'This of course arises', I observed, 'from the industry of his priests, who are now spread all over the country; and you know that there is hardly a village or hamlet in which there are not some of them to be found subsisting upon the fears of the people.'

'I have no doubt', replied he, 'that the cures which the people attribute to the spirit of Hardaul Lala often arise merely from the firmness of their faith (itikad) in the efficacy of their offerings; and that any other ceremonies, that should give to their minds the same assurance of recovery, would be of great advantage in cases of epidemic diseases. I remember a singular instance of this,' said he. 'When Jeswant Rao Holkar was flying before Lord Lake to the banks of the Hyphasis,[8] a poor trooper of one of his lordship's irregular corps, when he tied the grain-bag to his horse's mouth, said 'Take this in the name of Jeswant Rao Holkar, for to him you and I owe all that we have.' The poor man had been suffering from an attack of ague and fever; but from that moment he felt himself relieved, and the fever never returned. At that time this fever prevailed more generally among the people of Hindustan than any I have ever known, though I am now an old man. The speech of the trooper and the supposed result soon spread; and others tried the experiment with similar success, and it acted everywhere like a charm. I had the fever myself, and, though by no means a superstitious man, and certainly no lover of Jeswant Rao Holkar, I tried the experiment, and the fever left me from that day. From that time, till the epidemic disappeared, no man, from the Nerbudda to the Indus, fed his horse without invoking the spirit of Jeswant Rao, though the chief was then alive and well. Some one had said he found great relief from plunging into the stream during the paroxysms of the fever; others followed the example, and some remained for half an hour at a time, and the sufferers generally found relief. The streams and tanks throughout the districts between the Ganges and Jumna became crowded, till the propitiatory offering to the spirit of the living Jeswant Rao Holkar were [sic] found equally good, and far less troublesome to those who had horses that must have got their grain, whether in Holkar's name or not.'

There is no doubt that the great mass of those who had nothing but their horses and their good blades to depend upon for their subsistence did most fervently pray throughout India for the safety of this Maratha chief, when he fled before Lord Lake's army; for they considered that, with his fall, the Company's dominion would become everywhere securely established, and that good soldiers would be at a discount. 'Company ke amal men kuchh rozgar nahin hai,'—'There is no employment in the Company's dominion,' is a common maxim, not only among the men of the sword and the spear, but among those merchants who lived by supporting native civil and military establishments with the luxuries and elegancies which, under the new order of things, they have no longer the means to enjoy.

The noisy puja (worship), about which our conversation began, took place at Sagar in April, 1832, while I was at that station. More than four-fifths of the people of the city and cantonments had been affected by a violent influenza, which commenced with a distressing cough, was followed by fever, and, in some cases, terminated in death. I had an application from the old Queen Dowager of Sagar, who received a pension of ten thousand pounds a year from the British Government,[9] and resided in the city, to allow of a noisy religious procession to implore deliverance from this great calamity. Men, women, and children in this procession were to do their utmost to add to the noise by 'raising their voices in psalmody', beating upon their brass pots and pans with all their might, and discharging fire-arms where they could get them; and before the noisy crowd was to be driven a buffalo, which had been purchased by a general subscription, in order that every family might participate in the merit. They were to follow it out for eight miles, where it was to be turned loose for any man who would take it. If the animal returned, the disease, it was said, must return with it, and the ceremony be performed over again. I was requested to intimate the circumstance to the officer commanding the troops in cantonments, in order that the hideous noise they intended to make might not excite any alarm, and bring down upon them the visit of the soldiery. It was, however, subsequently determined that the animal should be a goat, and he was driven before the crowd accordingly. I have on several occasions been requested to allow of such noisy pujas in cases of epidemics; and the confidence they feel in their efficiency has, no doubt, a good effect.

While in civil charge of the district of Narsinghpur, in the valley of the Nerbudda, in April 1823, the cholera morbus raged in almost every house of Narsinghpur and Kandeli, situated near each other,[l0] and one of them close to my dwelling-house and court. The European physicians lost all confidence in their prescriptions, and the people declared that the hand of God was upon them, and by appeasing Him could they alone hope to be saved.[11] A religious procession was determined upon; but the population of both towns was divided upon the point whether a silent or a noisy one would be most acceptable to God. Hundreds were dying around me when I was applied to to settle this knotty point between the parties. I found that both in point of numbers and respectability the majority was in favour of the silent procession, and I recommended that this should be adopted. The procession took place about nine the same night, with all due ceremony; but the advocates for noise would none of them assist in it. Strange as it may appear, the disease abated from that moment; and the great majority of the population of both towns believed that their prayers had been heard; and I went to bed with a mind somewhat relieved by the hope that this feeling of confidence might be useful. About one o'clock I was awoke from a sound sleep by the most hideous noise that I had ever heard; and, not at that moment recollecting the proposal for the noisy procession, ran out of my house, in expectation of seeing both towns in flames. I found that the advocates for noise, resolving to have their procession, had assembled together about midnight; and, apprehensive that they might be borne down by the advocates for silence and my police establishment, had determined to make the most of their time, and put in requisition all the pots, pans, shells, trumpets, pistols, and muskets that they could muster. All opened at once about one o'clock; and, had there been any virtue in discord, the cholera must soon have deserted the place, for such another hideous compound of noises I never heard. The disease, which seemed to have subsided with the silent procession before I went to bed, now returned with double violence, as I was assured by numbers who flocked to my house in terror; and the whole population became exasperated with the leaders of the noisy faction, who had, they believed, been the means of bringing back among them all the horrors of this dreadful scourge.

I asked the Hindoo Sadar Amin, or head native judicial officer at Sagar, a very profound Sanskrit scholar, what he thought of the efficacy of these processions in checking epidemic diseases. He said that 'there could be nothing more clear than the total inefficiency of medicine in such cases; and, when medicine failed, a man's only resource was in prayers; that the diseases of mankind were to be classed under three general heads: first, those suffered for sins committed in some former births; second, those suffered for sins committed in the present birth; third, those merely accidental. Now,' said the old gentleman, 'it must be clear to every unprejudiced mind that the third only can be cured or checked by the physician.' Epidemics, he thought, must all be classed under the second head, and as inflicted by the Deity for some very general sin; consequently, to be removed only by prayers; and, whether silent or noisy, was, he thought, matter of little importance, provided they were offered in the same spirit. I believe that, among the great mass of the people of India, three-fourths of the diseases of individuals are attributed to evil spirits and evil eyes; and for every physician among them there are certainly ten exorcisers. The faith in them is very great and very general; and, as the gift is supposed to be supernatural, it is commonly exercised without fee or reward. The gifted person subsists upon some other employment, and exorcises gratis.

A child of one of our servants was one day in convulsions from its sufferings in cutting its teeth. The Civil Surgeon happened to call that morning, and he offered to lance the child's gums. The poor mother thanked him, but stated that there could be no possible doubt as to the source of her child's sufferings—that the devil had got into it during the night, and would certainly not be frightened out by his little lancet; but she expected every moment my old tent- pitcher, whose exorcisms no devil of this description had ever yet been able to withstand.

The small-pox had been raging in the town of Jubbulpore for some time during one hot season that I was there, and a great many children had died from it. The severity of the disease was considered to have been a good deal augmented by a very untoward circumstance that had taken place in the family of the principal banker of the town, Khushhal Chand. Sewa Ram Seth, the old man, had lately died, leaving two sons. Ram Kishan, the eldest, and Khushhal Chand, the second. The eldest gave up all the management of the sublunary concerns of the family, and devoted his mind entirely to religious duties. They had a very fine family temple of their own, in which they placed an image of their god Vishnu, cut out of the choicest stone of the Nerbudda, and consecrated after the most approved form, and with very expensive ceremonies. This idol Ram Kishan used every day to wash with his own hands with rosewater, and anoint with precious ointments. One day, while he had the image in his arms, and was busily employed in anointing it, it fell to the ground upon the stone pavement, and one of the arms was broken. To live after such an untoward accident was quite out of the question, and poor Ram Kishan proceeded at once quietly to hang himself. He got a rope from the stable, and having tied it over the beam in the room where he had let the god fall upon the stone pavement, he was putting his head calmly into the noose, when his brother came in, laid hold of him, called for assistance, and put him under restraint. A conclave of the priests of that sect was immediately held in the town, and Ram Kishan was told that hanging himself was not absolutely necessary; that it might do if he would take the stone image, broken arm and all, upon his own back, and carry it two hundred and sixty miles to Benares, where resided the high priest of the sect, who would, no doubt, be able to suggest the proper measures for pacifying the god.

