Chapter 22
=Khadga Sthapana, Sword Worship.=—The festival in which this imposing rite occurs is the Nauratri,[4.22.1] sacred to the god of war, commencing on the first of the month Asoj. It is essentially martial, and confined to the Rajput, who on the departure of the monsoon finds himself at liberty to indulge his passion whether for rapine or revenge, both which in these tropical regions are necessarily suspended during the rains. Arguing from the order of the passions, we may presume that the first objects of emblematic worship were connected with war [583], and we accordingly find the highest reverence paid to arms by every nation of antiquity. The Scythic warrior of Central Asia, the intrepid Gete, admitted no meaner representative of the god of battle than his own scimitar.[4.22.2] He worshipped it, he swore by it; it was buried with him, in order that he might appear before the martial divinity in the other world as became his worshipper on earth: for the Gete of Transoxiana, from the earliest ages, not only believed in the soul’s immortality, and in the doctrine of rewards and punishments hereafter, but, according to the father of history, he was a monotheist; of which fact he has left a memorable proof in the punishment of the celebrated Anacharsis, who, on his return from a visit to Thales and his brother philosophers of Greece, attempted to introduce into the land of the Saka (Sakatai) the corrupted polytheism of Athens.
If we look westward from this the central land of earliest civilization, to Dacia, Thrace, Pannonia, the seats of the Thyssagetae or western Getae, we find the same form of adoration addressed to the emblem of Mars, as mentioned by Xenophon in his memorable retreat, and practised by Alaric and his Goths, centuries afterwards, in the Acropolis of Athens. If we transport ourselves to the shores of Scandinavia, amongst the Cimbri and Getae of Jutland, to the Ultima Thule, wherever the name of Gete prevails, we shall find the same adoration paid by the Getic warrior to his sword.
The Frisian Frank also of Gothic race, adhered to this worship, and transmitted it with the other rites of the Getic warrior of the Jaxartes; such as the adoration of the steed, sacred to the sun, the great god of the Massagetae, as well as of the Rajput, who sacrificed it at the annual feast, or with his arms and wife burnt it on his funeral pile. Even the kings of the ‘second race’ kept up the religion of their Scythic sires from the Jaxartes, and the bones of the war-horse of Chilperic were exhumed with those of the monarch. These rites, as well as those long-cherished chivalrous notions, for which the Salian Franks have ever been conspicuous [584], had their birth in Central Asia; for though contact with the more polished Arab softened the harsh character of the western warrior, his thirst for glory, the romantic charm which fed his passion, and his desire to please the fair, he inherited from his ancestors on the shores of the Baltic, which were colonized from the Oxus. Whether Charlemagne addressed his sword as Joyeuse,[4.22.3] or the Scandinavian hero Angantýr as the enchanted blade Tyrfing (Hialmar’s bane), each came from one common origin, the people which invented the custom of Khadga Sthapana, or ‘adoration of the sword.’ But neither the falchion ‘made by the dwarfs for Suafurlama,’ nor the redoubled sword of Bayard with which he dubbed the first Francis,—not even the enchanted brand of Ariosto’s hero, can for a moment compare with the double-edged khanda (scimitar) annually worshipped by the chivalry of Mewar. Before I descant on this monstrous blade, I shall give an abstract of the ceremonies on each of the nine days sacred to the god of war.
=The Dasahra Festival.=—On the 1st of Asoj, after fasting, ablution, and prayer on the part of the prince and his household, the double-edged khanda is removed from the hall of arms (ayudhsala), and having received the homage (puja) of the court, it is carried in procession to the Kishanpol (gate of Kishan), where it is delivered to the Raj Jogi,[4.22.4] the Mahants, and band of Jogis assembled in front of the temple of Devi ‘the goddess,’ adjoining the portal of Kishan.[4.22.5] By these, the monastic militant adorers of Hara, the god of battle, the brand emblematic of the divinity is placed[4.22.6] on the altar before the image of his divine consort. At three in the afternoon the nakkaras, or grand kettle-drums, proclaim from the Tripolia[4.22.7] the signal for the assemblage of the chiefs with their retainers; and the Rana and his cavalcade proceed direct to the stables, when a buffalo is sacrificed in honour of the war-horse. Thence the procession moves to the temple of Devi, where the Raja Krishan (Godi) has proceeded. Upon this, the Rana seats himself close to the Raj Jogi, presents two pieces of [585] silver and a coco-nut, performs homage to the sword (khadga), and returns to the palace.
Asoj 2nd. In similar state he proceeds to the Chaugan, their Champ de Mars, where a buffalo is sacrificed; and on the same day another buffalo victim is felled by the nervous arm of a Rajput, near the Toranpol, or triumphal gate. In the evening the Rana goes to the temple of Amba Mata, the universal mother, when several goats and buffaloes bleed to the goddess.
The 3rd. Procession to the Chaugan, when another buffalo is offered; and in the afternoon five buffaloes and two rams are sacrificed to Harsiddh Mata.[4.22.8]
On the 4th, as on every one of the nine days, the first visit is to the Champ de Mars: the day opens with the slaughter of a buffalo. The Rana proceeds to the temple of Devi, when he worships the sword, and the standard of the Raj Jogi, to whom, as the high-priest of Siva, the god of war, he pays homage, and makes offering of sugar, and a garland of roses. A buffalo having been previously fixed to a stake near the temple, the Rana sacrifices him with his own hand, by piercing him from his travelling throne (raised on men’s shoulders and surrounded by his vassals) with an arrow. In the days of his strength, he seldom failed almost to bury the feather in the flank of the victim; but on the last occasion his enfeebled arm made him exclaim with Prithiraj, when, captive and blind, he was brought forth to amuse the Tartar despot, “I draw not the bow as in the days of yore.”
On the 5th, after the usual sacrifice at the Chaugan, and an elephant fight, the procession marches to the temple of Asapurna (Hope); a buffalo and a ram are offered to the goddess adored by all the Rajputs, and the tutelary divinity of the Chauhans. On this day the lives of some victims are spared at the intercession of the Nagar-Seth, or chief-magistrate,[4.22.9] and those of his faith, the Jains.
On the 6th, the Rana visits the Chaugan, but makes no sacrifice. In the afternoon, prayers and victims to Devi; and in the evening the Rana visits Bhikharinath, the chief of the Kanphara Jogis, or split-ear ascetics.
The 7th. After the daily routine at the Chaugan, and sacrifices to Devi (the goddess of destruction), the chief equerry is commanded to adorn the steeds with their new caparisons, and lead them to be bathed in the lake. At night, the sacred fire (hom) is kindled, and a buffalo and a ram are sacrificed to Devi; the Jogis [586] are called up and feasted on boiled rice and sweetmeats. On the conclusion of this day, the Rana and his chieftains visit the hermitage of Sukharia Baba, an anchorite of the Jogi sect.
8th. There is the homa, or fire-sacrifice in the palace. In the afternoon, the prince, with a select cavalcade, proceeds to the village of Samina, beyond the city walls, and visits a celebrated Gosain.[4.22.10]
9th. There is no morning procession. The horses from the royal stables, as well as those of the chieftains, are taken to the lake, and bathed by their grooms, and on returning from purification they are caparisoned in their new housings, led forth, and receive the homage of their riders, and the Rana bestows a largess on the master of the horse, the equerries, and grooms. At three in the afternoon, the nakkaras having thrice sounded, the whole State insignia, under a select band, proceed to Mount Matachal, and bring home the sword. When its arrival in the court of the palace is announced, the Rana advances and receives it with due homage from the hands of the Raj Jogi, who is presented with a khilat; while the Mahant, who has performed all the austerities during the nine days, has his patra[4.22.11] filled with gold and silver coin. The whole of the Jogis are regaled, and presents are made to their chiefs. The elephants and horses again receive homage, and the sword, the shield, and spear are worshipped within the palace. At three in the morning the prince takes repose.
The 10th, or Dasahra,[4.22.12] is a festival universally known in India, and respected by all classes, although entirely military, being commemorative of the day on which the deified Rama commenced his expedition to Lanka for the redemption of Sita;[4.22.13] the ‘tenth of Asoj’ is consequently deemed by the Rajput a fortunate day for warlike enterprise. The day commences with a visit from the [587] prince or chieftain to his spiritual guide. Tents and carpets are prepared at the Chaugan or Matachal mount, where the artillery is sent; and in the afternoon the Rana, his chiefs, and their retainers repair to the field of Mars, worship the khejra tree,[4.22.14] liberate the nilkanth or jay (sacred to Rama), and return amidst a discharge of guns.
11th. In the morning, the Rana, with all the State insignia, the kettledrums sounding in the rear, proceeds towards the Matachal mount, and takes the muster of his troops, amidst discharges of cannon, tilting, and display of horsemanship. The spectacle is imposing even in the decline of this house. The hilarity of the party, the diversified costume, the various forms, colours, and decorations of the turbans, in which some have the heron plume, or sprigs from some shrub sacred to the god of war; the clusters of lances, shining matchlocks, and black bucklers, the scarlet housings of the steeds, and waving pennons, recall forcibly the glorious days of the devoted Sanga, or the immortal Partap, who on such occasions collected round the black changi and crimson banner of Mewar a band of sixteen thousand of his own kin and clan, whose lives were their lord’s and their country’s. The shops and bazaars are ornamented with festoons of flowers and branches of trees, while the costliest cloths and brocades are extended on screens, to do honour to their prince; the toran (or triumphal arch) is placed before the tent, on a column of which he places one hand as he alights, and before entering makes several circumambulations. All present offer their nazars to the prince, the artillery fires, and the bards raise ‘the song of praise,’ celebrating the glories of the past; the fame of Samra, who fell with thirteen thousand of his kin on the Ghaggar; of Arsi and his twelve brave sons, who gave themselves as victims for the salvation of Chitor; of Kumbha, Lakha, Sanga, Partap, Amra, Raj, all descended of the blood of Rama, whose exploits, three thousand five hundred years before, they are met to celebrate. The situation of Matachal is well calculated for such a spectacle, as indeed is the whole ground from the palace through the Delhi portal to the mount, on which is erected one of the several castles commanding the approaches to the city. The fort is dedicated to Mata, though it would not long remain stable (achal) before a battery of thirty-six pounders. The guns are drawn up about the termination of the slope of the natural glacis; the Rana and his court remain on horseback [588] half up the ascent; and while every chief or vassal is at liberty to leave his ranks, and “witch the world with noble horsemanship,” there is nothing tumultuous, nothing offensive in their mirth.
The steeds purchased since the last festival are named, and as the cavalcade returns, their grooms repeat the appellations of each as the word is passed by the master of the horse; as Baj Raj, ‘the royal steed’; Hayamor, ‘the chief of horses’; Manika, ‘the gem’; Bajra, ‘the thunderbolt,’ etc., etc. On returning to the palace, gifts are presented by the Rana to his chiefs. The Chauhan chief of Kotharia claims the apparel which his prince wears on this day, in token of the fidelity of his ancestor to the minor, Udai Singh, in Akbar’s wars. To others, a fillet or balaband for the turban is presented; but all such compliments are regulated by precedent or immediate merit.
=The Toran Arch.=—Thus terminates the Nauratri festival sacred to the god of war, which in every point of view is analogous to the autumnal festival of the Scythic warlike nations, when these princes took the muster of their armies, and performed the same rites to the great celestial luminary.[4.22.15] I have presented to the antiquarian reader these details, because it is in minute particulars that analogous customs are detected. Thus the temporary toran, or triumphal arch, erected in front of the tent at Mount Mataehala would scarcely claim the least notice, but that we discover even in this emblem the origin of the triumphal arches of antiquity, with many other rites which may be traced to the Indo-Scythic races of Asia. The toran in its original form consisted of two columns and an architrave, constituting the number three, sacred to Hara, the god of war. In the progress of the arts the architrave gave way to the Hindu arch, which consisted of two or more ribs without the keystone, the apex being the perpendicular junction of the archivaults; nor is the arc of the toran semicircular, or any segment of a circle, but with that graceful curvature which stamps with originality one of the arches of the Normans, who may have brought it from their ancient seats on the Oxus, whence it may also have been [589] carried within the Indus. The cromlech, or trilithic altar in the centre of all those monuments called Druidic, is most probably a toran, sacred to the Sun-god Belenus, like Har, or Balsiva, the god of battle, to whom as soon as a temple is raised the toran is erected, and many of these are exquisitely beautiful.
=Gates.=—An interesting essay might be written on portes and torans, their names and attributes, and the genii presiding as their guardians. Amongst all the nations of antiquity, the portal has had its peculiar veneration: to pass it was a privilege regarded as a mark of honour. The Jew Haman, in the true Oriental style, took post at the king’s gate as an inexpugnable position. The most pompous court in Europe takes its title from its porte, where, as at Udaipur, all alight. The Tripolia, or triple portal, the entry to the magnificent terrace in front of the Rana’s palace, consists, like the Roman arcs of triumph, of three arches, still preserving the numeral sacred to the god of battle, one of whose titles is Tripura, which may be rendered Tripoli, or lord of the three places of abode, or cities, but applied in its extensive sense to the three worlds, heaven, earth, and hell. From the Sanskrit Pola we have the Greek πύλη, a gate, or pass; and in the guardian or Polia, the πυλωρός or porter; while to this langue mère our own language is indebted, not only for its portes and porters, but its doors (dwara).[4.22.16] Pylos signified also a pass; so in Sanskrit these natural barriers are called Palas, and hence the poetical epithet applied to the aboriginal mountain tribes of Rajasthan, namely, Palipati and Palindra, ‘lords of the pass.’[4.22.17]
=Ganesa.=—One of the most important of the Roman divinities was Janus, whence Januae, or portals, of which he was the guardian.[4.22.18] A resemblance between the Ganesa of the Hindu pantheon and the Roman Janus has been pointed out by Sir W. Jones, but his analogy extended little beyond nominal similarity. The fable of the birth of Ganesa furnishes us with the origin of the worship of Janus, and as it has never been given, I shall transcribe it from the bard Chand. Ganesa is the chief of the genii[4.22.19] attendant on the god of war, and was expressly formed by Uma, the Hindu Juno, to guard the entrance of her caverned retreat in the [590] Caucasus, where she took refuge from the tyranny of the lord of Kailasa (Olympus), whose throne is fixed amidst eternal snows on the summit of this peak of the gigantic Caucasus (Koh-khasa).[4.22.20]
“Strife arose between Mahadeo and the faithful Parvati: she fled to the mountains and took refuge in a cave. A crystal fountain tempted her to bathe, but shame was awakened; she dreaded being seen. Rubbing her frame, she made an image of man; with her nail she sprinkled it with the water of life, and placed it as guardian at the entrance of the cave.” Engrossed with the recollection of Parvati,[4.22.21] Siva went to Karttikeya[4.22.22] for tidings of his mother, and together they searched each valley and recess, and at length reached the spot where a figure was placed at the entrance of a cavern. As the chief of the gods prepared to explore this retreat, he was stopped by the Polia. In a rage he struck off his head with his discus (chakra), and in the gloom discovered the object of his search. Surprised and dismayed, she demanded how he obtained ingress: “Was there no guardian at the entrance?” The furious Siva replied that he had cut off his head. On hearing this, the mountain-goddess was enraged, and weeping, exclaimed, “You have destroyed my child.” The god, determined to recall him to life, decollated a young elephant, replaced the head he had cut off, and naming him Ganesa, decreed that in every resolve his name should be the first invoked.
Invocation of the Bard to Ganesa.
“Oh, Ganesa! thou art a mighty lord; thy single tusk[4.22.23] is beautiful, and demands the tribute of praise from the Indra of song.[4.22.24] Thou art the chief of the human race; the destroyer of unclean spirits; the remover of fevers, whether daily or tertian. Thy bard sounds thy praise; let my work be accomplished!”
Thus Ganesa is the chief of the Di minores of the Hindu pantheon, as the etymology of the word indicates,[4.22.25] and like Janus, was entrusted with the gates of heaven [591]; while of his right to preside over peace and war, the fable related affords abundant testimony. Ganesa is the first invoked and propitiated[4.22.26] on every undertaking, whether warlike or pacific. The warrior implores his counsel; the banker indites his name at the commencement of every letter; the architect places his image in the foundation of every edifice; and the figure of Ganesa is either sculptured or painted at the door of every house as a protection against evil. Our Hindu Janus is represented as four-armed, and holding the disk (chakra), the war-shell, the club, and the lotos. Ganesa is not, however, bifrons, like the Roman guardian of portals. In every transaction he is adi, or the first, though the Hindu does not, like the Roman, open the year with his name. I shall conclude with remarking that one of the portes of every Hindu city is named the Ganesa Pol, as well as some conspicuous entrance to the palace: thus Udaipur has its Ganesa dwara, who also gives a name to the hall, the Ganesa deori; and his shrine will be found on the ascent of every sacred mount, as at Abu, where it is placed close to a fountain on the abrupt face about twelve hundred feet from the base. There is likewise a hill sacred to him in Mewar called Ganesa Gir, tantamount to the Mons Janiculum of the eternal city. The companion of this divinity is a rat, who indirectly receives a portion of homage, and with full as much right as the bird emblematic of Minerva.[4.22.27]
We have abandoned the temple of the warlike divinity (Devi), the sword of Mars, and the triumphal toran, to invoke Ganesa. It will have been remarked that the Rana aids himself to dismount by placing his hand on one of the columns of the toran, an act which is pregnant with a martial allusion, as are indeed the entire ceremonials of the “worship of the sword.”
