I made some inquiries about Hardaul Lala, the son of Birsingh Deo, who built the fort of Dhamoni, one of the ancestors of the Datiya Raja, and found that he was as much worshipped here at his birthplace as upon the banks of the Nerbudda as the supposed great originator of the cholera morbus. There is at Datiya a temple dedicated to him and much frequented; and one of the priests brought me a flower in his name, and chanted something indicating that Hardaul Lala was now worshipped even so far as the British capital of Calcutta, I asked the old prince what he thought of the origin of the worship of this his ancestor; and he told me that when the cholera broke out first in the camp of Lord Hastings, then pitched about three stages from his capital, on the bank of the Sindh at Chandpur Sunari, several people recovered from the disease immediately after making votive offerings in his name; and that he really thought the spirit of his great- grandfather had worked some wonderful cures upon people afflicted with this dreadful malady.[9]

The town of Datiya contains a population of between forty and fifty thousand souls. The streets are narrow, for, in buildings, as in dress, the Raja allows every man to consult his own inclinations. There are, however, a great many excellent houses in Datiya, and the appearance of the place is altogether very good. Many of his feudatory chiefs reside occasionally in the city, and have all their establishments with them, a practice which does not, I believe, prevail anywhere else among these Bundelkhand chiefs, and this makes the capital much larger, handsomer, and more populous than that of Tehri. This indicates more of mutual confidence between the chief and his vassals, and accords well with the character they bear in the surrounding countries. Some of the houses occupied by these barons are very pretty. They spend the revenue of their distant estates in adorning them, and embellishing the capital, which they certainly could not have ventured to do under the late Rajas of Tehri, and may not possibly be able to do under the future Rajas of Datiya. The present minister of Datiya, Ganesh, is a very great knave, and encourages the residence upon his master's estate of all kinds of thieves and robbers, who bring back from distant districts every season vast quantities of booty, which they share with him. The chief himself is a mild old gentleman, who would not suffer violence to be offered to any of his nobles, though he would not, perhaps, quarrel with his minister for getting him a little addition to his revenue from without, by affording a sanctuary to such kind of people. As in Tehri, so here, the pickpockets constitute the entire population of several villages, and carry their depredations northward to the banks of the Indus, and southward to Bombay and Madras.[10] But colonies of thieves and robbers like these abound no less in our own territories than in those of native states. There are more than a thousand families of them in the districts of Muzaffarnagar, Saharanpur, and Meerut in the Upper Doab,[11] all well enough known to the local authorities, who can do nothing with them.

They extend their depredations into remote districts, and the booty they bring home with them they share liberally with the native police and landholders under whose protection they live. Many landholders and police officers make large fortunes from the share they get of this booty. Magistrates do not molest them, because they would despair of ever finding the proprietors of the property that might be found upon them; and, if they could trace them, they would never be able to persuade them to come and 'enter upon a worse sea of troubles' in prosecuting them. These thieves and robbers of the professional classes, who have the sagacity to avoid plundering near home, are always just as secure in our best regulated districts as they are in the worst native states, from the only three things which such depredators care about—the penal laws, the odium of the society in which they move, and the vengeance of the god they worship; and they are always well received in the society around them, as long as they can avoid having their neighbours annoyed by summons to give evidence for or against them in our courts. They feel quite sure of the goodwill of the god they worship, provided they give a fair share of their booty to his priests; and no less secure of immunity from penal laws, except on very rare occasions when they happen to be taken in the tact, in a country where such laws happen to be in force.[12]



Notes:

1. December, 1835.

2. Raja Parichhit died in 1839.

3. The word gram (Cicer arietinum) is misprinted 'grain' in the author's text, in this place and in many others.

4. Bundelkhand exports to the Ganges a great quantity of cotton, which enables it to pay for the wheat, gram, and other land produce which it draws from distant districts, [W. H. S.] Other considerable exports from Bundelkhand used to be the root of the Morinda citrifolia, yielding a dark red dye, and the coarse kharwa cloth, a kind of canvas, dyed with this dye, which is known by the name of ' al'. But modern chemistry has nearly killed the trade in vegetable dyes. The construction of railways and roads has revolutionized the System of trade, and equalized prices.

5. Governor-General from October 4, 1813, till January 1, 1823. He was Earl of Moira when he assumed office.

6. Sir John Malcolm was Agent to the Governor-General in Central India from 1817 to 1822, and was appointed Governor of Bombay in 1827.

7. The construction of railways and the development of trade with Europe have completely altered the conditions. The Nerbudda valley can now yield a considerable revenue.

8. The iron ore no doubt is good, but the difficulties in the way of working it profitably are so great that the author's sanguine expectations seem unlikely to be fully realized. V. Ball, in his day the best authority on the subject, observes, 'As will be abundantly shown in the course of the following pages, the manufacture of iron has, in many parts of India, been wholly crushed out of existence by competition with English iron, while in others it is steadily decreasing, and it seems destined to become extinct' (Economic Geology (1881), being part of the Manual of the Geology of India, p. 338). Ball thought that, if improved methods of reduction should be employed, the Chanda ore might be worked profitably. As regards the rest of India, with the doubtful exception of Upper Assam, he had little hope of success. Full details of the working of the mines in the Jabalpur, Narsinghpur, and Chanda districts of the Central Provinces are given in pp. 384 to 392 of the same work. See also I. G. (1908), vol. x, p. 51; and The Oxford Survey of the British Empire (Oxford, 1914), vol. ii, Asia, pp. 143, 160. A powerful company formed at Bombay in 1907, operating at a spot on the borders of the Central Provinces and Orissa, hopes to turn out 7,000 tons of 'steel shapes' per month.

Coal is not found below the very ancient sandstone rocks, classed by geologists under the name of the Vindhyan Series. The principal beds of coal are found in the great series of rocks, known collectively as the Gondwana System, which is supposed to range in age from the Permian to the Upper Jurassic periods of European geologists (Manual, vol. i, p. 102). This Gondwana System includes sandstones. A coalfield at Mohpani, ninety-five miles west-south-west from Jabalpur by rail, was worked from 1862 to 1904 by the Nerbudda Coal and Iron Company; and is now worked by the G. I. P. Railway Company. The principal coal-field of the Central Provinces for some years was that near Warora in the Chanda district, but the amount which can be extracted profitably is approaching exhaustion; in fact the colliery was closed in 1906. Thick seams are known to exist to the south of Chanda near the Wardha river. See I. G., 1907, vol. iii, chap. iii, p. 135; vol. x. p. 51.

9. See note to Chapter 25, ante, note 7.

10. 'Pickpockets' is not a suitable term.

11. The Persian word 'doab' means the tract of land between two rivers, which ultimately meet. The upper doab referred to in the text lies between the Ganges and the Jumna.

12. These 'colonies of thieves and robbers' are still the despair of the Indian administrator. They are known to Anglo-Indian law as 'criminal tribes', and a special Act has been passed for their regulation. The principle of that Act is police supervision, exercised by means of visits of inspection, and the issue of passports. The Act has been applied from time to time to various tribes, but has in every case failed. In 1891, Sir Auckland Colvin, then Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces, adopted the strong measure of suddenly capturing many hundreds of Sansias, a troublesome criminal tribe, in the Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, and Aligarh Districts. Some of the prisoners were sent to a special jail, or reformatory, called a 'settlement', at Sultanpur in Oudh, and the others were drafted off to various landlords' estates. These latter were supposed to devote themselves to agriculture. The editor, as Magistrate of Muzaffarnagar, effected the capture of more than seven hundred Sansias in that district, and dispatched them in accordance with orders. As most people expected, the agricultural pupils promptly absconded. Multitudes of Sansias in the Panjab and elsewhere remained unaffected by the raid, which could not have any permanent effect. The milder expedient of settling and nursing a large colony, organized in villages, of another criminal tribe, the Bawarias (Boureahs), was also tried many years ago in the same district of Muzaffarnagar. The people settled readily enough, and reclaimed a considerable area of waste land, but were not in the least degree reformed. At the beginning of the cold season, in October or November, most of the able-bodied men annually leave the villages, and remain absent on distant forays till March or April, when they return with their booty, enjoying almost complete immunity, for the reasons stated in the text. On one occasion some of these Bawarias of Muzaffarnagar stole a lakh and a half of rupees (about L12,000 at that time), in currency notes at Tuticorin, in the south of the peninsula, 1,400 miles distant from their home. The number of such criminal tribes, or castes, is very great, and the larger of these communities, such as the Sansias, each comprise many thousands of members, diffused over an enormous area in several provinces. It is, therefore, impossible to put them down, except by the use of drastic measures such as no civilized European Government could propose or sanction. The criminal tribes, or castes, are, to a large extent, races; but, in many of these castes, fresh blood is constantly introduced by the admission of outsiders, who are willing to eat with the members of the tribe, and so become for ever incorporated in the brotherhood. The gipsies of Europe are closely related to certain of these Indian tribes. The official literature on the subject is of considerable bulk. Mr. W. Crooke's small book, An Ethnographic Glossary, published in 1891 (Government Press, Allahabad), is a convenient summary of most of the facts on record concerning the criminal and other castes of Northern India, and gives abundant references to other publications. See also his larger work, Castes and Tribes of the N. W. P. and Oudh, 4 vols. Calcutta, 1906. The author's folio book, Report on the Budhuk alias Bagree Decoits and other Gang Robbers by Hereditary Profession, and on the Measures adopted by the Government of India for their Suppression (Calcutta, 1849), ante, Bibliography No. 12, probably is the most valuable of the original authorities on the subject, but it is rare and seldom consulted.



