6. Of the Marathas. The district was ceded in 1818.

7. More correctly written Mughal. The term is properly applied to Muhammadans of Turk (Mongol) descent. Such persons commonly affix the title Beg to their names, and often prefix the Persian title Mirza.

8. Meerut, the well-known cantonment, in the district of the same name. The name is written Meeruth by the author, and may be also written Mirath. Ghat (ghaut) means a ferry, or crossing-place. Muradabad and Bareilly (Bareli) are in Rohilkhand. The latter has a considerable garrison. Both places are large cities, and the head- quarter of districts.

9. The bow and quiver are now rarely seen, except, possibly, in remote parts of Rajputana. A body of archers helped to hold the Shah Najaf building at Lucknow against Sir Colin Campbell in 1858. Even in 1903-4 some of the Tibetans who resisted the British advance were armed with bows and arrows.

10. An inn of the Oriental pattern, often called caravanserai in books of travel.

11. Then the capital of Ranjit Singh, the great Sikh chief.

12. 'This is commonly given either by the leader of the gang or the belha, who has chosen the place for the murder.' It was usually some commonplace order, such as 'Bring the tobacco' (Ramaseeana, p.99, &c.). See also Meadows Taylor, Confessions of a Thug.

13. The Jamaldehi Thugs resided 'in Oude and some other parts east of the Ganges. They are considered very clever and expert, and more stanch to their oath of secrecy than most other classes' (ibid. p. 97). At the time referred to Oudh was a separate kingdom, which lasted as such until 1856. A map included in the printed Thuggee papers reveals the appalling fact that the Thugs had 274 fixed burying-places for their victims in the area of the small kingdom, about half the size of Ireland.

14. Fakir (fakeer), a religious mendicant. The word properly applies to Muhammadans only, but is often laxly used to include Hindoo ascetics.

15. So called because the poison they use is made of the seeds of the 'datura' plant (Datura alba), and other species of the same genus. It is a powerful narcotic.

16. The crime of poisoning travellers is still prevalent, and its detection is still attended by the difficulties described in the text. In some cases the criminals have been proved to belong to families of Thug stranglers. The poisoning of cattle by arsenic, for the sake of their hides, was very prevalent forty years ago, especially in the districts near Benares, but is now believed to be less practised. It was checked under the ordinary law by numerous convictions and severe sentences.

17. In the Saharanpur district, where the Ganges issues from the hills.

18. A small principality in Rohilkhand, between Muradabad and Bareilly (Bareli).

19. The special laws on the subject, namely: Acts xxx of 1836, xviii of 1837, xix of 1837, xviii of 1839, xviii of 1843, xxiv of 1843, xiv of 1844, v of 1847, x of 1847, iii of 1848, and xi of 1848, are printed in pp. 353-7 of the author's Report on Budhuk alias Bagree Decoits, &c. (1849). See Bibliography, ante. No. 12.

20. I may here mention the names of a few diplomatic officers of distinction who have aided in the good cause. Of the Civil Service- -Mr. F. C. Smith, Mr. Martin, Mr. George Stockwell, Mr. Charles Fraser, the Hon. Mr. Wellesley, the Hon. Mr. Shore, the Hon. Mr. Cavendish, Mr. George Clerk, Mr. L. Wilkinson, Mr, Bax; Majors- General—Cubbon and Fraser; Colonels—Low, Stewart, Alves, Spiers, Caulfield, Sutherland, and Wade; Major Wilkinson; and, among the foremost, Major Borthwick and Captain Paton. [W. H. S.]

The author's characteristic modesty has prevented him from dwelling upon his own services, which were greater than those of any other officer. Some idea of them may be gathered from the collection of papers entitled Ramaseeana, the contents of which are enumerated in the Bibliography, ante. No. 2. Colonel Meadows Taylor has given a more popular account of the measures taken for the suppression of Thuggee (thagi) in his Confessions of a Thug, written in 1837 (1st ed. 1839). The Thug organization dated from ancient times, but attracted little notice from the East India Company's Government until the author, then Captain Sleeman, submitted his reports on the subject while employed in the Sagar and Nerbudda Territories, where he had been posted in 1820. He proved that the Thug crimes were committed by a numerous and highly organized fraternity operating in all parts of India. In consequence of his reports, Mr. F. C. Smith, Agent to the Governor-General in the Sagar and Nerbudda Territories, was invested, in the year 1829, with special powers, and the author, then Major Sleeman, was employed, in addition to his district duties, as Mr, Smith's coadjutor and assistant. In 1835 the author was relieved from district work, and appointed General Superintendent of the operations for the suppression of the Thug gangs. He went on leave to the hills in 1836, and on resuming duty in February, 1839, was appointed Commissioner for the suppression of Thuggee and Dacoity, which office he continued to hold in addition to his other appointments.

Between 1826 and 1835, 1,562 prisoners were tried for the crime of Thuggee, of whom 1,404 were either hanged or transported for life. Some individuals are said to have confessed to over 200 murders, and one confessed to 719. The Thug approvers, whose lives were spared, were detained in a special prison at Jubbulpore, where the remnant of them, with their families, were kept under surveillance. They were employed in a tent and carpet factory, known as the School of Industry, founded in 1838 by the author and Captain Charles Brown. If released, they would certainly have resumed their hereditary occupation, which exercised an awful fascination over its votaries. Most of the Thug gangs had been broken up by 1860, but cases of Thuggee have occurred occasionally since that date. A gang of Kahars (palanquin bearers) committed a series of Thug murders in, I think, 1877, at Etawa, in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. The office of Superintendent of Thuggee and Dacoity was kept up until 1904, but the officer in charge was more concerned with Dacoity (that is to say, organized gang-robbery with violence) in the Native States than with the secret crime of Thuggee. Secret crime is now watched by the Central Criminal Intelligence Department under the direct control of the Government of India, and has to deal with novel forms of evil- doing. In India it is never safe to assume that any ancient practice has been suppressed, and I have little doubt that, if administrative pressure were relaxed, the old form of Thuggee would again be heard of. The occasional discovery of murdered beggars, who could not have been killed for the sake of their property, leads me to suppose that the Megpunnia variety of Thuggee, that is to say, murder of poor persons in order to kidnap and sell their children, is still sometimes practised.

Among the officers named by the author the best known is Sir Mark Cubbon, who came to India in 1800, and died at Suez in 1861. During the interval he had never quitted India. He ruled over Mysore for nearly thirty years with almost despotic power, and reorganized the administration of that country with conspicuous success (Buckland, Dict. of Indian Biography, Sonnenschein, 1906).

The Hon. Frederick John Shore, of the Bengal Civil Service, officiated in 1836 as Civil Commissioner and Political Agent of the Sagar and Nerbudda Territories. In 1837 he published his Notes on Indian Affairs (London, 2 vols. 8vo), a series of articles dealing in the most outspoken way with the abuses and weaknesses of Anglo- Indian administration at that time.

Mr. F. C. Smith was Agent to the Governor-General at Jubbulpore in 1830 and subsequent years. The author was then immediately subordinate to him. Messrs. Martin and Wellesley were Residents at Holkar's court at Indore. Mr. Stockwell tried some of the Thug prisoners at Cawnpore and Allahabad as Special Commissioner, in addition to his ordinary duties: correspondence between him and the author is printed in Ramaseeana. Mr. Charles Fraser preceded the author in charge of the Sagar district, and in January, 1832, resumed charge of the revenue and civil duties of that district, leaving the criminal work to the author. The Hon. Mr. Cavendish was Resident at Sindhia's court at Gwalior. Mr. George Clerk became Sir George Clerk and Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces, Governor of Bombay, and Permanent Under-Secretary of State for India; he died at a great age in 1889. Mr. Lancelot Wilkinson, Political Agent in Bhopal, was considered by the author to be 'one of the most able and estimable members of the India Civil Service' (Journey, ii. 403). Mr. Bax was Resident at Indore; Colonel (afterwards Sir John) Low, was Resident at Lucknow, and had served at Jubbulpore; Colonel Stewart and Major-General Fraser were Residents at Hyderabad; Major (Colonel) Alves was Political Agent in Bhopal and Agent in Rajputana; Colonel Spiers was Agent at Nimach, and officiated as Agent in Rajputana; Colonel Caulfield had been Political Agent at Harauti; Colonel Sutherland was Resident at Gwalior, and afterwards Agent in Rajputana; Colonel (Sir C. M.) Wade had been Political Agent at Ludiana; Major Borthwick was employed at Indore; Captain Paton was Assistant Resident at Lucknow (see Journey through Kingdom of Oudh, vol. ii, pp. 152-69).

Besides the officers above named, others are specified in Ramaseeana as having done good service.

Note.—Mr. Crooke suggests, and, I think, correctly, that the words Megpunnia and Megpunnaism (ante, note 20, and Bibliography No. 7) are corruptions of the Hindi Mekh-phandiya, from mekh, 'a peg', and phanda, 'a noose', equivalent to the Persian tasmabaz, meaning 'playing tricks with a strap'. Creagh, a private in a British regiment at Cawnpore about 1803, is said to have initiated three men into the peg and strap trick, as practised by English rogues. These men became the leaders of three Tasmabaz Thug gangs, whose proceedings are described by Mr. R. Montgomery in Selections of the Records of Government, N.W.P., vol. i, p. 312. A strap is doubled and folded up in different shapes. The art consists in putting in a stick or peg in such a way that the strap when unfolded shall come out double. The Tasmabaz Thugs seem to be identical with the 'Megpunnia' (N.I.N.& Qu., vol. i, p. 108, note 721, September 1891).