=Analogies to Western Customs. Oaths by the Sword.=—It might be deemed folly to trace the rites and superstitions of so remote an age and nation to Central Asia; but when we find the superstitions of the Indo-Scythic Getae prevailing within the Indus, in Dacia, and on the shores of the Baltic, we may assume their common origin; for although the worship of arms has prevailed among all warlike tribes, there is a peculiar respect paid to the sword amongst the Getic races. The Greeks and Romans paid devotion to their arms, and swore by them. The Greeks brought their habits from ancient Thrace, where the custom existed of presenting as the greatest gift that peculiar kind of sword called acinaces,[4.22.28] which we dare not derive from the Indo-Scythic or Sanskrit asi, a [592] sword. When Xenophon,[4.22.29] on his retreat, reached the court of Seuthes, he agreed to attach his corps to the service of the Thracian. His officers on introduction, in the true Oriental style, presented their nazars, or gifts of homage, excepting Xenophon, who, deeming himself too exalted to make the common offering, presented his sword, probably only to be touched in recognition of his services being accepted. The most powerful oath of the Rajput, next to his sovereign’s throne (gaddi ka an), is by his arms, ya silah ka an, ‘by this weapon!’ as, suiting the action to the word, he puts his hand on his dagger, never absent from his girdle. Dhal, tarwar, ka an, ‘by my sword and shield!’ The shield is deemed the only fit vessel or salver on which to present gifts; and accordingly at a Rajput court, shawls, brocades, scarfs, and jewels are always spread before the guest on bucklers.[4.22.30]
In the Runic “incantation of Hervor,” daughter of Angantýr, at the tomb of her father, she invokes the dead to deliver the enchanted brand Tyrfing, or “Hjalmr’s bane,” which, according to Getic custom, was buried in his tomb; she adjures him and his brothers “by all their arms, their shields, etc.” It is depicted with great force, and, translated, would deeply interest a Rajput, who might deem it the spell by which the Khanda of Hamira, which he annually worships, was obtained.
INCANTATION
Hervor—“Awake, Angantýr! Hervor, the only daughter of thee and Suafu, doth awaken thee. Give me out of the tomb the tempered sword which the dwarfs made for Suafurlama.
“Can none of Eyvors’[4.22.31] sons speak with me out of the habitations of the dead? Hervardur,[4.22.31] Hurvardur?”[4.22.31]
The tomb at length opens, the inside of which appears on fire, and a reply is sung within:
Angantýr—“Daughter Hervor, full of spells to raise the dead, why dost thou call so? I was not buried either by father or friends; two who lived after me got Tyrfing, one of whom is now in possession thereof [593].”
Hervor—“The dead shall never enjoy rest unless Angantýr deliver me Tyrfing, that cleaveth shields, and killed Hjalmr.”[4.22.32]
Angantýr—“Young maid, thou art of manlike courage, who dost rove by night to tombs, with spear engraven with magic spells,[4.22.33] with helm and coat of mail, before the door of our hall.”
Hervor—“It is not good for thee to hide it.”
Angantýr—“The death of Hjalmr[4.22.34] lies under my shoulders; it is all wrapt up in fire: I know no maid that dares to take this sword in hand.”
Hervor—“I shall take in hand the sharp sword, if I may obtain it. I do not think that fire will burn which plays about the site of deceased men.”[4.22.35]
Angantýr—“Take and keep Hjalmr’s bane: touch but the edges of it, there is poison in them both;[4.22.36] it is a most cruel devourer of men.”[4.22.37]
=The Magic Sword of Mewār.=—Tradition has hallowed the two-edged sword (khanda) of Mewar, by investing it with an origin as mysterious as “the bane of Hjalmr.” It is supposed to be the enchanted weapon fabricated by Viswakarma,[4.22.38] with which the Hindu Proserpine girded the founder of the race, and led him forth to the conquest of Chitor.[4.22.39] It remained the great heirloom of her princes till the sack of Chitor by the Tatar Ala, when Rana Arsi and eleven of his brave sons devoted themselves at the command of the guardian goddess of their race, and their capital falling into the hands of the invader, the last scion of Bappa became a fugitive amidst the mountains of the west. It was then the Tatar inducted the Sonigira Maldeo [594], as his lieutenant, into the capital of the Guhilots. The most celebrated of the poetic chronicles of Mewar gives an elaborate description of the subterranean palace in Chitor, in one of whose entrances the dreadful sacrifice was perpetuated to save the honour of Padmini and the fair of Chitor from the brutalized Tatars.[4.22.40] The curiosity of Maldeo was more powerful than his superstition, and he determined to explore these hidden abodes, though reputed to be guarded by the serpent genii attendant on Nagnaicha, the ancient divinity of its Takshak founders.[4.22.41] Whether it was through the identical caverned passage, and over the ashes of those martyred Kaminis,[4.22.42] that he made good his way into those rock-bound abodes, the legend says not; but though
In darkness, and with dangers compassed round, And solitude,
the intrepid Maldeo paused not until he had penetrated to the very bounds of the abyss, where in a recess he beheld the snaky sorceress and her sister crew seated round a cauldron, in which the materials of their incantation were solving before a fire that served to illume this abode of horror. As he paused, the reverberation of his footsteps caused the infernal crew to look athwart the palpable obscure of their abode, and beholding the audacious mortal, they demanded his intent. The valiant Sonigira replied that he did not come as a spy,
With purpose to explore or to disturb The secrets of their realm,
but in search of the enchanted brand of the founder of the Guhilots. Soon they made proof of Maldeo’s hardihood. Uncovering the cauldron, he beheld a sight most appalling: amidst divers fragments of animals was the arm of an infant. A dish of this horrid repast was placed before him, and a silent signal made for him to eat. He obeyed, and returned the empty platter: it was proof sufficient of his worth to wear the enchanted blade, which, drawn forth from its secret abode, was put into the hand of Maldeo, who bowing, retired with the trophy [595].
Rana Hamira recovered this heirloom of his house, and with it the throne of Chitor, by his marriage with the daughter of the Sonigira, as related in the annals.[4.22.43] Another version says it was Hamira himself who obtained the enchanted sword, by his incantations to Charani Devi, or the goddess of the bards, whom he worshipped.
=The Birth of Kumāra.=—We shall conclude this account of the military festival of Mewar with the birth of Kumara, the god of war, taken from the most celebrated of their mythological poems, the Ramayana, probably the most ancient book in the world.[4.22.44] “Mena, daughter of Meru, became the spouse of Himavat, from whose union sprung the beauteous Ganga, and her sister Uma. Ganga was sought in marriage by all the celestials; while Uma, after a long life of austerity, was espoused by Rudra.”[4.22.45] But neither sister was fortunate enough to have offspring, until Ganga became pregnant by Hutasana (regent of fire), and “Kumara, resplendent as the sun, illustrious as the moon, was produced from the side of Ganga.” The gods, with Indra at their head, carried him to the Krittikas[4.22.46] to be nursed, and he became their joint care. “As he resembled the fire in brightness, he received the name of Skanda, when the immortals, with Agni (fire) at their head, anointed him as general of the armies of the gods.”[4.22.47]—“Thus (the bard Valmiki speaks), oh! Rama, have I related the story of the production of Kumar.”
This is a very curious relic of ancient mythology, in which we may trace the most material circumstances of the birth of the Roman divinity of war. Kumara (Mars) was the son of Jahnavi (Juno), and born, like the Romans, without sexual intercourse, but by the agency of Vulcan (regent of fire). Kumara has the peacock (sacred to Juno likewise) as his companion; and as the Grecian goddess is feigned to have her car drawn by peacocks, so Kumara (the evil-striker)[4.22.48] has a peacock for his steed [596]. Ganga, ‘the river goddess,’ has some of the attributes of Pallas, being like the Athenian maid (Ganga never married) born from the head of Jove. The bard of the silver age makes her fall from a glacier of Kailasa (Olympus) on the head of the father of the gods, and remain many years within the folds of his tiara (jata), until at length being liberated, she was precipitated into the plains of Aryavarta. It was in this escape that she burst her rocky barrier (the Himalaya), and on the birth of Kumara exposed those veins of gold called jambunadi, in colour like the jambu fruit, probably alluding to the veins of gold discovered in the rocks of the Ganges in those distant ages.
=The Winter Season.=—The last day of the month Asoj ushers in the Hindu winter (sarad rit). On this day, nothing but white vestments and silver (chandi) ornaments are worn, in honour of the moon (Chandra), who gives his[4.22.49] name to the
Pale and common drudge ’Tween man and man.
This year there was an entire intercalary month: such are called Laund. There is a procession of all the chiefs to the Chaugan; and on their return, a full court is held in the great hall, which breaks up with ‘obeisance to the lamp’ (jot ka mujra), whose light each reverences; when the candles are lit at home, every Rajput, from the prince to the owner of a “skin (charsa) of land,” seated on a white linen cloth, should worship his tutelary divinity, and feed the priests with sugar and milk.
=Karttika.=—This month is peculiarly sacred to Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, the Juno Moneta of the Romans. The 13th is called the Dhanteras, or thirteenth [day] of wealth, when gold and silver coin are worshipped, as the representatives of the goddess, by her votaries of all classes, but especially by the mercantile [597]. On the 14th, all anoint with oil, and make libations thereof to Yama, the judge of departed spirits. Worship (puja) is performed to the lamp, which represents the god of hell, and is thence called Yamadiwa, ‘the lamp of Pluto’; and on this day partial illumination takes place throughout the city.
=The Diwāli, or Festival of Lamps.=—On the Amavas, or Ides of Karttik, is one of the most brilliant fètes of Rajasthan, called the Diwali, when every city, village, and encampment exhibits a blaze of splendour. The potters’ wheels revolve for weeks before solely in the manufacture of lamps (diwa), and from the palace to the peasant’s hut every one supplies himself with them, in proportion to his means, and arranges them according to his fancy. Stuffs, pieces of gold, and sweetmeats are carried in trays and consecrated at the temple of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, to whom the day is consecrated. The Rana on this occasion honours his prime minister with his presence to dinner; and this chief officer of the State, who is always of the mercantile caste, pours oil into a terra-cotta lamp, which his sovereign holds; the same libation of oil is permitted by each of the near relations of the minister. On this day, it is incumbent upon every votary of Lakshmi to try the chance of the dice, and from their success in the Diwali, the prince, the chief, the merchant, and the artisan foretell the state of their coffers for the ensuing year.
Lakshmi, though on this festival depicted under the type of riches, is evidently the beneficent Annapurna in another garb, for the agricultural community place a corn-measure filled with grain and adorned with flowers as her representative; or, if they adorn her effigies, they are those of Padma, the water-nymph, with a lotos in one hand, and the pasa (or fillet for the head) in the other. As Lakshmi was produced at “the Churning of the Ocean,” and hence called one of the “fourteen gems,” she is confounded with Rambha, chief of the Apsaras, the Venus of the Hindus. Though both were created from the froth (sara) of the waters (ap),[4.22.50] they are as distinct as the representations of riches and beauty can be. Lakshmi became the wife of Vishnu, or Kanhaiya, and is placed at the feet of his marine couch when he is floating on the chaotic waters. As his consort, she merges into the character of Sarasvati, the goddess of eloquence, and here we have the combination of Minerva and Apollo. As of Minerva, the owl [598] is the attendant of Lakshmi;[4.22.51] and when we reflect that the Egyptians, who furnished the Grecian pantheon, held these solemn festivals, also called “the feast of lamps,” in honour of Minerva at Sais, we may deduce the origin of this grand Oriental festival from that common mother-country in Central Asia, whence the Diwali radiated to remote China, the Nile, the Ganges, and the shores of the Tigris; for the Shab-i-barat of Islam is but “the feast of lamps” of the Rajputs. In all these there is a mixture of the attributes of Ceres and Proserpine, of Plutus and Pluto. Lakshmi partakes of the attributes of both the first, while Kuvera,[4.22.52] who is conjoined with her, is Plutus: as Yama is Pluto, the infernal judge. The consecrated lamps and the libations of oil are all dedicated to him; and “torches and flaming brands are likewise kindled and consecrated, to burn the bodies of kinsmen who may be dead in battle in a foreign land, and light them through the shades of death to the mansion of Yama.”[4.22.53]
=Festival of Yama.=—To the infernal god Yama, who is “the son of the sun,” the second day following the Amavas, or Ides of Karttika, is also sacred; it is called the Bhratri dvitiya, or ‘the brothers’ second,’ because the river-goddess Yamuna on this day entertained her brother (bhratri) Yama, and is therefore consecrated to fraternal affection. At the hour of curfew (godhuli),[4.22.54] when the cattle return from the fields, the cow is worshipped, the herd having been previously tended. From this ceremony no rank is exempted on the preceding day, dedicated to Krishna: prince and peasant all become pastoral attendants on the cow, as the form of Prithivi,[4.22.55] or the earth.
=The Annakūta Festival.=—The 1st (Sudi), or 16th of Karttika, is the grand festival of Annakuta, sacred to the Hindu Ceres, which will be described with its solemnities at Nathdwara. There is a State procession, horse-races, and elephant-fights at the Chaugan; the evening closes with a display of fireworks.
=The Jaljātra Festival.=—The 14th (Sudi), or 29th, is another solemn festival in honour of Vishnu. It is called the Jaljatra, from being performed on the water (jal). The Rana, chiefs, ministers, and citizens go in procession to the lake, and adore the “spirit of the waters,” on which floating lights are placed, and the whole surface is illuminated by a grand display of pyrotechny. On this day “Vishnu rises from his slumber of four [599] months”;[4.22.56] a figurative expression to denote the sun’s emerging from the cloudy months of the periodical flood.
=The Makara Sankrānti Festival.=—The next day (the Punim, or last day of Karttika), being the Makara sankranti, or autumnal equinox, when the sun enters the zodiacal sign Makara,[4.22.57] or Pisces, the Rana and chiefs proceed in state to the Chaugan, and play at ball on horseback. The entire last half of the month Karttika, from Amavas (the Ides) to the Punim, is sacred to Vishnu; who is declared by the Puranas to represent the sun, and whose worship, that of water, and the floating-lights placed thereon—all objects emblematic of fecundity—carry us back to the point whence we started—the adoration of the powers of nature: clearly proving all mythology to be universally founded on an astronomical basis.
=Mitra Saptami, Bhāskara Saptami Festivals.=—In the remaining months of Aghan, or Margsir, and Pus, there are no festivals in which a state procession takes place, though in each there are marked days, kept not only by the Rajputs, but generally by the Hindu nation; especially that on the 7th of Aghan, which is called Mitra Saptami, or 7th of Mithras, and like the Bhaskara Saptami or the 7th of Magha, is sacred to the sun as a form of Vishnu. On this seventh day occurred the descent of the river-goddess (Ganga) from the foot of Vishnu; or the genius of fertilization, typified under the form of the river-goddess, proceeding from the sun, the vivifying principle, and impended over the head of Iswara, the divinity presiding over generation, in imitation of which his votary pours libations of water (if possible from the sacred river Ganga) over his emblem, the lingam or phallus: a comparison which is made by the bard Chand in an invocation to this god, for the sake of contrasting his own inferiority “to the mighty bards of old.”
“The head of Is[4.22.58] is in the skies; on his crown falls the ever-flowing stream (Ganga); but on his statue below, does not his votary pour the fluid from his patra?”
=Phallicism.=—No satisfactory etymology has ever been assigned for the phallic emblem of generation, adored by Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and even by the Christian, which may be from the same primeval language that formed the Sanskrit.
Phalisa is the ‘fructifier,’ from phala, ‘fruit,’ and Isa, ‘the god.’[4.22.59] Thus the type of Osiris can have a definite interpretation, still wanting to the lingam of Iswara [600]. Both deities presided over the streams which fertilized the countries in which they received divine honours: Osiris over the Nile, from ‘the mountains of the moon,’ in Ethiopia,[4.22.60] Iswara over the Indus[4.22.61] (also called the Nil), and the Ganges from Chandragiri, ‘the mountains of the moon,’ on a peak of whose glaciers he has his throne.
=Siva and the Sun.=—Siva occasionally assumes the attributes of the sun-god; they especially appertain to Vishnu, who alone is styled “immortal, the one, creator, and uncreated”; and in whom centre all the qualities (gunan), which have peopled the Hindu pantheon with their ideal representatives. The bard Chand, who has embodied the theological tenets of the Rajputs in his prefatory invocation to every divinity who can aid his intent, apostrophizes Ganesa, and summons the goddess of eloquence (Sarasvati) “to make his tongue her abode”; deprecates the destroying power, “him whom wrath inhabits,” lest he should be cut off ere his book was finished; and lauding distinctly each member of the triad (trimurti), he finishes by declaring them one, and that “whoever believes them separate, hell will be his portion.” Of this One the sun is the great visible type, adored under a variety of names, as Surya, Mitra, Bhaskar, Vivasvat, Vishnu, Karna, or Kana, likewise an Egyptian epithet for the sun.[4.22.62]
The emblem of Vishnu is Garuda, or the eagle,[4.22.63] and the Sun-god both of the Egyptians and Hindus is typified with the bird’s head. Aruna (the dawn), brother of Garuda, is classically styled the charioteer of Vishnu, whose two sons, Sampati and Jatayu, attempting in imitation of their father to reach the sun, the wings of the former were burnt and he fell to the earth: of this the Greeks may have made their fable of Icarus.[4.22.64]
=Festivals in Honour of Vishnu.=—In the chief zodiacal phenomena, observation will discover that Vishnu is still the object of worship. The Phuladola,[4.22.65] or Floralia, in the vernal equinox, is so called from the image of Vishnu being carried in a dola, or ark, covered with garlands of flowers (phula). Again, in the month of Asarh, the commencement of [601] the periodical rains, which date from the summer solstice, the image of Vishnu is carried on a car, and brought forth on the first appearance of the moon, the 11th of which being the solstice, is called “the night of the gods.” Then Vishnu reposes on his serpent-couch until the cessation of the flood on the 11th of Bhadon, when “he turns on his side.”[4.22.66]
The 4th is also dedicated to Vishnu under his infantine appellation Hari (Ἥλιος), because when a child “he hid himself in the moon.” We must not derogate from Sir W. Jones the merit of drawing attention to the analogy between these Hindu festivals on the equinoxes, and the Egyptian, called the entrance of Osiris into the moon, and his confinement in an ark. But that distinguished writer merely gives the hint, which the learned Bryant aids us to pursue, by bringing modern travellers to corroborate the ancient authorities: the drawings of Pocock from the sun temple of Luxor to illustrate Plutarch, Curtius, and Diodorus. Bryant comes to the same conclusion with regard to Osiris enclosed in the ark, which we adopt regarding Vishnu’s repose during the four months of inundation, the period of fertilization. I have already, in the rites of Annapurna, the Isis of the Egyptians, noticed the crescent form of the ark of Osiris, as well as the ram’s-head ornaments indicative of the vernal equinox, which the Egyptians called Phamenoth, being the birthday of Osiris, or the sun; the Phag, or Phalgun month of the Hindus; the Phagesia of the Greeks, sacred to Dionysus.[4.22.67]
=The Argonauts.=—The expedition of Argonauts in search of the golden fleece is a version of the arkite worship of Osiris, the Dolayatra of the Hindus: and Sanskrit etymology, applied to the vessel of the Argonauts, will give the sun (argha) god’s (natha) entrance into the sign of the Ram. The Tauric and Hydra foes, with which Jason had to contend before he obtained the fleece of Aries, are the symbols of the sun-god, both of the Ganges and the Nile; and this fable, which has occupied almost every pen of antiquity, is clearly astronomical, as the names alone of the Arghanath, sons of Apollo, Mars, Mercury, Sol, Arcus or Argus,[4.22.68] Jupiter, Bacchus, etc., sufficiently testify, whose voyage is entirely celestial.
