient falls of rain in due season. They attract the clouds, and make them deposit their stores in districts that would not otherwise be blessed with them; and hot and dry countries denuded of their trees, and by that means deprived of a great portion of that moisture to which they had been accustomed, and which they require to support vegetation, soon become dreary and arid wastes. The lighter particles, which formed the richest portion of their soil, blow off, and leave only the heavy arenaceous portion; and hence, perhaps, those sandy deserts in which are often to be found the signs of a population once very dense.
In the Mauritius, the rivers were found to be diminishing under the rapid disappearance of the woods in the interior, when Government had recourse to the measure of preventing further depredations, and they soon recovered their size.
The clouds brought up from the southern ocean by the south-east trade wind are attracted, as they pass over the island, by the forests in the interior, and made to drop their stores in daily refreshing showers. In many other parts of the world governments have now become aware of this mysterious provision of nature; and have adopted measures to take advantage of it for the benefit of the people; and the dreadful sufferings to which the people of those of our districts, which have been the most denuded of their trees, have been of late years exposed from the want of rain in due season, may, perhaps, induce our Indian Government to turn its thoughts to the subject.[13]
The province of Malwa, which is bordered by the Nerbudda on the south, Gujarat on the west, Rajputana on the north, and Allahabad on the east, is said never to have been visited by a famine; and this exemption from so great a calamity must arise chiefly from its being so well studded with hills and groves. The natives have a couplet, which, like all good couplets on rural subjects, is attributed to Sahadeo, one of the five demigod brothers of the Mahabharata, to this effect: 'If it does not thunder on such a night, you, father, must go to Malwa, and I to Gujarat', meaning, 'The rains will fail us here, and we must go to those quarters where they never fail'[14]
Notes:
1. The Archaeological Survey is engaged in unceasing battle with the pipal seedlings.
2. This proposition is too general.
3. The Hiliya, or Haliya, Pass is near the town of the same name in the Mirzapur district, thirty-one miles south-west of Mirzapur. A bilingual inscription, in English and Hindi, on a large slab on the bank of the river, records the capture of the fort of Bhopari in 1811 by the 21st Regiment Native Infantry. The tank described in the text is at Dibhor, twelve miles south of Haliya, and is 430 feet long by 352 broad. The full name of the builder is Sriman Nayak Manmor, who was the head of the Banjara merchants of Mirzapur. The inscription on his temple is dated 23 February, 1825, A.D. 'I suppose', remarks Cunningham, 'that the vagrant instinct of the old Banjara preferred a jungle site. No doubt he got the ground cheap; and from this vantage point he was able to supply Mirzapur with both wood and charcoal.' (A.S.R., vol. xxi, pp. 121-5, pl. xxxi.)
4. The new road passes through the Katra Pass. The pass via Dibhor and Haliya, which the author calls the Hiliya Pass, is properly called the Kerahi (Kerai) Pass. Both old and new roads are now little used. The construction of railways has altogether changed the course of trade, and Cawnpore has risen on the ruins of Mirzapur. Lalu, Nayak's 'grandson, died in comparative obscurity some years ago, and only a few female relatives remain to represent the family—a striking example, if one were needed, of the instability of Oriental fortunes.' (A.S.R., vol. xxi, p. 124, quoting Gazetteer.)
5. Within a few miles of Gosalpur, at the village of Talwa, which stands upon the old high road leading to Mirzapore, is a still more magnificent tank with one of the most beautiful temples in India, all executed two or three generations ago at the expense of two or three lakhs of rupees for the benefit of the public, by a very worthy man, who became rich in the service of the former Government. His descendants, all save one, now follow the plough; and that one has a small rent-free village held on condition of appropriating the rents to the repair of the tank. [W. H. S.]
The name Talwa is only the rustic way of pronouncing 'tal', meaning the tank. Gosalpur is nineteen miles north-east of Jabalpur. Two or three lakhs of rupees were then (in eighteenth century) worth about 22,000 pounds to 33,000 pounds sterling.
6. India, except on the frontiers, has been at peace since 1858, and much revenue has been spent on the duties of peace, but the power of combination for public objects has developed among the people to a less degree than the author seems to have expected, though some development undoubtedly has taken place.