CHAPTER 32

Sporting at Datiya—Fidelity of Followers to their Chiefs in India— Law of Primogeniture wanting among Muhammadans.

The morning after we reached Datiya, I went out with Lieutenant Thomas to shoot and hunt in the Raja's large preserve, and with the humane and determined resolution of killing no more game than our camp would be likely to eat; for we were told that the deer and wild hogs were so very numerous that we might shoot just as many as we pleased.[l] We were posted upon two terraces, one near the gateway, and the other in the centre of the preserve; and, after waiting here an hour, we got each a shot at a hog. Hares we saw, and might have shot, but we had loaded all our barrels with ball for other game. We left the 'ramna', which is a quadrangle of about one hundred acres of thick grass, shrubs, and brushwood, enclosed by a high stone wall. There is one gate on the west side, and this is kept open during the night, to let the game out and in. It is shut and guarded during the day, when the animals are left to repose in the shade, except on such occasions as the present, when the Raja wants to give his guests a morning's sport. On the plains and woods outside we saw a good many large deer, but could not manage to get near them in our own way, and had not patience to try that of the natives, so that we came back without killing anything, or having had any occasion to exercise our forbearance. The Raja's people, as soon as we left them, went about their sport after their own fashion, and brought us a fine buck antelope after breakfast. They have a bullock trained to go about the fields with them, led at a quick pace by a halter, with which the sportsman guides him, as he walks along with him by the side opposite to that facing the deer he is in pursuit of. He goes round the deer as he grazes in the field, shortening the distance at every circle till he comes within shot. At the signal given the bullock stands still, and the sportsman rests his gun upon his back and fires. They seldom miss. Others go with a fine buck and doe antelope, tame, and trained to browse upon the fresh bushes, which are woven for the occasion into a kind of hand-hurdle, behind which a man creeps along over the fields towards the herd of wild ones, or sits still with his matchlock ready, and pointed out through the leaves. The herd seeing the male and female strangers so very busily and agreeably employed upon their apparently inviting repast, advance to accost them, and are shot when they get within a secure distance.[2] The hurdle was filled with branches from the 'dhau' (Lythrum fructuosum) tree, of which the jungle is for the most part composed, plucked as we went along; and the tame antelopes, having been kept long fasting for the purpose, fed eagerly upon them. We had also two pairs of falcons; but a knowledge of the brutal manner in which these birds are fed and taught is enough to prevent any but a brute from taking much delight in the sport they afford.[3]

The officer who conducted us was evidently much disappointed, for he was really very anxious, as he knew his master the Raja was, that we should have a good day's sport. On our way back I made him ride by my side, and talk to me about Datiya, since he had been unable to show me any sport. I got his thoughts into a train that I knew would animate him, if he had any soul at all for poetry or poetical recollections, as I thought he had. 'The noble works in palaces and temples,' said he, 'which you see around you, Sir, mouldering in ruins, were built by princes who had beaten emperors in battle, and whose spirits still hover over and protect the place. Several times, under the late disorders which preceded your paramount rule in Hindustan, when hostile forces assembled around us, and threatened our capital with destruction, lights and elephants innumerable were seen from the tops of those battlements, passing and repassing under the walls, ready to defend them had the enemy attempted an assault. Whenever our soldiers endeavoured to approach near them, they disappeared; and everybody knew that they were spirits of men like Birsingh Deo and Hardaul Lala that had come to our aid, and we never lost confidence.' It is easy to understand the devotion of men to their chiefs when they believe their progenitors to have been demigods, and to have been faithfully served by their ancestors for several generations. We neither have, nor ever can have, servants so personally devoted to us as these men are to their chiefs, though we have soldiers who will fight under our banners with as much courage and fidelity. They know that their grandfathers served the grandfathers of these chiefs, and they hope their grandchildren will serve their grandsons. The one feels as much pride and pleasure in so serving, as the other in being so served; and both hope that the link which binds them may never be severed. Our servants, on the contrary, private and public, are always in dread that some accident, some trivial fault, or some slight offence, not to be avoided, will sever for ever the link that binds them to their master.

The fidelity of the military classes of the people of India to their immediate chief, or leader, whose salt they eat, has been always very remarkable, and commonly bears little relation to his moral virtues, or conduct to his superiors. They feel that it is their duty to serve him who feeds and protects them and their families in all situations, and under all circumstances; and the chief feels that, while he has a right to their services, it is his imperative duty so to feed and protect them and their families. He may change sides as often as he pleases, but the relations between him and his followers remain unchanged. About the side he chooses to take in a contest for dominion, they ask no questions, and feel no responsibility. God has placed their destinies in dependence upon his; and to him they cling to the last. In Malwa, Bhopal, and other parts of Central India, the Muhammadan rule could be established over that of the Rajput chief only by the annihilation of the entire race of their followers.[4] In no part of the world has the devotion of soldiers to their immediate chief been more remarkable than in India among the Rajputs; and in no part of the world bas the fidelity of these chiefs to the paramount power been more unsteady, or their devotion less to be relied upon. The laws of Muhammad, which prescribe that the property in land be divided equally among the sons,[5] leaves no rule for succession to territorial or political dominion. It has been justly observed by Hume: 'The right of primogeniture was introduced with the feudal law; an institution which is hurtful by producing and maintaining an unequal division of property; but it is advantageous in another respect by accustoming the people to a preference for the eldest son, and thereby preventing a partition or disputed succession in the monarchy.'

Among the Muhammadan princes there was no law that bound the whole members of a family to obey the eldest son of a deceased prince. Every son of the Emperor of Hindustan considered that he had a right to set up his claim to the throne, vacated by the death of his father; and, in anticipation of that death, to strengthen his claim by negotiations and intrigues with all the territorial chiefs and influential nobles of the empire. However prejudicial to the interests of his elder brother such measures might be, they were never considered to be an invasion of his rights, because such rights had never been established by the laws of their prophet. As all the sons considered that they had an equal right to solicit the support of the chiefs and nobles, so all the chiefs and nobles considered that they could adopt the cause of whichever son they chose, without incurring the reproach of either treason or dishonour. The one who succeeded thought himself justified by the law of self-preservation to put, not only his brothers, but all their sons, to death; so that there was, after every new succession, an entire clearance of all the male members of the imperial family. Aurangzeb said to his pedantic tutor, who wished to be raised to high station on his accession to the imperial throne, 'Should not you, instead of your flattery, have taught me something of that point so important to a king, which is, what are the reciprocal duties of a sovereign to his subjects, and those of the subjects to their sovereign? And ought not you to have considered that one day I should be obliged, with the sword, to dispute my life and the crown with my brothers? Is not that the destiny, almost of all the sons of Hindustan?'[6] Now that they have become pensioners of the British Government, the members increase like white ants; and, as Malthus has it, 'press so hard against their means of subsistence' that a great many of them are absolutely starving, in spite of the enormous pension the head of the family receives for their maintenance.[7]

The city of Datiya is surrounded by a stone wall about thirty feet high, with its foundation on a solid rock; but it has no ditch or glacis, and is capable of little or no defence against cannon. In the afternoon I went, accompanied by Lieutenant Thomas, and followed by the best cortege we could muster, to return the Raja's visit. He resides within the walls of the city in a large square garden, enclosed with a high wall, and filled with fine orange-trees, at this time bending under the weight of the most delicious fruit. The old chief received us at the bottom of a fine flight of steps leading up to a handsome pavilion, built upon the wall of one of the faces of this garden. It was enclosed at the back, and in front looked into the garden through open arcades. The floors were spread with handsome carpets of the Jhansi manufacture. In front of the pavilion was a wide terrace of polished stone, extending to the top of the flight of the steps; and, in the centre of this terrace, and directly opposite to us as we looked into the garden, was a fine jet d'eau in a large basin of water in full play, and, with its shower of diamonds, showing off the rich green and red of the orange-trees to the best advantage.