=Egyptian Influence on Hindu Mythology.=—If it be destined that any portion of the veil which covers these ancient mysteries [602], connecting those of the Ganges with the Nile, shall be removed, it will be from the interpretation of the expedition of Rama, hitherto deemed almost as allegorical as that of the Arghanaths. I shall at once assume an opinion I have long entertained, that the western coast of the Red Sea was the Lanka of the memorable exploit in the history of the Hindus. If Alexander from the mouths of the Indus ventured to navigate those seas with his frail fleet of barks constructed in the Panjab, what might we not expect from the resources of the King of Kosala, the descendant of Sagara, emphatically called the sea-king, whose “60,000 sons” were so many mariners, and who has left his name as a memorial of his marine power at the island (Sagar) at the embouchure of the main arm of the Ganges, and to the ocean itself, also called Sagara? If the embarkation of Ramesa and his heroes for the redemption of Sita had been from the Gulph of Cutch, the grand emporium from the earliest ages, the voyage of Rama would have been but the prototype of that of the Macedonians; but local tradition has sanctified Rameswaram, the southern part of the peninsula, as the rendezvous of his armament. The currents in the Straits of Manar, curiosity, or a wish to obtain auxiliaries from this insular kingdom, may have prompted the visit to Ceylon; and hence the vestiges there found of this event. But even from this “utmost isle, Taprobane,” the voyage across the Erythrean Sea is only twenty-five degrees of longitude, which with a flowing sail they would run down in ten or twelve days. The only difficulty which occurs is in the synchronical existence of Rama and the Pharaoh[4.22.69] of Moses, which would tend to the opposite of my hypothesis, and show that India received her Phallic rites, her architecture, and symbolic mythology from the Nile, instead of planting them there.
“Est-ce l’Inde, la Phénicie, l’Éthiopie, la Chaldée, ou l’Égypte, qui a vu naître ce culte? ou bien le type en a-t-il été fourni aux habitans de ces contrées, par une nation plus ancienne encore?” asks an ingenious but anonymous French author, on the origin of the Phallic worship.[4.22.70] Ramesa, chief of the Suryas, or sun-born race, was king of the city designated from his mother, Kausalya, of which Ayodhya was the capital. His sons were Lava and Kusa, who originated the races we may term the Lavites and Kushites, or Kushwas of India.[4.22.71] Was then Kausalya [603] the mother of Ramesa, a native of Aethiopia,[4.22.72] or Kusadwipa, ‘the land of Cush’? Rama and Krishna are both painted blue (nila), holding the lotus, emblematic of the Nile. Their names are often identified. Ram-Krishna, the bird-headed divinity, is painted as the messenger of each, and the historians of both were contemporaries. That both were real princes there is no doubt, though Krishna assumed to be an incarnation of Vishnu, as Rama was of the sun. Of Rama’s family was Trisankha,[4.22.73] mother of the great apostle of Buddha, whose symbol was the serpent; and the followers of Buddha assert that Krishna and this apostle, whose statues are facsimiles of those of Memnon, were cousins. Were the Hermetic creed and Phallic rites therefore received from the Ethiopic Cush? Could emblematic relics be discovered in the caves of the Troglodytes, who inhabited the range of mountains on the Cushite shore of the Arabian straits, akin to those of Ellora and Elephanta,[4.22.74] whose style discloses physical, mythological, as well as architectural affinity to the Egyptian, the question would at once be set at rest.
I have derived the Phallus from Phalisa, the chief fruit. The Greeks, who either borrowed it from the Egyptians or had it from the same source, typified the Fructifier by a pineapple, the form of which resembles the Sitaphala,[4.22.75] or fruit of Sita, whose rape by Ravana carried Rama from the Ganges over many countries ere he recovered her.[4.22.76] In like manner Gauri, the Rajput Ceres, is typified under the coco-nut, or sriphala,[4.22.77] the chief of fruit, or fruit sacred to Sri, or Isa (Isis), whose other elegant emblem of abundance, the kamakumbha, is drawn with branches of the palmyra,[4.22.78] or coco-tree, gracefully pendent from the vase (kumbha).
The Sriphala[4.22.79] is accordingly presented to all the votaries of Iswara and Isa on the conclusion of the spring-festival of Phalguna, the Phagesia of the Greeks, the [604] Phamenoth of the Egyptian, and the Saturnalia of antiquity; a rejoicing at the renovation of the powers of nature; the empire of heat over cold—of light over darkness.[4.22.80]
The analogy between the goddess of the spring Saturnalia, Phalguni, and the Phagesia of the Greeks, will excite surprise; the word is not derived from (φαγεῖν) eating, with the Rajput votaries of Holika, as with those of the Dionysia of the Greeks; but from phalguni, compounded of guna, ‘quality, virtue, or characteristic,’ and phala, ‘fruit’; in short, the fructifier. From φαλλός,[4.22.81] to which there is no definite meaning, the Egyptian had the festival Phallica, the Holika of the Hindus. Phula and phala, flower and fruit, are the roots of all, Floralia and Phalaria, the Phallus of Osiris, the Thyrsus of Bacchus, or Lingam of Iswara, symbolized by the Sriphala, or Ananas, the ‘food of the gods,’[4.22.82] or the Sitaphala of the Helen of Ayodhya.
From the existence of this worship in Congo at this day, the author already quoted asks if it may not have originated in Ethiopia, “qui, comme le témoignent plusieurs écrivains de l’antiquité, a fourni ses dieux à l’Égypte.“ On the first of the five complementary days called ”ἠπαγόμεναι ἡμέραι” preceding New Year’s Day, the Egyptians celebrated the birth of the sun-god Osiris, in a similar manner as the Hindus do their solstitial festival, “the morning of the gods,” the Hiul of Scandinavia; on which occasion, “on promenait en procession une figure d’Osiris, dont le Phallus était triple”; a number, he adds, expressing “la pluralité indéfinie.” The number three is sacred to Iswara, chief of the Trimurti or Triad, whose statue adorns the junction (sangam) of all triple streams; hence called Triveni, who is [605] Trinetra, or ‘three-eyed,’ and Tridanta, or ‘god of the trident’; Triloka, ‘god of the triple abode, heaven, earth, and hell’; Tripura, of the triple city, to whom the Tripoli or triple gates are sacred, and of which he has made Ganesa the Janitor, or guardian. The grotesque figure placed by the Hindus during the Saturnalia in the highways, and called Nathurama (the god Rama), is the counterpart of the figure described by Plutarch as representing Osiris, “ce soleil printanier,” in the Egyptian Saturnalia or Phamenoth. Even Ramisa and Ravana may, like Osiris and Typhon, be merely the ideal representatives of light and darkness; and the chaste Sita, spouse of the Surya prince, the astronomical Virgo, only a zodiacal sign.[4.22.83]
=Wide Extension of Hindu Mythology.=—That a system of Hinduism pervaded the whole Babylonian and Assyrian empires, Scripture furnishes abundant proofs, in the mention of the various types of the sun-god Balnath, whose pillar adorned “every mount” and “every grove”; and to whose other representative, the brazen calf (nandi), the 15th of each month (amavas)[4.22.84] was especially sacred. It was not confined to these celebrated regions of the East, but was disseminated throughout the earth; because from the Aral to the Baltic, colonies were planted from that central region,[4.22.85] the cradle of the Suryas and the Indus, whose branches (sakha),[4.22.86] the Yavan, the Aswa, and the Meda, were the progenitors of the Ionians, the Assyrians, and the Medes;[4.22.87] while in later times, from the same teeming region, the Galati and Getae,[4.22.88] the Kelts and Goths, carried modifications of the system to the shores of Armorica and the Baltic, the cliffs of Caledonia, and the remote isles of the German Ocean. The monumental circles sacred to the sun-god Belenus at once existing in that central region,[4.22.89] in India,[4.22.90] and throughout Europe, is conclusive. The apotheosis of the patriarch Noah, whom the Hindu styles Manu-Vaivaswata, ‘the man, son of the sun,’ may have originated the Dolayatra of the Hindus, the ark of Osiris [606], the ship of Isis amongst the Suevi, in memory of “the forty days” noticed in the traditions of every nation of the earth.
The time may be approaching when this worship in the East, like the Egyptian, shall be only matter of tradition; although this is not likely to be effected by such summary means as were adopted by Cambyses, who slew the sacred Apis and whipped his priests, while their Greek and Roman conquerors adopted and embellished the Pantheon of the Nile.[4.22.91] But when Christianity reared her severe yet simple form, the divinities of the Nile, the Pantheon of Rome, and the Acropolis of Athens, could not abide her awful majesty. The temples of the Alexandrian Serapis were levelled by Theophilus,[4.22.92] while that of Osiris at Memphis became a church of Christ. “Muni de ses pouvoirs, et escorté d’une foule de moines, il mit en fuite les prêtres, brisa les idoles, démolit les temples, ou y établit des monastères.”[4.22.93] The period for thus subverting idolatry is passed: the religion of Christ is not of the sword, but one enjoining peace and goodwill on earth. But as from him “to whom much is given,” much will be required, the good and benevolent of the Hindu nations may have ulterior advantages over those Pharisees who would make a monopoly even of the virtues; who “see the mote in their neighbour’s eye, but cannot discern the beam in their own.” While, therefore, we strive to impart a purer taste and better faith, let us not imagine that the minds of those we would reform are the seats of impurity, because, in accordance with an idolatry coeval with the flood, they continue to worship mysteries opposed to our own modes of thinking [607].
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Footnote 4.22.1:
Nauratri may be interpreted the nine days’ festival, or the ‘new night’ [?].
Footnote 4.22.2:
“It was natural enough,” says Gibbon, “that the Scythians should adore with peculiar devotion the god of war; but as they were incapable of forming either an abstract idea, or a corporeal representation, they worshipped their tutelar deity under the symbol of an iron cimeter. If the rites of Scythia were practised on this solemn occasion,[4.22.2.A] a lofty altar, or rather pile of faggots, three hundred yards in length and in breadth, was raised in a spacious plain; and the sword of Mars was placed erect on the summit of this rustic altar, which was annually consecrated by the blood of sheep, horses, and of the hundredth captive” (Gibbon’s Roman Empire, ed. W. Smith, iv. 194 f.).
Footnote 4.22.2.A:
Attila dictating the terms of peace with the envoys of Constantinople, at the city of Margus, in Upper Moesia.
Footnote 4.22.3:
St. Palaye, Memoirs of Ancient Chivalry, p. 305.
Footnote 4.22.4:
Raj Jogi is the chief of the ascetic warriors; the Mahants are commanders [the term being usually applied to the abbot of a monastery]. More will be said of this singular society when we discuss the religious institutions of Mewar.
Footnote 4.22.5:
The god Krishna is called Kishan in the dialects.
Footnote 4.22.6:
This is the sthapana of the sword, literally its inauguration or induction, for the purposes of adoration.
Footnote 4.22.7:
Tripolia, or triple portal.
Footnote 4.22.8:
[The chief centres of worship of Harsiddh Māta are Gāndhari and Ujjain. It is said that her image stood on the sea-shore, and that she used to swallow all the vessels that passed by (R. E. Enthoven, Folklore Notes Gujarāt, 5; BG, ix. Part i. 226).]
Footnote 4.22.9:
[Formerly an important personage, but his authority has now much decreased (BG, ix. Part i. 96).]
Footnote 4.22.10:
On this day sons visit and pay adoration to their fathers. The diet is chiefly of vegetables and fruits. Brahmans with their unmarried daughters are feasted, and receive garments called chunri from their chiefs. [This is a kind of cloth dyed by partly tying it in knots, which escape the action of the dye.]
Footnote 4.22.11:
The Jogi’s patra is not so revolting as that of their divinity Hara (the god of war), which is the human cranium; this is a hollow gourd.
Footnote 4.22.12:
From das, the numeral ten; the tenth. [It means ‘the feast that removes ten sins.’]
Footnote 4.22.13:
In this ancient story we are made acquainted with the distant maritime wars which the princes of India carried on. Even supposing Ravana’s abode to be the insular Ceylon, he must have been a very powerful prince to equip an armament sufficiently numerous to carry off from the remote kingdom of Kosala the wife of the great king of the Suryas. It is most improbable that a petty king of Ceylon could wage equal war with a potentate who held the chief dominion of India; whose father, Dasaratha, drove his victorious car (ratha) over every region (desa), and whose intercourse with the countries beyond the Brahmaputra is distinctly to be traced in the Ramayana. [Dasaratha has no connexion with desa: the name means ‘he who possesses ten (dasa) chariots (ratha).’]
Footnote 4.22.14:
[Prosopis spicigera.]
Footnote 4.22.15:
“A la première lune de chaque année, tous ces officiers, grands et petits, tenoient une assemblée générale à la cour du Tanjou, et y faisoient un sacrifice solennel: à la cinquième lune, ils s’assembloient à Lumtching, où ils sacrifioient au ciel, à la terre, aux esprits, et aux ancêtres. Il se tenoit encore une grande assemblée à Tai-lin dans l’automne, parce qu’alors les chevaux étoient plus gras, et on y faisoit en même-tems le dénombrement des hommes et des troupeaux; mais tous les jours le Tanjou sortoit de son camp, le matin pour adorer le soleil, et le soir la lune. Sa tente étoit placée à gauche, comme le côté le plus honorable chez ces peuples, et regardoit le couchant” (Avant J.-C. 209; L’Histoire Générale des Huns, vol. i. p. 24).
Footnote 4.22.16:
[There is no Skt. word pola, ‘gate’; the Hindi pol, paul is Skt. pura dvāra, ‘city entrance.’]
Footnote 4.22.17:
[The words pol and pāl are not connected.]
Footnote 4.22.18:
Hence may be found a good etymology of janizary, the guardian of the serai, a title left by the lords of Eastern Rome for the Porte. [Turkish yeni-tsheri, ‘new soldiery.’]
Footnote 4.22.19:
In Sanskrit gana (pronounced as gun), the jinn of the Persians, transmuted to genii; here is another instance in point of the alternation of the initial, and softened by being transplanted from Indo-Scythia to Persia, as Ganes was Janus at Rome. [Gana and Jinn, Ganesa and Janus, have no connexion.
Footnote 4.22.20:
The Casius Mons of Ptolemy. [The derivation of the word Caucasus is unknown.]
Footnote 4.22.21:
Parvati, ‘the mountain goddess,’ was called Sati, or ‘the faithful,’ in her former birth. She became the mother of Jahnavi, the river (Ganga) goddess.
Footnote 4.22.22:
Karttikeya, the son of Siva and Parvati, the Jupiter and Juno of the Hindu theogony, has the leading of the armies of the gods, delegated by his father; and his mother has presented to him her peacock, which is the steed of this warlike divinity. He is called Karttikeya from being nursed by six females called Krittika, who inhabit six of the seven stars composing the constellation of the Wain, or Ursa Major. Thus the Hindu Mars, born of Jupiter and Juno, and nursed by Ursa Major, is, like all other theogonies, an astronomical allegory. There is another legend of the birth of Mars, which I shall give in the text.
Footnote 4.22.23:
This elephant-headed divinity has but one tusk.
Footnote 4.22.24:
The bard thus modestly designates himself.
Footnote 4.22.25:
Chief (isa) of the gana (genii) or attendants on Siva.
Footnote 4.22.26:
So he was at Rome, and his statue held the keys of heaven in his right hand, and, like Ganesa, a rod (the ankus) in his left.
Footnote 4.22.27:
[The rat is the emblem of Ganesa probably because, like Apollo Smintheus, he protects the crops from vermin (Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3rd ed. Part v. vol. ii. 282 f.).]
Footnote 4.22.28:
[Persian āhanak, ‘a sword of steel.’]
Footnote 4.22.29:
[Anabasis, vii. 2.]
Footnote 4.22.30:
The Gothic invaders of Italy inaugurated their monarch by placing him upon a shield, and elevating him on their shoulders in the midst of his army.
Footnote 4.22.31:
All these proper names might have Oriental etymologies assigned to them; Eyvor-sail is the name of a celebrated Rajput hero of the Bhatti tribe, who were driven at an early period from the very heart of Scythia, and are of Yadu race.