At this time, the only son of his brother, Khushhal Chand, an interesting little boy of about four years of age, was extremely ill of the small-pox; and it is a rule with Hindoos never to undertake any journey, even one of pilgrimage to a holy shrine, while any member of the family is afflicted with this disease; they must all sit at home clothed in sackcloth and ashes. He was told that he had better defer his journey to Benares till the child should recover; but he could neither sleep nor eat, so great was his terror, lest some dreadful calamity should befall the whole family before he could expiate his crime, or take the advice of his high priest as to the best means of doing it: and he resolved to leave the decision of the question to God Himself. He took two pieces of paper, and having caused Benares to be written upon one, and Jubbulpore upon the other, he put them both into a brass vessel. After shaking the vessel well, he drew forth that on which Benares had been written. 'It is the will of God,' said Ram Kishan. All the family, who were interested in the preservation of the poor boy, implored him not to set out, lest Devi, who presides over small-pox, should become angry. It was all in vain. He would set out with his household god; and, unable to carry it himself, he put it into a small litter upon a pole, and hired a bearer to carry it at one end, while he supported it at the other. His brother, Khushhal Chand, sent his second wife at the same time with offerings for Devi, to ward off the effects of his brother's rashness from his child. By the time the brother had got with his god to Adhartal, three miles from Jubbulpore, on the road to Benares, he heard of the death of his nephew; but he seemed not to feel this slight blow in his terror of the dreadful but undefined calamity which he felt to be impending over him and the whole family, and he trotted on his road. Soon after, an infant son of their uncle died of the same disease; and the whole town became at once divided into two parties—those who held that the children had been killed by Devi as a punishment for Ram Kishan's presuming to leave Jubbulpore before they recovered; and those who held that they were killed by the god Vishnu himself, for having been so rudely deprived of one of his arms. Khushhal Chand's wife sickened on the road, and died on reaching Mirzapore, of fever; and, as Devi was supposed to have nothing to do with fevers, this event greatly augmented the advocates of Vishnu. It is a rule with the Hindoos to bury, and not to burn, the bodies of those who die of the small-pox; 'for', say they, 'the small-pox is not only caused by the goddess Devi, but is, in fact, Devi herself', and to burn the body of the person affected with this disease is, in reality, neither more nor less than to burn the goddess'.

Khushhal Chand was strongly urged to bury, and not burn, his child, particularly as it was usual with Hindoos to bury infants and children of that age, of whatever disease they might die; but he insisted upon having his boy burned with all due pomp and ceremony, and burned he was accordingly. From that moment, it is said, the disease began to rage with increased violence throughout the town of Jubbulpore. At least one-half of the children affected had before survived; but, from that hour, at least three out of four died; and, instead of the condolence which he expected from his fellow citizens, poor Khushhal Chand, a very amiable and worthy man, received nothing but their execrations for bringing down so many calamities upon their heads; first, by maltreating his own god, and then by setting fire to theirs.

I had, a few days after, a visit from Gangadhar Rao, the Sadar Amin, or head native judicial officer of this district, whose father had been for a short time the ruler of the district, under the former government; and I asked him whether the small-pox had diminished in the town since the rains had now set in. He told me that he thought it had, but that a great many children had been taken off by the disease.[12]

'I understand, Rao Sahib, that Khushhal Chand, the banker, is supposed to have augmented the virulence of the disease by burning his boy; was it so?'

'Certainly,' said my friend, with a grave, long face; 'the disease was much increased by this man's folly.' I looked very grave in my turn, and he continued:- 'Not a child escaped after he had burned his boy. Such incredible folly! To set fire to the goddess in the midst of a population of twenty thousand souls; it might have brought destruction on us all!'

'What makes you think that the disease is itself the goddess?'

'Because we always say, when any member of a family becomes attacked by the small-pox, "Devi nikali", that is, Devi has shown herself in that family, or in that individual. And the person affected can wear nothing but plain white clothing, not a silken or coloured garment, nor an ornament of any kind; nor can he or any of his family undertake a journey, or participate in any kind of rejoicings, lest he give offence to her. They broke the arm of their god, and he drove them all mad.[l3] The elder brother set out on a journey with it, and his nephew, cousin, and sister-in-law fell victims to his temerity; and then Khushhal Chand brings down the goddess upon the whole community by burning his boy![14] No doubt he was very fond of his child—so we all are—and wished to do him all honour; but some regard is surely due to the people around us, and I told him so when he was making preparations for the funeral; but he would not listen to reason.'

A complicated religious code, like that of the Hindoos, is to the priest what a complicated civil code, like that of the English, is to the lawyers. A Hindoo can do nothing without consulting his priest, and an Englishman can do nothing without consulting his lawyer.

Notes:

1. Ante, Chapter 24, following note [4].

2. Sagar was ceded by the Peshwa in 1818, and a yearly sum of two and a half lakhs of rupees was allotted by Government for pensions to Rukma Bai, Vinayak Rao, and the other officers of the Maratha Government. A descendant of Rukma Bai continued for many years to enjoy a pension of R.10,000 per annum (C.P. Gazetteer (1870), p, 442). The lady referred to in the text seems to be Rukma Bai.

3. A village about twenty miles north-west of Sagar. The estate consists of twenty-six revenue-free villages.

4. The Jewish ceremonial is described in Leviticus xvi. 20-26. After completing the atonement for the impurities of the holy place, the tabernacle, and the altar, Aaron was directed to lay 'his hands upon the head of the live goat', so putting all the sins of the people upon the animal, and then to 'send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness; and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness'. The subject of scape-goats is discussed at length and copiously illustrated by Mr. Frazer in The Golden Bough, 1st ed., vol. ii, section 15, pp. 182-217; 3rd ed. (1913) Part VI. The author's stories in the text are quoted by Mr. Frazer.

5. During the season of 1816-17 the ravages of the Pindharis were exceptionally daring and extensive. The Governor-General, the Marquis of Hastings, organized an army in several divisions to crush the marauders, and himself joined the central division in October 1817. The operations were ended by the capture of Asirgarh in March 1819.

6. The people in the Sagar territories used to show several decayed mango-trees in groves where European troops had encamped during the campaigns of 1816 and 1817, and declared that they had been seen to wither from the day that beef for the use of these troops had been tied to their branches. The only coincidence was in the decay of the trees, and the encamping of the troops in the groves; that the withering trees were those to which the beef had been tied was of course taken for granted. [W. H. S.] The Hindoo veneration for the cow amounts to a passion, and its intensity is very inadequately explained by the current utilitarian explanations. The best analysis of the motives underlying the passionate Hindoo feeling on the subject is to be found in Mr. William Crooke's article 'The Veneration of the Cow in India' (Folklore, Sept. 1912, pp. 275- 306). In modern times an active, though absolutely hopeless, agitation has been kept up, directed against the reasonable liberty of those communities in India who are not members of the Hindoo system. This agitation for the prohibition of cow-killing has caused some riots, and has evoked much ill-feeling. The editor had to deal with it in the Muzaffarnagar district in 1890, and had much trouble to keep the peace. The local leaders of the movement went so far as to send telegrams direct to the Government of India. Many other magistrates have had similar experiences. The authorities take every precaution to protect Hindoo susceptibilities from needless wounds, but they are equally bound to defend the lawful liberty of subjects who are not Hindoos. The Government of the United Provinces on one occasion yielded to the Hindoo demands so far as to prohibit cow- killing in at least one town where the practice was not fully established, but the legality and expediency of such an order are both open to criticism. The administrative difficulty is much enhanced by the fact that the Indian Muhammadans profess to be under a religious obligation to sacrifice cows at the Idul Bakr festival. Cholera has been known to exist in India at least since the seventeenth century (Balfour, Cyclopaedia of India, 3rd ed. (1885), s.v.).