General Hervey records seven modern instances of strangulation by Megpunnia Thugs in Rajputana (Some Records of Crime (1867), vol. i, pp. 126-31).



CHAPTER 14

Basaltic Cappings of the Sandstone Hills of Central India—Suspension Bridge—Prospects of the Nerbudda Valley—Deification of a Mortal.

On the 29th[1] we came on to Patharia, a considerable little town thirty miles from Sagar, supported almost entirely by a few farmers, small agricultural capitalists, and the establishment of a native collector,[2] On leaving Patharia, we ascend gradually along the side of the basaltic hills on our left to the south for three miles to a point whence we see before us this plane of basaltic cappings extending as far as the eye can reach to the west, south, and north, with frequent breaks, but still preserving one uniform level. On the top of these tables are here and there little conical elevations of laterite, or indurated iron clay.[3] The cappings everywhere repose immediately upon the sandstone of the Vindhya range; but they have occasional beds of limestone, formed apparently by springs rising from their sides, and strongly impregnated with carbonic acid gas. For the most part this is mere travertine, but in some places they get good lime from the beds for building.

On the 1st of December we came to the pretty village of Sanoda, near the suspension bridge built over the river Bias by Colonel Presgrave, while he was assay master of the Sagar mint.[4] I was present at laying the foundation-stone of this bridge in December 1827. Mr. Maddock was the Governor-General's representative in these territories, and the work was undertaken more with a view to show what could be done out of their own resources, under minds capable of developing them, than to supply any pressing or urgent want.

The work was completed in June, 1830; and I have several times seen upon the bridge as many as it could hold of a regiment of infantry while it moved over; and, at other times, as many of a corps of cavalry, and often several elephants at once. The bridge is between the points of suspension two hundred feet, and the clear portion of the platform measures one hundred and ninety feet by eleven and a half. The whole cost of the work amounted to about fifty thousand rupees; and, under a less able and careful person than Colonel Presgrave, would have cost, perhaps, double the amount. This work has been declared by a very competent judge to be equal to any structure of the same kind in Europe, and is eminently calculated to show what genius and perseverance can produce out of the resources of a country even in the rudest state of industry and the arts.

The river Nerbudda neither is nor ever can, I fear, be made navigable, and the produce of its valley would require to find its way to distant markets over the Vindhya range of hills to the north, or the Satpura to the south. If the produce of the soil, mines, and industry of the valley cannot be transported to distant markets, the Government cannot possibly find in it any available net surplus revenue in money; for it has no mines of the precious metals, and the precious metals can flow in only in exchange for the produce of the land, and the industry of the valley that flows out. If the Government wishes to draw a net surplus revenue from the valley or from the districts that border upon it, that is, a revenue beyond its expenditure in support of the local public establishments, it must either draw it in produce, or for what can be got for that produce in distant markets.[5] Hitherto little beyond the rude produce of the soil has been able to find its way into distant markets from the valley of the Nerbudda; yet this valley abounds in iron mines,[6] and its soil, where unexhausted by cropping, is of the richest quality.[7] It is not then too much to hope that in time the iron of the mines will be worked with machinery for manufactures; and that multitudes, aided by this machinery, and subsisted on the rude agricultural produce, which now flows out, will invest the value of their labour in manufactured commodities adapted to the demand of foreign markets and better able from their superior value, compared with their bulk, to pay the cost of transport by land. Then, and not till then, can we expect to see these territories pay a considerable net surplus revenue to Government, and abound in a middle class of merchants, manufacturers, and agricultural capitalists.[8]

At Sanoda there is a very beautiful little fortress or castle now unoccupied, though still entire. It was built by an officer of the Raja Chhatar Sal of Bundelkhand, about one hundred and twenty years ago.[9] He had a grant, on the tenure of military service, of twelve villages situated round this place; and a man who could build such a castle to defend the surrounding country from the inroads of freebooters, and to secure himself and his troops from any sudden impulse of the people's resentment, was as likely to acquire an increase of territorial possession in these parts as he would have been in Europe during the Middle Ages. The son of this chief, by name Rai Singh, was, soon after the castle had been completed, killed in an attack upon a town near Chitrakot;[10] and having, in the estimation of the people, become a god, he had a temple and a tomb raised to him close to our encampment. I asked the people how he had become a god; and was told that some one who had been long suffering from a quartan ague went to the tomb one night, and promised Rai Singh, whose ashes lay under it, that if he could contrive to cure his ague for him, he would, during the rest of his life, make offerings to his shrine. After that he had never another attack, and was very punctual in his offerings. Others followed his example, and with like success, till Rai Singh was recognized among them universally as a god, and a temple raised to his name. This is the way that gods were made all over the world at one time, and are still made all over India. Happy had it been for mankind if those only who were supposed to do good had been deified.[11]

On the 2nd we came on to the village of Khojanpur (leaving the town and cantonments of Sagar to our left), a distance of some fourteen miles. The road for a great part of the way was over the bare back of the sandstone strata, the covering of basalt having been washed off. The hills, however, are, at this distance from the city and cantonments of Sagar, nicely wooded; and, being constantly intersected by pretty little valleys, the country we came over was picturesque and beautiful. The soil of all these valleys is rich from the detritus of the basalt that forms or caps the hills; but it is now in a bad state of cultivation, partly from several successive seasons of great calamity, under which the people have been suffering, and partly from over-assessment; and this posture of affairs is continued by that loss of energy, industry, and character, among the farmers and cultivators, which must everywhere result from these two evils. In India, where the people have learnt so well to govern themselves, from the want of settled government, good or bad government really depends almost altogether upon good or bad settlements of the land revenue. Where the Government demand is imposed with moderation, and enforced with justice, there will the people be generally found happy and contented, and disposed to perform their duties to each other and to the state; except when they have the misfortune to suffer from drought, blight, and other calamities of season.[l2]

I have mentioned that the basalt in the Sagar district reposes for the most part immediately upon the sandstone of the Vindhya range; and it must have been deposited on the sand, while the latter was yet at the bottom of the ocean, though this range is now, I believe, nowhere less than from fifteen hundred to two thousand feet above the level of the sea. The marks of the ripple of the sea may be observed in some places where the basalt has been recently washed off, beautifully defined, as if formed only yesterday, and there is no other substance to be seen between the two rocks.

The texture of the sandstone at the surface, where it comes in contact with the basalt, has in some places been altered by it, but in others it seems to have been as little changed as the habitations of the people who were suffocated by the ashes of Vesuvius in the city of Pompeii. I am satisfied, from long and careful examination, that the greater part of this basalt, which covers the tableland of Central and Southern India, must have been held for some time in suspension in the ocean or lake into which it was first thrown in the shape of ashes, and then gradually deposited. This alone can account for its frequent appearance of stratification, for the gentle blending of its particles with those of the sand near the surface of the latter; and, above all, for those level steps, or tables, lying one above another horizontally in parallel bars on one range, corresponding exactly with the same parallel lines one above another on a range twenty or thirty miles across the valley. Mr. Scrope's theory is, I believe, that these are all mere flowing coulees of lava, which, in their liquid state, filled hollows, but afterwards became of a harder texture, as they dried and crystallized, than the higher rocks around them; the consequence of which is that the latter has been decomposed and washed away, while the basalt has been left to form the highest elevations. My opinion is that these steps, or stairs, at one time formed the beds of the ocean, or of great lakes, and that the substance of which they are composed was, for the most part, projected into the water, and there held in suspension till gradually deposited. There are, however, amidst these steps, and beneath them, masses of more compact and crystalline basalt, that bear evident signs of having been flows of lava.[l3]

Reasoning from analogy at Jubbulpore, where some of the basaltic cappings of the hills had evidently been thrown out of craters long after this surface had been raised above the waters, and become the habitation both of vegetable and animal life, I made the first discovery of fossil remains in the Nerbudda valley. I went first to a hill within sight of my house in 1828,[14] and searched exactly between the plateau of basalt that covered it and the stratum immediately below, and there I found several small trees with roots, trunks, and branches, all entire, and beautifully petrified. They had been only recently uncovered by the washing away of a part of the basaltic plateau. I soon after found some fossil bones of animals.[15] Going over to Sagar, in the end of 1830, and reasoning there upon the same analogy, I searched for fossil remains along the line of contact between the basalt and the surface upon which it had been deposited, and I found a grove of silicified palm-trees within a mile of the cantonments. These palm-trees had grown upon a calcareous deposit formed from springs rising out of the basaltic range of hills to the south. The commissariat officer had cut a road through this grove, and all the European officers of a large military station had been every day riding through it without observing the geological treasure; and it was some time before I could convince them that the stones which they had every day seen were really petrified palm- trees. The roots and trunks were beautifully perfect.[l6]

Notes:

1. November, 1835.

2. In the Damoh District, twenty-four miles west of Damoh. The name appears to be derived from the 'great quantity of hewn stone (Hind. patthar or pathar) lying about in all directions'. The C. P. Gazetteer (1870) calls the place 'a considerable village'.