Footnote 4.22.32:
This word can have a Sanskrit derivation from haya, ‘a horse’; marna, ‘to strike or kill’; Hjalmr, ‘the horse-slayer.’ [These theories are of no value.]
Footnote 4.22.33:
The custom of engraving incantations on weapons is also from the East, and thence adopted by the Muhammadan, as well as the use of phylacteries. The name of the goddess guarding the tribe is often inscribed, and I have had an entire copy of the Bhagavadgita taken from the turban of a Rajput killed in action: in like manner the Muhammadans place therein the Koran.
Footnote 4.22.34:
The metaphorical name of the sword Tyrfing.
Footnote 4.22.35:
I have already mentioned these fires (see p. 89), which the northern nations believed to issue from the tombs of their heroes, and which seemed to guard their ashes; them they called Hauga Elldr, or ‘the sepulchral fires,’ and they were supposed more especially to surround tombs which contained hidden treasures. These supernatural fires are termed Shihaba by the Rajputs. When the intrepid Scandinavian maiden observes that she is not afraid of the flame burning her, she is bolder than one of the boldest Rajputs, for Sri-kishan, who was shocked at the bare idea of going near these sepulchral lights, was one of the three non-commissioned officers who afterwards led thirty-two firelocks to the attack and defeat of 1500 Pindaris.
Footnote 4.22.36:
Like the Rajput Khanda, Tyrfing was double-edged; the poison of these edges is a truly Oriental idea.
Footnote 4.22.37:
This poem is from the Hervarer Saga, an ancient Icelandic history. See Edda, vol. ii. p. 192.
Footnote 4.22.38:
The Vulcan of the Hindus.
Footnote 4.22.39:
For an account of the initiation to arms of Bappa, the founder of the Guhilots, see p. 264 [Vol. I.].
Footnote 4.22.40:
See p. 311 [Vol. I.].
Footnote 4.22.41:
The Mori prince, from whom Bappa took Chitor, was of the Tak or Takshak race [?], of whom Nagnaicha or Nagini Mata was the mother, represented as half woman and half serpent; the sister of the mother of the Scythic race, according to their legends; so that the deeper we dive into these traditions, the stronger reason we shall find to assign a Scythic origin to all these tribes. As Bappa, the founder of the Guhilots, retired into Scythia and left his heirs to rule in India, I shall find fault with no antiquary who will throw overboard all the connexion between Kanaksen, the founder of the Valabhi empire, and Sumitra, the last of Rama’s line. Many rites of the Rama’s house are decidedly Scythic.
Footnote 4.22.42:
[Lovely maidens.]
Footnote 4.22.43:
See p. 317 [Vol. I.].
Footnote 4.22.44:
[“The kernel of the Rāmāyana was composed before 500 B.C., while the more recent portions was probably not added till the second century B.C., and later” (Macdonell, Hist. Sanskrit Literature, 309).]
Footnote 4.22.45:
One of the names of the divinity of war, whose images are covered with vermilion in imitation of blood. (Qy. the German roodur, ‘red’)[596]. [Rudra, ‘the roarer,’ originally “god of storms.”]
Footnote 4.22.46:
The Pleiades.
Footnote 4.22.47:
The festival of the birth of this son of Ganga, or Jahnavi, is on the 10th of Jeth. Sir W. Jones gives the following couplet from the Sancha: “On the 10th of Jyaishtha, on the bright half of the month, on the day of Mangala,[4.22.47.A] son of the earth, when the moon was in Hasta, this daughter of Jahnu brought from the rocks, and ploughed over the land inhabited by mortals.”
Footnote 4.22.47.A:
Mangala is one of the names (and perhaps one of the oldest) of the Hindu Mars (Kumara), to whom the Wodens-dag of the Northmen, the Mardi of the French, the Dies Martis of the Romans, are alike sacred. Mangala also means ‘happy,’ the reverse of the origin of Mongol, said to mean ‘sad’ [‘brave’]. The juxtaposition of the Rajput and Scandinavian days of the week will show that they have the same origin:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rajput Scandinavian and Saxon. Suryavar Sun-day. Som, or Induvar Moon-day. Budhvar Tuis-day. Mangalvar Wodens-day. Brihaspativar[a] Thors-day. Sukravar[b] Frey-day. Sani, or } -var Satur-day[c] Sanichara }
------------------------------------------------------------------------
(a) Brihaspati, ‘he who rides on the bull’; the steed of the Rajput god of war [probably ‘lord of prayer,’ or ‘of increase,’ confounded in the original note with Vrishapati, ‘Lord of the bull,’ a title of Siva.]]
(b) Sukra is a Cyclop, regent of the planet Venus.]
(c) [See Max Müller, Selected Essays, 1881, ii. 460 ff.]]
Footnote 4.22.48:
[Kumāra probably means ‘easily dying.’]
Footnote 4.22.49:
It will be recollected that the moon with the Rajputs as with the Scandinavians is a male divinity. The Tatars, who also consider him a male divinity, pay him especial adoration in this autumnal month.
Footnote 4.22.50:
[Apsaras means ‘going in the waters, or in the waters of the clouds.’]
Footnote 4.22.51:
[The owl is a bird of ill omen, and does not seem to be associated with Lakshmi except in Bengal.]
Footnote 4.22.52:
The Hindu god of riches.
Footnote 4.22.53:
Yamala is the great god of the Finlanders (Clarke).
Footnote 4.22.54:
From go, ‘a cow’ [dhūli, ‘the dust raised by them as they return to the stall’].F
Footnote 4.22.55:
See anecdote in Chap. 21, which elucidates this practice of princes becoming herdsmen.
Footnote 4.22.56:
Matsya Purana. [Vishnu is generally said to wake on the Deothān, 11th light half of Kārttik.]
Footnote 4.22.57:
[Makara, a kind of shark or sea-monster, marks the 10th sign of the Zodiac, Capricorn.]
Footnote 4.22.58:
Iswara, Isa, or as pronounced, Is.
Footnote 4.22.59:
[Monier-Williams in his Sanskrit Dict. records no such form as phalīsa. φαλλός = Lat. palus, English pole, pale. The Author follows Wilford (Asiatic Researches, iii. 135 f.).]
Footnote 4.22.60:
‘The land of the sun’ (aditya). [This is impossible. The true derivation is unknown; to the Greeks the word meant ‘swarthy-faced.’]
Footnote 4.22.61:
Ferishta calls the Indus the Nilab, or ‘blue waters’; it is also called Abusin, the ‘father of streams.’
Footnote 4.22.62:
According to Diodorus Siculus. [Rudra-Siva has a benign side to his character, and may be associated with the Sun (R. G. Bhandarkar, Vaisnavism, Saivism and Minor Religious Systems, 105). But the Author, in his constant references to “Bāl”-Siva, has pressed this conception to an excessive length.]
Footnote 4.22.63:
The vulture and crane, which soar high in the heavens, are also called garuda, and vulgarly gidh. The ibis is of the crane or heron kind.
Footnote 4.22.64:
Phaeton was the son of Cephalus and Aurora. The former answers to the Hindu bird-headed messenger of the sun. Aruna is the Aurora of the Greeks, who with more taste have given the dawn a female character.
Footnote 4.22.65:
Also called Dolayatra.
Footnote 4.22.66:
Bhagavat and Matsya Puranas. See Sir W. Jones on the lunar year of the Hindus, Asiatic Researches, vol. iii. p. 286.
Footnote 4.22.67:
[Mr. F. Ll. Griffith tells me that this comes from a French translation of Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, cap. xii. (birth of Osiris on the first of the epagomenal days). This entry of Osiris into the moon seems to mean his conception rather than his birth. Φαμενώθ is the name of the seventh month, about 25th February.]
Footnote 4.22.68:
Arka, ‘the sun,’ in Sanskrit. [This is due to Wilford (Asiatic Researches, iii. 134) and is, of course, impossible.]
Footnote 4.22.69:
Pha-ra is but a title, ‘the king.’ [Egyptian Pro, ‘the great house.’]
Footnote 4.22.70:
Des divinités génératives: ou du culte du Phallus chez les anciens et les modernes (Paris).
Footnote 4.22.71:
Of the former race the Ranas of Mewar, of the latter the princes of Narwar and Amber, are the representatives.
Footnote 4.22.72:
Aethiopia, ‘the country of the sun’; from Ait, contraction of Aditya. Aegypt may have the same etymology, Aitia [see p. 699 above].
Footnote 4.22.73:
[The Author may refer to Pārsvanātha, 23rd Jain Tīrthakara, whose symbol was his serpent; but his mother was Vāmadevi. Trisala was mother of the 24th Tīrthakara, Mahāvira or Vardhamāna, but his cognizance was a lion.]
Footnote 4.22.74:
It is absurd to talk of these being modern; decipher the characters thereon, and then pronounce their antiquity. [Ellora, 5th to 9th or 10th centuries A.D.; Elephanta, 8th to 10th (IGI, xii. 22, 4).]
Footnote 4.22.75:
Vulg. Sharifa.
Footnote 4.22.76:
Rama subjected her to the fiery ordeal, to discover whether her virtue had suffered while thus forcibly separated.
Footnote 4.22.77:
Vulg. Nariyal.
Footnote 4.22.78:
Palmyra is Sanskrit corrupted, and affords the etymology of Solomon’s city of the desert, Tadmor. The ﺙ p, by the retrenchment of a single diacritical point, becomes ت t; and the ل (l) and د (d) being permutable, Pal becomes Tad, or Tal—the Palmyra, which is the Mor, or chief of trees; hence Tadmor, from its date-trees [?].
Footnote 4.22.79:
The Jayaphala, ‘the fruit of victory,’ is the nutmeg; or, as a native of Java, Javuphala, ‘fruit of Java,’ is most probably derived from Jayadiva, ‘the victorious isle.’ [The nutmeg is Jātiphala: Java is yavadwīpa, ‘island of barley.’]
Footnote 4.22.80:
The Kamari of the Saura tribes, or sun-worshippers of Saurashtra, claims descent from the bird-god of Vishnu (who aided Rama[4.22.80.A] to the discovery of Sita), and the Makara[4.22.80.B] or crocodile, and date the monstrous conception from that event, and their original abode from Sankodra Bet, or island of Sankodra. Whether to the Dioscorides at the entrance of the Arabian Gulf this name was given, evidently corrupted from Sankhadwara to Socotra, we shall not stop to inquire. Like the isle in the entrance of the Gulf of Cutch, it is the dwara or portal to the Sinus Arabicus, and the pearl-shell (sankha) there abounds. This tribe deduce their origin from Rama’s expedition, and allege that their Icthyiopic mother landed them where they still reside. Wild as is this fable, it adds support to this hypothesis. [The Sanskrit name of Bet Island (“Bate” in the text) is Sankhuddhāra, from the conch fishery. Socotra is Dwīpa Sukhadāra, ‘island of pleasure’ (not Sakhādāra, as in EB, xxv. 355) (Yule, Marco Polo, 1st ed. ii. 342).]
Footnote 4.22.80.A:
Rama and Vishnu interchange characters.
Footnote 4.22.80.B:
It is curious that the designation of the tribe Kamar is a transposition of Makar, for the final letter of each is mute.
Footnote 4.22.81:
See Lempriere, arts. Phagesia and Phallica. “L’Abbé Mignot pense que le Phallus est originaire de l’Assyrie et de la Chaldée, et que c’est de ce pays que l’usage de consacrer ce symbole de la génération a passé en Égypte. Il croit, d’après le savant Le Clerc, que le nom de ce symbole est phénicien: qu’il dérive de Phalou qui, dans cette langue, signifie une chose secrète et cachée, et du verbe phala, qui veut dire être tenu secret.”[4.22.81.A]
Footnote 4.22.81.A:
Des divinités génératives.
Footnote 4.22.82:
Anna, ‘food,’ and asa or isa, ‘the god.’ [Ananas comes from Brazilian Nana or Nanas (Yule, Hobson-Jobson, 2nd ed. 25).]
Footnote 4.22.83:
[It is unnecessary to discuss these theories, which are based on incorrect assumptions and obsolete etymologies.]
Footnote 4.22.84:
The Hindus divide the month into two portions called pakh or fortnights. The first is termed badi, reckoning from the 1st to the 15th, which day of partition is called amavas, answering to the Ides of the Romans, and held by the Hindus as it was by the Jews in great sanctity. The last division is termed sudi, and they recommence with the initial numeral, thence to the 30th or completion, called punim; thus instead of the 16th, 17th, etc., of the month, they say Sudi ekam (1st), Sudi duj (3rd).
Footnote 4.22.85:
Sogdiana and Transoxiana.
Footnote 4.22.86:
Hence the word Saka [?].
Footnote 4.22.87:
See Genealogical Table No. 2 for these names. The sons of the three Midas, pronounced Mede, founded kingdoms at the precise point of time, according to calculation from the number of kings, that Assyria was founded.
Footnote 4.22.88:
The former were more pastoral, and hence the origin of their name, corrupted to Keltoi. The Getae or Jats pursued the hunter’s occupation, living more by the chase, though these occupations are generally conjoined in the early stages of civilization.
Footnote 4.22.89:
Rubruquis and other travellers.
Footnote 4.22.90:
Colonel Mackenzie’s invaluable and gigantic collection.
Footnote 4.22.91:
Isis and Osiris, Serapis and Canopus, Apis and Ibis, adopted by the Romans, whose temples and images, yet preserved, will allow full scope to the Hindu antiquary for analysis of both systems. The temple of Serapis at Pozzuoli is quite Hindu in its ground plan.
Footnote 4.22.92:
In the reign of Theodosius.
Footnote 4.22.93:
Du Culte, etc., etc., p. 47.
-----
Chapter 23
=The Character of the Rājput. Influence of Custom.=—The manners of a nation constitute the most interesting portion of its history, but a thorough knowledge of them must be the fruit of long and attentive observation: an axiom which applies to a people even less inaccessible than the Rajputs. The importance and necessity of such an illustration of the Rajput character, in a work like the present, call for and sanction the attempt, however inadequate the means. Of what value to mankind would be the interminable narrative of battles, were their moral causes and results passed by unheeded? Although both the Persian and Hindu annalists not unfrequently unite the characters of moralist and historian, it is in a manner unsuitable to the subject, according to the more refined taste of Europe. In the poetic annals of the Rajput, we see him check his war-chariot, and when he should be levelling his javelin, commence a discourse upon ethics; or when the battle is over, the Nestor or Ulysses of the host converts his tent into a lyceum, and delivers lectures on morals or manners. But the reflections which should follow, and form the corollary to each action, are never given; and even if they were, though we might comprehend the moral movements of a nation, we should still be unable to catch the minute shades of character that complete the picture of domestic life, and which are to be collected from those familiar sentiments uttered in social intercourse, when the mind unbends and nature throws aside the trammels of education and of ceremony. Such a picture would represent the manners, which are continually undergoing modifications, in contradistinction to the morals of society; the latter, having a fixed creed for their basis, are definite and unchangeable. The chal of the Rajput, like the mores of the Romans, or costumi of modern Italy, is significant alike of mental and external habit. In the moral point of view it is the path chalked out for him by the sages of antiquity [608]; in the personal, it is that which custom has rendered immutable. Kaisi buri chal men chalta, ‘in what a bad path does he march!’ says the moralist: Bap, Dada ki chal chhori, ‘he abandons the usages of his ancestors,’ says the stickler for custom, in Rajasthan.[4.23.1]
=Rājput Morals.=—The grand features of morality are few, and nearly the same in every nation not positively barbarous. The principles contained in the Decalogue form the basis of every code—of Manu and of Muhammad, as well as of Moses. These are grand landmarks of the truth of divine history; and are confirmed by the less important traits of personal customs and religious rites, which nations the most remote from each other continue to hold in common. The Koran we know to have been founded on the Mosaic law; the Sastra of Manu, unconsciously, approaches still more to the Jewish Scriptures in spirit and intention; and from its pages might be formed a manual of moral instruction, which, if followed by the disciples of the framer, might put more favoured societies to the blush.
=Variety of Customs due to Environment.=—As it has been observed in a former part of this work, the same religion governing all must tend to produce a certain degree of mental uniformity. The shades of moral distinction which separate these races are almost imperceptible: while you cannot pass any grand natural barrier without having the dissimilarity of customs and manners forced upon your observation. Whoever passes from upland Mewar, the country of the Sesodias, into the sandy flats of Marwar, the abode of the Rathors, would feel the force of this remark. Innovations proceeding from external causes, such as conquest by irreligious foes, and the birth of new sects and schisms, operate important changes in manners and customs. We can only pretend, however, to describe facts which are obvious, and those which history discloses, whence some notions may be formed of the prevailing traits of character in the Rajput; his ideas of virtue and vice, the social intercourse and familiar courtesies of Rajasthan, and their recreations, public and private.
“The manners of a people,” says the celebrated Goguet, “always bear a proportion to the progress they have made in the arts and sciences.” If by this test we trace the analogy between past and existing manners amongst the Rajputs, we must conclude at once that they have undergone a decided deterioration. Where can we look for sages like those whose systems of philosophy were the [609] prototypes of those of Greece: to whose works Plato, Thales, and Pythagoras were disciples? Where shall we find the astronomers, whose knowledge of the planetary system yet excites wonder in Europe, as well as the architects and sculptors, whose works claim our admiration, and the musicians, “who could make the mind oscillate from joy to sorrow, from tears to smiles, with the change of modes and varied intonation.”[4.23.2] The manners of those days must have corresponded with this advanced stage of refinement, as they must have suffered from its decline: yet the homage paid by Asiatics to precedent has preserved many relics of ancient customs, which have survived the causes that produced them.
PORTRAITS OF A RĀJPUTNI, A RĀJPUT, A MEWĀTI AND GUSĀĪN. To face page 708.