7. The cultus of Hardaul is further discussed post in Chapter 31. In 1875, the editor, who was then employed in the Hamirpur district of Bundelkhand, published some popular Hindi songs in praise of the hero, with the following abstract of the Legend of Hardaul: 'Hardaul, a son of the famous Bir Singh Deo Bundela of Orchha, was born at Datiya. His brother, Jhajhar Singh, suspected him of undue intimacy with his wife, and at a feast poisoned him with all his followers. After this tragedy, it happened that the daughter of Kunjavati, the sister of Jhajhar and Hardaul, was about to be married. Kunjavati accordingly sent an invitation to Jhajhar Singh, requesting him to attend the wedding. He refused, and mockingly replied that she had better invite her favourite brother Hardaul. Thereupon she went in despair to his tomb and lamented aloud. Hardaul from below answered her cries, and said that he would come to the wedding and make all arrangements. The ghost kept his promise, and arranged the nuptials as befitted the honour of his house. Subsequently, he visited at night the bedside of Akbar, and besought the emperor to command chabutras to be erected and honour paid to him in every village throughout the empire, promising that, if he were duly honoured, a wedding should never be marred by storm or rain, and that no one who first presented a share of his meal to Hardaul should ever want for food. Akbar complied with these requests, and since that time Hardaul's ghost has been worshipped in every village. He is chiefly honoured at weddings and in Baisakh (April-May), during which month the women, especially those of the lower castes, visit his chabutra and eat there. His chabutra is always built outside the village. On the day but one before the arrival of a wedding procession, the women of the family worship the gods and Hardaul, and invite them to the wedding. If any signs of a storm appears, Hardaul is propitiated with songs '(J.A.S.B., vol. xliv (1875), Part I, p. 389). The belief that Hardaul worship and cholera had been introduced at the same time prevailed in Hamirpur, as elsewhere. The chabutra referred to in the above extract is a small platform built of mud or masonry.

8. The Hyphasis is the Greek name for the river Bias in the Panjab. Holkar's flight into the Panjab occurred in 1805, and in the same year the long war with him was terminated by a treaty, much too favourable to the marauding chief. He became insane a few years later, and died in 1811.

9. See note 2,ante.

10. Narsinghpur and Kandeli are practically one town. The Government offices and houses of the European residents are in Kandeli, which is a mile east of Narsinghpur. The original name of Narsinghpur was Gadaria Khera. The modern name is due to the erection of a large temple to Narsingha, one of the forms of Vishnu. The district of Narsinghpur lies in the Nerbudda valley, west and south-west of Jubbulpore.

11. All classes of Indians still frequently refuse to employ any medicines in cases of either cholera or small-pox, supposing that the attempt to use ordinary human means is an insult to, and a defiance of, the Deity.

12. Vaccination was not practised in India in those days. The practice of it, although still unpopular in most places, has extended sufficiently to check greatly the ravages of small-pox. In many municipal towns vaccination is compulsory.

13.Quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat.

14. The judge cleverly combines the opinions of the adherents of both sects.



CHAPTER 26

Artificial Lakes in Bundelkhand—Hindoo, Greek, and Roman Faith.

On the 11th[1] we came on twelve miles to the town of Bamhauri, whence extends to the south-west a ridge of high and bare quartz hills, towering above all others, curling and foaming at the top, like a wave ready to burst, when suddenly arrested by the hand of Omnipotence, and turned into white stone. The soil all the way is wretchedly poor in quality, being formed of the detritus of syenitic and quartz rocks, and very thin. Bamhauri is a nice little town,[2] beautifully situated on the bank of a fine lake, the waters of which preserved during the late famine the population of this and six other small towns, which are situated near its borders, and have their lands irrigated from it. Besides water for their fields, this lake yielded the people abundance of water-chestnuts[3] and fish. In the driest season the water has been found sufficient to supply the wants of all the people of those towns and villages, and those of all the country around, as far as the people can avail themselves of it.

This large lake is formed by an artificial bank or wall at the south- east end, which rests one arm upon the high range of quartz rocks, which run along its south-west side for several miles, looking down into the clear deep water, and forming a beautiful landscape.

From this pretty town, Ludhaura, where the great marriage had lately taken place, was in sight, and only four miles distant.[4] It was, I learnt, the residence of the present Raja of Orchha, before the death of his brother called him to the throne. Many people were returning from the ceremonies of the marriage of 'salagram' with 'Tulasi'; who told me that the concourse had been immense—at least one hundred and fifty thousand; and that the Raja had feasted them all for four days during the progress of the ceremonies, but that they were obliged to defray their expenses going and coming, except when they came by special invitation to do honour to the occasion, as in the case of my little friend the Sagar high priest, Janki Sewak. They told me that they called this festival the 'Dhanuk jag';[5] and that Janakraj, the father of Sita, had in his possession the 'dhanuk', or immortal bow of Parasram, the sixth incarnation of Vishnu, with which he exterminated all the Kshatriyas, or original military class of India, and which required no less than four thousand men to raise it on one end.[6] The prince offered his daughter in marriage to any man who should bend this bow. Hundreds of heroes and demigods aspired to the hand of the fair Sita, and essayed to bend the bow; but all in vain, till young Ram, the seventh incarnation of Vishnu,[7] then a lad of only ten years of age, came; and at the touch of his great toe the bow flew into a thousand pieces, which are supposed to have been all taken up into heaven. Sita became the wife of Ram; and the popular poem of the Ramayana describes the abduction of the heroine by the monster king of Ceylon, Ravana, and her recovery by means of the monkey general Hanuman. Every word of this poem, the people assured me, was written, if not by the hand of the Deity himself, at least by his inspiration, which was the same thing, and it must, consequently, be true.[8] Ninety-nine out of a hundred among the Hindoos implicitly believe, not only every word of this poem, but every word of every poem that has ever been written in Sanskrit. If you ask a man whether he really believes any very egregious absurdity quoted from these books, he replies with the greatest naivete in the world, 'Is it not written in the book; and how should it be there written if not true?' The Hindoo religion reposes upon an entire prostration of mind, that continual and habitual surrender of the reasoning faculties, which we are accustomed to make occasionally. While engaged at the theatre, or in the perusal of works of fiction, we allow the scenes, characters, and incidents to pass before 'our mind's eye', and move our feelings, without asking, or stopping a moment to ask, whether they are real or true. There is only this difference that, with people of education among us, even in such short intervals of illusion or abandon, any extravagance in acting, or flagrant improbability in the fiction, destroys the charm, breaks the spell by which we have been so mysteriously bound, stops the smooth current of sympathetic emotion, and restores us to reason and to the realities of ordinary life. With the Hindoos, on the contrary, the greater the improbability, the more monstrous and preposterous the fiction, the greater is the charm it has over their minds;[9] and the greater their learning in the Sanskrit the more are they under the influence of this charm. Believing all to be written by the Deity, or by his inspiration, and the men and things of former days to have been very different from the men and things of the present day, and the heroes of these fables to have been demigods, or people endowed with powers far superior to those of the ordinary men of their own day, the analogies of nature are never for a moment considered; nor do questions of probability, or possibility, according to those analogies, ever obtrude to dispel the charm with which they are so pleasingly bound. They go on through life reading and talking of these monstrous fictions, which shock the taste and understanding of other nations, without once questioning the truth of one single incident, or hearing it questioned. There was a time, and that not very distant, when it was the same in England, and in every other European nation; and there are, I am afraid, some parts of Europe where it is so still. But the Hindoo faith, so far as religious questions are concerned, is not more capacious or absurd than that of the Greeks and Romans in the days of Socrates and Cicero—the only difference is, that among the Hindoos a greater number of the questions which interest mankind are brought under the head of religion.

There is nothing in the Hindoos more absurd than the piety of Tiberius in offering up sacrifices in the temple, and before the image of Augustus; while he was solicited by all the great cities of the empire to suffer temples to be built and sacrifices to be made to himself while still living; or than Alexander's attempt to make a goddess of his mother while yet alive, that he might feel the more secure of being made a god himself after his death.[10] In all religions there are points at which the professors declare that reason must stop, and cease to be a guide to faith. The pious man thinks that all which he cannot comprehend or reconcile to reason in his own religion must be above it. The superstitions of the people of India will diminish before the spread of science, art, and literature; and good works of history and fiction would, I think, make far greater havoc among these superstitions even than good works in any of the sciences, save the physical, such as astronomy, chemistry, &c.[11]

In the evening we went out with the intention of making an excursion of the lake, in boats that had been prepared for our reception by tying three or four fishing canoes together;[12] but, on reaching the ridge of quartz hills which runs along the south-east side, we preferred moving along its summit to entering the boats. The prospect on either side of this ridge was truly beautiful. A noble sheet of clear water, about four miles long by two broad, on our right; and on our left a no less noble sheet of rich wheat cultivation, irrigated from the lake by drains passing between small breaks in the ridges of the hills. The Persian wheel is used to raise the water.[13] This sheet of rich cultivation is beautifully studded with mango groves and fields of sugar-cane. The lake is almost double the size of that of Sagar, and the idea of its great utility for purposes of irrigation made it appear to me far more beautiful; but my little friend the Sarimant, who accompanied us in our walk, said that 'it could not be so handsome, since it had not a fine city and castle on two sides, and a fine Government house on the third'.