The large quadrangle thus occupied is called the 'kila', or fort, and the wall that surrounds it is thirty feet high, with a round embattled tower at each corner. On the east face is a fine large gateway for the entrance, with a curtain as high as the wall itself. Inside the gate is a piece of ordnance painted red, with the largest calibre I ever saw.[8] This is fired once a year, at the festival of the Dasahra.[9]

Our arrival at the wall was announced by a salute from some fine brass guns upon the bastions near the gateway. As we advanced from the gateway up through the garden to the pavilion, we were again serenaded by our friends with their guitars and excellent voices. They were now on foot, and arranged along both sides of the walk that we had to pass through. The open garden space within the walls appeared to me to be about ten acres. It is crossed and recrossed at right angles by numerous walks, having rows of plantain and other fruit trees on each side; and orange, pomegranate, and other small fruit trees to fill the space between; and anything more rich and luxuriant one can hardly conceive. In the centre of the north and west sides are pavilions with apartments for the family above, behind, and on each side of the great reception room, exactly similar to that in which we were received on the south face. The whole formed, I think, the most delightful residence that I have seen for a hot climate. There is, however, no doubt that the most healthy stations in this, and every other hot climate, are those situated upon dry, open, sandy plains, with neither shrubberies nor basins.[10]

We were introduced to the young Raja, the old man's adopted son, a lad of about ten years of age, who is to be married in February next. He is plain in person, but has a pleasing expression of countenance; and, if he be moulded after the old man, and not after his minister, the country may perhaps have in him the 'lucky accident' of a good governor.[11] I have rarely seen a finer or more prepossessing man than the Raja, and all his subjects speak well of him. We had an elephant, a horse, abundance of shawls, and other fine clothes placed before us as presents; but I prayed the old gentleman to keep them all for me till I returned, as I was a mere voyageur without the means of carrying such valuable things in safety; but he would not be satisfied till I had taken two plain hilts of swords and spears, the manufacture of Datiya, and of little value, which Lieutenant Thomas and I promised to keep for his sake. The rest of the presents were all taken back to their places. After an hour's talk with the old man and his ministers, attar of roses and pan were distributed, and we took our leave to go and visit the old palace, which as yet we had seen only from a distance. There were only two men besides the Raja, his son, and ourselves, seated upon chairs. All the other principal persons of the court sat around cross-legged on the carpet; but they joined freely in the conversation, I was told by these courtiers how often the young chief had, during the day, asked when he could have the happiness of seeing me; and the old chief was told, in my hearing, how many good things I had said since I came into his territories, all tending to his honour and my credit. This is a species of barefaced flattery to which we are all doomed to submit in our intercourse with these native chiefs; but still, to a man of sense, it never ceases to be distressing and offensive; for he can hardly ever help feeling that they must think him a mere child before they could venture to treat him with it. This is, however, to put too harsh a construction upon what in reality, the people mean only as civility; and they, who can so easily consider the grandfathers of their chiefs as gods, and worship them as such, may be suffered to treat us as heroes and sayers of good things without offence.[12]

We ascended to the summit of the old palace, and were well repaid for the trouble by the view of an extremely rich sheet of wheat, gram, and other spring crops, extending to the north and east, as far as the eye could reach, from the dark belt of forest, three miles deep, with which the Raja has surrounded his capital on every side as hunting grounds. The lands comprised in this forest are, for the most part, exceedingly poor, and water for irrigation is unattainable within them, so that little is lost by this taste of the chief for the sports of the field, in which, however, he cannot himself now indulge.

On the 19th[13] we left Datiya, and, after emerging from the surrounding forest, came over a fine plain covered with rich spring crops for ten miles, till we entered among the ravines of the river Sindh, whose banks are, like those of all rivers in this part of India, bordered to a great distance by these deep and ugly inequalities. Here they are almost without grass or shrubs to clothe their hideous nakedness, and have been formed by the torrents, which, in the season of the rains, rush from the extensive plain, as from a wide ocean, down to the deep channel of the river in narrow streams. These streams cut their way easily through the soft alluvial soil, which must once have formed the bed of a vast lake.[14] On coming through the forest, before sunrise we discovered our error of the day before, for we found excellent deer-shooting in the long grass and brushwood, which grow luxuriantly at some distance from the city. Had we come out a couple of miles the day before, we might have had noble sport, and really required the forbearance and humanity to which we had so magnanimously resolved to sacrifice our 'pride of art' as sportsmen; for we saw many herds of the nilgai, antelope, and spotted deer,[15] browsing within a few paces of us, within the long grass and brushwood on both sides of the road. We could not stay, however, to indulge in much sport, having a long march before us.

Notes:

1. Some readers may be shocked at the notion of the author shooting pig, but, in Bundelkhand, where pig-sticking, or hog-hunting, as the older writers call it, is not practised, hog-shooting is quite legitimate.

2. The common antelope, or black buck (Antilope bezoartica, or cervicapra) feed in herds, sometimes numbering many hundreds, in the open plains, especially those of black soil. Men armed with matchlocks can scarcely get a shot except by adopting artifices similar to those described in the text.

3. Sixteen species of hawks, belonging to several genera, are trained in India. They are often fed by being allowed to suck the blood from the breasts of live pigeons, and their eyes are darkened by means of a silken thread passed through holes in the eyelids. 'Hawking is a very dull and very cruel sport. A person must become insensible to the sufferings of the most beautiful and most inoffensive of the brute creation before he can feel any enjoyment in it. The cruelty lies chiefly in the mode of feeding the hawks' (Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, vol. i, p, 109). Asoka forbade the practice by the words: 'The living must not be fed with the living' (Pillar Edict V, c. 243 B.C., in V. A. Smith, Asoka, 2nd ed. (1909), p. 188).

4. The wording of this sentence is unfortunate, and it is not easy to understand why the author mentioned Bhopal. The principality of Bhopal was formed by Dost Mohammed Khan, an Afghan officer of Aurangzeb, who became independent a few years after that sovereign's death in 1707. Since that time the dynasty has always continued to be Muhammadan. The services of Sikandar Begam in the Mutiny are well known. Malwa is the country lying between Bundelkhand, on the east, and Rajputana, on the west, and includes Bhopal. Most of the states in this region are now ruled by Hindoos, but the local dynasty which ruled the kingdom of Malwa and Mandu from A.D. 1401 to 1531 was Musalman. (See Thomas, Chronicles of the Pathan Kings of Dehli, pp. 346-53.)

5. All near relatives succeed to a Muhammadan's estate, which is divided, under complicated rules, into the necessary number of shares. A son's share is double that of a daughter. As between themselves all sons share equally.

6. Bernier's Revolutions of the Mogul Empire. [W. H. S.] The author seems to have used either the London edition of 1671, entitled The History of the Late Revolution of the Empire of the Great Mogul, or one of the reprints of that edition. The anecdote referred to is called by Bernier 'an uncommonly good story'. Aurangzeb made a long speech, ending by dismissing the unlucky pedagogue with the words: 'Go! withdraw to thy native village. Henceforth let no man know either who thou art, or what is become of thee.' (Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, pp. 154-161, ed. Constable and V. A, Smith, 1914.) Manucci repeats the story with slight variations (Storie da Mogor, vol. ii, pp. 29-33).

7. Compare the forcible description of the state of the Delhi royal family in Chapter 76, post. The old emperor's pension was one hundred thousand rupees a month. The events of the Mutiny effected a considerable clearance, though the number of persons claiming relationship with the royal house is still large. A few of these have taken service under the British Government, but have not distinguished themselves.

8. The author, unfortunately, does not give the dimensions of this piece. Rumi Khan's gun at Bijapur, which was cast in the sixteenth century at Ahmadnagar, is generally considered the largest ancient cannon in India. It is fifteen feet long, and weighs about forty-one tons, the calibre being two feet four inches. Like the gun at Datiya, it is painted with red lead, and is worshipped by Hindoos, who are always ready to worship every manifestation of power. Another big gun at Bijapur is thirty feet in length, built up of bars bound together. Other very large pieces exist at Gawilgarh in Berar, and Bidar in the Nizam's dominions. (Balfour, Cyclopaedia, 3rd ed., s.v. Gun, Bijapur, Gawilgarh Hill Range, and Beder.)

9. The Dasahra festival, celebrated at the beginning of October, marks the close of the rains and the commencement of the cold season. It is observed by all classes of Hindus, but especially by Rajas and the military classes, for whom this festival has peculiar importance. In the old days no prince or commander, whether his command consisted of soldiers or robbers, ever undertook regular operations until the Dasahra had been duly observed. All Rajas still receive valuable offerings on this occasion, which form an important element in their revenue. In some places buffaloes are sacrificed by the Raja in person. The soldiers worship the weapons which they hope to use during the coming season. Among the Marathas the ordnance received especial attention and worship. The ceremony of worshipping certain leguminous trees at this festival has been noticed ante, Chapter 26 note 8.

10. Few Europeans nowadays could join in the author's enthusiastic admiration of the Datiya garden. The arrangements seem to have been those usual in large formal native gardens in Northern India.

11. This lad has since succeeded his adoptive father as the chief of the Datiya principality. The old chief found him one day lying in the grass, as he was shooting through one of his preserves. His elephant was very near treading upon the infant before he saw it. He brought home the boy, adopted him as his son, and declared him his successor, from having no son of his own. The British Government, finding that the people generally seemed to acquiesce in the old man's wishes, sanctioned the measure, as the paramount power. [W. H. S.] The old Raja died in 1839, and the succession of the boy, Bijai Bahadur, thus strangely favoured by fortune, was unsuccessfully opposed by one of the nobles of the state. Bijai Bahadur governed the state with sufficient success until his death in 1857. The succession was then again disputed, and disturbances took place which were suppressed by an armed British force. The state is still governed by its hereditary ruler, who has been granted the privilege of adoption (N.W.P. Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. i, p. 410, s.v. Datiya).

12. The fact is that all Oriental rulers thoroughly enjoy the most outrageous flattery, and would feel defrauded if they did not get it in abundance. Even Akbar, the greatest of them, could enjoy it, and allow the courtly poet to say 'See Akbar, and you see God'. Indians find it difficult to believe that European officials really dislike attentions which are exacted by rulers of their own races.

13. December, 1835.

14. This theory is probably incorrect. See ante, Chapter 14, note 7, on formation of black soil.

15. Nilgai, or 'blue-bull', a huge, heavy antelope of bovine form, common in India, scientifically named Portax pictus. By 'antelope' the author means the common antelope, or black buck, the Antilope bezoartica, or cervicapra of naturalists. The spotted deer, or 'chital', a very handsome creature, is the Axis maculata of Gray, the Cervus axis of other zoologists.