=Treatment of Women by the Rājputs.=—It is universally admitted that there is no better criterion of the refinement of a nation than the condition Of the fair sex therein. As it is elegantly expressed by Comte Ségur, “Leur sort est une boussole sûre pour le premier regard d’un étranger qui arrive dans un pays inconnu.”[4.23.3] Unfortunately, the habitual seclusion of the higher classes of females in the East contracts the sphere of observation in regard to their influence on society; but, to borrow again from our ingenious author, “les hommes font les lois, les femmes font les mœurs”; and their incarceration in Rajasthan by no means lessens the application of the adage to that country. Like the magnetic power, however latent, their attraction is not the less certain. “C’est aux hommes à faire des grandes choses, c’est aux femmes à les inspirer,” is a maxim to which every Rajput cavalier would subscribe, with whom the age of chivalry is not fled, though ages of oppression have passed over him. He knows there is no retreat into which the report of a gallant action will not penetrate, and set fair hearts in motion to be the object of his search. The bards, those chroniclers of fame, like the Jongleurs of old, have everywhere access, to the palace as to the hamlet; and a brilliant exploit travels with all the rapidity of a comet, and clothed with the splendid decorations of poetry, from the Indian desert to the valley of the Jumna. If we cannot paint the Rajput dame as invested with all the privileges which Ségur assigns to the first woman, “compagne de l’homme et son égale, vivant par lui, pour lui, associée à son bonheur, à ses plaisirs, à la puissance qu’il exerçait sur ce vaste univers,” she is far removed from the condition which demands commiseration [610].
=The Seclusion of Women.=—Like the ancient German or Scandinavian, the Rajput consults her in every transaction; from her ordinary actions he draws the omen of success, and he appends to her name the epithet of devi, or ‘godlike.’ The superficial observer, who applies his own standard to the customs of all nations, laments with an affected philanthropy the degraded condition of the Hindu female, in which sentiment he would find her little disposed to join. He particularly laments her want of liberty, and calls her seclusion imprisonment. Although I cordially unite with Ségur, who is at issue with his compatriot Montesquieu on this part of discipline, yet from the knowledge I do possess of the freedom, the respect, the happiness, which Rajput women enjoy, I am by no means inclined to deplore their state as one of captivity. The author of the Spirit of Laws, with the views of a closet philosopher, deems seclusion necessary from the irresistible influence of climate on the passions; while the chivalrous Ségur, with more knowledge of human nature, draws the very opposite conclusion, asserting all restraints to be injurious to morals. Of one thing we are certain, seclusion of females could only originate in a moderately advanced stage of civilization. Amongst hunters, pastors, and cultivators, the women were required to aid in all external pursuits, as well as internal economy. The Jews secluded not their women, and the well, where they assembled to draw water, was the place where marriages were contracted, as with the lower classes in Rajputana. The inundations of the Nile, each house of whose fertile valleys was isolated, is said to have created habits of secluding women with the Egyptians; and this argument might apply to the vast valleys of the Indus and Ganges first inhabited, and which might have diffused example with the spread of population. Assuredly, if India was colonized from the cradle of nations, Central Asia, they did not thence bring these notions within the Indus; for the Scythian women went to the opposite extreme, and were polyandrists.[4.23.4] The desire of eradicating those impure habits, described by Herodotus, that the slipper at the tent-door should no longer be a sign, may have originated the opposite extreme in a life of entire seclusion. Both polygamy and polyandry originated in a mistaken view of the animal economy, and of the first great command to people the earth: the one was general amongst all the nations [611] of antiquity; the other rare, though to be found in Scythia, India, and even amongst the Natchez, in the new world; but never with the Rajput, with whom monogamy existed during the patriarchal ages of India, as amongst the Egyptians.[4.23.5] Of all the nations of the world who have habituated the female to a restricted intercourse with society, whether Grecian, Roman, Egyptian, or Chinese, the Rajput has given least cause to provoke the sentiment of pity; for if deference and respect be proofs of civilization, Rajputana must be considered as redundant in evidence of it. The uxoriousness of the Rajput might be appealed to as indicative of the decay of national morals; “chez les barbares (says Ségur) les femmes ne sont rien: les mœurs de ces peuples s’adoucissent-t’-elles, on compte les femmes pour quelque chose: enfin, se corrompent-elles, les femmes sont tout”; and whether from this decay, or the more probable and amiable cause of seeking, in their society, consolation for the loss of power and independence, the women are nearly everything with the Rajput.
It is scarcely fair to quote Manu as an authority for the proper treatment of the fair sex, since many of his dicta by no means tend to elevate their condition. In his lengthened catalogue of things pure and impure he says, however, “The mouth of a woman is constantly pure,”[4.23.6] and he ranks it with the running waters and the sunbeam; he suggests that their names should be “agreeable, soft, clear, captivating the fancy, auspicious, ending in long vowels, resembling words of benediction.”[4.23.7]
“Where females are honoured” (says Manu), “there the deities are pleased; but where dishonoured, there all religious rites become useless”: and he declares, “that in whatever house a woman not duly honoured pronounces an imprecation, that house, with all that belongs to it, shall utterly perish.”[4.23.8] “Strike not, even with a blossom, a wife guilty of a hundred faults,”[4.23.9] says another sage: a sentiment so delicate, that Reginald de Born, the prince of troubadours, never uttered any more refined.
However exalted the respect of the Rajput for the fair, he nevertheless holds that
Nothing lovelier can be found In woman, than to study household good [612].
=The Chief of Sādri and his Wife.=—In the most tempestuous period of the history of Mewar, when the Ranas broke asunder the bonds which united them to the other chiefs of Rajasthan, and bestowed their daughters on the foreign nobles incorporated with the higher class of their own kin, the chief of Sadri, so often mentioned, had obtained a princess to wife. There was a hazard to domestic happiness in such unequal alliance, which the lord of Sadri soon experienced. To the courteous request, “Ranawatji, fill me a cup of water,” he received a contemptuous refusal, with the remark, that “The daughter of a hundred kings would not become cup-bearer to the chieftain of Sadri.”—“Very well,” replied the plain soldier, “you may return to your father’s house, if you can be of no use in mine.” A messenger was instantly sent to the court, and the message, with every aggravation, was made known; and she followed on the heels of her messenger. A summons soon arrived for the Sadri chief to attend his sovereign at the capital. He obeyed; and arrived in time to give his explanation just as the Rana was proceeding to hold a full court. As usual, the Sadri chief was placed on his sovereign’s right hand, and when the court broke up, the heir-apparent of Mewar, at a preconcerted sign, stood at the edge of the carpet, performing the menial office of holding the slippers of the chief. Shocked at such a mark of extreme respect, he stammered forth some words of homage, his unworthiness, etc.; to which the Rana replied, “As my son-in-law, no distinction too great can be conferred: take home your wife, she will never again refuse you a cup of water” [613].[4.23.10]
Could authority deemed divine ensure obedience to what is considered a virtue in all ages and countries, the conjugal duties of the Rajputs are comprehended in the following simple text: “Let mutual fidelity continue to death; this, in few words, may be considered as the supreme law between husband and wife.”[4.23.11]
=Devotion of Rājput Women.=—That this law governed the Rajputs in past ages, as well as the present, in as great a degree as in other stages of society and other countries, we cannot doubt. Nor will the annals of any nation afford more numerous or more sublime instances of female devotion, than those of the Rajputs; and such would never have been recorded, were not the incentive likely to be revered and followed. How easy would it be to cite examples for every passion which can actuate the human mind! Do we desire to see a model of unbounded devotion, resignation, and love, let us take the picture of Sita, as painted by the Milton of their silver age, than which nothing more beautiful or sentimental may be culled even from Paradise Lost. Rama was about to abandon his faithful wife for the purpose of becoming a Vana-prastha or hermit, when she thus pours out her ardent desire to partake of his solitude.
A woman’s bliss is found, not in the smile Of father, mother, friend, nor in herself: Her husband is her only portion here, Her heaven hereafter. If thou indeed Depart this day into the forest drear, I will precede, and smooth the thorny way.
A gay recluse On thee attending, happy shall I feel Within the honey-scented grove to roam, For thou e’en here canst nourish and protect; And therefore other friend I cannot need. To-day most surely with thee will I go, And thus resolved, I must not be deny’d. Roots and wild fruit shall be my constant food; Nor will I near thee add unto thy cares, Nor lag behind, nor forest-food refuse, But fearless traverse every hill and dale.
Thus could I sweetly pass a thousand years; But without thee e’en heaven would lose its charms [614].
Pleased to embrace thy feet, I will reside In the rough forest as my father’s house. Void of all other wish, supremely thine, Permit me this request—I will not grieve, I will not burden thee—refuse me not. But shouldst thou, Raghuvu, this prayer deny Know, I resolve on death.
Vide Ward, On the History, Literature, and Mythology of the Hindus, ed. 1815, ii. p. 308 ff. [Cp. Manu, vi. 2 ff.]
The publication of Mr. Wilson’s specimens of the Hindu drama has put the English public in possession of very striking features of ancient Hindu manners, amongst which conjugal fidelity and affection stand eminently conspicuous. The Uttara Rama Charitra, the Vikrama and Urvasi, and the Mudra Rakshasa, contain many instances in point. In the latter piece occurs an example, in comparatively humble life, of the strong affection of a Hindu wife. Chandana Das, like Antonio in the Merchant of Venice, is doomed to die, to save his friend. His wife follows him to the scene of execution, with their only child, and the succeeding dialogue ensues:
Chand. Withdraw, my love, and lead our boy along.
Wife. Forgive me, husband,—to another world
Thy steps are bound, and not to foreign realms,
Whence in due time thou homeward wilt return;
No common farewell our leave-taking now
Admits, nor must the partner of thy fate
Leave thee to trace thy solitary way.
Chand. What dost thou mean?
Wife. To follow thee in death.
Chand. Think not of this—our boy’s yet tender years
Demand affectionate and guardian care.
Wife. I leave him to our household gods, nor fear
They will desert his youth:—come, my dear boy,
And bid thy sire a long and last farewell.
=The Tale of Dewaldai.=—The annals of no nation on earth record a more ennobling or more magnanimous instance of female loyalty than that exemplified by Dewaldai, mother of the Bannaphar brothers, which will at once illustrate the manners of the Rajput fair, and their estimation and influence in society.
The last Hindu emperor of Delhi, the chivalrous Prithiraj of the Chauhan race, had abducted the daughter of the prince of Sameta. Some of the wounded who had covered his retreat were assailed and put to death by Parmal, the Chandel prince of Mahoba.[4.23.12] In order to avenge this insult, the emperor had no sooner conveyed his bride to Delhi than he invaded the territory of the Chandel, whose troops were cut to pieces at Sirswa,[4.23.13] the advanced post of his kingdom. While [615] pursuing his success, the Chandel called a council, and by the advice of his queen Malandevi demanded a truce of his adversary, on the plea of the absence of his chieftains Alha and Udala. The brother of the bard of Mahoba was the envoy, who found the Chauhan ready to cross the Pahuj. He presented his gifts, and adjured him, “as a true Rajput, not to take them at such disadvantage.” The gifts were accepted, and the Chauhan pledged himself, “albeit his warriors were eager for the fight,” to grant the truce demanded; and having dismissed the herald, he inquired of his own bard, the prophetic Chand, the cause of the disaffection which led to the banishment of the Bannaphar; to which he thus replies: “Jasraj was the leader of the armies of Mahoba when his sovereign was defeated and put to flight by the wild race of Gonds; Jasraj repulsed the foe, captured Garha their capital, and laid his head at his sovereign’s feet. Parmal returning with victory to Mahoba, in gratitude for his service, embraced the sons of Jasraj, and placed them in his honours and lands, while Malandevi the queen made no distinction between them and her son.” The fief of the young Bannaphar[4.23.14] chieftains was at the celebrated fortress Kalanjar, where their sovereign happening to see a fine mare belonging to Alha, desired to possess her, and being refused, so far forgot past services as to compel them to abandon the country. On retiring they fired the estates of the Parihara chief who had instigated their disgrace. With their mother and families they repaired to Kanauj, whose monarch received them with open arms, assigning lands for their maintenance. Having thus premised the cause of banishment, Chand conducts us to Kanauj, at the moment when Jagnakh the bard was addressing the exiles on the dangers of Mahoba.
=War with Prithirāj.=—“The Chauhan is encamped on the plains of Mahoba; Narsingh and Birsingh have fallen, Sirswa is given to the flames, and the kingdom of Parmal laid waste by the Chauhan. For one month a truce has been obtained: while to you I am sent for aid in his griefs. Listen, O sons of Bannaphar; sad have been the days of Malandevi since you left Mahoba! Oft she looks towards Kanauj; and while she recalls you to mind, tears gush from her eyes and she exclaims, ‘The fame of the Chandel is departing’; but when gone, O sons of Jasraj, great will be your self-accusing sorrow: yet, think of Mahoba.”
“Destruction to Mahoba! Annihilation to the Chandel who, without fault [616], expelled us our home: in whose service fell our father, by whom his kingdom was extended. Send the slanderous Parihara—let him lead your armies against the heroes of Delhi. Our heads were the pillars of Mahoba; by us were the Gonds expelled, and their strongholds Deogarh and Chandbari added to his sway. We maintained the field against the Jadon, sacked Hindaun,[4.23.15] and planted his standard on the plains of Katehr.[4.23.16] It was I (continued Alha) who stopped the sword of the conquering Kachhwaha[4.23.17]—The amirs of the Sultan fled before us.—At Gaya we were victorious, and added Rewa[4.23.18] to his kingdom. Antarved[4.23.19] I gave to the flames, and levelled to the ground the towns of Mewat.[4.23.20] From ten princes did Jasraj bring spoil to Mahoba. This have we done; and the reward is exile from our home! Seven times have I received wounds in his service, and since my father’s death gained forty battles; and from seven has Udala conveyed the record of victory[4.23.21] to Parmal. Thrice my death seemed inevitable. The honour of his house I have upheld—yet exile is my reward!”
The bard replies—“The father of Parmal left him when a child to the care of Jasraj. Your father was in lieu of his own; the son should not abandon him when misfortune makes him call on you. The Rajput who abandons his sovereign in distress will be plunged into hell. Then place on your head the loyalty of your father. Can you desire to remain at Kanauj while he is in trouble, who expended thousands in rejoicings for your birth? Malandevi (the queen), who loves you as her own, presses your return. She bids me demand of Dewaldai fulfilment of the oft-repeated vow, that your life and Mahoba, when endangered, were inseparable. The breaker of vows, despised on earth, will be plunged into hell, there to remain while sun and moon endure.”
Dewaldai heard the message of the queen. “Let us fly to Mahoba,” she [617] exclaimed. Alha was silent, while Udala said aloud, “May evil spirits seize upon Mahoba!—Can we forget the day when, in distress, he drove us forth?—Return to Mahoba—let it stand or fall, it is the same to me; Kanauj is henceforth my home.”
“Would that the gods had made me barren,” said Dewaldai, “that I had never borne sons who thus abandon the paths of the Rajput, and refuse to succour their prince in danger!” Her heart bursting with grief, and her eyes raised to heaven, she continued: “Was it for this, O universal lord, thou mad’st me feel a mother’s pangs for these destroyers of Bannaphar’s fame? Unworthy offspring! the heart of the true Rajput dances with joy at the mere name of strife—but ye, degenerate, cannot be the sons of Jasraj—some carl must have stolen to my embrace, and from such ye must be sprung.” The young chiefs arose, their faces withered in sadness. “When we perish in defence of Mahoba, and covered with wounds, perform deeds that will leave a deathless name; when our heads roll in the field—when we embrace the valiant in fight, and treading in the footsteps of the brave, make resplendent the blood of both lines, even in the presence of the heroes of the Chauhan, then will our mother rejoice.”
The envoy having, by this loyal appeal of Dewaldai, attained the object of his mission, the brothers repair to the monarch of Kanauj,[4.23.22] in order to ask permission to return to Mahoba; this is granted, and they are dismissed with magnificent gifts, in which the bardic herald participated;[4.23.23] and the parting valediction was “preserve the faith of the Rajputs.” The omens during the march were of the worst kind: as Jagnakh expounded them, Alha with a smile replied, “O bard, though thou canst dive into the dark recesses of futurity, to the brave all omens are happy,[4.23.24] even though our heroes shall fall, and the fame of the Chandel must depart; thus in secret does my soul assure me.” The saras[4.23.25] was alone on the right—the eagle as he flew dropped his prey—the chakwa[4.23.26] “separated from his mate—drops fell from the eyes of the warlike steed—the siyal[4.23.27] sent forth sounds of lamentation; spots were seen on the disc of the sun” [618]. The countenance of Lakhan fell;[4.23.28] these portents filled his soul with dismay: but Alha said, “though these omens bode death, yet death to the valiant, to the pure in faith, is an object of desire not of sorrow. The path of the Rajput is beset with difficulties, rugged, and filled with thorns; but he regards it not, so it but conducts to battle.”—“To carry joy to Parmala alone occupied their thoughts: the steeds bounded over the plain like the swift-footed deer.” The brothers, ere they reached Mahoba, halted to put on the saffron robe, the sign of “no quarter” with the Rajput warrior. The intelligence of their approach filled the Chandela prince with joy, who advanced to embrace his defenders, and conduct them to Mahoba; while the queen Malandevi came to greet Dewaldai, who with the herald bard paid homage, and returned with the queen to the city. Rich gifts were presented, gems resplendent with light. The queen sent for Alha, and extending her hands over his head, bestowed the asis[4.23.29] (blessing) as kneeling he swore his head was with Mahoba, and then waved a vessel filled with pearls over his head, which were distributed to his followers.[4.23.30]
The bardic herald was rewarded with four villages. We are then introduced to the Chauhan camp and council, where Chand the bard is expatiating on the return of the Bannaphars with the succours of Kanauj. He recommends his sovereign to send a herald to the Chandel to announce the expiration of the truce, and requiring him to meet him in the field, or abandon Mahoba. According to the bard’s advice, a dispatch was transmitted to Parmal, in which the cause of war was recapitulated—the murder of the wounded; and stating that, according to Rajput faith, he had granted seven days beyond the time demanded, “and although so many days had passed since succour had arrived from Kanauj, the lion-horn had not yet sounded (singhnad)”: adding, “if he abandon all desire of combat, let him proclaim his vassalage to Delhi, and abandon Mahoba.”