'But', said I, 'no man's field is watered from that lake.'

'No', replied he, 'but for every man that drinks of the waters of this, fifty drink of the waters of that; from that lake thirty thousand people get aram (comfort) every day.'

This lake is called Kewlas after Kewal Varmma, the Chandel prince by whom it was formed.[14] His palace, now in ruins, stood on the top of the ridge of rocks in a very beautiful situation. From the summit, about eight miles to the west, we could see a still larger lake, called the Nandanvara Lake, extending under a similar range of quartz hills running parallel with that on which we stood.[15] That lake, we were told, answered upon a much larger scale the same admirable purpose of supplying water for the fields, and securing the people from the dreadful effects of droughts. The extensive level plains through which the rivers of Central India[16] generally cut their way have, for the most part, been the beds of immense natural lakes;[17] and there rivers sink so deep into their beds, and leave such ghastly chasms and ravines on either side, that their waters are hardly ever available in due season for irrigation. It is this characteristic of the rivers of Central India that makes such lakes so valuable to the people, particularly in seasons of drought.[l8] The river Nerbudda has been known to rise seventy feet in the course of a couple of days in the rains; and, during the season when its waters are wanted for irrigation, they can nowhere be found within that [distance] of the surface; while a level piece of ground fit for irrigation is rarely to be met with within a mile of the stream.[19]

The people appeared to improve as we advanced farther into Bundelkhand in appearance, manners, and intelligence. There is a bold bearing about the Bundelas, which at first one is apt to take for rudeness or impudence, but which in time he finds not to be so.

The employes of the Raja were everywhere attentive, frank, and polite; and the peasantry seemed no longer inferior to those of our Sagar and Nerbudda territories. The females of almost all the villages through which we passed came out with their Kalas in procession to meet us—one of the most affecting marks of respect from the peasantry for their superiors that I know. One woman carries on her head a brass jug, brightly polished, full of water; while all the other families of the village crowd around her, and sing in chorus some rural song, that lasts from the time the respected visitor comes in sight till he disappears. He usually puts into the Kalas a rupee to purchase 'gur' (coarse sugar), of which all the females partake, as a sacred offering to the sex. No member of the other sex presumes to partake of it, and during the chorus all the men stand aloof in respectful silence. This custom prevails all over India, or over all parts of it that I have seen; and yet I have witnessed a Governor-General of India, with all his suite, passing by this interesting group, without knowing or asking what it was. I lingered behind, and quietly put my silver into the jug, as if from the Governor-General.[20]

The man who administers the government over these seven villages in all its branches, civil, criminal, and fiscal, receives a salary of only two hundred rupees a year. He collects the revenues on the part of Government; and, with the assistance of the heads and the elders of the villages, adjusts all petty matters of dispute among the people, both civil and criminal. Disputes of a more serious character are sent to be adjusted at the capital by the Raja and his ministers. The person who reigns over the seven villages of the lake is about thirty years of age, of the Rajput caste, and, I think, one of the finest young men I have ever seen. His ancestors have served the Orchha State in the same station for seven generations; and he tells me that he hopes his posterity will serve them [sic] for as many more, provided they do not forfeit their claims to do so by their infidelity or incapacity. This young man seemed to have the respect and affection of every member of the little communities of the villages through which we passed, and it was evident that he deserved their attachment. I have rarely seen any similar signs of attachment to one of our own native officers. This arises chiefly from the circumstance of their being less frequently placed in authority among those upon whose good feelings and opinions their welfare and comfort, as those of their children, are likely permanently to depend. In India, under native rule, office became hereditary, because officers expended the whole of their incomes in religious ceremonies, or works of ornament and utility, and left their families in hopeless dependence upon the chief in whose service they had laboured all their lives, while they had been educating their sons exclusively with the view of serving that chief in the same capacity that their fathers had served him before them. It is in this case, and this alone, that the law of primogeniture is in force in India.[21] Among Muhammadans, as well as Hindoos, all property, real and personal, is divided equally among the children;[22] but the duties of an office will not admit of the same subdivision; and this, therefore, when hereditary, as it often is, descends to the eldest son with the obligation of providing for the rest of the family. The family consists of all the members who remain united to the parent stock, including the widows and orphans of the sons or brothers who were so up to the time of their death.[23]

The old 'chobdar', or silver-stick bearer, who came with us from the Raja, gets fifteen rupees a month, and his ancestors have served the Raja for several generations. The Diwan, who has charge of the treasury, receives only one thousand rupees a year, and the Bakshi, or paymaster of the army, who seems at present to rule the state as the prime favourite, the same. These latter are at present the only two great officers of state; and, though they are, no doubt, realizing handsome incomes by indirect means, they dare not make any display, lest signs of wealth might induce the Raja or his successors to treat them as their predecessors in office were treated for some time past.[24] The Jagirdars, or feudal chiefs, as I have before stated, are almost all of the same family or class as the Raja, and they spend all the revenues of their estates in the maintenance of military retainers, upon whose courage and fidelity they can generally rely. These Jagirdars are bound to attend the prince on all great occasions, and at certain intervals; and are made to contribute something to his exchequer in tribute. Almost all live beyond their legitimate means, and make up the deficiency by maintaining upon their estates gangs of thieves, robbers, and murderers, who extend their depredations into the country around, and share the prey with these chiefs, and their officers and under-tenants. They keep them as poachers keep their dogs; and the paramount power, whose subjects they plunder, might as well ask them for the best horse in the stable as for the best thief that lives under their protection.[25]

I should mention an incident that occurred during the Raja's visit to me at Tehri. Lieutenant Thomas was sitting next to the little Sarimant, and during the interview he asked him to allow him to look at his beautiful little gold-hilted sword. The Sarimant held it fast, and told him that he should do himself the honour of waiting upon him in his tent in the course of the day, when he would show him the sword and tell him its history. After the Raja, left me, Thomas mentioned this, and said he felt very much hurt at the incivility of my little friend; but I told him that he was in everything he did and said so perfectly the gentleman, that I felt quite sure he would explain all to his satisfaction when he called upon him. During his visit to Thomas he apologized for not having given over his sword to him, and said, 'You European gentlemen have such perfect confidence in each other, that you can, at all times, and in all situations, venture to gratify your curiosity in these matters, and draw your swords in a crowd just as well as when alone; but, had you drawn mine from the scabbard in such a situation, with the tent full of the Raja's personal attendants, and surrounded by a devoted and not very orderly soldiery, it might have been attended by very serious consequences. Any man outside might have seen the blade gloaming, and, not observing distinctly why it had been drawn, might have suspected treachery, and called out "To the rescue", when we should all have been cut down—the lady, child, and all.' Thomas was not only satisfied with the Sarimant's apology, but was so much delighted with him, that he has ever since been longing to get his portrait; for he says it was really his intention to draw the sword had the Sarimant given it to him. As I have said, his face is extremely beautiful, quite a model for a painter or a statuary, and his figure, though small, is handsome. He dresses with great elegance, mostly in azure-coloured satin, surmounted by a rose-coloured turban and a waistband of the same colour. All his motions are graceful, and his manners have an exquisite polish. A greater master of all the convenances I have never seen, though he is of slender capacity, and, as I have said, in stature less than five feet high.

A poor, half-naked man, reduced to beggary by the late famine, ran along by my horse to show me the road, and, to the great amusement of my attendants, exclaimed that he felt exactly as if he were always falling down a well, meaning as if he were immersed in cold water. He said that the cold season was suited only to gentlemen who could afford to be well clothed; but, to a poor man like himself, and the great mass of people, in Bundelkhand at least, the hot season was much better. He told me that 'the late Raja, though a harsh, was thought to be a just man;[26] and that his good sense, and, above all, his good fortune (ikbal) had preserved the principality entire; but that God only, and the forbearance of the Honourable Company, could now serve it under such an imbecile as the present chief'. He seemed quite melancholy at the thought of living to see this principality, the oldest in Bundelkhand, lose its independence. Even this poor, unclothed, and starving wretch had a feeling of patriotism, a pride of country, though that country had been so wretchedly governed, and was now desolated by a famine.