CHAPTER 33

'Bhumiawat.'

Though no doubt very familiar to our ancestors during the Middle Ages, this is a thing happily but little understood in Europe at the present day. 'Bhumiawat', in Bundelkhand, signifies a war or fight for landed inheritance, from 'bhum', the land, earth, &c.; 'bhumia', a landed proprietor.

When a member of the landed aristocracy, no matter how small, has a dispute with his ruler, he collects his followers, and levies indiscriminate war upon his territories, plundering and burning his towns and villages, and murdering their inhabitants till he is invited back upon his own terms. During this war it is a point of honour not to allow a single acre of land to be tilled upon the estate which he has deserted, or from which he has been driven; and he will murder any man who attempts to drive a plough in it, together with all his family, if he can. The smallest member of this landed aristocracy of the Hindoo military class will often cause a terrible devastation during the interval that he is engaged in his bhumiawat; for there are always vast numbers of loose characters floating upon the surface of Indian society, ready to 'gird up their loins' and use their sharp swords in the service of marauders of this kind, when they cannot get employment in that of the constituted authorities of government.

Such a marauder has generally the sympathy of nearly all the members of his own class and clan, who are apt to think that his case may one day be their own. He is thus looked upon as contending for the interests of all; and, if his chief happens to be on bad terms with other chiefs in the neighbourhood, the latter will clandestinely support the outlaw and his cause, by giving him and his followers shelter in the hills and jungles, and concealing their families and stolen property in their castles. It is a maxim in India, and, in the less settled parts of it, a very true one, that 'one Pindhara or robber makes a hundred'; that is, where one robber, by a series of atrocious murders and robberies, frightens the people into non- resistance, a hundred loose characters from among the peasantry of the country will take advantage of the occasion, and adopt his name, in order to plunder with the smallest possible degree of personal risk to themselves.

Some magistrates and local rulers, under such circumstances, have very unwisely adopted the measure of prohibiting the people from carrying or having arms in their houses, the very thing which, above all others, such robbers most wish; for they know, though such magistrates and rulers do not, that it is the innocent only, and the friends to order, who will obey the command. The robber will always be able to conceal his arms, or keep with them out of reach of the magistrate; and he is now relieved altogether from the salutary dread of a shot from a door or window. He may rob at his leisure, or sit down like a gentleman and have all that the people of the surrounding towns and villages possess brought to him, for no man can any longer attempt to defend himself or his family.[1] Weak governments are obliged soon to invite back the robber on his own terms, for the people can pay them no revenue, being prevented from cultivating their lands, and obliged to give all they have to the robbers, or submit to be plundered of it. Jhansi and Jalaun are exceedingly weak governments, from having their territories studded with estates held rent-free, or at a quit-rent, by Pawar, Bundela, and Dhandel barons, who have always the sympathy of the numerous chiefs and their barons of the same class around.

In the year 1832, the Pawar barons of the estates of Noner, Jigni, Udgaon, and Bilhari in Jhansi had some cause of dissatisfaction with their chief; and this they presented to Lord William Bentinck as he passed through the province in December. His lordship told them that these were questions of internal administration which they must settle among themselves, as the Supreme Government would not interfere. They had, therefore, only one way of settling such disputes, and that was to raise the standard of bhumiawat, and cry, 'To your tents, O Israel!' This they did; and, though the Jhansi chief had a military force of twelve thousand men, they burnt down every town and village in the territory that did not come into their terms; and the chief had possession of only two, Jhansi, the capital, and the large commercial town of Mau,[2] when the Bundela Rajas of Orchha and Datiya, who had hitherto clandestinely supported the insurgents, consented to become the arbitrators. A suspension of arms followed, the barons got all they demanded, and the bhumiawat ceased. But the Jhansi chief, who had hitherto lent large sums to the other chiefs in the province, was reduced to the necessity of borrowing from them all, and from Gwalior, and mortgaging to them a good portion of his lands.[3]

Gwalior is itself weak in the same way. A great portion of its lands are held by barons of the Hindoo military classes, equally addicted to bhumiawat, and one or more of them is always engaged in this kind of indiscriminate warfare; and it must be confessed that, unless they are always considered to be ready to engage in it, they have very little chance of retaining their possessions on moderate terms, for these weak governments are generally the most rapacious when they have it in their power.

A good deal of the lands of the Muhammadan sovereign of Oudh are, in the same manner, held by barons of the Rajput tribe; and some of them are almost always in the field engaged in the same kind of warfare against their sovereign. The baron who pursues it with vigour is almost sure to be invited back upon his own terms very soon. If his lands are worth a hundred thousand a year, he will get them for ten; and have this remitted for the next five years, until he is ready for another bhumiawat, on the ground of the injuries sustained during the last, from which his estate has to recover. The baron who is peaceable and obedient soon gets rack-rented out of his estate, and reduced to beggary.[4]

In 1818, some companies of my regiment were for several months employed in Oudh, after a young 'bhumiawati' of this kind, Sheo Ratan Singh. He was the nephew and heir of the Raja of Partabgarh,[5] who wished to exclude him from his inheritance by the adoption of a brother of his young bride. Sheo Ratan had a small village for his maintenance, and said nothing to his old uncle till the governor of the province, Ghulam Husani[6], accepted an invitation to be present at the ceremony of adoption. He knew that, if he acquiesced any longer, he would lose his inheritance, and cried, 'To your tents, 0 Israel!' He got a small band of three hundred Rajputs, with nothing but their swords, shields, and spears, to follow him, all of the same clan and true men. They were bivouacked in a jungle not more than seven miles from our cantonments at Partabgarh, when Ghulam Husain marched to attack them with three regiments of infantry, one of cavalry, and two nine-pounders. He thought he should surprise them, and contrived so that he should come upon them about daybreak. Sheo Ratan knew all his plans. He placed one hundred and fifty of his men in ambuscade at the entrance to the jungle, and kept the other hundred and fifty by him in the centre. When they had got well in, the party in ambush rushed upon the rear, while he attacked them in front. After a short resistance, Ghulam Husain's force took to flight, leaving five hundred men dead on the field, and their guns behind them. Ghulam Husain was so ashamed of the drubbing he got that he bribed all the news-writers[7] within twenty miles of the place to say nothing about it in their reports to court, and he never made any report of it himself. A detachment of my regiment passed over the dead bodies in the course of the day, on their return to cantonments from detached command, or we should have known nothing about it. It is true, we heard the firing, but that we heard every day; and I have seen from my bungalow half a dozen villages in flames, at the same time, from this species of contest between the Rajput landholders and the government authorities. Our cantonments were generally full of the women and children who had been burnt out of house and home.

In Oudh such contests generally begin with the harvests. During the season of tillage all is quiet; but, when the crops begin to ripen, the governor begins to rise in his demands for revenue, and the Rajput landholders and cultivators to sharpen their swords and burnish their spears. One hundred of them always consider themselves a match for one thousand of the king's troops in a fair field, because they have all one heart and soul, while the king's troops have many.[8]

While the Pawars were ravaging the Jhansi state with their bhumiawat, a merchant of Sagar had a large convoy of valuable cloths, to the amount, I think, of forty thousand rupees,[9] intercepted by them on its way from Mirzapur[10] to Rajputana. I was then at Sagar, and wrote off to the insurgents to say that they had mistaken one of our subjects for one of the Jhansi chiefs, and must release the convoy. They did so, and not a piece of the cloth was lost. This bhumiawat is supposed to have cost the Jhansi chief above twenty lakhs of rupees,[11] and his subjects double that sum.

Gopal Singh, a Bundela, who had been in the service of the chief of Panna,[12] took to bhumiawat in 1809, and kept a large British force employed in pursuit through Bundelkhand and the Sagar territories for three years, till he was invited back by our Government in the year 1812, by the gift of a fine estate on the banks of the Dasan river, yielding twenty thousand rupees[13] a year, which his son now enjoys, and which is to descend to his posterity, many of whom will, no doubt, animated by their fortunate ancestor's example, take to the same trade. He had been a man of no note till he took to this trade, but by his predatory exploits he soon became celebrated throughout India; and, when I came to the country, no other man's chivalry was so much talked of.

A Bundela, or other landholder of the Hindoo military class, does not think himself, nor is he indeed thought by others, in the slightest degree less respectable for having waged this indiscriminate war upon the innocent and unoffending, provided he has any cause of dissatisfaction with his liege lord; that is, provided he cannot get his land or his appointment in his service upon his own terms, because all others of the same class and clan feel more or less interested in his success.

They feel that their tenure of land, or of office, is improved by the mischief he does; because every peasant he murders, and every field he throws out of tillage, affects their liege lord in his most tender point, his treasury; and indisposes him to interfere with their salaries, their privileges, or their rents. He who wages this war goes on marrying his sisters or his daughters to the other barons or landholders of the same clan, and receiving theirs in marriage during the whole of his bhumiawat,[14] as if nothing at all extraordinary had happened, and thereby strengthening his hand at the game he is playing.