Parmal received the hostile message in despair; but calling his warriors around him, he replied to the herald of the Chauhan, that “on the day of the sun, the first of the month, he would join him in strife” [619].
“On the day sacred to Sukra (Friday), Prithiraj sounded the shell, while the drums thrice struck proclaimed the truce concluded.[4.23.31] The standard was brought forth, around which the warriors gathered; the cup circulated, the prospect of battle filled their souls with joy. They anointed their bodies with fragrant oils, while the celestial Apsaras with ambrosial oils and heavenly perfumes anointed their silver forms, tinged their eyelids, and prepared for the reception of heroes.[4.23.32] The sound of the war-shell reached Kailas; the abstraction of Iswara was at an end—joy seized his soul at the prospect of completing his chaplet of skulls (mundamala). The Yoginis danced with joy, their faces sparkled with delight, as they seized their vessels to drink the blood of the slain. The devourers of flesh, the Palankashas, sung songs of triumph at the game of battle between the Chauhan and Chandel.”
In another measure, the bard proceeds to contrast the occupations of his heroes and the celestials preparatory to the combat, which descriptions are termed rupaka. “The heroes gird on their armour, while the heavenly fair deck their persons. They place on their heads the helm crowned with the war-bell (viragantha), these adjust the corset; they draw the girths of the war-steed, the fair of the world of bliss bind the anklet of bells; nets of steel defend the turban’s fold, they braid their hair with golden flowers and gems; the warrior polishes his falchion—the fair tints the eyelid with anjan;[4.23.33] the hero points his dagger, the fair paints a heart on her forehead; he braces on his ample buckler—she places the resplendent orb in her ear; he binds his arms with a gauntlet of brass—she stains her hands with the henna. The hero decorates his hand with the tiger-claw[4.23.34]—the Apsaras ornaments with rings and golden bracelets; the warrior shakes the ponderous lance—the heavenly fair the garland of love[4.23.35] to decorate those who fall in the fight; she binds on a necklace of pearls, he a mala of the tulasi.[4.23.36] The warrior strings his bow—the fair assume their killing [620] glances. Once more the heroes look to their girths, while the celestial fair prepare their cars.”
After the bard has finished his rupaka, he exclaims, “Thus says Chand, the lord of verse; with my own eyes have I seen what I describe.” It is important to remark, that the national faith of the Rajput never questions the prophetic power of their chief bard, whom they call Trikala, or cognoscent of the past, the present, and the future—a character which the bard has enjoyed in all ages and climes; but Chand was the last whom they admitted to possess supernatural vision.
We must now return to Mahoba, where a grand council had assembled at a final deliberation; at which, shaded by screens, the mother of the Bannaphars, and the queen Malandevi, were present. The latter thus opens the debate: “O mother of Alha, how may we succeed against the lord of the world?[4.23.37] If defeated, lost is Mahoba; if we pay tribute, we are loaded with shame.” Dewaldai recommends hearing seriatim the opinions of the chieftains, when Alha thus speaks: “Listen, O mother, to your son; he alone is of pure lineage who, placing loyalty on his head, abandons all thoughts of self, and lays down his life for his prince; my thoughts are only for Parmal. If she lives she will show herself a woman, or emanation of Parvati.[4.23.38] The warriors of Sambhar shall be cut in pieces. I will so illustrate the blood of my fathers, that my fame shall last for ever. My son Indal, O prince! I bequeath to you, and the fame of Dewaldai is in your keeping.”
The queen thus replies: “The warriors of the Chauhan are fierce as they are numerous; pay tribute, and save Mahoba.” The soul of Udala inflamed, and turning to the queen, “Why thought you not thus when you slew the defenceless? but then I was unheard. Whence now your wisdom? thrice I beseeched you to pardon. Nevertheless, Mahoba is safe while life remains in me, and in your cause, O Parmal! we shall espouse celestial brides.”
“Well have you spoken, my son,” said Dewaldai, “nothing now remains but to make thy parent’s milk resplendent by thy deeds. The call of the peasant driven [621] from his home meets the ear, and while we deliberate, our villages are given to the flames.” But Parmal replied: “Saturn[4.23.39] rules the day, to-morrow we shall meet the foe.” With indignation Alha turned to the king: “He who can look tamely on while the smoke ascends from his ruined towns, his fields laid waste, can be no Rajput—he who succumbs to fear when his country is invaded, his body will be plunged into the hell of hells, his soul a wanderer in the world of spirits for sixty thousand years; but the warrior who performs his duty will be received into the mansion of the sun, and his deeds will last for ever.”
But cowardice and cruelty always accompany each other, nor could all the speeches of the brothers “screw his courage to the sticking place.” Parmal went to his queen, and gave fresh vent to his lamentation. She upbraided his unmanly spirit, and bid him head his troops and go forth to the fight. The heroes embraced their wives for the last time, and with the dawn performed their pious rites. The Bannaphar offered oblations to the nine planets, and having adored the image of his tutelary god, he again put the chain round his neck;[4.23.40] then calling his son Indal, and Udala his brother, he once more poured forth his vows to the universal mother “that he would illustrate the name of Jasraj, and evince the pure blood derived from Dewaldai, whene’er he met the foe.”—“Nobly have you resolved,” said Udala, “and shall not my kirwan[4.23.41] also dazzle the eyes of Sambhar’s lord? shall he not retire from before me?”—“Farewell, my children,” said Dewaldai, “be true to your salt, and should you lose your heads for your prince, doubt not you will obtain the celestial crown.” Having ceased, the wives of both exclaimed, “What virtuous wife survives her lord? for thus says Gauriji,[4.23.42] ‘the woman, who survives her husband who falls in the field of battle, will never obtain bliss, but wander a discontented ghost in the region of unhallowed spirits.’”
This is sufficient to exhibit the supreme influence of women, not only on, but also in society.
The extract is taken from the Bardic historian, when Hindu customs were pure, and the Chauhan was paramount sovereign of India. It is worth while to compare it with another written six centuries after the conquest by the Muhammadans; although six dynasties—namely, Ghazni, Ghor, Khilji [622], Sayyid, Lodi, and Mogul, numbering more than thirty kings, had intervened, yet the same uncontrollable spirit was in full force, unchangeable even in misfortune. Both Hindu and Persian historians expatiate with delight on the anecdote; but we prefer the narrative of the ingenuous Bernier, under whose eye the incident occurred.
=Jaswant Singh and his Wife.=—In the civil war for empire amongst the sons of Shah Jahan, when Aurangzeb opened his career by the deposal of his father and the murder of his brothers, the Rajputs, faithful to the emperor, determined to oppose him. Under the intrepid Rathor Jaswant Singh, thirty thousand Rajputs, chiefly of that clan, advanced to the Nerbudda, and with a magnanimity amounting to imprudence, they permitted the junction of Murad with Aurangzeb, who, under cover of artillery served by Frenchmen, crossed the river almost unopposed. Next morning the action commenced, which continued throughout the day. The Rajputs behaved with their usual bravery; but were surrounded on all sides, and by sunset left ten thousand dead on the field.[4.23.43] The Maharaja retreated to his own country, but his wife, a daughter of the Rana of Udaipur, “disdained (says Ferishta) to receive her lord, and shut the gates of the castle.”
Bernier, who was present, says, “I cannot forbear to relate the fierce reception which the daughter of the Rana gave to her husband Jeswunt Singh [Jessom Seingue], after his defeat and flight. When she heard he was nigh, and had understood what had passed in the battle; that he had fought with all possible courage; that he had but four or five hundred men left; and at last, no longer able to resist the enemy, had been forced to retreat; instead of sending some one to condole him in his misfortunes, she commanded in a dry mood to shut the gates of the castle, and not to let this infamous man enter; that he was not her husband; that the son-in-law of the great Rana could not have so mean a soul; that he was to remember, that being grafted into so illustrious a house, he was to imitate its virtue; in a word, he was to vanquish, or to die. A moment after, she was of another humour; she commands a pile of wood to be laid, that she might burn herself; that they abused her; that her husband must needs be dead; that it could not be otherwise. And a little while after, she was seen to change countenance, to [623] fall into a passion, and break into a thousand reproaches against him. In short, she remained thus transported eight or nine days, without being able to resolve to see her husband, till at last her mother coming, brought her in time to herself, composed by assuring her that as soon as the Raja had but refreshed himself he would raise another army to fight Aurangzeb, and repair his honour. By which story one may see,” says Bernier, “a pattern of the courage of the women in that country”; and he adds this philosophical corollary on this and the custom of satis, which he had witnessed: “There is nothing which opinion, prepossession, custom, hope, and the point of honour, may not make men do or suffer.”[4.23.44]
=The Tale of Sanjogta.=—The romantic history of the Chauhan emperor of Delhi abounds in sketches of female character; and in the story of his carrying off Sanjogta, the princess of Kanauj, we have not only the individual portrait of the Helen of her country, but in it a faithful picture of the sex. We see her, from the moment when, rejecting the assembled princes, she threw the “garland of marriage” round the neck of her hero, the Chauhan, abandon herself to all the influences of passion—mix in a combat of five days’ continuance against her father’s array, witness his overthrow, and the carnage of both armies, and subsequently, by her seductive charms, lulling her lover into a neglect of every princely duty. Yet when the foes of his glory and power invade India, we see the enchantress at once start from her trance of pleasure, and exchanging the softer for the sterner passions, in accents not less strong because mingled with deep affection, she conjures him, while arming him for the battle, to die for his fame, declaring that she will join him in “the mansions of the sun.” Though it is difficult to extract, in passages sufficiently condensed, what may convey a just idea of this heroine, we shall attempt it in the bard’s own language, rendered into prose. He announces the tidings of invasion by the medium of a dream, which the Chauhan thus relates:
“‘This night, while in the arms of sleep, a fair, beautiful as Rambha, rudely seized my arm; then she assailed you, and while you were struggling, a mighty elephant,[4.23.45] infuriated, and hideous as a demon, bore down upon me. Sleep fled—nor Rambha nor demon remained—but my heart was panting, and [624] my quivering lips muttering Har! Har![4.23.46] What is decreed the gods only know.’
“Sanjogta replied, ‘Victory and fame to my lord! O, sun of the Chauhans, in glory, or in pleasure, who has tasted so deeply as you? To die is the destiny not only of man but of the gods: all desire to throw off the old garment; but to die well is to live for ever. Think not of self, but of immortality; let your sword divide your foe, and I will be your ardhanga[4.23.47] hereafter.’
“The king sought the bard, who expounded the dream, and the Guru wrote an incantation, which he placed in his turban. A thousand brass vessels of fresh milk were poured in libations to the sun and moon. Ten buffaloes were sacrificed to the supporters of the globe, and gifts were made to all. But will offerings of blood or libations of milk arrest what is decreed? If by these man could undo what is ordained, would Nala or the Pandus have suffered as they did?”
While the warriors assemble in council to consult on the best mode of opposing the Sultan of Ghazni, the king leaves them to deliberate, in order to advise with Sanjogta. Her reply is curious:
“Who asks woman for advice? The world deems their understanding shallow; even when truths issue from their lips, none listen thereto. Yet what is the world without woman? We have the forms of Sakti[4.23.48] with the fire of Siva; we are at once thieves and sanctuaries; we are vessels of virtue and of vice—of knowledge and of ignorance. The man of wisdom, the astrologer, can from the books calculate the motion and course of the planets; but in the book of woman he is ignorant: and this is not a saying of to-day, it ever has been so: our book has not been mastered, therefore, to hide their ignorance, they say, in woman there is no wisdom! Yet woman shares your joys and your sorrows. Even when you depart from the mansion of the sun, we part not. Hunger and thirst we cheerfully partake with you; we are as the lakes, of which you are the swans; what are when absent from our bosoms?”
The army having assembled, and all being prepared to march against the Islamite, in the last great battle which subjugated India, the fair Sanjogta armed her lord for the encounter. In vain she sought the rings of his corslet; her eyes were [625] fixed on the face of the Chauhan, as those of the famished wretch who finds a piece of gold. The sound of the drum reached the ear of the Chauhan; it was as a death-knell on that of Sanjogta: and as he left her to head Delhi’s heroes, she vowed that henceforward water only should sustain her. “I shall see him again in the region of Surya, but never more in Yoginipur.”[4.23.49] Her prediction was fulfilled: her lord was routed, made captive and slain; and, faithful to her vow, she mounted the funeral pyre.
=The Queen of Ganor.=—Were we called upon to give a pendant for Lucretia, it would be found in the queen of Ganor.[4.23.50] After having defended five fortresses against the foe, she retreated to her last stronghold on the Nerbudda, and had scarcely left the bark, when the assailants arrived in pursuit. The disheartened defenders were few in number, and the fortress was soon in possession of the foe, the founder of the family now ruling in Bhopal. The beauty of the queen of Ganor was an allurement only secondary to his desire for her country, and he invited her to reign over it and him. Denial would have been useless, and would have subjected her to instant coercion, for the Khan awaited her reply in the hall below; she therefore sent a message of assent, with a complimentary reflection on his gallant conduct and determination of pursuit; adding, that he merited her hand for his bravery, and might prepare for the nuptials, which should be celebrated on the terrace of the palace. She demanded two hours for unmolested preparation, that she might appear in appropriate attire, and with the distinction her own and his rank demanded.
Ceremonials, on a scale of magnificence equal to the shortness of the time, were going on. The song of joy had already stifled the discordant voice of war, and at length the Khan was summoned to the terrace. Robed in the marriage garb presented to him by the queen, with a necklace and aigrette of superb jewels from the coffers of Ganor, he hastened to obey the mandate, and found that fame had not done justice to her charms. He was desired to be seated, and in conversation full of rapture on his side, hours were as minutes while he gazed on the beauty of the queen. But presently his countenance fell—he complained of heat; punkas and water were brought, but they availed him not, and he began to tear the bridal garments from his frame, when the queen thus addressed him [626]: “Know, Khan, that your last hour is come; our wedding and our death shall be sealed together. The vestments which cover you are poisoned; you had left me no other expedient to escape pollution.” While all were horror-struck by this declaration, she sprung from the battlements into the flood beneath. The Khan died in extreme torture, and was buried on the road to Bhopal; and, strange to say, a visit to his grave has the reputation of curing the tertian of that country.[4.23.51]
=Rāja Jai Singh and his Wife.=—We may give another anecdote illustrative of this extreme delicacy of sentiment, but without so tragical a conclusion. The celebrated Raja Jai Singh of Amber had espoused a princess of Haraoti, whose manners and garb, accordant with the simplicity of that provincial capital, subjected her to the badinage of the more refined court of Amber, whose ladies had added the imperial costume to their own native dress. One day being alone with the prince, he began playfully to contrast the sweeping jupe of Kotah with the more scanty robe of the belles of his own capital; and taking up a pair of scissors, said he would reduce it to an equality with the latter. Offended at such levity, she seized his sword, and assuming a threatening attitude, said, “that in the house to which she had the honour to belong, they were not habituated to jests of this nature; that mutual respect was the guardian, not only of happiness but of virtue”; and she assured him, that if he ever again so insulted her, he would find that the daughter of Kotah could use a sword more effectively than the prince of Amber the scissors; adding, that she would prevent any future scion of her house from being subjected to similar disrespect, by declaring such intermarriages talak, or forbidden, which interdict I believe yet exists.[4.23.52]
=A Courageous Rājput Woman.=—I will append an anecdote related by the celebrated Zalim Singh, characteristic of the presence of mind, prowess, and physical strength of the Rajput women. To attend and aid in the minutiae of husbandry is by no means uncommon with them, as to dress and carry the meals of their husbands to the fields is a general practice. In the jungle which skirts the knolls of Pachpahar, a huge bear assaulted a Rajputni as she was carrying her husband’s dinner. As he approached with an air of gallantry upon his hind-legs, doubting whether the food or herself [627] were the intended prey, she retreated behind a large tree, round the trunk of which Bruin, still in his erect attitude, tried all his powers of circumvention to seize her. At length, half exhausted, she boldly grasped his paws, and with so vigorous a hold that he roared with pain, while in vain, with his short neck, did he endeavour to reach the powerful hand which fixed him. While she was in this dilemma, a Pardesi (a foreign soldier of the State) happened to be passing to the garrison of Gagraun, and she called out to him in a voice of such unconcern to come and release her for a time, that he complied without hesitation. She had not retired, however, above a dozen yards ere he called loudly for her return, being scarcely able to hold his new friend; but laughingly recommending perseverance, she hastened on, and soon returned with her husband, who laid the monster prostrate with his matchlock, and rescued the Pardesi from his unpleasing predicament.[4.23.53]
Such anecdotes might be multiplied ad infinitum; but I will conclude with one displaying the romantic chivalry of the Rajput, and the influence of the fair in the formation of character; it is taken from the annals of Jaisalmer, the most remote of the States of Rajasthan, and situated in the heart of the desert, of which it is an oasis.