3. A peculiar formation, of 'widespread occurrence in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world'. It is ordinarily of a reddish ferruginous or brick-dust colour, sometimes deepened into dark red. Apparently the special character which distinguishes laterite from other forms of red-coloured weathering is the presence of hydrous oxide of alumina in varying proportions. . . . 'Though there is still a great deal of uncertainty about the way in which laterite was formed, the facts which are known of its distribution seem to show that it is a distinct form of weathering, which is confined to low latitudes and humid climates; its formation seems to have been a slow process, only possible on flat or nearly flat surfaces, where surface rain-wash could not act' (Oldham, in The Oxford Survey of the British Empire, vol. ii, Asia, p. 10: Oxford, 1914). It hardens and darkens by exposure to air, and is occasionally used as a building stone.

4. The Sagar mint was erected in 1820 by Captain Presgrave, the assay master, and used to employ four hundred men, but, after about ten or twelve years, the business was transferred to Calcutta, and the buildings converted to other uses (C. P. Gazetteer, 1870). Mints are now kept up at Calcutta and Bombay only. The Bias is a small stream flowing into the Sunar river, and belonging to the Jumna river system. The name is printed Beeose in the original edition.

5. Since the author's time the conditions have been completely changed by the introduction of railways. The East Indian, Great Indian Peninsular, and other railways now enter the Nerbudda Valley, so that the produce of most districts can be readily transported to distant markets. A large enhancement of the land revenue has been obtained by revisions of the settlement.

6. Details will be found in the Central Provinces Gazetteer (1870). The references are collected under the head 'Iron' in the index to that work. Chapter VIII of Ball's Economic Geology of India gives full information concerning the iron mines of the Central Provinces and all parts of India. That work forms Part III of the Manual of the Geology of India.

7. The soil of the valley of the Nerbudda, and that of the Nerbudda and Sagar territories generally, is formed for the most part of the detritus of trap-rocks that everywhere covered the sandstone of the Vindhya and Satpura ranges which run through these territories. This basaltic detritus forms what is called the black cotton soil by the English, for what reason I know not. [W. H. S.] The reason is that cotton is very largely grown in the Nerbudda Valley, both on the black soil and other soils. In Bundelkhand the black, friable soil, often with a high proportion of organic matter, is called 'mar', and is chiefly devoted to raising crops of wheat, gram, or chick-pea (Cicer arietinum), linseed, and joar (Holcus sorghum). Cotton is also sown in it, but not very generally. This black soil requires little rain, and is fertile without manure. It absorbs water too freely to be suitable for irrigation, and in most seasons does not need it. The 'black cotton soil' is often known as regur, a corruption of a Tamil word. 'The origin of regur is a doubtful question. . . . The dark coloration was attributed by earlier writers to vegetable matter, and taken to indicate a large amount of humus in the soil; more recent investigations make this doubtful, and in all probability the colour is due to mineral constitution rather than to the very scanty organic constituents of the soil,' It may possibly be formed of 'wind-borne dust', like the loess plains of China (Oldham, in The Oxford Survey of the British Empire, vol. ii, Asia, p. 9: Oxford, 1914).

8. The land revenue has been largely increased, and the resources and communications of the country have been greatly developed during the last half-century. The formation of the Central Provinces as a separate administration in 1861 secured for the Sagar and Nerbudda territories the attention which they failed to obtain from the distant Government of the North-Western Provinces. Sir Richard Temple, the first Chief Commissioner, administered the Central Provinces with extraordinary energy and success.

9. Raja Chhatarsal Bundela was Raja of Panna. The history of Chhatarsal is related in I.G. (1908), vol. xix, p. 400, s.v. Panna State. In 1729 he called in the Marathas to help him against Muhammad Khan Bangash, and when he died in 1731 rewarded them by bequeathing one-third of his dominions to the Peshwa. The correct date of his death is Pus Badi 3, Samvat 1788 (Hamirpur Settlement Report (1880), note at end of chapter 2). The date is often given inaccurately.

10. Chitrakot, in the Banda district of Bundelkhand, under the government of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, and seventy-one miles distant from Allahabad, is a famous place of pilgrimage, much frequented by the votaries of Rama. Large fairs are held there.

11. The performance of miraculous cures at the tomb is not necessary for the deification of a person who has been specially feared in his lifetime, or has died a violent death. Either of these conditions is enough to render his ghost formidable, and worthy of propitiation. Shrines to such persons are very numerous both in Bundelkhand and other parts of India, Miracles, of course, occur at nearly every shrine, and are too common and well attested to attract much attention.

12. These observations are as true to-day as they were in the author's time. Disastrous cases of over-assessment were common in the early years of British rule, and the mischief so wrought has been sometimes traceable for generations afterwards. Since 1833 the error, though less common, has not been unknown.

13. Since writing the above, I have seen Colonel Sykes's notes on the formations of Southern India in the Indian Review. The facts there described seem all to support my conclusion, and his map would answer just as well for Central as for Southern India; for the banks of the Nerbudda and Chambal, Son, and Mahanadi, as well as for those of the Bam and the Bima. Colonel Sykes does not, I believe, attempt to account for the stratification of the basalt; he merely describes it. [W. H. S.]

The author's theory of the subaqueous origin of the greater part of the basalt of Central and Southern India, otherwise known as the 'Deccan Trap Series', had been supported by numerous excellent geologists, but W. T. Blanford proved the theory to be untenable, there being 'clear and unmistakable evidence that the traps were in great part of sub-aerial formation', The intercalation of sedimentary beds with fresh-water fossils is conclusive proof that the lava-flows associated with such beds cannot be submarine. The hypothesis that the lower beds of traps were poured out in a vast, but shallow, freshwater lake extending throughout the area over which the inter- trappean limestone formation extends appears to be extremely improbable. The lava seems to have been poured, during a long succession of ages, over a land surface, uneven and broken in parts, 'with intervals of rest sufficient for lakes, stocked with fresh- water mollusca, to form on the cold surfaces of several of the lava- flows' (Holland, in I.G. (1907), i. 88). A great tract of the volcanic region appears to have remained almost undisturbed to the present day, affected by sub-aerial erosion alone. The geological horizon of the Deccan trap cannot be precisely defined, but is now vaguely stated as 'the close of the cretaceous period'. The 'steps', or conspicuous terraces, traceable on the hill-sides for great distances, are explained as being 'due to the outcrop of the harder basaltic strata, or of those beds which resist best the disintegrating influences of exposure'.

The general horizontality of the Deccan trap over an area of not less than 200,000 square miles, and the absence of volcanic hills of the usual conical form, are difficulties which have caused much discussion. Some of the 'old volcanic vents' appear to have existed near Poona and Mahableshwar. The entire area has been subjected to sub-aerial denudation on a gigantic scale, which explains the occurrence of the basalt as the caps of isolated hills. Much further investigation is required to clear up details (Manual of the Geology of India, ed. 1, Part I, chap. 13)

14. The author took charge of the Jubbulpore District in March 1828.

15. The fossiliferous beds near Jubbulpore, described in the text, seem to belong to the group now classed as the Lameta beds. The bones of a large dinosaurian reptile (Titanosaurus indicus) have been identified (I.G., 1907, vol. i, p. 88).

16. 'Many years ago Dr. Spry (Note on the Fossil Palms and Shells lately discovered on the Table-Land of Sagar in Central India, in J.A.S.B. for 1833, vol. ii, p. 639) and, subsequently to him, Captain Nicholls (Journal of Asiatic Soc. of Bombay, vol. v, p. 614), studied and described certain trunks of palm-trees, whose silicified remains are found imbedded in the soft intertrappean mud- beds near Sagar. . . . The trees are imbedded in a layer of calcareous black earth, which formed the surface soil in which they grew; this soil rests on, and was made up of the disintegration of, a layer of basalt. It is covered over by another and similar layer of the same rock near where the trees occur. . . . The palm-trees, now found fossilized, grew in the soil, which, in the condition of a black calcareous earthy bed, we now find lying round their prostrate stems. They fell (from whatever cause), and lay until their silicification was complete. A slight depression of the surface, or some local or accidental check of some drainage-course, or any other similar and trivial cause, may have laid them under water. The process of silicification proceeded gradually but steadily, and after they had there, in lapse of ages, become lapidified, the next outburst of volcanic matter overwhelmed them, broke them, partially enveloped, and bruised them, until long subsequent denudation once more brought them to light' (J. G. Medlicott, in Memoirs of the Geological Survey of India, vol. ii. Part II, pp. 200, 203, 204, 205, 216, as quoted in C. P. Gazetteer (1870), p. 435). The intertrappean fossils are all those of organisms which would occur in shallow fresh-water lakes or marshy ground.

Besides the author's friend and relative, Dr. H. H. Spry, Dr. Spilsbury contributed papers on the Nerbudda fossils to vols. iii, vi, viii, ix, x, and xiii of the J.A.S.B. Other writers also have treated of the subject, but it appears to be by no means fully worked out. James Prinsep, to whom no topic came amiss, discussed the Jubbulpore fossil bones in the volume in which Dr. Spry's paper appeared. Dr. Spry was the author of a work entitled Modern India: with Illustrations of the Resources and Capabilities of Hindustan (2 vols. 8vo, 1838). He became F.R.S.



CHAPTER 15

Legend of the Sagar Lake—Paralysis from eating the Grain of the Lathyrus sativus.