Umrao Singh of Jaklon in Chanderi, a district of Gwalior bordering upon Sagar,[15] has been at this game for more than fifteen years out of twenty, but his alliances among the baronial families around have not been in the slightest degree affected by it. His sons and his grandsons have, perhaps, made better matches than they might, had the old man been at peace with all the world, during the time that he has been desolating one district by his atrocities, and demoralizing all those around it by his example, and by inviting the youth to join him occasionally in his murderous enterprises. Neither age nor sex is respected in their attacks upon towns or villages; and no Muhammadan can take more pride and pleasure in defacing idols—the most monstrous idol—than a 'bhumiawati' takes in maiming an innocent peasant, who presumes to drive his plough in lands that he chooses to put under the ban.

In the kingdom of Oudh, this bhumiawat is a kind of nursery for our native army; for the sons of Rajput yeomen who have been trained in it are all exceedingly anxious to enlist in our native infantry regiments, having no dislike to their drill or their uniform. The same class of men in Bundelkhand and the Gwalior State have a great horror of the drill and uniform of our regular infantry, and nothing can induce them to enlist in our ranks. Both are equally brave, and equally faithful to their salt—that is, to the person who employs them; but the Oudh Rajput is a much more tameable animal than the Bundela. In Oudh this class of people have all inherited from their fathers a respect for our rule and a love for our service. In Bundelkhand they have not yet become reconciled to our service, and they still look upon our rule as interfering a good deal too much with their sporting propensities.[16]



Notes:

1. Since the author's time conditions have much changed. Then, and for long afterwards, up to the Mutiny, every village throughout the country was fall of arms, and almost every man was armed. Consequently, in those tracts where the Mutiny of the native army was accompanied by popular insurrection, the flame of rebellion burned fiercely, and was subdued with difficulty. The painful experience of 1857 and 1858 proved the necessity of general disarmament, and nearly the whole of British India has been disarmed under the provisions of a series of Acts. Licences to have and carry ordinary arms and ammunition are granted by the magistrates of districts. Licences to possess artillery are granted only by the Governor-General in Council. The improved organization of the police and of the executive power generally renders possible the strict enforcement of the law. Some arms are concealed, but very few of these are serviceable. With rare exceptions, arms are now carried only for display, and knowledge of the use of weapons has died out in most classes of the population. The village forts have been everywhere dismantled. Robbery by armed gangs still occurs in certain districts (see ante, Chapter 23, note 14), but is much less frequent than it used to be in the author's days.

2. Many towns and villages bear the name of Mau (auglice, Mhow), which may be, as Mr. Growse suggests, a form of the Sanskrit mahi, 'land' or 'ground'. The town referred to in the text is the principal town of the Jhansi district, distinguished from its homonyms as Mau- Ranipur, situated about east-south-east from Jhansi, at a distance of forty miles from that city. Its special export used to be the 'kharwa' cloth, dyed with 'ai' (see ante., Chapter 31, note 4).

3. This insurrection continued into the year 1833. 'The inhabitants were reduced to the greatest distress, and have, even to the present day, scarcely recovered the losses they then sustained' (N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. i (1870), p. 296).

4. See the author's Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, passim.

5. Partabgarh is now a separate district in the Fyzabad Division of Oudh. The chief town, also called Partabgarh, is thirty-two miles north of Allahabad, and still possesses a Raja, who, at present (1914), is a most respectable gentleman, with no thoughts of violence. Further details about the Partabgarh family are given in the Journey, vol. i, p. 231.

6. Transcriber's note:- The author then uses the spelling 'Husain' consistently.

7. 'The news department is under a Superintendent-General, who has sometimes contracted for it, as for the revenues of a district, but more commonly holds it in amani, as a manager. . . . He nominates his subordinates, and appoints them to their several offices, taking from each a present gratuity and a pledge for such monthly payments as he thinks the post will enable him to make. They receive from four to fifteen rupees a month each, and have each to pay to their President, for distribution among his patrons or patronesses at Court, from one hundred to five hundred rupees a month in ordinary times. Those to whom they are accredited have to pay them, under ordinary circumstances, certain sums monthly, to prevent their inventing or exaggerating cases of abuse of power or neglect of duty on their part; but, when they happen to be really guilty of great acts of atrocity, or great neglect of duty, they are required to pay extraordinary sums, not only to the news-writers, who are especially accredited to them, but to all others who happen to be in the neighbourhood at the time. There are six hundred and sixty news- writers of this kind employed by the king, and paid monthly three thousand one hundred and ninety-four rupees, or, on an average, between four and five rupees each; and the sums paid by them to their President for distribution among influential officers and Court favourites averages [sic] above one hundred and fifty thousand rupees a year. . . . Such are the reporters of the circumstances in all the cases on which the sovereign and his ministers have to pass orders every day in Oudh. . . . the European magistrate of one of our neighbouring districts one day, before the Oudh Frontier Police was raised, entered the Oudh territory at the head of his police in pursuit of some robbers, who had found an asylum in one of the King's villages. In the attempt to secure them some lives were lost: and, apprehensive of the consequences, he sent for the official news- writer, and gratified him in the usual way. No report of the circumstances was made to the Oudh Darbar; and neither the King, the President, nor the British Government ever heard anything about it' (Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, vol. i, pp. 67-69). Such a System of official news-writers was usually maintained by Asiatic despots from the most ancient times.

8. full details of the rotten state of the king's army are given in the Journey through the Kingdom of Oude.

9. Then worth L4,000, or more.

10. Mirzapur (Mirzapore) on the Ganges, twenty-seven miles from Benares, was, in the author's time, the principal depot for the cotton and cloth trade of Northern India. Although the East Indian Railway passes through the city, the construction of the railway has diverted the bulk of the trade from Mirzapur, which is now a declining place. The population, which wag 70,621 in 1881, fell to 32,332 in 1911. The carpets made there are well known.

11. Then equal to L200,000, or more.

12. The Panna State lies between the British districts of Banda, in the United Provinces, on the north, and Damoh and Jabalpur, in the Central Provinces, on the south. The chief is a descendant of Chhatarsal. For description and engraving of the diamond mines see Economic Geology (1881), p. 39.

13. Then equivalent to L2,000, or more.

14. The words 'of the same clan' are inexact. The author has shown (ante, Chapter 23 following [10], and Chapter 26 following [32]) that Rajputs never marry into their own clan.

15. 'The Raja of Chanderi belonged to the same family as the Orchha chief. Sindhia annexed a great part of the Chanderi State in 1811. Chanderi was for a time British territory, but is now again in Sindhia's dominions. Its vicissitudes are related in N.W.P. Gazetteer (1870), vol. i, pp. 351-8.

16. In Oudh the misgovernment, anarchy, and cruel rapine, briefly alluded to in the text, and vividly described in detail by the author in his Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, lasted until the annexation of the kingdom by Lord Dalhousie in 1856, and, after a brief lull, were renewed during the insurrection of 1857 and 1858. The events of those years are a curious commentary on the author's belief that the people of Oudh entertained 'a respect for our rule and a love for our service'. The service of the British Government is sought because it pays, but a foreign Government must not expect love. Respect for the British rule depends upon the strength of that rule. Oudh still sends many recruits to the native army, though the young men no longer enjoy the advantage of a training in 'bhumiawat'. An occasional gang-robbery or bludgeon fight is the meagre modern substitute. The Rajputs or Thakurs of Bundelkhand and Gwalior still retain their old character for turbulence, but, of course, have less scope for what the author calls their 'sporting propensities' than they had in his time.



CHAPTER 34

The Suicide—Relations between Parents and Children in India.

The day before we left Datiya our cook had a violent dispute with his mother, a thing of almost daily occurrence; for though a very fat and handsome old lady, she was a very violent one. He was a quiet man, but, unable to bear any longer the abuse she was heaping upon him, he first took up a pitcher of water and flung it at her head. It missed her, and he then snatched up a stick, and, for the first time in his life, struck her. He was her only son. She quietly took up all her things, and, walking off towards a temple, said she would leave him for ever; and he, having passed the Rubicon, declared that he was resolved no longer to submit to the parental tyranny which she had hitherto exercised over him. My water carrier, however, prevailed upon her with much difficulty to return, and take up her quarters with him and his wife and five children in a small tent we had given them. Maddened at the thought of a blow from her son, the old lady about sunset swallowed a large quantity of opium; and before the circumstance was discovered, it was too late to apply a remedy. We were told of it about eight o'clock at night, and found her lying in her son's arms—tried every remedy at hand, but without success, and about midnight she died. She loved her son, and he respected her; and yet not a day passed without their having some desperate quarrel, generally about the orphan daughter of her brother, who lived with them, and was to be married, as soon as the cook could save out of his pay enough money to defray the expenses of the ceremonies. The old woman was always reproaching him for not saving money fast enough. This little cousin had now stolen some of the cook's tobacco for his young assistant; and the old lady thought it right to admonish her. The cook likewise thought it right to add his admonitions to those of his mother; but the old lady would have her niece abused by nobody but herself, and she flew into a violent passion at his presuming to interfere. This led to the son's outrage, and the mother's suicide. The son is a mild, good-tempered young man, who bears an excellent character among his equals, and is a very good servant. Had he been less mild it had perhaps been better; for his mother would by degrees have given up that despotic sway over her child, which in infancy is necessary, in youth useful, but in manhood becomes intolerable. 'God defend us from the anger of the mild in spirit', said an excellent judge of human nature, Muhammad, the founder of this cook's religion;[1] and certainly the mildest tempers are those which become the most ungovernable when roused beyond a certain degree; and the proud spirit of the old woman could not brook the outrage which her son, so roused, had been guilty of. From the time that she was discovered to have taken poison till she breathed her last she lay in the arms of the poor man, who besought her to live, that her only son might atone for his crime, and not be a parricide.