Just such a feeling had the impressed seamen who fought our battles in the great struggle. No nation has ever had a more disgraceful institution than that of the press-gang of England. This institution, if so it can be called, must be an eternal stain upon her glory— posterity will never be able to read the history of her naval victories without a blush—without reproaching her lawgivers who could allow them to be purchased with the blood of such men as those who fought for us the battles of the Nile and Trafalgar. 'England expected every man to do his duty' on that day, but had England done her duty to every man who was on that day to fight for her? Was not every English gentleman of the Lords and Commons a David sending his Uriah to battle?[27]

The intellectual stock which we require in good seamen for our navy, and which is acquired in scenes of peril 'upon the high and giddy mast', is as much their property as that which other men acquire in schools and colleges; and we had no more right to seize and employ these seamen in our battles upon the wages of common, uninstructed labour, than we should have had to seize and employ as many clergymen, barristers, and physicians. When I have stood on the quarter-deck of a ship in a storm, and seen the seamen covering the yards in taking in sail, with the thunder rolling, and the lightning flashing fearfully around them—the sea covered with foam, and each succeeding billow, as it rushed by, seeming ready to sweep them all from their frail footing into the fathomless abyss below—I have asked myself, 'Are men like these to be seized like common felons, torn from their wives and children as soon as they reach their native land, subject every day to the lash, and put in front of those battles on which the wealth, the honour, and the independence of the nation depend, merely because British legislators know that when there, a regard for their own personal character among their companions in danger will make them fight like Englishmen?'

This feeling of nationality which exists in the little states of Bundelkhand, arises from the circumstance that the mass of the landholders are of the same class as the chief Bundelas; and that the public establishments of the state are recruited almost exclusively from that mass. The states of Jhansi[28] and Jalaun[29] are the only exceptions. There the rulers are Brahmans and not Rajputs, and they recruit their public establishments from all classes and all countries. The landed aristocracy, however, there, as elsewhere, are Rajputs-either Pawars, Chandels, or Bundelas.

The Rajput landholders of Bundelkhand are linked to the soil in all their grades, from the prince to the peasant, as the Highlanders of Scotland were not long ago; and the holder of a hundred acres is as proud as the holder of a million.[30] He boasts the same descent, and the same exclusive possession of arms and agriculture, to which unhappily the industry of their little territories is almost exclusively confined, for no other branch can grow up among so turbulent a set, whose quarrels with their chiefs, or among each other, are constantly involving them in civil wars, which render life and property exceedingly insecure. Besides, as I have stated, their propensity to keep bands of thieves, robbers, and murderers in their baronial castles, as poachers keep their dogs, has scared away the wealthy and respectable capitalist and peaceful and industrious manufacturer.

All the landholders are uneducated, and unfit to serve in any of our civil establishments, or in those of any very civilized Governments; and they are just as unfitted to serve in our military establishments, where strict discipline is required. The lands they occupy are cultivated because they depend almost entirely upon the rents they get from them for subsistence; and because every petty chief and his family hold their lands rent-free, or at a trifling quit-rent, on the tenure of military service, and their residue forms all the market for land produce which the cultivators require. They dread the transfer of the rule to our Government, because they now form almost exclusively all the establishments of their domestic chief, civil as well as military; and know that, were our rule to be substituted, they would be almost entirely excluded from these, at least for a generation or two. In our regiments, horse or foot, there is hardly a man from Bundelkhand, for the reasons above stated; nor are there any in the Gwalior regiments and contingents which are stationed in the neighbourhood; though the land among them is become minutely subdivided, and they are obliged to seek service or starve. They are all too proud for manual labour, even at the plough. No Bundelkhand Rajput will, I believe, condescend to put his hand to one.

Among the Maratha states, Sikhs, and Muhammadans, there is no bond of union of this kind. The establishments, military as well as civil, are everywhere among them composed for the most part of foreigners; and the landed interests under such Governments would dread nothing from the prospect of a transfer to our rule; on the contrary, they and the mass of the people would almost everywhere hail it as a blessing.

There are two reasons why we should leave these small native states under their own chiefs, even when the claim to the succession is feeble or defective; first, because it tends to relieve the minds of other native chiefs from the apprehension, already too prevalent among them, that we desire by degrees to absorb them all, because we think our government would do better for the people; and secondly, because, by leaving them as a contrast, we afford to the people of India the opportunity of observing the superior advantages of our rule.

'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,' in governments as well as in landscapes; and if the people of India, instead of the living proofs of what perilous things native governments, whether Hindoo or Muhammadan, are in reality, were acquainted with nothing but such pictures of them as are to be found in their histories and in the imaginations of their priests and learned men (who lose much of their influence and importance under our rule), they would certainly, with proneness like theirs to delight in the marvellous, be far from satisfied, as they now are, that they never had a government so good as ours, and that they never could hope for another so good, were ours removed.[31]

For the advantages which we derive from leaving them independent, we are, no doubt, obliged to pay a heavy penalty in the plunder of our wealthy native subjects by the gangs of robbers of all descriptions whom they foster; but this evil may be greatly diminished by a judicious interposition of our authority to put down such bands.[32]

In Bundelkhand, at present, the government and the lands of the native chiefs are in the hands of three of the Hindoo military classes, Bundelas, Dhandelas, and Pawars. The principal chiefs are of the first, and their feudatories are chiefly of the other two. A Bundela cannot marry the daughter of a Bundela; he must take his wife from one or other of the other two tribes; nor can a member of either of the other two take his wife from his own tribe; he must take her from the Bundelas, or the other tribe. The wives of the greatest chiefs are commonly from the poorest families of their vassals; nor does the proud family from which she has been taken feel itself exalted by the alliance; neither does the poorest vassal among the Pawars and Dhandels feel that the daughter of his prince has condescended in becoming his wife. All they expect is a service for a few more yeomen of the family among the retainers of the sovereign.

The people are in this manner, from the prince to the peasant, indissolubly linked to each other, and to the soil they occupy; for, where industry is confined almost exclusively to agriculture, the proprietors of the soil and the officers of Government, who are maintained out of its rents, constitute nearly the whole of the middle and higher classes. About one-half of the lands of every state are held on service tenure by vassals of the same family or clan as the chief; and there is hardly one of them who is not connected with that chief by marriage. The revenue derived from the other half is spent in the maintenance of establishments formed almost exclusively of the members of these families.

They are none of them educated for civil offices under any other rule, nor could they, for a generation or two, be induced to submit to wear military uniform, or learn the drill of regular soldiers. They are mere militia, brave as men can be, but unsusceptible of discipline. They have, therefore, a natural horror at the thought of their states coming under any other than a domestic rule, for they could have no chance of employment in the civil or military establishments of a foreign power; and their lands would, they fear, be resumed, since the service for which they had been given would be no longer available to the rulers. It is said that, in the long interval from the commencement of the reign of Alexander the third to the end of that of David the second,[33] not a single baron could be found in Scotland able to sign his own name. The Bundelkhand barons have never, I believe, been quite so bad as this, though they have never yet learned enough to fit them for civil offices under us. Many of them can write and read their own language, which is that common to the other countries around them.[34]

Bundelkhand was formerly possessed by another tribe of Rajputs, the proud Chandels, who have now disappeared altogether from this province. If one of that tribe can still be found, it is in the humblest rank of the peasant or the soldier; but its former strength is indicated by the magnificent artificial lakes and ruined castles which are traced to them; and by the reverence which is still felt by the present dominant classes of [sic] their old capital of Mahoba. Within a certain distance around that ruined city no one now dares to beat the 'nakkara', or great drum used in festivals or processions, lest the spirits of the old Chandel chiefs who there repose should be roused to vengeance;[35] and a kingdom could not tempt one of the Bundelas, Pawars, or Chandels to accept the government of the parish ['mauza'] in which it is situated. They will take subordinate offices there under others with fear and trembling, but nothing could induce one of them to meet the governor. When the deadly struggle between these two tribes took place cannot now be discovered.[36]

In the time of Akbar, the Chandels were powerful in Mahoba, as the celebrated Durgavati, the queen of Garha Mandla, whose reign extended over the Sagar and Nerbudda territories and the greater part of Berar, was a daughter of the reigning Chandel prince of Mahoba. He condescended to give his daughter only on condition that the Gond prince who demanded her should, to save his character, come with an army of fifty thousand men to take her. He did so, and 'nothing loth', Durgavati departed to reign over a country where her name is now more revered than that of any other sovereign it has ever had. She was killed above two hundred and fifty years ago, about twelve miles from Jubbulpore, while gallantly leading on her troops in their third and last attempt to stem the torrent of Muhammadan invasion. Her tomb is still to be seen where she fell, in a narrow defile between two hills; and a pair of large rounded stones which stand near are, according to popular belief, her royal drums turned into stone, which, in the dead of night, are still heard resounding through the woods, and calling the spirits of her warriors from their thousand graves around her. The travellers who pass this solitary spot respectfully place upon the tomb the prettiest specimen they can find of the crystals which abound in the neighbourhood; and, with so much of kindly feeling had the history of Durgavati inspired me, that I could not resist the temptation of adding one to the number when I visited her tomb some sixteen years ago.[37]

I should mention that the Raja of Samthar in Bundelkhand.[38] is by caste a Gujar;[39] and he has not yet any landed aristocracy like that of the Bundelas about him. One of his ancestors, not long ago, seized upon a fine open plain, and built a fort upon it, and the family has ever since, by means of this fort, kept possession of the country around, and drawn part of their revenues from depredations upon their neighbours and travellers. The Jhansi and Jalaun chiefs are Brahmans of the same family as the Peshwa.