The cantonments of Sagar are about two miles from the city and occupied by three regiments of native infantry, one of local horse, and a company of European artillery.[1] The city occupies two sides of one of the most beautiful lakes of India, formed by a wall which unites two sandstone hills on the north side. The fort and part of the town stands upon this wall, which, according to tradition, was built by a wealthy merchant of the Banjara caste.[2] After he had finished it, the bed of the lake still remained dry; and he was told in a dream, or by a priest, that it would continue so till he should consent to sacrifice his own daughter, then a girl, and the young lad to whom she was affianced, to the tutelary god of the place. He accordingly built a little shrine in the centre of the valley, which was to become the bed of the lake, put the two children in, and built up the doorway. He had no sooner done so than the whole of the valley became filled with water, and the old merchant, the priest, the masons, and spectators, made their escape with much difficulty. From that time the lake has been inexhaustible; but no living soul of the Banjara caste has ever since been known to drink of its waters. Certainly all of that caste at present religiously avoid drinking the water of the lake; and the old people of the city say that they have always done so since they can remember, and that they used to hear from their parents that they had always done so. In nothing does the Founder of the Christian religion appear more amiable than in His injunction, 'Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not'. In nothing do the Hindoo deities appear more horrible than in the delight they are supposed to take in their sacrifice—it is everywhere the helpless, the female, and the infant that they seek to devour—and so it was among the Phoenicians and their Carthaginian colonies. Human sacrifices were certainly offered in the cities of Sagar during the whole of the Maratha government up to the year 1800, when they were put a stop to by the local governor, Asa Sahib, a very humane man; and I once heard a very learned Brahman priest say that he thought the decline of his family and government arose from this innovation. 'There is', said he, 'no sin in not offering human sacrifices to the gods where none have been offered; but, where the gods have been accustomed to them, they are naturally annoyed when the rite is abolished, and visit the place and people with all kinds of calamities.' He did not seem to think that there was anything singular in this mode of reasoning, and perhaps three Brahman priests out of four would have reasoned in the same manner.[3]

On descending into the valley of the Nerbudda over the Vindhya range of hills from Bhopal, one may see by the side of the road, upon a spur of the hill, a singular pillar of sandstone rising in two spires, one turning above and rising over the other, to the height of from twenty to thirty feet. On a spur of a hill half a mile distant is another sandstone pillar not quite so high. The tradition is that the smaller pillar was the affianced bride of the taller one, who was a youth of a family of great eminence in these parts. Coming with his uncle to pay his first visit to his bride in the procession they call the 'barat', he grew more and more impatient as he approached nearer and nearer, and she shared the feeling. At last, unable to restrain himself, he jumped upon his uncle's shoulder, and looked with all his might towards the spot where his bride was said to be seated. Unhappily she felt no less impatient than he did, and raised 'the fringed curtains of her eye', as he raised his, [and] they saw each other at the same moment. In that moment the bride, bridegroom, and uncle were all converted into stone pillars; and there they stand to this day a monument, in the estimation of the people, to warn men and womankind against too strong an inclination to indulge curiosity. It is a singular fact that in one of the most extensive tribes of the Gond population of Central India, to which this couple is said to have belonged, the bride always goes to the bridegroom in the procession of the 'barat', to prevent a recurrence of this calamity. It is the bridegroom who goes to the bride among every other class of the people of India, as well Muhammadans as Hindoos. Whether the usage grew out of the tradition, or the tradition out of the usage, is a question that will admit of much being said on both sides. I can only vouch for the existence of both. I have seen the pillars, heard the tradition from the people, and ascertained the usage; as in the case of that of the Sagar lake.

The Mahadeo sandstone hills, which in the Satpura range overlook the Nerbudda to the south, rise to between four and five thousand feet above the level of the sea;[4] and in one of the highest parts a fair was formerly, and is, perhaps, still held[5] for the enjoyment of those who assemble to witness the self devotion of a few young men, who offer themselves as a sacrifice to fulfil the vows of their mothers. When a woman is without children she makes votive offerings to all the gods, who can, she thinks, assist her, and promises of still greater in case they should grant what she wants. Smaller promises being found of no avail, she at last promises her first- born, if a male, to the god of destruction, Mahadeo. If she gets a son, she conceals from him her vows till he has attained the age of puberty; she then communicates it [sic] to him, and enjoins him to fulfil it. He believes it to be his paramount duty to obey his mother's call; and from that moment he considers himself as devoted to the god. Without breathing to any living soul a syllable of what she has told him, he puts on the habit of a pilgrim or religious mendicant, visits all the celebrated temples dedicated to this god in different parts of India;[6] and, at the annual fair on the Mahadeo hills, throws himself from a perpendicular height of four or five hundred feet, and is dashed to pieces upon the rocks below.[7] If the youth does not feel himself quite prepared for the sacrifice on the first visit, he spends another year in pilgrimages, and returns to fulfil his mother's vow at the next fair. Some have, I believe, been known to postpone the sacrifice to a third fair; but the interval is always spent in painful pilgrimages to the celebrated temples of the god. When Sir R. Jenkins was the Governor-General's representative at the court of Nagpur,[8] great efforts were made by him and all the European officers under him to put a stop to these horrors by doing away with the fair; and their efforts were assisted by the cholera morbus, which broke out among the multitude one season while they were so employed, and carried off the greater part of them. This seasonable visitation was, I believe, considered as an intimation on the part of the god that the people ought to have been more attentive to the wishes of the white men, for it so happens that Mahadeo is the only one of the Hindoo gods who is represented with a white face.[9] He figures among the dramatis personae of the great pantomime of the Ramlila[10] or fight for the recovery of Sita from the demon king of Ceylon; and is the only one with a white face. I know not whether the fair has ever been revived, but [I] think not.

In 1829 the wheat and other spring crops in this and the surrounding villages were destroyed by a severe hail-storm; in 1830 they were deficient from the want of seasonable rains; and in 1831 they were destroyed by blight. During these three years the 'teori', or what in other parts of India is called 'kesari' (the Lathyrus sativus of botanists), a kind of wild vetch, which, though not sown itself, is left carelessly to grow among the wheat and other grain, and given in the green and dry state to cattle, remained uninjured, and thrived with great luxuriance.[11] In 1831 they reaped a rich crop of it from the blighted wheat-fields, and subsisted upon its grain during that and the following years, giving the stalks and leaves only to their cattle. In 1833 the sad effects of this food began to manifest themselves. The younger part of the population of this and the surrounding villages, from the age of thirty downwards, began to be deprived of the use of their limbs below the waist by paralytic strokes, in all cases sudden, but in some cases more severe than in others. About half the youth of this village of both sexes became affected during the years 1833 and 1834, and many of them have lost the use of their lower limbs entirely, and are unable to move. The youth of the surrounding villages, in which the 'teori' from the same causes formed the chief article of food during the years 1831 and 1832, have suffered to an equal degree. Since the year 1834 no new case has occurred; but no person once attacked had been found to recover the use of the limbs affected; and my tent was surrounded by great numbers of the youth in different stages of the disease, imploring my advice and assistance under this dreadful visitation. Some of them were very fine-looking young men of good caste and respectable families; and all stated that their pains and infirmities were confined entirely to the parts below the waist. They described the attack as coming on suddenly, often while the person was asleep, and without any warning symptoms whatever; and stated that a greater portion of the young men were attacked than of the young women. It is the prevailing opinion of the natives throughout the country that both horses and bullocks, which have been much fed upon 'teori', are liable to lose the use of their limbs; but, if the poisonous qualities abound more in the grain than in the stalk or leaves, man, who eats nothing but the grain, must be more liable to suffer from the use of this food than beasts, which eat it merely as they eat grass or hay.

I sent the son of the head man of the village and another, who were among the young people least affected, into Sagar with a letter to my friend Dr. Foley, with a request that he would try what he could do for them; and if he had any fair prospect of being able to restore these people to the use of their limbs, that measures might be adopted through the civil authorities to provide them with accommodation and the means of subsistence, either by private subscription, or by application to Government. The civil authorities, however, could find neither accommodation nor funds to maintain these people while under Dr. Foley's care; and several seasons of calamity had deprived them of the means of maintaining themselves at a distance from their families. Nor is a medical man in India provided with the means found most effectual in removing such affections, such as baths, galvanic batteries, &c. It is lamentable to think how very little we have as yet done for the country in the healing art, that art which, above all others, a benevolent and enlightened Government should encourage among the people of India.

All we have as yet done has been to provide medical attendants for our European officers; regiments, and jails. It must not, however, be supposed that the people of India are without medical advice, for there is not a town or considerable village in India without its practitioners, the Hindoos following the Egyptian (Misrani), and the Musalmans the Grecian (Yunani) practice. The first prescribe little physic and much fasting; and the second follow the good old rules of Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna, with which they are all tolerably well acquainted. As far as the office of physician goes, the natives of India of all classes, high and low, have much more confidence in their own practitioners than in ours, whom they consider too reckless and better adapted to treat diseases in a cold than a hot climate. They cannot afford to give the only fees which European physicians would accept; and they see them, in their hospital practice, trust much to their native assistants, who are very few of them able to read any book, much less to study the profound doctrines of the great masters of the science of medicine.[12] No native ventures to offer an opinion upon this abstruse subject in any circle where he is not known to be profoundly read in either Arabic or Sanskrit lore; nor would he venture to give a prescription without first consulting, 'spectacles on nose', a book as large as a church Bible. The educated class, as indeed all classes, say that they do not want our physicians, but stand much in need of our surgeons. Here they feel that they are helpless, and we are strong; and they seek our aid whenever they see any chance of obtaining it, as in the present case.[13] Considering that every European gentleman they meet is more or less a surgeon, or hoping to find him so, people who are afflicted, or have children afflicted, with any kind of malformation, or malorganization, flock round them [sic] wherever they go, and implore their aid; but implore in vain, for, when they do happen to fall in with a surgeon, he is a mere passer-by, without the means or the time to afford relief. In travelling over India there is nothing which distresses a benevolent man so much as the necessity he is daily under of telling poor parents, who, with aching hearts and tearful eyes, approach him with their suffering children in their arms, that to relieve them requires time and means which are not at a traveller's command, or a species of knowledge which he does not possess; it is bitter thus to dash to the ground the cup of hope which our approach has raised to the lip of mother, father, and child; but he consoles himself with the prospect, that at no distant period a benevolent and enlightened Government will distribute over the land those from whom the afflicted will not seek relief in vain.[14]

Notes:

1. The garrison is stated in the Gazetteer (1870) to consist of a European regiment of infantry, two batteries of European artillery, one native cavalry and one native infantry regiment. In 1893 it consisted of one battery of Royal Artillery, a detachment of British Infantry, a regiment of Bengal Cavalry, and a detachment of Bengal Infantry. According to the census of 1911, the population of Sagar was 45,908.