=The Wedding of Sādhu.=—Raningdeo was lord of Pugal, a fief of Jaisalmer; his heir, named Sadhu, was the terror of the desert, carrying his raids even to the valley of the Indus, and on the east to Nagor. Returning from a foray, with a train of captured camels and horses, he passed by Aurint, where dwelt Manik Rao, the chief of the Mohils, whose rule extended over 1440 villages. Being invited to partake of the hospitality of the Mohil, the heir of Pugal attracted the favourable regards of the old chieftain’s daughter:
She loved him for the dangers he had passed;
for he had the fame of being the first riever of the desert. Although betrothed to the heir of the Rathor of Mandor, she signified her wish to renounce the throne to be the bride of the chieftain of Pugal; and in spite of the dangers he provoked, and contrary to the Mohil chief’s advice, Sadhu, as a gallant Rajput, dared not reject the overture, and he promised “to accept the coco,”[4.23.54] if sent in form to Pugal [628]. In due time it came, and the nuptials were solemnized at Aurint. The dower was splendid; gems of high price, vessels of gold and silver, a golden bull, and a train of thirteen dewadharis,[4.23.55] or damsels of wisdom and penetration.
Arankanwal, the slighted heir of Mandor, determined on revenge, and with four thousand Rathors planted himself in the path of Sadhu’s return, aided by the Sankhla Mehraj, whose son Sadhu had slain. Though entreated to add four thousand Mohils to his escort, Sadhu deemed his own gallant band of seven hundred Bhattis sufficient to convey his bride to his desert abode, and with difficulty accepted fifty, led by Meghraj, the brother of the bride.
The rivals encountered at Chondan, where Sadhu had halted to repose; but the brave Rathor scorned the advantage of numbers, and a series of single combats ensued, with all the forms of chivalry. The first who entered the lists was Jaitanga, of the Pahu clan, and of the kin of Sadhu. The enemy came upon him by surprise while reposing on the ground, his saddle-cloth for his couch, and the bridle of his steed twisted round his arm; he was soon recognized by the Sankhla, who had often encountered his prowess, on which he expatiated to Arankanwal, who sent an attendant to awake him; but the gallant Panch Kalyan (for such was the name of his steed) had already performed this service, and they found him upbraiding white-legs[4.23.56] for treading upon him. Like a true Rajput, “toujours prêt,” he received the hostile message, and sent the envoy back with his compliments, and a request for some amal or opium, as he had lost his own supply. With all courtesy this was sent, and prepared by the domestics of his antagonist; after taking which he lay down to enjoy the customary siesta. As soon as he awoke, he prepared for the combat, girt on his armour, and having reminded Panch Kalyan of the fields he had won, and telling him to bear him well that day, he mounted and advanced. The son of Chonda admiring his sang-froid, and the address with which he guided his steed, commanded Jodha Chauhan, the leader of his party, to encounter the Pahu. “Their two-edged swords soon clashed in combat”; but the gigantic Chauhan fell beneath the Bhatti, who, warmed with the fight, plunged amidst his foes, encountering all he deemed worthy of his assault.
The fray thus begun, single combats and actions of equal parties followed, the [629] rivals looking on. At length Sadhu mounted: twice he charged the Rathor ranks, carrying death on his lance; each time he returned for the applause of his bride, who beheld the battle from her car. Six hundred of his foes had fallen, and nearly half his own warriors. He bade her a last adieu, while she exhorted him to the fight, saying, “she would witness his deeds, and if he fell, would follow him even in death.” Now he singled out his rival Arankanwal,[4.23.57] who was alike eager to end the strife, and blot out his disgrace in his blood. They met: some seconds were lost in a courteous contention, each yielding to his rival the first blow, at length dealt out by Sadhu on the neck of the disappointed Rathor. It was returned with the rapidity of lightning, and the daughter of the Mohil saw the steel descend on the head of her lover. Both fell prostrate to the earth: but Sadhu’s soul had sped; the Rathor had only swooned. With the fall of the leaders the battle ceased; and the fair cause of strife, Karamdevi, at once a virgin, a wife, and a widow, prepared to follow her affianced. Calling for a sword, with one arm she dissevered the other, desiring it might be conveyed to the father of her lord—“tell him such was his daughter.” The other she commanded to be struck off, and given, with her marriage jewels thereon, to the bard of the Mohils. The pile was prepared on the field of battle; and taking her lord in her embrace, she gave herself up to the devouring flames. The dissevered limbs were disposed of as commanded; the old Rao of Pugal caused the one to be burnt, and a tank was excavated on the spot, which is still called after the heroine, “the lake of Karamdevi.”
This encounter took place in S. 1462, A.D. 1406. The brunt of the battle fell on the Sankhlas, and only twenty-five out of three hundred and fifty left the field with their leader, Mehraj, himself severely wounded. The rejected lover had four brothers dangerously hurt; and in six months the wounds of Arankanwal opened afresh: he died, and the rites to the manes of these rivals in love, the chhamasa[4.23.58] of Sadhu, and the duadasa[4.23.59] of Arankanwal, were celebrated on the same day.
Without pausing to trace the moral springs of that devotion which influenced the Mohila maiden, we shall relate the sequel to the story (though out of place)[4.23.60] in illustration of the prosecution of feuds throughout Rajasthan. The fathers [630] now took up the quarrel of their sons; and as it was by the prowess of the Sankhla vassal of Mandor that the band of Sadhu was discomfited, the old Rao, Raningdeo, drew together the lances of Pugal, and carried destruction into the fief of Mehraj. The Sankhlas yield in valour to none of the brave races who inhabit the “region of death”; and Mehraj was the father of Harbuji Sankhla, the Palladin of Marudes, whose exploits are yet the theme of the erratic bards of Rajasthan. Whether he was unprepared for the assault, or overcome by numbers, three hundred of his kin and clan moistened the sand-hills of the Luni with their blood. Raningdeo, flushed with revenge and laden with spoil, had reached his own frontier, when he was overtaken by Chonda of Mandor, alike eager to avenge the loss of his son Arankanwal, and this destructive inroad on his vassal. A desperate conflict ensued, in which the Rao of Pugal was slain; and the Rathor returned in triumph to Mandor.
Unequal to cope with the princes of Mandor, the two remaining sons of Raningdeo, Tana and Mera, resolved to abandon their faith, in order to preserve the point of honour, and “to take up their father’s feud.”[4.23.61] At this period the king, Khizr Khan,[4.23.62] was at Multan; to him they went, and by offers of service and an open apostacy, obtained a force to march against Chonda, who had recently added Nagor to his growing dominions. While the brothers were thus negotiating, they were joined by Kilan, the third son of their common sovereign, the Rawal of Jaisalmer, who advised the use of chal, which with the Rajput means indifferently stratagem or treachery, so that it facilitates revenge. With the ostensible motive of ending their feuds, and restoring tranquillity to their borderers, whose sole occupation was watching, burning, and devastating, Kilan offered a daughter in marriage to Chonda, and went so far as to say, that if he suspected aught unfair, he would, though contrary to custom and his own dignity, send the Bhatti princess to Nagor. This course being deemed the wisest, Chonda acquiesced in his desire “to extinguish the feud (wair bujhana).”
=Nāgor taken by Stratagem.=—Fifty covered chariots were prepared as the nuptial cortège, but which, instead of the bride and her handmaids, contained the bravest men of Pugal.[4.23.63] These were preceded by a train of horses led by Rajputs, of whom seven hundred also attended the camels laden with baggage, provisions, and gifts, while a small armed [631] retinue brought up the rear. The king’s troops, amounting to one thousand horse, remained at a cautious distance behind. Chonda left Nagor to meet the cavalcade and his bride, and had reached the chariots ere his suspicions were excited. Observing, however, some matters which little savoured of festivity, the Rathor commenced his retreat. Upon this the chiefs rushed from their chariots and camels, and the royal auxiliaries advancing, Chonda was assailed and fell at the gate of Nagor; and friend and foe entering the city together, a scene of general plunder commenced.
Once more the feud was balanced; a son and a father had fallen on each side, and the petty Rao of Pugal had bravely maintained the wair against the princes of Mandor. The point of honour had been carried to the utmost bound by both parties, and an opportunity of reconciliation was at hand, which prevented the shadow of disgrace either to him who made or him who accepted the overture. The Rathors dreaded the loss of the recent acquisition, Nagor, and proposed to the Bhattis to seal their pacification with the blood of their common foe. United, they fell on the spoil-encumbered Tatars, whom they slew to a man.[4.23.64] Their father’s feud thus revenged, the sons of Raningdeo (who, as apostates from their faith, could no longer hold Pugal in fief, which was retained by Kilan, who had aided their revenge) retired amongst the Aboharia Bhattis, and their descendants are now styled Momin Musalman Bhatti.
From such anecdotes it will be obvious wherein consists the point of honour with the Rajputs; and it is not improbable that the very cause which has induced an opinion that females can have no influence on the lords of the creation, namely, their seclusion, operates powerfully in the contrary way.
=Influence of Women on Rājput Society.=—In spite of this seclusion, the knowledge of their accomplishments and of their personal perfections, radiates wherever the itinerant bard can travel. Though invisible themselves, they can see; and accident often favours public report, and brings the object of renown within the sphere of personal observation: as in the case of Sadhu and the Mohila maiden. Placed behind screens, they see the youths of all countries, and there are occasions when permanent impressions are made, during tournaments and other martial exercises. Here we have just seen that the passion of the [632] daughter of the Mohil was fostered at the risk of the destruction not only of her father’s house, but also that of her lover; and as the fourteen hundred and forty towns, which owned the sway of the former, were not long after absorbed into the accumulating territory of Mandor, this insult may have been the cause of the extirpation of the Mohils, as it was of the Bhattis of Pugal.
The influence of women on Rajput society is marked in every page of Hindu history, from the most remote periods. What led to the wars of Rama? the rape of Sita. What rendered deadly the feuds of the Yadus? the insult to Draupadi. What made prince Nala an exile from Narwar? his love for Damayanti. What made Raja Bhartari abandon the throne of Avanti? the loss of Pingali. What subjected the Hindu to the dominion of the Islamite? the rape of the princess of Kanauj. In fine, the cause which overturned kingdoms, commuted the sceptre to the pilgrim’s staff, and formed the groundwork of all their grand epics, is woman. In ancient, and even in modern times, she had more than a negative in the choice of a husband, and this choice fell on the gallant and the gay. The fair Draupadi was the prize of the best archer, and the Pandu Bhima established his fame, and bore her from all the suitors of Kampila. The princess of Kanauj, when led through ranks of the princes of Hind, each hoping to be the object of her choice, threw the marriage-garland (barmala) over the neck of the effigy of the Chauhan, which her father in derision had placed as porter at the gate. Here was incense to fame and incentive to gallantry![4.23.65]
In the same manner, as related in another part of this work, did the princess of Kishangarh invite Rana Raj Singh to bear her from the impending union with the emperor of the Moguls; and abundant other instances could be adduced of the free agency of these invisibles.
It were superfluous to reason on the effects of traditional histories, such as these, on the minds and manners of the females of Rajasthan. They form the amusement of their lives, and the grand topic in all their conversaziones; they read them with the Purohit, and they have them sung by the itinerant bard or Dholi minstrel [633], who disseminates them wherever the Rajput name extends. The Rajput mother claims her full share in the glory of her son, who imbibes at the maternal fount his first rudiments of chivalry; and the importance of this parental instruction cannot be better illustrated than in the ever-recurring simile, “make thy mother’s milk resplendent”; the full force of which we have in the powerful, though overstrained expression of the Bundi queen’s joy on the announcement of the heroic death of her son: “the long-dried fountain at which he fed, jetted forth as she listened to the tale of his death, and the marble pavement, on which it fell, rent asunder.” Equally futile would it be to reason on the intensity of sentiment thus implanted in the infant Rajput, of whom we may say without metaphor, the shield is his cradle, and daggers his playthings; and with whom the first commandment is, “avenge thy father’s feud”; on which they can heap text upon text, from the days of the great Pandu moralist Vyasa to the not less influential bard of their nation, the Trikala Chand.
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Footnote 4.23.1:
[“The custom handed down in regular succession since time immemorial among the four chief castes and the mixed races of that country, is called the conduct of virtuous men” (Manu, Laws, ii. 18).]
Footnote 4.23.2:
So says Valmiki, the author of the oldest epic in existence, the Ramayana [see p. 693 above].
Footnote 4.23.3:
Les Femmes, leur condition et leur influence dans l’ordre social, vol. i. p. 10.
Footnote 4.23.4:
So are some of the Hindu races in the mountainous districts about the Himalaya, and in other parts of India. This curious trait in ancient manners is deserving of investigation: it might throw some light on the early history of the world. [“Each man has but one wife, yet all the women are held in common: for this is a custom of the Massagetae, and not of the Scythians, as the Greeks wrongly say” (Herodotus i. 216). For polyandry in India see Risley, The People of India, 2nd ed. 206 ff.]
Footnote 4.23.5:
[Polygamy does to some extent prevail (Census Report, Rājputāna, 1911, i. 157 f.)]
Footnote 4.23.6:
Laws, v. 130.
Footnote 4.23.7:
Ibid. ii. 33.
Footnote 4.23.8:
Digest of Hindu Law, Colebrooke, vol. ii. p. 209 [Manu iii. 55-8].
Footnote 4.23.9:
Of all the religions which have diversified mankind, whatever man might select, woman should choose the Christian. This alone gives her just rank in the scale of creation, whether arising from the demotic principle which pervades our faith, or the dignity conferred on the sex in being chosen to be the mother of the Saviour of man. In turning over the pages of Manu we find many mortifying texts, which I am inclined to regard as interpolations; as the following, so opposed to the beautiful sentiment above quoted: “A wife, a son, a servant, a pupil, and a younger brother, may be corrected when they commit faults with a rope, or the small thong of a cane” [viii. 299]. Such texts might lead us to adopt Ségur’s conclusions, that ever since the days of the patriarchs women were only brilliant slaves—victims, who exhibited, in the wreaths and floral coronets which bedecked them, the sacrifices to which they were destined. In the patriarchal ages their occupations were to season the viands, and bake the bread, and weave cloth for the tents: their recreations limited to respire the fresh evening air under the shade of a fig tree, and sing canticles to the Almighty. Such a fate, indeed, must appear to a Parisian dame, who passes her time between the Feydeau and Tivoli, and whose daily promenade is through the Champs Élysées, worse than death: yet there is no positive hardships in these employments, and it was but the fair division of labour in the primitive ages, and that which characterizes the Rajputni of the present day.
Footnote 4.23.10:
Manu lays down some plain and wholesome rules for the domestic conduct of the wife; above all, he recommends her to “preserve a cheerful temper,” and “frugality in domestic expenses” [Laws, v. 150]. Some of his texts savour, however, more of the anchorite than of a person conversant with mankind; and when he commands the husband to be reverenced as a god by the virtuous wife, even though enamoured of another woman, it may be justly doubted if ever he found obedience thereto; or the scarcely less difficult ordinance, “for a whole year let a husband bear with his wife who treats him with aversion,” after which probation he is permitted to separate [ix. 77]. It is very likely the Rajputs are more in the habit of quoting the first of these texts than of hearing the last: for although they have a choice at home, they are not ashamed to be the avowed admirers of the Aspasias and Phrynes of the capital; from the same cause which attracted Socrates and made Pericles a slave and which will continue until the united charms of the dance and the song are sanctioned to be practised by the légitimes within.
Footnote 4.23.11:
Manu ix. 101.
Footnote 4.23.12:
Parmāl or Paramardi Chandel (A.D. 1165-1203). He was defeated by Prithirāj Chauhān in 1182.]
Footnote 4.23.13:
On the Pahuj, and now belonging to the Bundela prince of Datia. The author has been over this field of battle.
Footnote 4.23.14:
[On the Bannāphar sept, from which sprang the heroes Alha and Udal, see Crooke, Tribes and Castes North-West Provinces, i. 137 ff.; their bravery forms the subject of numerous ballads (ASR, ii. 455 ff.).]
Footnote 4.23.15:
Hindaun was a town dependent on Bayana, the capital of the Jadons, whose descendants still occupy Karauli and Sri Mathura.
Footnote 4.23.16:
[The modern Rohilkhand Division.]
Footnote 4.23.17:
Rao Pajun of Amber, one of the great vassals of the Chauhan, and ancestor of the present Raja of Jaipur.
Footnote 4.23.18:
In the original, “the land of the Baghel to that of the Chandel.” Rewa is capital of [or leading State in] Baghelkhand, founded by the Baghela Rajputs, a branch of the Solanki kings of Anhilwara.
Footnote 4.23.19:
Antarved, the Duab, or Mesopotamia of the Jumna and Ganges.
Footnote 4.23.20:
A district S.W. of Delhi, notorious for the lawless habits of its inhabitants: a very ancient Hindu race, but the greater part forced proselytes to the faith of Islam. In the time of Prithiraj the chief of Mewat was one of his vassals.
Footnote 4.23.21:
Jayapattra, or ‘bulletin of victory.’
Footnote 4.23.22:
Jaichand was then king of this city, only second to Delhi. He was attacked in 1193 (A.D.) by Shihabu-d-din, after his conquest of the Chauhan, driven from his kingdom, and found a watery grave in the Ganges. [The battle was fought at Chandāwar in the Etāwa District, A.D. 1194 (Smith, EHI, 385).]
Footnote 4.23.23:
Jagnakh had two villages conferred upon him, besides an elephant and a dress.
Footnote 4.23.24:
[Compare Iliad, xii. 237 ff.]
Footnote 4.23.25:
The phenicopteros. [The great crane, Grus antigone.]
Footnote 4.23.26:
A large red duck, the emblem of fidelity with the Rajputs. [The Brahmani duck, Anas casarca.]
Footnote 4.23.27:
The jackal.
Footnote 4.23.28:
Commander of the succours of Kanauj.
Footnote 4.23.29:
Asis is a form of benediction only bestowed by females and priests: it is performed by clasping both hands over the person’s head, and waving a piece of silver or other valuable over him, which is bestowed in charity [the object being to disperse evil influence].
Footnote 4.23.30:
This is a very ancient ceremony, and is called Nicharavali [or ārti. The Author has frequently had a large salver filled with silver coin waved over his head, which was handed for distribution amongst his attendants. It is most appropriate from the fair, from whom also he has had this performed by their proxies, the family priest or female attendants.