In the states governed by chiefs of the military classes, nearly the whole produce of the land goes to maintain soldiers, or military retainers, who are always ready to fight or rob for their chief. In those governed by the Brahmanical class, nearly the whole produce goes to maintain priests; and the other chiefs would soon devour them, as the black ants devour the white, were not the paramount power to interpose and save them. While the Peshwa lived, he interposed; but all his dominions were running into priesthood, like those in Sagar and Bundelkhand, and must soon have been swallowed up by the military chiefs around him, had we not taken his place. Jalaun and Jhansi are preserved only by us, for, with all their religious, it is impossible for them to maintain efficient military establishments; and the Bundela chiefs have always a strong desire to eat them up, since these states were all sliced out of their principalities when the Peshwa was all-powerful in Hindustan.

The Chhatarpur Raja is a Pawar. His father had been in the service of the Bundela Raja; but, when we entered upon our duties as the paramount power in Bundelkhand, the son had succeeded to the little principality seized upon by his father; and, on the principle of respecting actual possession, he was recognized by us as the sovereign.[40] The Bundela Rajas, east of the Dasan river, are descended from Raja Chhatarsal, and are looked down upon by the Bundela Rajas of Orchha, Chanderi, and Datiya, west of the Dasan, as Chhatarsal was in the service of one of their ancestors, from whom he wrested the estates which his descendants now enjoy. Chhatarsal, in his will, gave one-third of the dominion he had thus acquired to the strongest power then in India, the Peshwa, in order to secure the other two-thirds to his two sons Hardi Sa and Jagatraj, in the same manner as princes of the Roman empire used to bequeath a portion of theirs to the emperor.[41] Of the Peshwa's share we have now got all, except Jalaun. Jhansi was subsequently acquired by the Peshwa, or rather by his subordinates, with his sanction and assistance.[42]

Notes:

1. December, 1835.

2. In the Orchha State. This seems to be the same town which the author had already visited on his way to Tehri on the 7th December. Ante, Chapter 19 note [15].

3. Ante, Chapter 12 following note [9].

4. Sodora in the author's text; see ante, Chapter 19, note 11.

5. 'Bow-sacrifice.'

6. The tradition is that a prince of this military class was sporting in a river with his thousand wives, when Renuka, the wife of Jamadagni, went to bring water. He offended her, and her husband cursed the prince, but was put to death by him. His son Parasram was no less a person than the sixth incarnation of Vishnu, who had assumed the human shape merely to destroy these tyrants. He vowed, now that his mother had been insulted, and his father killed, not to leave one on the face of the earth. He destroyed them all twenty-one times, the women with child producing a new race each time. [W. H. S.] The legend is not narrated quite correctly.

7. Rama Chandra, son of Dasaratha.

8. When Ram set out with his army for Ceylon, he is supposed to have worshipped the little tree called 'cheonkul', which stood near his capital of Ajodhya. It is a wretched little thing, between a shrub and a tree; but I have seen a procession of more than seventy thousand persons attend their prince to the worship of it on the festival of the Dasahara, which is held in celebration of this expedition to Ceylon. [W. H. S.] 'As Arjuna and his brothers worshipped the shumee-tree, the Acacia suma, and hung up their arms upon it, so the Hindus go forth to worship that tree on the festival of the Dasahara. They address the tree under the name of Aparajita, the invincible goddess, sprinkle it with five ambrosial liquids, the 'panchamrit', a mixture of milk, curds, sugar, clarified butter, and honey, wash it with water, and hang garments upon it. They light lamps and burn incense before the symbol of Aparajita, make 'chandlos' upon the tree, sprinkle it with rose-coloured water, and set offerings of food before it' (Balfour, Cyclopaedia, 3rd ed., s.v. 'Dasahara'). The 'cheonkul' is the chhonkar or chhaunkar (Prosopis spicigera, Linn.), described by Growse as follows:—

'Very common throughout the district; occasionally grows to quite a large tree, as in the Dohani Kund at Chaksauli. It is used for religious worship at the festival of the Dasahara, and considered sacred to Siva. The pods (called sangri) are much used for fodder. Probably chhonkar and sangri, which latter is in some parts of India the name of the tree as well as of the pod, are both dialectical corruptions of the Sanskrit sankara, a name of Siva; for the palatal and sibilant are frequently interchangeable' ('List of Indigenous Trees' in Mathura, A. District Memoir, 3rd ed., Allahabad, 1883, p. 422). Sundry leguminous trees are used in Dasahara ceremonies in the different parts of India, under varying local names.

9. Credo quia impossibile.

10. This comparison is not a happy one. The elements in some of the Hindoo myths specially repulsive to European taste are their monstrosity, their inartistic and hideous exaggeration, their accumulation of sanguinary horrors, and their childish triviality. Few of the classical myths exhibit these characteristics. The vanity or policy of Tiberius and Alexander in believing themselves to be, or wishing to be believed, divine, has nothing in common with the grotesque imagination of Puranic Hinduism.

11. The roots of Hinduism are so deeply fixed in a thick soil of custom and inherited sentiment, the growth of thousands of years, that English education has less effect than might be expected in loosening the bonds of beliefs which seem to every one but a Hindoo the merest superstition. Hindoos who can read English with fluency, and write it with accuracy, are often extremely devout, and Hindoo devoutness must ever appear to an outsider, even to a European as sympathetic as the author, to be no better than superstition. A Hindoo able to read English with ease has at his command all the rich stores of the knowledge of the West, but very often does not care to taste them. Enmeshed in a web of ritual and belief inseparable from himself, he remains as much as ever a Hindoo, and uses his skill in English merely as an article of professional equipment. 'Good works of history and fiction' do not interest him, and he usually fails to digest and assimilate the physical or biological science administered to him at school or college. In fact, he does not believe it. The monstrous legends of the Puranas continue to be for his mind the realities; while the truths of science are to him phantoms, shadowy and unsubstantial, the outlandish notions of alien and casteless unbelievers. These observations, of course, are not universally true, and a few Hindoos, growing in number, are able to heartily accept and thoroughly assimilate the facts of history and the results of inductive science. But such Hindoos are few, and it may well be doubted if it is possible for a man really to believe the amount of history and science known to an ordinary English schoolboy, and still be a devout Hindoo. The old bottles cannot contain the new wine. The Hindoo scriptures do not treat of history and science in a merely incidental way; they teach, after their fashion, both history and science formally and systematically; grammar, logic, medicine, astronomy, the history of gods and men, are all taught in books which form part of the sacred canon. Inductive science and matter-of-fact history are absolutely destructive of, and irreconcilable with, veneration for the Hindoo scriptures as authoritative and infallible guides. It is impossible, within the narrow limits of a note, to discuss the problems suggested by the author's remarks. Enough, perhaps, has been said to show that the many-rooted banyan tree of Hinduism is in little danger of overthrow from the attacks either of history or of science, not to speak of 'good works of fiction'.

12. A 'dug-out' canoe is rather a shaky craft. When two or three are lashed together, and a native cot (charpai) is stretched across, the passenger can make himself very comfortable. The boats are poled by men standing in the stern.

13. Ante, Chapter 24, note 1.

14. This prince is not included in the authentic dynastic lists given in the Chandel inscriptions. He was probably a younger son, who never reigned. The principal authorities for the history of the Chandel dynasty are A.S.R., vol. ii, pp. 439-51; vol. xxi, pp. 77-90, and V. A. Smith, 'Contributions to the History of Bundelkhand', in J.A.S.B. vol. 1 (1881), Part I, p. 1; and 'The History and Coinage of the Chandel (Chandella) Dynasty' in Ind. Ant., 1908, pp. 114-48. A brief summary will be found in Early History of India, 3rd ed. (1914), pp. 390-4. Most of the great works of the dynasty date from the period A.D. 950-1200.