2. The Banjaras, or Brinjaras, are a wandering tribe, principally employed as carriers of grain and salt on bullocks and cows. They used to form the transport service of the Moghal armies, and of the Company's forces at least as late as 1819. Their organization and customs are in many ways peculiar. The development of roads and railways has much diminished the importance of the tribe. A good account of it will be found in Balfour, Cyclopaedia of India, 3rd ed., 1885, s. v. 'Banjara'. Dubois (Hindu Manners, &c., 3rd ed. (1906), p. 70) states that 'of all the castes of the Hindus, this particular one is acknowledged to be the most brutal'.

3. See note on human sacrifice, ante, Chapter 8, note 8.

4. In the Hoshangabad district of the Central Provinces. The sandstone formation here attains its highest development, and is known to geologists as the 'Mahadeo sandstones'. The new sanitarium of Pachmarhi is situated in these hills.

5. It has been long since suppressed.

6. Benares is the principal seat of the worship of Mahadeo (Siva), but his shrines are found everywhere throughout India. One hundred and eight of these are reckoned as important. In Southern India the most notable, perhaps, is the great temple at Tanjore (see chap. 17 of Monier Williams's Religious Thought and Life in India).

7. 'This mode of suicide is called Bhrigu-pata, "throwing one's self from a precipice". It was once equally common at the rock of Girnar [in Kathiawar], and has only recently been prohibited' (ibid. p. 349).

8. Nagpore (Nagpur) was governed by Maratha rulers, with the title of Bhonsla, also known as the Rajas of Berar. The last Raja, Raghoji, died without heirs in 1853. His dominions were then annexed as lapsed territory by Lord Dalhousie. Sir Richard Jenkins was Resident at Nagpur from 1810 to 1827. Nagpur is now the head-quarters of the Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces.

9. 'There is a legend that Siva appeared in the Kali age, for the good of the Brahmans, as "Sveta", "the white one", and that he had four disciples, to all of whom the epithet "Sveta" is applied' (Monier Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India, p. 80, note 2). Various explanations of the legend have been offered. Professor A. Weber is inclined to think that the various references to white teachers in Indian legends allude to Christian missionaries. The Mahabharata mentions the travels of Narada and others across the sea to 'Sveta-dwipa', the 'Island of the White Men', in order to learn the doctrine of the unity of God. This tradition appears to be intelligible only if understood to commemorate the journeys of pious Indians to Alexandria, and their study of Christianity there (Die Griechen in Indien, 1890, p. 34).

10. The Ramlila, a performance corresponding to the mediaeval European 'miracle-play', is celebrated in Northern India in the month of Kuar (or Asvin, September-October), at the same time as the Durga Puja is solemnized in Bengal. Rama and his brother Lachhman are impersonated by boys, who are seated on thrones in state. The performance concludes by the burning of a wicker image of Ravana, the demon king of Lanka (Ceylon), who had carried off Rama's queen, Sita. The story is the leading subject of the great epic called the Ramayana.

11. The Lathyrus sativus is cultivated in the Punjab and in Tibet. Its poisonous qualities are attributed to its excessive proportion of nitrogenous matter, which requires dilution. Another species of the genus, L. cicer, grown in Spain, has similar properties. The distressing effects described in the text have been witnessed by other observers (Balfour, Cyclopaedia, 3rd ed., 1885, s.v. 'Lathyrus').

12. One of the tent-pitchers one morning, after pitching our tent, asked the loan of a small extra one for the use of his wife, who was about to be confined. The basket-maker's wife of the village near which we were encamped was called; and the poor woman, before we had finished our breakfast, gave birth to a daughter. The charge is half a rupee, or one shilling for a boy, and a quarter, or sixpence, for a girl. The tent-pitcher gave her ninepence, which the poor midwife thought very handsome, The mother had come fourteen miles upon a loaded cart over rough roads the night before; and went the same distance with her child the night after, upon the same cart. The first midwife in Europe could not have done her duty better than this poor basket-maker's wife did hers. [W. H. S.]

13. The 'present case' was of a medical, not a surgical, nature.

14. The Hindoo practitioners are called 'baid' (Sanskrit 'vaidya', followers of the Veda, that is to say, the Ayur Veda). The Musalman practitioners are generally called 'hakim'. The Egyptian school (Misrani, Misri, or Suryani, that is, Syrian) never practise bleeding, and are partial to the use of metallic oxides. The Yunani physicians approve of bleeding, and prefer vegetable drugs. The older writers on India fancied that the Hindoo system of medicine was of enormous antiquity, and that the principles of Galenical medical science were ultimately derived from India. Modern investigation has proved that Hindoo medicine, like Hindoo astronomy, is largely of Greek origin. This conclusion has been expressed in an exaggerated form by some writers, but its general truth appears to be established. The Hindoo books treating of medicine are certainly older than Wilson supposed, for the Bower manuscript, written in the second half of the fourth century of our era, contains three Sanskrit medical treatises. The writers had, however, plenty of time to borrow from Galen, who lived in the second century. The Indian aversion to European medicine, as distinguished from surgery, still exists, though in a degree somewhat less than in the author's time. Many municipal boards have insisted on employing 'baids' and 'hakims' in addition to the practitioners trained in European methods. Well-to-do patients often delay resort to the English physician until they have exhausted all resources of the 'hakim' and have been nearly killed by his drastic treatment. One medical innovation, the use of quinine as a febrifuge, has secured universal approbation. I never heard of an Indian who disbelieved in quinine. Chlorodyne also is fully appreciated, but most of the European medicines are regarded with little faith.

Since the author wrote, great progress has been made in providing hospital and dispensary accommodation. Each 'district', or unit of civil administration, has a fairly well equipped combined hospital and dispensary at head-quarters, and branch dispensaries exist in almost every district. An Inspector-General of Dispensaries supervises the medical administration of each province, and medical schools have been organized at Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Lahore, and Agra. During Lord Dufferin's Viceroyalty and afterwards, energetic steps were taken to improve the system of medical relief for females. Pandit Madhusadan Gupta, on January 10, 1836, was the first Hindoo who ventured to dissect a human body and teach anatomy. India can now boast of a considerable number of Hindoo and Musalman practitioners, trained in European methods, and skilful in their profession. Much has been done, infinitely more remains to be done. Details will be found in I.G. (1907), vol. iv, chap. 14, 'Medical Administration', The article 'Medicine' in Balfour, Cyclopaedia, 3rd ed., 1885, on which I have drawn for some of the facts above stated, gives a good summary of the earlier history of medicine in India, but greatly exaggerates the antiquity of the Hindoo books. On this question Weber's paper, 'Die Griechen in Indien' (Berlin, 1890, p. 28), and Dr. Hoernle's remarks on the Bower manuscript (in J.A.S.B., vol. lx (1891), Part I, p. 145) may be consulted. Dr. Hoernle's annotated edition and translation of the Bower MS. were completed in 1912. Part of the work is reprinted with additions in the Ind. Ant. for 1913 and 1914.



CHAPTER 16

Suttee Tombs—Insalubrity of deserted Fortresses.

On the 3rd we came to Bahrol,[1] where I had encamped with Lord William Bentinck on the last day of December, 1832, when the quicksilver in the thermometer at sunrise, outside our tents, was down to twenty-six degrees of Fahrenheit's thermometer. The village stands upon a gentle swelling hill of decomposed basalt, and is surrounded by hills of the same formation. The Dasan river flows close under the village, and has two beautiful reaches, one above, the other below, separated by the dyke of basalt, over which lies the ford of the river.[2]

There are beautiful reaches of the kind in all the rivers in this part of India, and they are almost everywhere formed in the same manner. At Bahrol there is a very unusual number of tombs built over the ashes of women who have burnt themselves with the remains of their husbands. Upon each tomb stands erect a tablet of freestone, with the sun, the new moon, and a rose engraved upon it in bas-relief in one field;[3] and the man and woman, hand in hand, in the other. On one stone of this kind I saw a third field below these two, with the figure of a horse in bas-relief, and I asked one of the gentlemen farmers, who was riding with me, what it meant. He told me that he thought it indicated that the woman rode on horseback to bathe before she ascended the pile.[4] I asked him whether he thought the measure prohibiting the practice of burning good or bad.