There is no part of the world, I believe, where parents are so much reverenced by their sons as they are in India, in all classes of society. This is sufficiently evinced in the desire that parents feel to have sons. The duty of daughters is from the day of their marriage transferred entirely to their husbands and their husbands' parents, on whom alone devolves the duty of protecting and supporting them through the wedded and the widowed state. The links that united them to their parents are broken. All the reciprocity of rights and duties which have bound together the parent and child from infancy is considered to end with the consummation of her marriage; nor does the stain of any subsequent female backsliding ever affect the family of her parents; it can affect that only of her husband, who is held alone responsible for her conduct. If a widow inherits the property of her husband, on her death the property would go to her husband's brother, supposing neither had any children by their husbands, in preference to her own brother; but between the son and his parents this reciprocity of rights and duties follows them to the grave.[2] One is delighted to see in sons this habitual reverence for the mother; but, as in the present case, it is too apt to occasion a domineering spirit, which produces much mischief even in private families, but still more in sovereign ones. A prince, when he attains the age of manhood, and ought to take upon himself the duties of the government, is often obliged to witness a great deal of oppression and misrule, from his inability to persuade his widowed mother to resign the power willingly into his hands. He often tamely submits to see his country ruined, and his family dishonoured, as at Jhansi, before he can bring himself, by some act of desperate resolution, to wrest it from her grasp.[3] In order to prevent his doing so, or to recover the reins he has thus obtained, the mother has often been known to poison her own son; and many a princess in India, like Isabella of England, has, I believe, destroyed her husband, to enjoy more freely the society of her paramour, and hold these reins during the minority of her son.[4]

In the exercise of dominion from behind the curtain (for it is those who live behind the curtain that seem most anxious to hold it), women select ministers who, to secure duration to their influence, become their paramours, or, at least, make the world believe that they are so, to serve their own selfish purposes. The sons are tyrannized over through youth by their mothers, who endeavour to subdue their spirit to the yoke, which they wish to bind heavy upon their necks for life; and they remain through manhood timid, ignorant, and altogether unfitted for the conduct of public affairs, and for the government of men under a despotic rule, whose essential principle is a salutary fear of the prince in all his public officers. Every unlettered native of India is as sensible of this principle [as] Montesquieu was; and will tell us that, in countries like India, a chief, to govern well, must have a smack of the devil ('shaitan') in him; for, if he has not, his public servants will prey upon his innocent and industrious subjects.[5] In India there are no universities or public schools, in which young men might escape, as they do in Europe, from the enervating and stultifying influence of the zanana.[6] The state of mental imbecility to which a youth of naturally average powers of mind, born to territorial dominion, is in India often reduced by a haughty and ambitious mother, would be absolutely incredible to a man bred up in such schools. They are often utterly unable to act, think, or speak for themselves. If they happen, as they sometimes do, to get well informed in reading and conversation, they remain, Hamlet-like, nervous and diffident; and, however speculatively or ruminatively wise, quite unfit for action, or for performing their part in the great drama of life.

In my evening ramble on the bank of the river, which was flowing against the wind and rising into waves, my mind wandered back to the hours of infancy and boyhood when I sat with my brothers watching our little vessels as they scudded over the ponds and streams of my native land; and then of my poor brothers John and Louis, whose bones now he beneath the ocean. As we advance in age the dearest scenes of early days must necessarily become more and more associated in our recollection with painful feelings; for they who enjoyed such scenes with us must by degrees pass away, and be remembered with sorrow even by those who are conscious of having fulfilled all their duties in life towards them—but with how much more by those who can never remember them without thinking of occasions of kindness and assistance neglected or disregarded. Many of them have perhaps left behind them widows and children struggling with adversity, and soliciting from us aid which we strive in vain to give.

During my visit to the Raja, a person in the disguise of one of my sipahis[7] went to a shop and purchased for me five-and-twenty rupees' worth of fine Europe chintz, for which he paid in good rupees, which were forthwith assayed by a neighbouring goldsmith. The sipahi put these rupees into his own purse, and laid it down, saying that he should go and ascertain from me whether I wished to keep the whole of the chintz or not; and, if not, he should require back the same money—that I was to halt to-morrow, when he would return to the shop again. Just as he was going away, however, he recollected that he wanted a turban for himself, and requested the shopkeeper to bring him one. They were sitting in the verandah, and the shopkeeper had to go into his shop to bring out the turban. When he came out with it, the sipahi said it would not suit his purpose, and went off, leaving the purse where it lay, cautioning the shopkeeper against changing any of the rupees, as he should require his own identical money back if his master rejected any of the chintz. The shopkeeper waited till four o'clock in the afternoon of the next day without looking into the purse.

Hearing then that I had left Datiya, and seeing no signs of the sipahi, he opened the purse, and found that the rupees were all copper, with a thin coating of silver. The man had changed them while he went into the shop for a turban, and substituted a purse exactly the same in appearance. After ascertaining that the story was true, and that the ingenious thief was not one of my followers, I insisted upon the man's taking the money from me, in spite of a great deal of remonstrance on the part of the Raja's agent, who had come on with us.

Notes:

1. The editor has failed to trace this quotation, which may possibly be from the Mishkat-ul-Masabih (ante, Chapter 5, note 10). Compare '"There is nothing more horrible than the rebellion of a sheep", said de Marsay' (Balzac, Lost by a Laugh).

2. The English doggerel expresses the opposite sentiment, 'My son's my son till he gets him a wife; My daughter's my daughter all her life.'

3. Ante, chap. 29, text at [4], and before [7].

4. Edward II, A.D. 1327.

5. The principle, so bluntly enunciated by the author, is true, though the truth may be unpalatable to people who think they know better, and it applies with as much force to European officials as it does to Indian princes. The 'shaitan' is more familiar in his English dress as Satan. The editor has failed to find any such phrase in the works of Montesquieu. In chapter 9 of Book III of L'Esprit des Lois that author lays down the principle that 'il faut de la crainte dans un gouvernement despotique; pour la vertu, elle n'y est point necessaire,'

6. It can no longer be said that universities do not exist, at least in name, in India. Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Lahore, and Allahabad are the seats of universities, and new foundations at Dacca and Patna are promised (1914). The Indian universities, when first established, were mere examining bodies, on the model of the University of London. But changes, initiated by Lord Curzon, are in progress, and the University of London is being remodelled (1914). The Indian institutions are not frequented by young princes and nobles, and have little influence on their education. Attempts have been made, with partial success, to provide special boarding schools, or 'Chiefs' Colleges', for the sons of ruling princes and native nobles. The most notable of such institution are the colleges at Ajmer, Rajkot in Kathiawar, and Indore. The influence of the zanana is invariably directed against every proposal to remove a young nobleman from home for the purpose of education, and obstacles of many kinds render the task of rightly educating such a youth extraordinarily difficult and unsatisfactory. In some cases a considerable degree of success has been attained.

7. Armed follower. The word is more familiar in the corrupt form 'sepoy'.



CHAPTER 35

Gwalior Plain once the Bed of a Lake—Tameness of Peacocks.

On the 19th, 20th, and 21st[1] we came on forty miles to the village of Antri in the Gwalior territory, over a fine plain of rich alluvial soil under spring crops. This plain bears manifest signs of having been at no very remote period, like the kingdom of Bohemia, the bed of a vast lake bounded by the ranges of sandstone hills which now seem to skirt the horizon all round; and studded with innumerable islands of all shapes and sizes, which now rise abruptly in all directions out of the cultivated plain.[2] The plain is still like the unruffled surface of a vast lake; and the rich green of the spring crops, which cover the surface in one wide sheet unintersected by hedges, tends to keep up the illusion, which the rivers have little tendency to dispel; for, though they have cut their way down immense depths to their present beds through this soft alluvial deposit, the traveller no sooner emerges from the hideous ravines, which disfigure their banks, than he loses all trace of them. Their course is unmarked by trees, large shrubs, or any of the signs which mark the course of rivers in other quarters.

The soil over the vast plain is everywhere of good quality, and everywhere cultivated, or rather worked, for we can hardly consider a soil cultivated which is never either irrigated or manured, or voluntarily relieved by fallows or an alternation of crops, till it has descended to the last stage of exhaustion. The prince rack-rents the farmer, the farmer rack-rents the cultivator, and the cultivator rack-rents the soil. Soon after crossing the Sindh river we enter upon the territories of the Gwalior chief, Sindhia.