15. The long ridges of quartz traversing the gneiss are marked features in the scenery of Bundelkhand.

16. The author always uses the phrase Central India as a vague geographical expression. The phrase is now generally used to mean an administrative division, namely, the group of Native States under the Central India Agency at Indore, which deals with about 148 chiefs and rulers of various rank. Central India in this official sense must not be confounded with the Central Provinces, of which the capital is Nagpur.

17. On this lake theory, see ante, Chapter 14, note 13.

18. During a residence of six years in Bundelkhand the editor came to the conclusion that most of the ancient artificial lakes were not constructed for purposes of irrigation. The embankments seem generally to have been built as adjuncts to palaces or temples. Many of the lakes command no considerable area of irrigable ground, and there are no traces of ancient irrigation channels. In modern times small canals have been drawn from some of the lakes.

19. The desolation of the ravines of the rivers of Central India and Bundelkhand offers a very striking spectacle, presenting to the geologist a signal example of the effects of sub-aerial denudation.

20. This pretty custom is also described, in Tod's Rajasthan; and is still common in Alwar, and perhaps in other parts of Rajputana (N.I. Notes and Queries, vol. ii (Dec. 1892), p. 152), It does not seem to be now known in the Gangetic valley.

21. Principalities, and the estates of the talukdars of Oudh also descend to the eldest son. The author states (ante, Chapter 10, see text before note [10].) that the same rule applied in his time to the small agricultural holdings in the Sagar and Nerbudda territories.

22. This statement is inexact; Hindoo daughters, as a rule, inherit nothing from their fathers; a Muhammadan daughter takes half the share of a son.

23. But it is only the smaller local ministerial officers who are secure in their tenure of office under native Governments; those on whose efficiency the well-being of village communities depends. The greatest evil of Governments of the kind is the feeling of insecurity which pervades all the higher officers of Government, and the instability of all engagements made by the Government with them, and by them with the people. [W. H. S.]

24. Ante, Chapter 23, text at note [8].

25. In the Gwalior territory, the Maratha 'amils' or governors of districts, do the same, and keep gangs of robbers on purpose to plunder their neighbours; and, if you ask them for their thieves, they will actually tell you that to part with them would be ruin, as they are their only defence against the thieves of their neighbours. [W. H. S.] These notions and habits are by no means extinct. In October, 1892, a force of about two hundred men, cavalry and infantry, was sent into Bundelkhand to suppress robber gangs. Such gangs are constantly breaking out in that region, in most native states, and in many British districts. See ante, chapter 23, text following note [13].

26. My poor guide had as little sympathy with the prime ministers, whom the Tehri Raja put to death, as the peasantry of England had with the great men and women whom Harry the Eighth sacrificed. [W. H. S.] Ante, Chapter 23, beginning to note [9].

27. The cruel practice of impressment for the royal navy is authorized by a series of statutes extending from the reign of Philip and Mary to that of George III. Seamen of the merchant navy, and, with few exceptions, all seafaring men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five, are liable, under the provisions of these harsh statutes, to be forcibly seized by the press-gang, and compelled to serve on board a man-of-war. The acts legalizing impressment were freely made use of during the Napoleonic wars, but since then have been little acted on, and no Government at the present day could venture to use them, though they have never been repealed. The fleet sent against the Russians in 1855 was the first English fleet ever manned without recourse to forcible impressment: see the article 'Impressment' by David Hannay, in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., 1910. The work by J. B. Hutchinson entitled The Press-gang Afloat and Ashore (London: Nash, 1913) gives copious details of the infamous proceedings.

28. The Brahman chief of Jhansi was originally a governor under the Peshwa. The treaty of November 18, 1817, recognized the then chief Ramchand Rao, his heirs and successors, as hereditary rulers of Jhansi. Ramchand Rao was granted the title of Raja by the British Government in 1832, and died without issue on August 20, 1835 (N.W.P. Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. i, p. 296). See post, Chapter 29.

29. The chiefs of Jalaun also were officers under the Maratha Government of the Peshwa up to 1817. In consequence of gross misgovernment, an English superintendent was appointed in 1838, and the state lapsed to the British Government, owing to failure of heirs, in 1840 (ibid. p. 229).

30. Ante Chapter 23, note 13.

31. Lapse of years has increased the distance and the enchantment, so that modern agitators and sentimentalists discover marvellous excellences in the native Governments of the now remote past. The methods of government in the existing native states have been so profoundly modified by the influence of the Imperial Government that these states are no longer as instructive in the way of contrast as they were in the author's day.

32. The author consistently held the views above enunciated, and defended the policy of maintaining the native states. He was of opinion that the system of annexation favoured by Lord Dalhousie and his Council 'had a downward tendency, and tended to crush all the higher and middle classes connected with the land'. He considered that the Government of India should have undertaken the management of Oudh, but that it had no right to annex the province, and appropriate its revenues (Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, p. 22, &c.). Since 1858 the policy of annexation has been repudiated. See Sir W. Lee-Warner, The Protected Princes of India (Macmillan, 1894), and The Native States of India (1910).

33. A.D. 1249 to A.D. 1371.

34. The Hindi spoken in different parts of Bundelkhand comprises several distinct dialects: see Kellogg, A Grammar of the Hindi Language, 2nd ed., 1893; and Grierson, Linguistic Survey, vol. vi (1904), pp. 18-23, where the dialects of Eastern Bundelkhand are discussed. Bundeli, the speech of Bundelkhand proper, will be treated as a dialect of Western Hindi in a volume of the Survey not yet published. Sir G. Grierson has favoured me with perusal of the proofs, and has used materials collected by me in the Hamirpur District nearly forty years ago. Bundeli has a considerable literature.

35. The editor was told of a case in which two chiefs suffered for beating their drums in Mahoba.

36. See ante, Chapter 23 note 11, and Chapter 26 note 14, and the authorities there cited. The Chandel history occupies an important place in the mediaeval annals of India. Several important inscriptions of the dynasty have been correctly edited in the Epigraphia Indica. Mahoba is not now a 'ruined city'; it is a moderately prosperous country town, with a tolerable bazaar, and about eleven thousand inhabitants. It is the head-quarters of a 'tahsildar', or sub-collector, and a station on the Midland Railway. The ruined temples and places in and near the town are of much interest. For many miles round the country is full of remarkable remains, some of which are in fairly good preservation. The published descriptions of these works are far from being exhaustive. The author was mistaken in supposing that the power of the Chandels was broken by the Bundelas. The last Chandel king, who ruled over an extensive dominion, was Paramardi Deva, or Parmal. This prince was defeated in a pitched battle, or rather a series of battles, near the Betwa river, by Prithiraj Chauhan, king of Kanauj, in the year 1182. A few years later, the victor was himself vanquished and slain by the advancing Muhammadans. Mahoba and the surrounding territories then passed through many vicissitudes, imperfectly recorded in the pages of history, and were ruled from time to time by Musalmans, Bhars, Khangars, and others. The Bundelas, an offshoot of the Gaharwar clan, did not come into notice before the middle of the fourteenth century, and first became a power in India under the leadership of Champat Rai, the contemporary of Jahangir and Shah Jahan, in the first half of the seventeenth century. The line of Chandel kings was continued in the persons of obscure local chiefs, whose very names are, for the most part, forgotten. The story of Durgavati, briefly told in the text, casts a momentary flash of light on their obscurity. The principal nobleman of the Chandel race now occupying a dignified position is the Raja of Gidhaur in the Mungir (Monghyr) district of Bengal, whose ancestor emigrated from Mahoba.

The war between the Chandels and Chauhans is the subject of a long section or canto of the Hindi epic, the Chand-Raisa, written by Chand Bardai, the court poet of Prithiraj, of which the original MS. in 5,000 verses still exists. It was subsequently expanded to 125,000 verses (E.H.I., 3rd ed., 1914, p. 387 note). The war is also the theme of the songs of many popular rhapsodists. The story is, of course, encrusted with a thick deposit of miraculous legend, and none of the details can be relied on. But the fact and the date of the war are fully proved by incontestable evidence.

37. The marriage of Durgavati is no proof that her father, the Chandel Raja, was powerful in Mahoba in the time of Akbar. It is rather an indication that he was poor and weak. If he had been rich and strong, he would probably have refused his daughter to a Gond, even though complaisant bards might invent a Rajput genealogy for the bridegroom. The story about the army of fifty thousand men cannot be readily accepted as sober fact. It looks like a courtly invention to explain a mesalliance. The inducement really offered to the proud but poor Chandel was, in all likelihood, a large sum of money, according to the usual practice in such cases. Several indications exist of close relations between the Gonds and Chandels in earlier times.