'It is', said he, 'in some respects good, and in others bad. Widows cannot marry among us, and those who had no prospect of a comfortable provision among their husband's relations, or who dreaded the possibility of going astray, and thereby sinking into contempt and misery, were enabled in this way to relieve their minds, and follow their husbands, under the full assurance of being happily united to them in the next world.'

When I passed this place on horseback with Lord William Bentinck, he asked me what these tombs were, for he had never seen any of the kind before. When I told him what they were, he said not a word; but he must have felt a proud consciousness of the debt of gratitude which India owes to the statesman who had the courage to put a stop to this great evil, in spite of all the fearful obstacles which bigotry and prejudice opposed to the measure. The seven European functionaries in charge of the seven districts of the newly-acquired territories were requested, during the administration of Lord Amherst in 1826, to state whether the burning of widows could or should be prohibited; and I believe every one of them declared that it should not. And yet, when it was put a stop to only a few years after by Lord William, not a complaint or murmur was heard. The replies to the Governor- General's inquiries were, I believe, throughout India, for the most part, opposed to the measure.[5]

On the 4th we came to Dhamoni, ten miles. The only thing remarkable here is the magnificent fortress, which is built upon a small projection of the Vindhya range, looking down on each side into two enormously deep glens, through which the two branches of the Dasan river descend over the tableland into the plains of Bundelkhand.[6] The rays of the sun seldom penetrate to the bottom of these glens, and things are, in consequence, grown there that could not be grown in parts more exposed.

Every inch of the level ground in the bed of the streams below seems to be cultivated with care. This fortress is said to have cost more than a million of money, and to have been only one of fifty-two great works, of which a former Raja of Bundelkhand, Birsingh Deo, laid the foundation in the same happy hour which had been pointed out to him by his astrologers.[7] The works form an acute triangle, with the base towards the tableland, and the two sides hanging perpendicularly over the glens, while the apex points to the course of the streams as they again unite, and pass out through a deep chasm into the plains of Bundelkhand.

The fortress is now entirely deserted, and the town, which the garrison supported, is occupied by only a small police-guard, stationed here to see that robbers do not take up their abode among the ruins. There is no fear of this. All old deserted fortresses in India become filled by a dense stream of carbonic acid gas, which is found so inimical to animal life that those who attempt to occupy them become ill, and, sooner or later, almost all die of the consequences. This gas, being specifically much heavier than common air, descends into the bottom of such unoccupied fortresses, and remains stagnant like water in old reservoirs. The current of pure air continually passes over, without being able to carry off the mass of stagnant air below; and the only way to render such places habitable is to make large openings in the walls on all sides, from the top to the bottom, so that the foul air may be driven out by the current of pure atmospheric air, which will then be continually rushing in. When these fortresses are thickly peopled, the continual motion within tends, I think, to mix up this gas with the air above; while the numerous fires lighted within, by rarefying that below, tend to draw down a regular supply of the atmospheric air from above for the benefit of the inhabitants. When natives enter upon the occupation of an old fortress of this kind, that has remained long unoccupied, they always make a solemn religions ceremony of it; and, having fed the priests, the troops, and a crowd of followers, all rush in at once with beat of drums, and as much noise as they can make. By this rush, and the fires that follow, the bad air is, perhaps, driven off, and never suffered to collect again while the fortress remains fully occupied. Whatever may be the cause, the fact is certain that these fortresses become deadly places of abode for small detachments of troops, or small parties of any kind. They all get ill, and few recover from the diseases they contract in them.

From the year 1817, when we first took possession of the Sagar and Nerbudda Territories, almost all the detachments of troops we required to keep at a distance from the headquarters of their regiments were posted in these old deserted fortifications. Our collections of revenue were deposited in them; and, in some cases, they were converted into jails for the accommodation of our prisoners. Of the soldiers so lodged, I do not believe that one in four ever came out well; and, of those who came out ill, I do not believe that one in four survived five years. They were all abandoned one after the other; but it is painful to think how many hundreds, I may say thousands, of our brave soldiers were sacrificed before this resolution was taken. I have known the whole of the survivors of strong detachments that went in, in robust health, three months before, brought away mere skeletons, and in a hopeless and dying state. All were sent to their homes on medical certificate, but they almost all died there, or in the course of their journey.

Notes:

1. December, 1835. The name of the village is spelled Behrole by the author.

2. The Dasan river rises in the Bhopal State, flows through the Sagar district of the Central Provinces, and along the southern boundary of the Lalitpur subdivision of the Jhansi District, United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. It also forms the boundary between the Jhansi and Hamirpur Districts, and falls into the Betwa after a course of about 220 miles. The name is often, but erroneously, written Dhasan. It is the Sanskrit Dasarna.

3. This emblem is a lotus, not a rose flower. The latter is never used in Hindoo symbolism. The lotus is a solar emblem, and intimately associated with the worship of Vishnu.

4. It rather indicates that the husband was on horseback when killed. The sculptures on sati pillars often commemorate the mode of death of the husband. Sometimes these pillars are inscribed. They usually face the east. An open hand is often carved in the upper compartment as well as the sun and moon. A drawing of such a pillar will be found in J.A.S.B., vol. xlvi. Part I, 1877, pl. xiv. A.S.R., vol. iii, p. 10; vol. vii, p. 137; vol. x, p. 75; and vol. xxi, p. 101, may be consulted.

5. The 'newly-acquired territories' referred to are the Sagar and Nerbudda Territories, comprising the seven districts, Sagar, Jubbulpore, Hoshangabad, Seoni, Damoh, Narsinghpur, and Baitul, ceded in 1818, and now included in the Central Provinces. The tenor of the replies given to Lord Amherst's queries shows how far the process of Hindooizing had advanced among the European officials of the Company. Lord Amherst left India in March, 1828. See ante. Chapter 4 and Chapter 8, for cases of sati (suttees). For a good account of the suttee discussions and legislation, see D. Boulger, Lord William Bentinck (1897), chap. v, in 'Rulers of India' Series. No other biography of Lord William Bentinck exists.

6. Dhamoni is in the Sagar district of the Central Provinces, about twenty-nine miles north of Sagar. The fort was taken by General Marshall in 1818. It had been rebuilt by Raja Birsingh Deo of Orchha on an enormous scale about the end of the sixteenth century. In the original edition, the author's march is said to have taken place 'on the 24th'. This must be a mistake for 'on the 4th'; as the last date, that of the march to Bahrol, was the 3rd December. The author reached Agra on January 1, 1836,

7. The number fifty-two is one of the Hindoo favourite numbers, like seven, twelve, and eighty-four, held sacred for astronomical or astrological reasons. Birsingh Deo was the younger brother of Ramchand, head of the Bundela clan. To oblige Prince Salim, afterwards the Emperor Jahangir, he murdered Abul Fazl, the celebrated minister and historian of Akbar, on August 12, 1602, Jahangir, after his accession, rewarded the murderer by allowing him to supersede his brother in the headship of his clan, and by appointing him to the rank of 'commander of three thousand'. The capital of Birsingh was Orchha. His successors are often spoken of as Rajas of Tehri. The murder is fully described in The Emperor Akbar by Count von Noer, translated by A. S. Beveridge, Calcutta, 1890, vol. ii, pp. 384-404. Orchha is described post, Chapters 22,23.



CHAPTER 17

Basaltic Cappings—Interview with a Native Chief—A Singular Character.

On the 5th[1] we came to the village of Seori. Soon after leaving Dhamoni, we descended the northern face of the Vindhya range into the plains of Bundelkhand. The face of this range overlooking the valley of the Nerbudda to the south is, as I have before stated, a series of mural precipices, like so many rounded bastions, the slight dip of the strata being to the north. The northern face towards Bundelkhand, on the contrary, here descends gradually, as the strata dip slightly towards the north, and we pass down gently over their back. The strata have, however, been a good deal broken, and the road was so rugged that two of our carts broke down in descending. From the descent over the northern face of the tableland into Bundelkhand to the descent over the southern face into the valley of the Nerbudda must be a distance of one hundred miles directly north and south.

The descent over the northern face is not everywhere so gradual; on the contrary, there are but few places where it is at all feasible; and some of the rivers of the tableland between Jubbulpore and Mirzapore have a perpendicular fall of more than four hundred feet over these mural precipices of the northern face of the Vindhya range.[2] A man, if he have good nerve, may hang over the summits, and suspend in his hand a plummet that shall reach the bottom.

I should mention that this tableland is not only intersected by ranges, but everywhere studded with isolated hills rising suddenly out of basins or valleys. These ranges and isolated hills are all of the same sandstone formation, and capped with basalt, more or less amygdaloidal. The valleys and cappings have often a substratum of very compact basalt, which must evidently have flowed into them after these islands were formed. The question is, how were these valleys and basins scooped out? 'Time, time, time!' says Mr. Scrope; 'grant me only time, and I can account for everything.' I think, however, that I am right in considering the basaltic cappings of these ranges and isolated hills to have once formed part of continued flat beds of great lakes. The flat parallel planes of these cappings, corresponding with each other, however distantly separated the hills they cover may be, would seem to indicate that they could not all have been subject to the convulsions of nature by which the whole substrata were upheaved above the ocean. I am disposed to think that such islands and ranges of the sandstone were formed before the deposit of the basalt, and that the form of the surface is now returning to what it then was, by the gradual decomposition and wearing away of the latter rock. Much, however, may be said on both sides of this, as of every other question. After descending from the sandstone of the Vindhya[3] range into Bundelkhand, we pass over basalt and basaltic soil, reposing immediately on syenitic granite, with here and there beds and veins of pure feldspar, hornblende, and quartz.