The villages are everywhere few, and their communities very small. The greater part of the produce goes for sale to the capital of Gwalior, when the money it brings is paid into the treasury in rent, or revenue, to the chief, who distributes it in salaries among his establishments, who again pay it for land produce to the cultivators, farmers, and agricultural capitalists, who again pay it back into the treasury in land revenue. No more people reside in the villages than are absolutely necessary to the cultivation of the land, because the chief takes all the produce beyond what is necessary for their bare subsistence; and, out of what he takes, maintains establishments that reside elsewhere. There is nowhere any jungle to be seen, and very few of the villages that are scattered over the plains have any fruit or ornamental trees left; and, when the spring crops, to which the tillage is chiefly confined, are taken off the ground, the face of the country must have a very naked and dreary appearance.[3] Near one village on the road I saw some men threshing corn in a field, and among them a peacock (which, of course, I took to be domesticated) breakfasting very comfortably upon the grain as it flew around him. A little farther on I saw another quietly working his way into a stack of corn, as if he understood it to have been made for his use alone. It was so close to me as I passed that I put out my stick to push it off in play, and, to my surprise, it flew off in a fright at my white face and strange dress, and was followed by the others. I found that they were all wild, if that term can be applied to birds that live on such excellent terms with mankind. On reaching our tents we found several feeding in the corn-fields close around them, undisturbed by our host of camp-followers; and were told by the villagers, who had assembled to greet us, that they were all wild. 'Why', said they, 'should we think of keeping birds that live among us on such easy terms without being kept?' I asked whether they ever shot them, and was told that they never killed or molested them, but that any one who wished to shoot them might do so, since they had here no religions regard for them.[4] Like the pariah dogs the peacocks seem to disarm the people by confiding in them—their tameness is at once the cause and the effect of their security. The members of the little communities among whom they live on such friendly terms would not have the heart to shoot them; and travellers either take them to be domesticated, or are at once disarmed by their tameness.

At Antri a sufficient quantity of salt is manufactured for the consumption of the people of the town. The earth that contains most salt is dug up at some distance from the town, and brought to small reservoirs made close outside the walls. Water is here poured over it, as over tea and coffee. Passing through the earth, it flows out below into a small conduit, which takes it to small pits some yards' distance, whence it is removed in buckets to small enclosed platforms, where it is exposed to the Sun's rays, till the water evaporates, and leaves the salt dry.[5] The want of trees over this vast plain of fine soil from the Sindh river is quite lamentable. The people of Antri pointed out the place close to my tents where a beautiful grove of mango-trees had been lately taken off to Gwalior for gun-carriages and firewood, in spite of all the proprietor could urge of the detriment to his own interest in this world, and to those of his ancestors in that to which they had gone. Wherever the army of this chief moved they invariably swept off the groves of fruit-trees in the same reckless manner. Parts of the country, which they merely passed through, have recovered their trees, because the desire to propitiate the Deity, and to perpetuate their name by such a work, will always operate among Hindoos as a sufficient incentive to secure groves, wherever man has be made to feel that their rights of property in the trees will be respected.[6] The lands around the village, which had a well for irrigation, paid four times as much as those of the same quality which had none, and were made to yield two crops in the year. As everywhere else, so here, those lands into which water flows from the town and can be made to stand for a time, are esteemed the best, as this water brings down with it manures of all kinds.[7] I had a good deal of talk with the cultivators as I walked through the fields in the evenings; and they seemed to dwell much upon the good faith which is observed by the farmers and cultivators in the Honourable Company's territories, and the total absence of it in those of Sindhia's, where no work, requiring an outlay of capital from the land, is, in consequence, ever thought of- -both farmers and cultivators engaging from year to year, and no farmer ever feeling secure of his lease for more than one.

Notes:

1. December, 1835.

2. The anthor's favourite theory. See ante, Chapter 14 note 7, Chapter 24 note 6, on the formation of black cotton soil. The Gwalior plain is covered with this soil.

3. It has a very desolate appearance. The Indian Midland Railway now passes through Gwalior.

4. In many parts of India, especially in Mathura (Mattra) on the Jumna, and the neighbouring districts, the peacock is held strictly sacred, and shooting one would be likely to cause a riot. Tavernier relates a story of a rich Persian merchant being beaten to death by the Hindoos of Gujarat for shooting a peacock. (Tavernier, Travels, transl. Ball, vol. i, p. 70.) the bird is regarded as the vehicle of the Hindoo god of war, variously called Kumara, Skanda, or Kartikeya. the editor, like the author, has observed that in Bundelkhand no objection is raised to the shooting of peacocks by any one who cares for such poor sport.

5. In British India the manufacture of salt can be practised only by persons duly licensed.

6. The Revenue Settlement Regulations now in force in British India provide liberally for the encouragement of groves, and hundred of miles of road are annually planted with trees.

7. Sanitation did not trouble native states in those days.



CHAPTER 36

Gwalior and its Government.

On the 22nd,[1] we came on fourteen miles to Gwalior, over some ranges of sandstone hills, which are seemingly continuations of the Vindhyan range. Hills of indurated brown and red iron clay repose upon and intervene between these ranges, with strata generally horizontal, but occasionally bearing signs of having been shaken by internal convulsions. These convulsions are also indicated by some dykes of compact basalt which cross the road.[2]

Nothing can be more unprepossessing than the approach to Gwalior; the hills being naked, black, and ugly, with rounded tops devoid of grass or shrubs, and the soil of the valleys a poor red dust without any appearance of verdure or vegetation, since the few autumn crops that lately stood upon them have been removed.[3] From Antri to Gwalior there is no sign of any human habitation, save that of a miserable police guard of four or five, who occupy a wretched hut on the side of the road midway, and seem by their presence to render the scene around more dreary.[4] the road is a mere footpath unimproved and unadorned by any single work of art; and, except in this footpath, and the small police guard, there is absolutely no single sign in all this long march to indicate the dominion, or even the presence, of man; and yet it is between two contiguous [sic] capitals, one occupied by one of the most ancient, and the other by one of the greatest native sovereigns of Hindustan.[5] One cannot but feel that he approaches the capital of a dynasty of barbarian princes, who, like Attila, would choose their places of residence, as devils choose their pandemonia, for their ugliness, and rather reside in the dreary wastes of Tartary than on the shores of the Bosphorus. There are within the dominions of Sindhia seats for a capital that would not yield to any in India in convenience, beauty, and salubrity; but, in all these dominions, there is not, perhaps, another place so hideously ugly as Gwalior, or so hot and unhealthy. It has not one redeeming quality that should recommend it to the choice of a rational prince, particularly to one who still considers his capital as his camp, and makes every officer of his army feel that he has as little of permanent interest in his house as he would have in his tent.[6]

Phul Bagh, or the flower-garden, was suggested to me as the best place for my tents, where Sindhia had built a splendid summer-house. As I came over this most gloomy and uninteresting march, in which the heart of a rational man sickens, as he recollects that all the revenues of such an enormous extent of dominion over the richest soil and the most peaceable people in the world should have been so long concentrated upon this point, and squandered without leaving one sign of human art or industry, I looked forward with pleasure to a quiet residence in the flower-garden, with good foliage above, and a fine sward below, and an atmosphere free from dust, such as we find in and around all the residences of Muhammadan princes. On reaching my tents I found them pitched close outside the flower-garden, in a small dusty plain, without a blade of grass or a shrub to hide its deformity—just such a place as the pig-keepers occupy in the suburbs of other towns. On one side of this little plain, and looking into it, was the summer-house of the prince, without one inch of green sward or one small shrub before it.

Around the wretched little flower-garden was a low, naked, and shattered mud wall, such as we generally see in the suburbs thrown up to keep out and in the pigs that usually swarm in such places—'and the swine they crawled out, and the swine they crawled in'.[7] When I cantered up to my tent-door, a sipahi of my guard came up, and reported that as the day began to dawn a gang of thieves had stolen one of my best carpets, all the brass brackets of my tent-poles, and the brass bell with which the sentries on duty sounded the hour; all Lieutenant Thomas's cooking utensils, and many other things, several of which they had found lying between the tents and the prince's pleasure-house, particularly the contents of a large heavy box of geological specimens. They had, in consequence, concluded the gang to be lodged in the prince's pleasure-house. The guard on duty at this place would make no answer to their inquiries, and I really believe that they were themselves the thieves. The tents of the Raja of Raghugarh, who had come to pay his respects to the Sindhia, his liege lord, were pitched near mine. He had the day before had five horses stolen from him, with all the plate, jewels, and valuable clothes he possessed; and I was told that I must move forthwith from the flower-garden, or cut off the tail of every horse in my camp. Without tails they might not be stolen, with them they certainly would. Having had sufficient proof of their dexterity, we moved our tents to a grove near the residency, four miles from the flower- garden and the court.[8]

As a citizen of the world I could not help thinking that it would be an immense blessing upon a large portion of our species if an earthquake were to swallow up this court of Gwalior, and the army that surrounds it. Nothing worse could possibly succeed, and something better might. It is lamentable to think how much of evil this court and camp inflict upon the people who are subject to them. In January, 1828, I was passing with a party of gentlemen through the town of Bhilsa, which belongs to this chief, and lies between Sagar and Bhopal,[9] when we found, lying and bleeding in one of the streets, twelve men belonging to a merchant at Mirzapore, who had the day before been wounded and plundered by a gang of robbers close outside the walls of the town. Those who were able ran in to the Amil, or chief of the district, who resides in the town; and begged him to send some horsemen after the banditti, and intercept them as they passed over the great plains. 'Send your own people', said he, 'or hire men to send. Am I here to look after the private affairs of merchants and travellers, or to collect the revenues of the prince?' Neither he, nor the prince himself, nor any other officer of the public establishments ever dreamed that it was their duty to protect the life, property, or character of travellers, or indeed of any other human beings, save the members of their own families. In this pithy question the Amil of Bhilsa described the nature and character of the government. All the revenues of his immense dominions are spent entirely in the maintenance of the court and camps of the prince; and every officer employed beyond the boundary of the court and camp considers his duties to be limited to the collection of the revenue. Protected from all external enemies by our military forces, which surround him on every side, his whole army is left to him for purposes of parade and display; and having, according to his notions, no use for them elsewhere, he concentrates them around his capital, where he lives among them in the perpetual dread of mutiny and assassination. He has nowhere any police, nor any establishment whatever, for the protection of the life and property of his subjects; nor has he, any more than his predecessors, ever, I believe, for one moment thought that those from whose industry and frugality he draws his revenues have any right whatever to expect from him the use of such establishments in return. They have never formed any legitimate part of the Maratha government, and, I fear, never will.[10]