Early in Akbar's reign, in the year 1564, Asaf Khan, the imperial viceroy of Karra Manikpur, obtained permission to invade the Gond territory. The young Raja of Garha Mandla, Bir Narayan, was then a minor, and the defence of the kingdom devolved on Durgavati, the dowager queen. She first took up her position at the great fortress of Singaurgarh, north-west of Jabalpur, and, being there defeated, retired through Garha, to the south-east, towards Mandla. After an obstinately contested fight the invaders were again successful, and broke the queen's stout resistance. 'Mounted on an elephant, she refused to retire, though she was severely wounded, until her troops had time to recover the shock of the first discharge of artillery, and, notwithstanding that she had received an arrow-wound in her eye, bravely defended the pass in person. But, by an extraordinary coincidence, the river in the rear of her position, which had been nearly dry a few hours before the action commenced, began suddenly to rise, and soon became unfordable. Finding her plan of retreat thus frustrated, and seeing her troops give way, she snatched a dagger from her elephant-driver, and plunged it into her bosom. . . . Of all the sovereigns of this dynasty she lives most in the recollection of the people; she carried out many highly useful works in different parts of her kingdom, and one of the large reservoirs near Jabalpur is still called the Rani Talao in memory of her. During the fifteen years of her regency she did much for the country, and won the hearts of the people, while her end was as noble and devoted as her life had been useful' (C.P. Gazetteer (1870), p. 283; with references to Sleeman's article on the Rajas of Garha Mandla, and 'Briggs' Farishta', ed. 1829, vol. ii, pp. 217, 218). A memoir of Asaf Khan Abdul Majid, the general who overcame Durgavati, will be found in Blochmann's translation of the Ain-i-Akbari, vol. i, p. 366.

38. Samthar is a small state, lying between the Betwa and Pahuj rivers, to the south-west of the Jalaun district. It was separated from the Datiya State only one generation previous to the British occupation of Bundelkhand. A treaty was concluded with the Raja in 1812 (N.W.P. Gazetteer (1st ed.), vol. i, p. 578).

39. Gujars occupy more than a hundred villages in the Jalaun district, chiefly among the ravines of the Pahuj river. The Gujar caste is most numerous in the Panjab and the upper districts of the United Provinces. It is not very highly esteemed, being of about equal rank with the Ahir caste and rather below the Jat. Gujar colonies are settled in the Hoshangabad and Nimar districts of the Central Provinces. The Gujars are inveterate cattle-lifters, and always ready to take advantage of any relaxation of the bonds of order to prey upon their neighbours. Many sections of the caste have adopted the Muhammadan faith.

40. The small state of Chhatarpur lies to the south of the Hamirpur district, between the Dasan and Ken rivers. The town of Chhatarpur, on the military road from Banda to Sagar, is remarkable for the mausoleum and ruined palace of Raja Chhatarsal, after whom the town is named. Khajuraho, the ancient religious capital of the Chandel monarchy, with its magnificent group of mediaeval Hindoo and Jain temples, is within the limits of the state, about eighteen miles south-east of Chhatarpur, and thirty-four miles south of Mahoba. The Pawar adventurer, who succeeded in separating Chhatarpur from the Panna state, was originally a common soldier.

41. Concerning Chhatarsal (A.D. 1671 to 1731), see notes ante, Chapter 14 note 9, and chapter 23 note 11. He was one of the sons of Champat Rai. The correct date of the death of Chhatarsal is Pus Badi 3, Sanwat, 1788 = A.D. 1731. Hardi (Hirdai) Sa succeeded to the Raj, or kingdom, of Panna, and Jagatraj to that of Jaitpur. These kingdoms quickly broke up, and the fragments are now in part native states and in part British territory. The Orchha State was formed about the beginning of the sixteenth century, and the Chanderi and Datiya States are offshoots from it, which separated during the seventeenth century.

42. As already observed (ante, Chapter 26, note 29), the Jalaun State became British territory in 1840, four years after the tour described in the text, and four years before the, publication of the book. The Jhansi State similarly lapsed on the death of Raja Gangadhar Rao in November, 1853. The Rani Lachhmi Bai joined the mutineers, and was killed in battle in June, 1858.



CHAPTER 27

Blights.

I had a visit from my little friend the Sarimant, and the conversation turned upon the causes and effects of the dreadful blight to which the wheat crops in the Nerbudda districts had of late years been subject. He said that 'the people at first attributed this great calamity to an increase in the crime of adultery which had followed the introduction of our rule, and which', he said, 'was understood to follow it everywhere; that afterwards it was by most people attributed to our frequent measurement of the land, and inspection of fields, with a view to estimate their capabilities to pay; which the people considered a kind of incest, and which he himself, the Deity, can never tolerate. The land is', said he, 'considered as the mother of the prince or chief who holds it—the great parent from whom he derives all that maintains him—his family and his establishments. If well treated, she yields this in abundance to her son; but, if he presumes to look upon her with the eye of desire, she ceases to be fruitful; or the Deity sends down hail or blight to destroy all that she yields. The measuring the surface of the fields, and the frequent inspecting the crops by the chief himself, or by his immediate agents were considered by the people in this light; and, in consequence, he never ventured upon these things. They were', he thought, 'fully satisfied that we did it more with a view to distribute the burthen of taxation equally upon the people than to increase it collectively; still', he thought that, 'either we should not do it at all, or delegate the duty to inferior agents, whose close inspection of the great parent could not be so displeasing to the Deity.'[1]

Ram Chand Pundit said that 'there was no doubt much truth in what Sarimant Sahib had stated; that the crops of late had unquestionably suffered from the constant measuring going on upon the lands; but that the people (as he knew) had now become unanimous in attributing the calamities of season, under which these districts had been suffering so much, to the eating of beef-this was', he thought, 'the great source of all their sufferings.'

Sarimant declared that he thought 'his Pundit was right, and that it would, no doubt, be of great advantage to them and to their rulers if Government could be prevailed upon to prohibit the eating of beef; that so great and general were the sufferings of the people from these calamities of seasons, and so firm, and now so general, the opinion that they arose chiefly from the practice of killing and eating cows that, in spite of all the other superior blessings of our rule, the people were almost beginning to wish their old Maratha rulers in power again.'

I reminded him of the still greater calamities the people of Bundelkhand had been suffering under.

'True,' said he, 'but among them there are crimes enough of everyday occurrence to account for these things; but, under your rule, the Deity has only one or other of these three things to be offended with; and, of these three, it must be admitted that the eating of beef so near the sacred stream of the Nerbudda is the worst.'

The blight of which we were speaking had, for several seasons from the year 1829, destroyed the greater part of the wheat crops over extensive districts along the line of the Nerbudda, and through Malwa generally; and old people stated that they recollected two returns of this calamity at intervals from twenty to twenty-four years. The pores, with which the stalks are abundantly supplied to admit of their readily taking up the aqueous particles that float in the air, seem to be more open in an easterly wind than in any other; and, when this wind prevails at the same time that the air is filled with the farina of the small parasitic fungus, whose depredations on the corn constitute what they call the rust, mildew, or blight, the particles penetrate into these pores, speedily sprout and spread their small roots into the cellular texture, where they intercept, and feed on, the sap in its ascent; and the grain in the ear, deprived of its nourishment, becomes shrivelled, and the whole crop is often not worth the reaping.[2] It is at first of a light, beautiful orange- colour, and found chiefly upon the 'alsi' (linseed)[3] which it does not seem much to injure; but, about the end of February, the fungi ripen, and shed their seeds rapidly, and they are taken up by the wind, and carried over the corn-fields. I have sometimes seen the air tinted of an orange colour for many days by the quantity of these seeds which it has contained; and that without the wheat crops suffering at all, when any but an easterly wind has prevailed; but, when the air is so charged with this farina, let but an easterly wind blow for twenty-four hours, and all the wheat crops under its influence are destroyed—nothing can save them. The stalks and leaves become first of an orange colour from the light colour of the farina which adheres to them, but this changes to deep brown. All that part of the stalk that is exposed seems as if it had been pricked with needles, and had exuded blood from every puncture; and the grain in the ear withers in proportion to the number of fungi that intercept and feed upon its sap; but the parts of the stalks that are covered by the leaves remain entirely uninjured; and, when the leaves are drawn off from them, they form a beautiful contrast to the others, which have been exposed to the depredations of these parasitic plants.