Takht Singh, the younger brother of Arjun Singh, the Raja of Shahgarh,[4] came out several miles to meet me on his elephant. Finding me on horseback, he got off from his elephant, and mounted his horse, and we rode on till we met the Raja himself, about a mile from our tents. He was on horseback, with a large and splendidly dressed train of followers, all mounted on fine sleek horses, bred in the Raja's own stables. He was mounted on a snow-white steed of his own breeding (and I have rarely seen a finer animal), and dressed in a light suit of silver brocade made to represent the scales of steel armour, surmounted by a gold turban. Takht Singh was more plainly dressed, but is a much finer and more intelligent-looking man. Having escorted us to our tents, they took their leave, and returned to their own, which were pitched on a rising ground on the other side of a small stream, half a mile distant. Takht Singh resides here in a very pretty fortified castle on an eminence. It is a square building, with a round bastion at each corner, and one on each face, rising into towers above the walls.

A little after midday the Raja and his brother came to pay us a visit; and about four o'clock I went to return it, accompanied by Lieutenant Thomas. As usual, he had a nautch (dance) upon carpets, spread upon the sward under awnings in front of the pavilion in which we were received. While the women were dancing and singing, a very fine panther was brought in to be shown to us. He had been caught, full-grown, two years before, and, in the hands of a skilful man, was fit for the chase in six months. It was a very beautiful animal, but, for the sake of the sport, kept wretchedly thin.[5] He seemed especially indifferent to the crowd and the music, but could not bear to see the woman whirling about in the dance with her red mantle floating in the breeze; and, whenever his head was turned towards her, he cropped his ears. She at last, in play, swept close by him, and with open mouth he attempted to spring upon her, but was pulled back by the keeper. She gave a shriek, and nearly fell upon her back in fright.

The Raja is a man of no parts or character, and, his expenditure being beyond his income, he is killing his goose for the sake of her eggs—that is, he is ruining all the farmers and cultivators of his large estate by exactions, and thereby throwing immense tracts of fine land out of tillage. He was the heir to the fortress and territory of Garha Kota, near Sagar, which was taken by Sindhia's army, under the command of Jean Baptiste Filose,[6] just before our conquest in 1817. I was then with my regiment, which was commanded by Colonel, afterwards Major-General, G———,[7] a very singular character. When our surgeon. Dr. E———, received the newspaper announcing the capture of Garha Kota in Central India by Jean- Baptiste, an officer of the corps was with him, who called on the colonel on his way home, and mentioned this as a bit of news. As soon as this officer had left him, the colonel wrote off a note to the doctor: 'My dear Doctor,—I understand that that fellow, John the Baptist, has got into Sindhia's service, and now commands an army— do send me the newspapers.' These were certainly the words of his note, and, at the only time I heard him speak on the subject of religion he discomfited his adversary in an argument at the mess by 'Why, sir, you do not suppose that I believe in those fellows, Luther, Calvin, and John the Baptist, do you?'

Nothing could stand this argument. All the party burst into a laugh, which the old gentleman took for an unequivocal recognition of his victory, and his adversary was silenced. He was an old man when I first became acquainted with him. I put into his hands, when in camp, Miss Edgeworth's novels, in the hope of being able to induce him to read by degrees; and I have frequently seen the tears stealing down over his furrowed cheeks, as he sat pondering over her pages in the corner of his tent. A braver soldier never lived than old G———; and he distinguished himself greatly in the command of his regiment, under Lord Lake, at the battle of Laswari[8] and siege of Bharatpur.[9] It was impossible ever to persuade him that the characters and incidents of these novels were the mere creations of fancy—he felt them to be true—he wished them to be true, and he would have them to be true. We were not very anxious to undeceive him, as the illusion gave him pleasure and did him good. Bolingbroke says, after an ancient author, 'History is philosophy teaching by example.'[10] With equal truth may we say that fiction, like that of Maria Edgeworth, is philosophy teaching by emotion. It certainly taught old G——— to be a better man, to leave much of the little evil he had been in the habit of doing, and to do much of the good he had been accustomed to leave undone.



Notes:

1. December 5, 1835, The date is misprinted '3rd' in the original edition. See note 2 to last preceding chapter, p. 110.

2. A good view of the precipices of the Kaimur range, the eastern continuation of the Vindhyan chain, is given facing page 41 of vol. i of Hooker's Himalayan Journals (ed. 1855).

3. The author's theory is untenable. He failed, to realize the vast effects of sub-aerial denudation. All the evidence shows that the successive lava outflows which make up the Deccan trap series ultimately converted the surface of the land over which they welled out into an enormous, nearly uniform, plain of basalt, resting on the Vindhyan sandstone and other rocks. This great sheet of lava, extending, east and west, from Nagpur to Bombay, a distance of about five hundred miles, was then, in succeeding millenniums, subjected to the denuding forces of air and water, until gradually huge tracts of it were worn away, forming beds of conglomerate, gravel, and clay. The flat-topped hills have been carved out of the basaltic surface by the agencies which wore away the massive sheet of lava. The basaltic cappings of the hills certainly cannot have 'formed part of continued flat beds of great lakes'. See the notes to Chapter 14, ante. Mr. Scrope was quite right. Vast periods of time must be allowed for geological history, and millions of years must have elapsed since the flow of the Deccan lava.

4. In the Sagar district. The last Raja joined the rebels in 1857, and so forfeited his rank and territory.

5. The name panther is usually applied only to the large, fulvous variety of Felis pardus (Linn.) (F. leopardus, Leopardus varius). The animal described in the text evidently was a specimen of the hunting leopard, Felis jubata (F. guttata, F. venatica).

6. This officer was one of the many 'condottieri' of various nationality who served the native powers during the eighteenth century, and the early years of the nineteenth. He commanded five infantry regiments at Gwalior. His 'kingdom-taking' raid in 1815 or 1816 is described post in Chapter 49. The history of the family is given by Compton in European Military Adventures of Hindustan from 1784 to 1803 (Unwin, 1892), App. pp, 352-6. In 1911 Michael Filose of Gwalior was appointed K.C.I.E.

7.'G———' appears to have been Robert Gregory C.B.

8. The fiercely contested battle of Laswari was fought on November 1, 1803, between the British force under Lord Lake and the flower of Sindhia's army, known as the 'Deccan Invincibles'. Sindhia's troops lost about seven thousand killed and two thousand prisoners. The British loss in killed and wounded amounted to more than eight hundred. A medal to commemorate the victory was struck in London in 1851, and presented to the survivors. Laswari is a village in the Alwar State, 128 miles south of Delhi.

9. Bharatpur (Bhurtpore), in the Jat State of the same name, is thirty-four miles west of Agra. In January and February, 1805, Lord Lake four times attempted to take it by assault, and each time was repulsed with heavy loss. On January 18, 1826, Lord Combermere stormed the fortress. The fortifications were then dismantled. A large portion of the walls is now standing, and presents an imposing appearance. They seem to have been repaired. See post, Chapter 62.

10. 'I will answer you by quoting what I have read somewhere or other—in Dionysius Halicarn., I think—that history is philosophy teaching by example' (Bolingbroke, Letters on the Study and Use of History, Letter II, p. 14 of vol. viii of edition printed by T. Cadell, London, 1770). The Greek words are. . . . . . . .



CHAPTER 18

Birds' Nests—Sports of Boyhood.

On the 6th[1] we came to Sayyidpur, ten miles, over an undulating country, with a fine soil of decomposed basalt, reposing upon syenite, with veins of feldspar and quartz. Cultivation partial, and very bad; and population extremely scanty. We passed close to a village, in which the children were all at play; while upon the bushes over their heads were suspended an immense number of the beautiful nests of the sagacious 'baya' bird, or Indian yellow- hammer,[2] all within reach of a grown-up boy, and one so near the road that a grown-up man might actually look into it as he passed along, and could hardly help shaking it. It cannot fail to strike a European as singular to see so many birds' nests, situated close to a village, remain unmolested within reach of so many boisterous children, with their little proprietors and families fluttering and chirping among them with as great a feeling of security and gaiety of heart as the children themselves enjoy.

In any part of Europe not a nest of such a colony could have lived an hour within reach of such a population; for the baya bird has no peculiar respect paid to it by the people here, like the wren and robin-redbreast in England. No boy in India has the slightest wish to molest birds in their nests; it enters not into their pastimes, and they have no feeling of pride or pleasure in it. With us it is different—to discover birds' nests is one of the first modes in which a boy exercises his powers, and displays his love of art. Upon his skill in finding them he is willing to rest his first claim to superior sagacity and enterprise. His trophies are his string of eggs; and the eggs most prized among them are those of the nests that are discovered with most difficulty, and attained with most danger. The same feeling of desire to display their skill and enterprise in search after birds' nests in early life renders the youth of England the enemy almost of the whole animal creation throughout their after career. The boy prides himself on his dexterity in throwing a stone or a stick; and he practises on almost every animal that comes in his way, till he never sees one without the desire to knock it down, or at least to hit it; and, if it is lawful to do so, he feels it to be a most serious misfortune not to have a stone within his reach at the time. As he grows up, he prides himself upon his dexterity in shooting, and he never sees a member of the feathered tribe within shot, without a desire to shoot it, or without regretting that he has not a gun in his hand to shoot it. That he is not entirely destitute of sympathy, however, with the animals he maims for his amusement is sufficiently manifest from his anxiety to put them out of pain the moment he gets them.