The misrule of such states, situated in the midst of our dominions, is not without its use. There is, as Gibbon justly observes, 'a strong propensity in human nature to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times'; and, if the people had not before their eyes such specimens of native rule to contrast with ours, they would think more highly than they do of that of their past Muhammadan and Hindoo sovereigns; and be much less disposed than they are to estimate fairly the advantages of being under ours. The native governments of the present day are fair specimens of what they have always been—grinding military despotisms—their whole history is that of 'Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands'; as if rulers were made merely to slay, and the ruled to be slain. In politics, as in landscape, ''Tis distance lends enchantment to the view', and the past might be all couleur de rose in the imaginations of the people were it not represented in these ill-governed states, where the 'lucky accident' of a good governor is not to be expected in a century, and where the secret of the responsibility of ministers to the people is yet undiscovered.[11]

The fortress of Gwalior stands upon a tableland, a mile and a half long by a quarter of a mile wide, at the north-east end of a small insulated sandstone hill, running north-east and south-west, and rising at both ends about three hundred and forty feet above the level of the plain below. At the base is a kind of glacis, which runs up at an angle of forty-five from the plain to within fifty, and, in some places, within twenty feet of the foot of the wall.

The interval is the perpendicular face of the horizontal strata of the sandstone rock. The glacis is formed of a bed of basalt in all stages of decomposition, with which this, like the other sandstone hills of Central India, was once covered, and of the debris and chippings of the rocks above. The walls are raised a certain uniform height all round upon the verge of the precipice, and being thus made to correspond with the edge of the rock, the line is extremely irregular. They are rudely built of the fine sandstone of the rock on which they stand, and have some square and some semicircular bastions of different sizes, few of these raised above the level of the wall itself.[12] On the eastern face of the rock, between the glacis and foot of the wall, are cut out, in bold relief, the colossal figures of men sitting bareheaded under canopies, on each side of a throne or temple; and, in another place, the colossal figure of a man standing naked, and facing outward, which I took to be that of Buddha.[l3]

The town of Gwalior extends along the foot of the hill on one side, and consists of a single street above a mile long. There is a very beautiful mosque, with one end built by a Muhammad Khan, A.D. 1665, of the white sandstone of the rock above it. It looks as fresh as if it had not been finished a month; and struck, as I passed it, with so noble a work, apparently new, and under such a government, I alighted from my horse, went in, and read the inscription, which told me the date of the building and the name of the founder. There is no stucco- work over any part of it, nor is any required on such beautiful materials; and the stones are all so nicely cut that cement seems to have been considered useless. It has the usual two minarets or towers, and over the arches and alcoves are carved, as customary, passages from the Koran, in the beautiful Kufic characters.[14] The court and camp of the chief extends out from the southern end of the hill for several miles.

The whole of the hill on which the fort of Gwalior stands had evidently, at no very distant period, been covered by a mass of basalt, surmounted by a crust of indurated brown and red iron clay, with lithomarge, which often assumes the appearance of common laterite. The boulders of basalt, which still cap some part of the hill, and form the greater part of the glacis at the bottom, are for the most part in a state of rapid decomposition; but some of them are still so hard and fresh that the hammer rings upon them as upon a bell, and their fracture is brilliantly crystalline. The basalt is the same as that which caps the sandstone hills of the Vindhya range throughout Malwa. The sandstone hills around Gwalior all rise in the same abrupt manner from the plain as those through Malwa generally; and they have almost all of them the same basaltic glacis at their base, with boulders of that rock scattered over the top, all indicating that they were at one time buried, in the same manner under one great mass of volcanic matter, thrown out from their submarine craters in streams of lava, or diffused through the ocean or lakes in ashes, and deposited in strata. The geological character of the country about Gwalior is very similar to that of the country about Sagar; and I may say the same of the Vindhya range generally, as far as I have seen it, from Mirzapore on the Ganges to Bhopal in Malwa—hills of sandstone rising suddenly from alluvial plain, and capped, or bearing signs of having been capped, by basalt reposing immediately upon it, and partly covered in its turn by beds of indurated iron clay.[15]

The fortress of Gwalior was celebrated for its strength under the Hindoo sovereigns of India; but was taken by the Muhammadans after a long siege, A.D. 1197.[16] the Hindoos regained possession, but were again expelled by the Emperor Iltutmish, A. D. 1235.[17] the Hindoos again got possession, and after holding it one hundred years, again surrendered it to the forces of the Emperor Ibrahim, A.D. 1519.[18] In 1543 it was surrendered up by the troops of the Emperor Humayun[19] to Sher Khan, his successful competitor for the empire.[20] It afterwards fell into the hands of a Jat chief, the Rana of Gohad,[21] from whom it was taken by the Marathas. While in their possession, it was invested by our troops under the command of Major Popham; and, on the 3rd of August, 1780, taken by escalade.[22] The party that scaled the wall was gallantly led by a very distinguished and most promising officer, Captain Bruce, brother of the celebrated traveller.[23]

It was made over to us by the Rana of Gohad, who had been our ally in the war. Failing in his engagement to us, he was afterwards abandoned to the resentment of Madhoji Sindhia, chief of the Marathas.[24] In 1783, Gwalior was invested by Madhoji Sindhia's troops, under the command of one of the most extraordinary men that have ever figured in Indian history, the justly celebrated General De Boigne.[25] After many unsuccessful attempts to take it by escalade, he bought over part of the garrison, and made himself master of the place. Gohad itself was taken soon after in 1784; but the Rana, Chhatarpat, made his escape. He was closely pursued, made prisoner at Karauli, and confined in the fortress of Gwalior, where he died in the year 1785.[26] He left no son, and his claims upon Gohad devolved upon his nephew, Kirat Singh, who, at the close of our war with the Marathas, got from Lord Lake, in lieu of these claims, the estate of Dholpur, situated on the left banks of the river Chambal, which is estimated at the annual value of three hundred thousand, or three lakhs, of rupees. He died this year, 1835, and has been succeeded by his son, Bhagwant Singh, a lad of seventeen years of age.[27]

Notes:

1. December, 1835.

2. Throughout the northern edge of the trap country in Rajputana, Gwalior, and Bundelkhand, dykes are rare or wanting.' (W. T. Blandford, in Manual of the Geology of India, 1st ed., Part 1, p. 328.) The dykes mentioned in the text may not have been visited by the officers of the Geological Surrey.

3. 'Basalt generally disintegrates into a reddish soil, quite different from regar in character. This reddish soil may be seen passing into regar, but, as a rule, the black soil is confined to the flatter ground at the bottom of the valleys, or on flat hill- tops, the brown or red soils occupying the slopes' (ibid. p. 433).

4. Johnson, in his Journey to the Western Islands, observes: 'Now and then we espied a little corn-field, which served to impress more strongly the general barrenness.' [W. H. S.] The remark referred to the shores of Loch Ness (p. 237 of volume viii of Johnson's Works, London, 1820).

5. By this awkward phrase the author seems to mean Lucknow, on the east, the capital of the kingdom of Oudh, and Udaipur, to the west, the capital of the long-descended chieftain of Mewar. Alternatively, the author may possibly have referred to Agra and Gwalior, rather than Lucknow and Udaipur.

6. 'The new city at Gwalior below the fortress is, like the city of Jhansi, known as the 'Lashkar', or camp. The old city of Gwalior encircles the north end of the fortress. The new city, or Lashkar, lies to the south, more than a mile distant. In January, 1859, the population of the two cities together amounted to 142,044 persons (A.S.R., vol. ii, p. 331).

7. Only those readers who have lived in India can fully understand the reasons why the pigs should frequent such a place, and how great would be the horrors of encamping in it.

8. In the description of the author's encampment at Gwalior, he fell into a mistake, which he discovered too late for correction in his journal. His tents were not pitched within the Phul Bagh, as he supposed, but without; and seeing nothing of this place, he imagined that the dirty and naked ground outside was actually the flower- garden. The Phul Bagh, however, is a very pleasing and well-ordered garden, although so completely secluded from observation by lofty walls that many other travellers must have encamped on the same spot without being aware of its existence. (Publishers' note at end of volume ii of original edition. )

9. Bhilsa is the principal town of the Isagarh subdivision in the Gwalior State. The famous Buddhist antiquities near it are described at length in Cunningham, The Bhilsa Topes, or Buddhist Monuments of Central India (1854), and in Maisey, Sanchi and its Remains. A full Description of the Ancient Buildings, Sculptures, and Inscriptions at Sanchi, near Bhilsa, in Central India. With an Introductory Note by Major-General Sir Alexander Cunningham, K.C.I.E. (1892). It is surprising that so keen an observer as the author appears not to have noticed any of the great Buddhist buildings of Central India.