7. In the original edition these statistics are given in words. Figures have been used in this edition as being more readily grasped. The Central Provinces Gazetteer (1870) gives the following figures: Area of district, 4,261 square miles; population, 620,201; villages, 2,707; wells in use, 5,515. The Gazetteer figures apparently include wells of all kinds, and do not reckon hamlets separately. Wells are, of course, an absolute necessity, and their construction could not be avoided in a country occupied by a fixed population. The number of temples and mosques was very small for so large a population. Many of the tanks, too, are indispensably necessary for watering the cattle employed in agriculture. The 'baolis' may fairly be reckoned as the fruit of the public spirit of individuals. This chapter is a reprint of a paper entitled 'On the Public Spirit of the Hindoos'. See Bibliography, ante, No. 10.
8. The C.P. Gazetteer (1870) states that in 1868-9 the land-revenue was R5,70,434, as compared with R500,000 in the author's time. It has since been largely enhanced. The lessees (zamindars) have now become proprietors, and the land-revenue, according to the rule in force for many years past, should not exceed half the estimated profit rental. The early settlements were made in accordance with the theory of native Governments that the land is the property of the State, and that the lessees are entitled only to subsistence, with a small percentage as payment for the trouble of collection from the actual cultivators. The author's estimate gives the zamindars only 15/80ths, or 3/16ths of the profit rental.
9. The people of the Jubbulpore district must have been very different from those of the rest of India if they planted their groves solely for the public benefit. The editor has never known the fruit, not to mention the timber and firewood, of a grove to be available for the use of the general public. Universal custom allows all comers to use the shade of any established grove, but the fruit is always jealousy guarded and gathered by the owners. Even one tree is often the property of many sharing, and disputes about the division of mangoes and other fruits are extremely frequent. The framing of a correct record of rights in trees is one of the most embarrassing tasks of a revenue officer.
10. Under the modern System it often happens that the land belongs to one party, and the trees to another. Disputes, of course, occur, but, as a rule, the rights of the owner of the trees are not interfered with by the owner of the land. In thousands of such cases both parties exercise their rights without friction.
11. This sentence shows clearly how remote from the author's mind was the idea of private property in land in India. Government has long since parted with the power of giving grants such as the author recommends. The upper Doab districts of Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, and Saharanpur now have plenty of groves.
12. The cost of establishing a grove varies much according to circumstances, of which the distance of water from the surface is the most important. Where water is distant, the cost of constructing and working a well is very high. Where water is near, these items of expense are small, because the roots of the trees soon reach a moist stratum, and can dispense with irrigation.
13. The author, in his appreciation of the value of arboriculture and forest conservancy, was far in advance of his Anglo-Indian contemporaries. A modern meteorologist might object to some of his phraseology, but the substance of his remarks is quite sound. His statement of the ways in which trees benefit climate is incomplete. One important function performed by the roots of trees is the raising of water from the depths below the surface, to be dispersed by the leaves in the form of vapour. Trees act beneficially in many other ways also, which it would be tedious to specify.
The Indian Government long remained blind to the importance of the duty of saving the country from denudation. The first forest conservancy establishments were organized in 1852 for Madras and Burma, and, by Act vii of 1865, the Forest Department was established on a legal basis. Its operations have since been largely extended, and trained foresters are now sent out each year to India. The Department at the present time controls many thousand square miles of forest. The reader may consult the article 'Forests' in Balfour, Cyclopaedia, 3rd ed., and sundry official reports for further details.
A yearly grant for arboriculture is now made to every district. Thousands of miles of roads have been lined with trees, and multitudes of groves have been established by both Government and private individuals. The author was himself a great tree-planter. In a letter dated 15th December, 1844, he describes the avenue which he had planted along the road from Maihar to Jubbulpore in 1829 and 1830, and another, eighty-six miles long, from Jhansi Ghat on the Nerbudda to Chaka. The trees planted were banyan, pipal, mango, tamarind, and jaman (Eugenia jambolana). He remarks that these trees will last for centuries.