A friend of mine, now no more, Captain Medwin, was once looking with me at a beautiful landscape painting through a glass. At last he put aside the glass, saying: 'You may say what you like, S—, but the best landscape I know is a fine black partridge[3] falling before my Joe Manton.'

The following lines of Walter Scott, in his Rokeby, have always struck me as very beautiful:-

As yet the conscious pride of art Had steel'd him in his treacherous part; A powerful spring of force unguessed That hath each gentler mood suppressed, And reigned in many a human breast; From his that plans the rude campaign, To his that wastes the woodland reign, &c.[4]

Among the people of India it is very different. Children do not learn to exercise their powers either in discovering and robbing the nests of birds, or in knocking them down with stones and staves; and, as they grow up, they hardly ever think of hunting or shooting for mere amusement. It is with them a matter of business; the animal they cannot eat they seldom think of molesting.

Some officers were one day pursuing a jackal, with a pack of dogs, through my grounds. The animal passed close to one of my guard, who cut him in two with his sword, and held up the reeking blade in triumph to the indignant cavalcade; who, when they came up, were ready to eat him alive. 'What have I done', said the poor man, 'to offend you?' 'Have you not killed the jackal?' shouted the whipper- in, in a fury.

'Of course I have; but were you not all trying to kill him?' replied the poor man. He thought their only object had been to kill the jackal, as they would have killed a serpent, merely because he was a mischievous and noisy beast.

The European traveller in India is often in doubt whether the peacocks, partridges, and ducks, which he finds round populous villages, are tame or wild, till he asks some of the villagers themselves, so assured of safety do these creatures become, and so willing to take advantage of it for the food they find in the suburbs. They very soon find the difference, however, between the white-faced visitor and the dark-faced inhabitants. There is a fine date-tree overhanging a kind of school at the end of one of the streets in the town of Jubbulpore, quite covered with the nests of the baya birds; and they are seen, every day and all day, fluttering and chirping about there in scores, while the noisy children at their play fill the street below, almost within arm's length of them. I have often thought that such a tree so peopled at the door of a school in England might work a great revolution in the early habits and propensities of the youth educated in it. The European traveller is often amused to see the pariah dog[5] squatted close in front of the traveller during the whole time he is occupied in cooking and eating his dinner, under a tree by the roadside, assured that he shall have at least a part of the last cake thrown to him by the stranger, instead of a stick or a stone. The stranger regards him with complacency, as one that reposes a quiet confidence in his charitable disposition, and flings towards him the whole or part of his last cake, as if his meal had put him in the best possible humour with him and all the world.

Notes:

1. December, 1835. The name of the village is given in the author's text as Seindpore. It seems to be the place which is called Siedpore in the next chapter.

2. The common weaver bird, Phoceus baya, Blyth. 'Ploceinae, the weaver birds. . . . They build nests like a crucible, with the opening downwards, and usually attach them to the tender branches of a tree hanging over a well or tank. P. baya is found throughout India; its nest is made of grasses and strips of the plantain or date-palm stripped while green. It is easily tamed and taught some tricks, such as to load and fire a toy cannon, to pick up a ring, &c,' (Balfour, Cyclopaedia, 3rd ed., 1885, s.v. 'Ploceinae').

3. Francolinus vulgaris; a capital game bird.

4. Canto V, stanza 22, line 3.

5. The author spells the word Pareear. The editor has used the form now customary. The word is the Tamil appellation of a large body of the population of Southern India, which stands outside the orthodox Hindoo castes, but has a caste organization of its own. Europeans apply the term to the low-caste mongrel dogs which infest villages and towns throughout India. See Yule and Burnell, Glossary of Anglo- Indian Words (Hobson-Jobson), in either edition, s.v.; and Dubois, Hindu Manners, &c., 3rd ed. (1906, index, s.v.).



CHAPTER 19

Feeding Pilgrims—Marriage of a Stone with a Shrub.

At Sayyidpur[1] we encamped in a pretty little mango grove, and here I had a visit from my old friend Janki Sewak, the high priest of the great temple that projects into the Sagar lake, and is called Bindraban.[2] He has two villages rent free, worth a thousand rupees a year; collects something more through his numerous disciples, who wander over the country; and spends the whole in feeding all the members of his fraternity (Bairagis), devotees of Vishnu, as they pass his temple in their pilgrimages. Every one who comes is considered entitled to a good meal and a night's lodging; and he has to feed and lodge about a hundred a day. He is a man of very pleasing manners and gentle disposition, and everybody likes him. He was on his return from the town of Ludhaura,[3] where he had been, at the invitation of the Raja of Orchha, to assist at the celebration of the marriage of Salagram with the Tulasi,[4] which there takes place every year under the auspices and at the expense of the Raja, who must be present. 'Salagrams'[5] are rounded pebbles which contain the impressions of ammonites, and are washed down into the plains of India by the rivers from the limestone rocks in which these shells are imbedded in the mountains of the Himalaya.[6] The Spiti valley[7] contains an immense deposit of fossil ammonites and belemnites[8] in limestone rocks, now elevated above sixteen thousand feet above the level of the sea; and from such beds as these are brought down the fragments, which, when rounded in their course, the poor Hindoo takes for representatives of Vishnu, the preserving god of the Hindoo triad. The Salagram is the only stone idol among the Hindoos that is essentially sacred, and entitled to divine honours without the ceremonies of consecration.[9] It is everywhere held most sacred. During the war against Nepal,[10] Captain B———, who commanded a reconnoitring party from the division in which I served, one day brought back to camp some four or five Salagrams, which he had found at the hut of some priest within the enemy's frontier. He called for a large stone and hammer, and proceeded to examine them. The Hindoos were all in a dreadful state of consternation, and expected to see the earth open and swallow up the whole camp, while he sat calmly cracking their gods with his hammer, as he would have cracked so many walnuts. The Tulasi is a small sacred shrub (Ocymum sanctum), which is a metamorphosis of Sita, the wife of Rama, the seventh incarnation of Vishnu.

This little pebble is every year married to this little shrub; and the high priest told me that on the present occasion the procession consisted of eight elephants, twelve hundred camels, four thousand horses, all mounted and elegantly caparisoned. On the leading elephant of this cortege, and the most sumptuously decorated, was carried the pebble god, who was taken to pay his bridal visit (barat) to the little shrub goddess. All the ceremonies of a regular marriage are gone through; and, when completed, the bride and bridegroom are left to repose together in the temple of Ludhaura[11] till the next season. 'Above a hundred thousand people', the priest said, 'were present at the ceremony this year at the Raja's invitation, and feasted upon his bounty.'[12]

The old man and I got into a conversation upon the characters of different governments, and their effects upon the people; and he said that bad governments would sooner or later be always put down by the deity; and quoted this verse, which I took down with my pencil:

Tulasi, gharib na satae, Buri gharib ki hai; Mari khal ke phunk se Loha bhasm ho jae.

'Oh, Raja Tulasi! oppress not the poor; for the groans of the wretched bring retribution from heaven. The contemptible skin (in the smith's bellows) in time melts away the hardest iron.'[13]

On leaving our tents in the morning, we found the ground all round white with hoar frost, as we had found it for several mornings before;[14] and a little canary bird, one of the two which travelled in my wife's palankeen, having, by the carelessness of the servants been put upon the top without any covering to the cage, was killed by the cold, to her great affliction. All attempts to restore it to life by the warmth of her bosom were fruitless.

On the 7th[15] we came nine miles to Bamhauri over a soil still basaltic, though less rich, reposing upon syenite, which frequently rises and protrudes its head above the surface, which is partially and badly cultivated, and scantily peopled. The silent signs of bad government could not be more manifest. All the extensive plains, covered with fine long grass, which is rotting in the ground from want of domestic cattle or distant markets. Here, as in every other part of Central India, the people have a great variety of good spontaneous, but few cultivated, grasses. They understand the character and qualities of these grasses extremely well. They find some thrive best in dry, and some in wet seasons; and that of inferior quality is often prized most because it thrives best when other kinds cannot thrive at all, from an excess or a deficiency of rain. When cut green they all make good hay, and have the common denomination of 'sahia'. The finest of these grasses are two which are generally found growing spontaneously together, and are often cultivated together-'kel' and 'musel'; the third 'parwana'; fourth 'bhawar', or 'guniar'; fifth 'saina'.[16]

Notes:

1. Spelled Siedpore in the author's text.

2. More correctly Brindaban (Vrindavana). The name originally belongs to one of the most sacred spots in India, situated near Mathura (Muttra) on the Jumna, and the reputed scene of the dalliance between Krishna and the milkmaids (Gopis); also associated with the legend Rama.

3. Twenty-seven miles north-west of Tehri in the Orchha State.

4. The Tulasi plant, or basil, Ocymum sanctum, is 'not merely sacred to Vishnu or to his wife Lakshmi; it is pervaded by the essence of these deities, and itself worshipped as a deity and prayed to accordingly. . . . The Tulasi is the object of more adoration than any other plant at present worshipped in India. . . .It is to be found in almost every respectable household throughout India. It is a small shrub, not too big to be cultivated in a good-sized flower-pot, and often placed in rooms. Generally, however, it is planted in the courtyard of a well-to-do man's house, with a space round it for reverential circumambulation. In real fact the Tulasi is par excellence a domestic divinity, or rather, perhaps, a woman's divinity' (M. Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India, p. 333).