14. 'In 1899-1900 Malwa suffered from a severe famine, such as had not visited this favoured spot for more than thirty years. The people were unused to, and quite unprepared for, this calamity, the distress being aggravated by the great influx of immigrants from Rajputana, who had hitherto always been sure of relief in this region, of which the fertility is proverbial. In 1903 a new calamity appeared in the shape of plague, which has seriously reduced the agricultural population in some districts' (I.G., 1908, xvii. 105).
CHAPTER 63
Cities and Towns, formed by Public Establishments, disappear as Sovereigns and Governors change their Abodes.
On the 17th and 18th,[1] we went on twenty miles to Palwal,[2] which stands upon an immense mound, in some places a hundred feet high, formed entirely of the debris of old buildings. There are an immense number of fine brick buildings in ruins, but not one of brick or stone at present inhabited. The place was once evidently under the former government the seat of some great public establishments, which, with their followers and dependants, constituted almost the entire population. The occasion which keeps such establishments at a place no sooner passes away than the place is deserted and goes to ruin as a matter of course. Such is the history of Nineveh, Babylon,[3] and all cities which have owed their origin and support entirely to the public establishments of the sovereign—any revolution that changed the seat of government depopulated a city.
Sir Thomas Roe, the ambassador of James the First of England to the court of Delhi during the reign of Jahangir, passing through some of the old capital cities of Western India, then deserted and in ruins, writes to the Archbishop of Canterbury: 'I know not by what policy the Emperors seek the ruin of all the ancient cities which were nobly built, but now be desolate and in rubbish. It must arise from a wish to destroy all the ancient cities in order that there might appear nothing great to have existed before their time.'[4] But these cities, like all which are supported in the same manner, by the residence of a court and its establishments, become deserted as the seat of dominion is changed. Nineveh, built by Ninus out of the spoils he brought back from the wide range of his conquests, continued to be the residence of the court and the principal seat of its military establishments for thirteen centuries to the reign of Sardanapalus. During the whole of this time it was the practice of the sovereigns to collect from all the provinces of the empire their respective quotas of troops, and to canton them within the city for one year, at the expiration of which they were relieved by fresh troops.' In the last years of Sardanapalus, four provinces of the empire, Media, Persia, Babylonia, and Arabia, are said to have furnished a quota of four hundred thousand; and, in the rebellion which closed his reign, these troops were often beaten by those from the other provinces of the empire, which could not have been much less in number. The successful rebel, Arbaces, transferred the court and his own appendages to its capital, and Nineveh became deserted, and for more than eighteen centuries lost to the civilized world.[5]
Babylon in the same manner; and Susa, Ecbatana, Persepolis, and Seleucia, all, one after the other, became deserted as sovereigns changed their residence, and with it the seats of their public establishments, which alone supported them. Thus Thebes became deserted for Memphis, Memphis for Alexandria, and Alexandria for Cairo, as the sovereigns of Egypt changed theirs; and thus it has always been in India, where cities have been almost all founded on the same bases—the residence of princes, and their public establishments, civil, military, or ecclesiastical.
The city of Kanauj, on the Ganges, when conquered by Mahmud of Ghazni,[6] is stated by the historians of the conqueror to have contained a standing army of five hundred thousand infantry, with a due proportion of cavalry and elephants, thirty thousand shops for the sale of 'pan' alone, and sixty thousand families of opera girls.[7] The 'pan' dealers and opera girls were part and parcel of the court and its public establishments, and as much dependent on the residence of the sovereign as the civil, military, and ecclesiastical officers who ate their 'pan', and enjoyed their dancing and music; and this great city no sooner ceased to be the residence of the sovereign, the great proprietor of all the lands in the country, than it became deserted.
After the establishment of the Muhammadan dominion in India almost all the Hindoo cities, within the wide range of their conquest, became deserted as the necessary consequence, as the military establishments were all destroyed or disbanded, and the religions establishments scattered, their lands confiscated, their idols broken, and their temples either reduced to ruins in the first ebullition of fanatical zeal, or left deserted and neglected to decay from want of those revenues by which alone they had been, or could be, supported.[8] The towns and cities of the Roman empire which owed their origin to the same cause, the residence of governors and their legions or other public establishments, resisted similar shocks with more endurance, because they had most of them ceased to depend upon the causes in which they originated, and began to rest upon other bases. When destroyed by wave after wave of barbarian conquest, they were restored for the most part by the residence of church dignitaries and their establishments; and the military establishments of the new order of things, instead of remaining as standing armies about the courts of princes, dispersed after every campaign like militia, to enjoy the fruits of the lands assigned for their maintenance, when alone they could be enjoyed in the rude state to which society had been reduced—upon the lands themselves.
For some time after the Muhammadan conquest of India, that part of it which was brought effectually under the new dominion can hardly be considered to have had more than one city with its dependent towns and villages;[9] because the emperor chose to concentrate the greater part of his military establishments around the seat of his residence, and this great city became deserted whenever he thought it necessary or convenient to change that seat.
But when the emperor began to govern his distant provinces by viceroys, he was obliged to confide to them a share of his military establishments, the only public establishments which a conqueror thought it worth while to maintain; and while they moved about in their respective provinces, the imperial camp became fixed. The great officers of state, enriched by the plunder of conquered provinces, began to spend their wealth in the construction of magnificent works for private pleasure or public convenience. In time, the viceroys began to govern their provinces by means of deputies, who moved about their respective districts, and enabled their masters, the viceroys of provinces, to convert their camps into cities, which in magnificence often rivalled that of the emperor their master. The deputies themselves in time found that they could govern their respective districts from a central point; and as their camps became fixed in the chosen spots, towns of considerable magnitude rose, and sometimes rivalled the capitals of the viceroys. The Muhammadans had always a greater taste for architectural magnificence, as well in their private as in their public edifices, than the Hindoos,[10] who sought the respect and good wishes of mankind through the medium of groves and reservoirs diffused over the country for their benefit. Whenever a Muhammadan camp was converted into a town or city almost all the means of individuals were spent in the gratification of this taste. Their wealth in money and movables would be, on their death, at the mercy of their prince—their offices would be conferred on strangers; tombs and temples, canals, bridges, and caravanserais, gratuitously for the public good, would tend to propitiate the Deity, and conciliate the goodwill of mankind, and might also tend to the advancement of their children in the service of their sovereign. The towns and cities which rose upon the sites of the standing camps of the governors of provinces and districts in India were many of them as much adorned by private and public edifices as those which rose upon the standing camps of the Muhammadan conquerors of Spain.[11] Standing camps converted into towns and cities, it became in time necessary to fortify with walls against any surprise under any sudden ebullition among the conquered people; and fortifications and strong garrisons often suggested to the bold and ambitions governors of distant provinces attempts to shake off the imperial yoke.[12] That portion of the annual revenue, which had hitherto flowed in copious streams of tribute to the imperial capital, was now arrested, and made to augment the local establishments, adorn the cities, and enrich the towns of the viceroys, now become the sovereigns of independent kingdoms. The lieutenant-governors of these new sovereigns, possessed of fortified towns, in their turn often shook off the yoke of their masters in the same manner, and became in their turn the independent sovereigns of their respective districts. The whole resources of the countries subject to their rule being employed to strengthen and improve their condition, they soon became rich and powerful kingdoms, adorned with splendid cities and populous towns, since the public establishments of the sovereigns, among whom all the revenues were expended, spent all they received in the purchase of the produce of the land and labour of the surrounding country, which required no other market.
Thus the successful rebellion of one viceroy converted Southern India into an independent kingdom; and the successful rebellion, of his lieutenant-governors in time divided it into four independent kingdoms, each with a standing army of a hundred thousand men, and adorned with towns and cities of great strength and magnificence.[13] But they continued to depend upon the causes in which they originated—the public establishments of the sovereign; and when the Emperor Akbar and his successors, aided by their own [sic] intestine wars, had conquered these sovereigns, and again reduced their kingdoms to tributary provinces, almost all these cities and towns became depopulated as the necessary consequence. The public establishments were again moving about with the courts and camps of the emperor and his viceroys; and drawing in their train all those who found employment and subsistence in contributing to their efficiency and enjoyment. It was not, as our ambassador in the simplicity of his heart supposed, the disinclination of the emperors to see any other towns magnificent, save those in which they resided, which destroyed them, but their ambition to reduce all independent kingdoms to tributary provinces. |
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