Footnote 4.23.31:
The sankh, or war-shell, is thrice sounded, and the nakkaras strike thrice, when the army is to march; but should it after such proclamation remain on its ground, a scape-goat is slain in front of the imperial tent.
Footnote 4.23.32:
This picture recalls the remembrance of Hacon and the heroes of the north; with the Valkyries or choosers of the slain; the celestial maids of war of Scandinavia.
Footnote 4.23.33:
[Collyrium.]
Footnote 4.23.34:
Baghnakh or Naharnakh. [This weapon is best known by its use by Sivaji when he slew Afzu-l Khān in 1659 at Pratāpgarh (Grant Duff, Hist. Mahrattas, 78). Four specimens in the Indian Museum are described, with an illustration, by Hon. W. Egerton (Illustrated Handbook of Indian Arms, 115).]
Footnote 4.23.35:
Barmala.
Footnote 4.23.36:
Mala, a necklace. The tulasi [the plant Olymum sanctum] or rudraksha [the nuts of Elaeocarpus ganitrus, the former worn by Vaishnavas, the latter by Saivas] had the same estimation amongst the Hindus that the mistletoe had amongst the ancient Britons, and was always worn in battle as a charm.
Footnote 4.23.37:
Prithiraj.
Footnote 4.23.38:
A Rajput never names his wife. Here it is evidently optional to the widow to live or die, though Alha shows his wish for her society above. See chapter on Satis, which will follow.
Footnote 4.23.39:
Sanichar.
Footnote 4.23.40:
It was a jantar or phylactery of Hanuman the monkey deity; probably a magical stanza, with his image.
Footnote 4.23.41:
A crooked scimitar.
Footnote 4.23.42:
One of the names of Mena or Parvati. This passage will illustrate the subject of Satis in a future chapter.
Footnote 4.23.43:
“’Tis a pleasure (says Bernier) to see them with the fume of opium in their heads, embrace each other when the battle is to begin, and give their mutual farewells, as men resolved to die.” [Ed. 1914, p. 40. The battle of Dharmāt was fought on the banks of the river Sipra (IGI, xxi. 14 f.) on 15th April, 1658. Manucci was not present, but gives an account derived from Aurangzeb’s artillery officers of the battle at Dharmātpur, about 14 miles from Ujjain (i. 259 f., and see Jadunath Sarkar, Life of Aurangzeb, ii. 1 ff.). The latter (ii. 20 f.) speaks highly of the valour of Jaswant Singh, but Khāfi Khan (Elliot-Dowson vii. 219) says that he acted in a cowardly way. The account quoted by the author is not in the original work of Ferishta, but in Dow’s continuation (ed. 1812, iii. 206 f).].
Footnote 4.23.44:
Bernier’s History of the Late Revolution of the Empire of the Mogul, fol. p. 13, ed. 1684 [ed. 1914, p. 40 f., where a somewhat different version is given].
Footnote 4.23.45:
It is deemed unlucky to see this emblem of Ganesa in sleep.
Footnote 4.23.46:
The battle-shout of the Rajput. [Hara, a title of Siva.]
Footnote 4.23.47:
‘Half-body,’ which we may render, in common phraseology, ‘other half.’
Footnote 4.23.48:
[The impersonation of the female energy.]
Footnote 4.23.49:
Delhi [“the city of the witch or sorceress”].
Footnote 4.23.50:
[The “Ganore” of the text possibly represents the town of Ganora in the Bānswāra State. There is another place of the same name in Gwalior.]
Footnote 4.23.51:
[Several of our best authorities—Sir Lauder Brunton, Sir G. Birdwood, Professors A. Keith and A. Doran of the Royal College of Surgeons—have kindly investigated the question of death by poisoned robes, of which various instances are reported in this work. The general result is that it is doubtful if any known poison could be used in this way. Sir Lauder Brunton remarks that a paste of the seeds of Abrus precatorius is used for killing animals. Dr. N. Chevers (Manual of Medical Jurisprudence in India, p. 299) writes: “Any one who has noticed how freely a robust person in India perspires through a thin garment can understand that, if a cloth were thoroughly impregnated with the cantharidine of that very powerful vesicant, the Telini, the result would be as dangerous as an extensive burn.” For telini (Mylabris punctum), used as a substitute for Cantharis vesicatoria, see Sir G. Watt (Dict. Economic Products of India, v. 309). Manucci (i. 149) says that Akbar placed such poisons in charge of a special officer. The stock classical case is that of Herakles killed by an ointment made from the blood of Nessus. An old writer, W. Ramesey (Of Poisons (1660), p. 14 f.) speaks of poisoning done in this way: but he regards some of “these and the like storeyes to be merely Fabulous ... and rather to be attributed to the Subtilty, Craft, and Malice of the Devill” (12 series, Notes and Queries, i. (1916) p. 417).]
Footnote 4.23.52:
The physician (unless he unite with his office that of ghostly comforter) has to feel the pulse of his patient with a curtain between them, through a rent, in which the arm is extended. [See the amusing account by Fryer (New Account of E. India and Persia, Hakluyt Society, ed. i. 326 f.).]
Footnote 4.23.53:
[This is a stock story (Risley, The People of India, 2nd ed. 179 f.; Rose, Glossary, ii. 220; cf. Herodotus v. 12).]
Footnote 4.23.54:
Sriphala.
Footnote 4.23.55:
Literally ‘lamp-holders’; such is the term applied to these handmaids; who invariably form a part of the daeja or ‘dower.’ [The custom of sending handmaids with the bride, the girls often becoming concubines of the bridegroom, is common (Russell, Tribes and Castes Central Provinces, i. 63, ii. 77). In Gujarāt they are known as Goli or Vadhāran, and are sometimes married to the Khawās, or male slaves of the harem (BG, ix. Part i. 147, 235).]
Footnote 4.23.56:
Panch Kalyan is generally, if not always, a chestnut, having four white legs, with a white nose and list or star.
Footnote 4.23.57:
Arankanwal, ‘the lotos of the desert,’ from aranya (Sanskrit), ‘a waste,’ and kamala (pronounced kanwal), ‘a lotos’: classically it should be written aranykamala; I write it as pronounced.
Footnote 4.23.58:
The rites to the manes on the completion of the ‘sixth month.’
Footnote 4.23.59:
The rites to the manes on the ‘twelfth day.’
Footnote 4.23.60:
The greater portion of these anecdotes, the foundation of national character, will appear in the respective annals.
Footnote 4.23.61:
Bap ra wair lena.
Footnote 4.23.62:
[Khizr Khān, of the Sayyid dynasty of Delhi, was left in charge by Timūr, and died A.D. 1421.]
Footnote 4.23.63:
[For this legend see Vol. I. p. 308 above.]
Footnote 4.23.64:
Khizr Khan succeeded to the throne of Delhi in A.D. 1414 [or rather, was left in charge of Delhi by Timūr, and died A.D. 1421], and according to the Jaisalmer annals the commencement of these feuds was in A.D. 1406.
Footnote 4.23.65:
The Samnite custom, so lauded by Montesquieu as the reward of youthful virtue, was akin in sentiment to the Rajput, except that the fair Rajputni made herself the sole judge of merit in her choice. It was more calculated for republican than aristocratic society: “On assembloit tous les jeunes gens, et on les jugeoit; celui qui était déclaré le meilleur de tout prenoit pour sa femme la fille qu’il vouloit: l’amour, la beauté, la chastité, la vertu, la naissance, les richesses même, tout cela était, pour ainsi dire, la dot de la vertu.” It would be difficult, adds Montesquieu, to imagine a more noble recompense, or one less expensive to a petty State, or more influential on the conduct of both sexes (L’Esprit des Lois, chap. xvi. livre vii.).
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Chapter 24
=The Immolation of Women.=—We now proceed to consider another trait of Rajput character, exemplified in the practice of female immolation, and to inquire whether religion, custom, or affection has most share in such sacrifice. To arrive at the origin of this rite, we must trace it to the recesses of mythology, where we shall discover the precedent in the example of Sati, who to avenge an insult to Iswara, in her own father’s omission to ask her lord to an entertainment, consumed herself in the presence of the assembled gods. With this act of fealty (sati) the name of Daksha’s daughter has been identified; and her regeneration and reunion to her husband, as the mountain-nymph Mena, or Parvati, furnish the incentive to similar [634] acts. In the history of these celestial beings, the Rajputni has a memorable lesson before her, that no domestic differences can afford exemption from this proof of faith: for Jupiter and Juno were not more eminent examples of connubial discord than Mena and Siva, who was not only alike unfaithful, but more cruel, driving Mena from his Olympus (Kailas), and forcing her to seek refuge in the murky caverns of Caucasus. Female immolation, therefore, originated with the sun-worshipping Saivas, and was common to all those nations who adored this the most splendid object of the visible creation. Witness the Scythic Gete or Jat warrior of the Jaxartes, who devoted his wife, horse, arms, and slaves, to the flames; the “giant Gete” of Scandinavia, who forgot not on the shores of the Baltic his Transoxianian habits; and the Frisian Frank and Saxon descended from him, who ages after omitted only the female. Could we assign the primary cause of a custom so opposed to the first law of nature with the same certainty that we can prove its high antiquity, we might be enabled to devise some means for its abolition. The chief characteristic of Satiism is its expiating quality: for by this act of faith, the Sati not only makes atonement for the sins of her husband, and secures the remission of her own, but has the joyful assurance of reunion to the object whose beatitude she procures. Having once imbibed this doctrine, its fulfilment is powerfully aided by that heroism of character inherent to the Rajputni; though we see that the stimulant of religion requires no aid even in the timid female of Bengal, who, relying on the promise of regeneration, lays her head on the pyre with the most philosophical composure.
Nothing short of the abrogation of the doctrines which pronounce such sacrifices exculpatory can be effectual in preventing them; but this would be to overturn the fundamental article of their creed, the notion of metempsychosis. Further research may disclose means more attainable, and the sacred Shastras are at once the surest and the safest. Whoever has examined these is aware of the conflict of authorities for and against cremation; but a proper application of them (and they are the highest who give it not their sanction) has, I believe, never been resorted to. Vyasa, the chronicler of the Yadus, a race whose manners were decidedly Scythic, is the great advocate for female sacrifice: he (in the Mahabharata) pronounces the expiation perfect. But Manu inculcates no such doctrine [635]; and although the state of widowhood he recommends might be deemed onerous by the fair sex of the west, it would be considered little hardship in the east. “Let her emaciate her body, by living voluntarily on pure flowers, roots, and fruit; but let her not, when her lord is deceased, even pronounce the name of another man.” Again he says, “A virtuous wife ascends to heaven, if, after the decease of her lord, she devote herself to pious austerity; but a widow, who slights her deceased husband by marrying again, brings disgrace on herself here below, and shall be excluded from the seat of her lord.”[4.24.1]
These and many other texts, enjoining purity of life and manners to the widow, are to be found in this first authority, but none demanding such a cruel pledge of affection. Abstinence from the common pursuits of life, and entire self-denial, are rewarded by “high renown in this world, and in the next the abode of her husband”; and procure for her the title of “sadhwi, or the virtuous.” These are deemed sufficient pledges of affection by the first of sages.[4.24.2] So much has been written on this subject that we shall not pursue it further in this place; but proceed to consider a still more inhuman practice, infanticide.
Although custom sanctions, and religion rewards, a Sati, the victim to marital selfishness, yet, to the honour of humanity, neither traditionary adage nor religious text can be quoted in support of a practice so revolting as infanticide. Man alone, of the whole animal creation, is equal to the task of destroying his offspring [636]: for instinct preserves what reason destroys. The wife is the sacrifice to his egotism, and the progeny of her own sex to his pride; and if the unconscious infant should escape the influence of the latter, she is only reserved to become the victim of the former at the period when life is most desirous of extension. If the female reasoned on her destiny, its hardships are sufficient to stifle all sense of joy, and produce indifference to life. When a female is born, no anxious inquiries await the mother—no greetings welcome the newcomer, who appears an intruder on the scene, which often closes in the hour of its birth. But the very silence with which a female birth is accompanied forcibly expresses sorrow; and we dare not say that many compunctious visitings do not obtrude themselves on those who, in accordance with custom and imagined necessity, are thus compelled to violate the sentiments of nature. Families may exult in the Satis which their cenotaphs portray,[4.24.3] but none ever heard a Rajput boast of the destruction of his infant progeny.
=The Origin of Infanticide.=—What are the causes, we may ask, sufficiently powerful to induce the suppression of a feeling which every sentient being has in common for its offspring? To suppose the Rajput devoid of this sentiment would argue his deficiency in the ordinary attributes of humanity: often is he heard to exclaim, “Accursed the day when a woman child was born to me!” The same motive which studded Europe with convents, in which youth and beauty were immured until liberated by death, first prompted the Rajput to infanticide: and, however revolting the policy, it is perhaps kindness compared to incarceration. There can be no doubt that monastic seclusion, practised by the Frisians in France, the Langobardi in Italy, and the Visigoths in Spain, was brought from Central Asia, the cradle of the Goths.[4.24.4] It is, in fact, a modification of the same feeling which characterizes the Rajput and the ancient German warrior—the dread of dishonour to the fair: the former raises the poniard to the breast of his wife rather than witness her captivity, and he gives the opiate to the infant, whom, if he cannot portion and marry to her equal, he dare not see degraded [637].
=Infanticide.=—Although religion nowhere authorizes this barbarity, the laws which regulate marriage amongst the Rajputs powerfully promote infanticide. Not only is intermarriage prohibited between families of the same clan (khanp), but between those of the same tribe (got); and though centuries may have intervened since their separation, and branches thus transplanted may have lost their original patronymic, they can never be regrafted on the original stem: for instance, though eight centuries have separated the two grand subdivisions of the Guhilots, and the younger, the Sesodia, has superseded the elder, the Aharya, each ruling distinct States, a marriage between any of the branches would be deemed incestuous: the Sesodia is yet brother to the Aharya, and regards every female of the race as his sister. Every tribe has therefore to look abroad, to a race distinct from its own, for suitors for the females. Foreign war, international feuds, or other calamities affect tribes the most remote from each other; nor can war or famine thin the clans of Marwar, without diminishing the female population of Amber: thus both suffer in a twofold degree. Many virtuous and humane princes have endeavoured to check or mitigate an evil, in the eradication of which every parental feeling would co-operate. Sumptuary edicts alone can control it; and the Rajputs were never sufficiently enamoured of despotism to permit it to rule within their private dwellings. The plan proposed, and in some degree followed by the great Jai Singh of Amber, might with caution be pursued, and with great probability of success. He submitted to the prince of every Rajput State a decree, which was laid before a convocation of their respective vassals, in which he regulated the daeja or dower, and other marriage expenditure, with reference to the property of the vassal, limiting it to one year’s income of the estate. This plan was, however, frustrated by the vanity of the Chondawat of Salumbar, who expended on the marriage of his daughter a sum even greater than his sovereign could have afforded; and to have his name blazoned by the bards and genealogists, he sacrificed the beneficent views of one of the wisest of the Rajput race. Until vanity suffers itself to be controlled, and the aristocratic Rajput submit to republican simplicity,[4.24.5] the evils arising from nuptial profusion will not cease. Unfortunately, those who could check it find their interest in stimulating it, namely, the whole class of Mangtas [638] (mendicants), bards, minstrels, jugglers, Brahmans who assemble on these occasions, and pour forth their epithalamiums in praise of the virtue of liberality. The Bardais are the grand recorders of fame, and the volume of precedent is always recurred to, in citing the liberality of former chiefs; while the dread of their satire (visarva, literally ‘poison’)[4.24.6] shuts the eyes of the chiefs to consequences, and they are only anxious to maintain the reputation of their ancestors, though fraught with future ruin. “The Dahima emptied his coffers” (says Chand, the pole-star of the Rajputs) “on the marriage of his daughter with Prithiraj; but he filled them with the praises of mankind.” The same bard retails every article of these daejas or ‘dowers,’ which thus become precedents for future ages; and the “lakh pasarna,”[4.24.7] then established for the chief bardai, has become a model to posterity. Even now the Rana of Udaipur, in his season of poverty, at the recent marriage of his daughters bestowed “the gift of a lakh” on the chief bard; though the articles of gold, horses, clothes, etc., were included in the estimate, and at an undue valuation, which rendered the gift not quite so precious as in the days of the Chauhan. Were bonds taken from all the feudal chiefs, and a penal clause inserted, of forfeiture of their fief by all who exceeded a fixed nuptial expenditure, the axe would be laid to the root, the evil would be checked, and the heart of many a mother (and we may add father) be gladdened, by preserving at once the point of honour and their child. When ignorance declaims against the gratuitous love of murder amongst these brave men, our contempt is excited equally by its short-sighted conclusions, and the affected philanthropy which overlooks all remedy but the “sic volo.” Sir John Shore,[4.24.8] when acting on the suggestions of the benevolent Duncan for the suppression of this practice amongst the Rajkumars, judged more wisely as a politician, and more charitably in his estimate of human motives. “A prohibition,” says he, “enforced by the denunciation of the severest temporal penalties, would have had little efficacy in abolishing a custom which existed in opposition to the feelings of humanity and natural affection”; but “the sanction of that religion which the Rajkumars professed was appealed to in aid of the ordinances of civil authority; and an engagement binding themselves to desist from the barbarous practice was prepared, and circulated for signature amongst the Rajkumars.” It may well be doubted how far this influence could extend, when the root of the evil [639] remained untouched, though not unseen, as the philanthropic Duncan pointed out in the confession of the Rajkumars: “all unequivocally admitted it, but all did not fully acknowledge its atrocity; and the only reason they assigned for the inhuman practice was the great expense of procuring suitable matches for their daughters, if they allowed them to grow up.” The Rajkumar is one of the Chauhan sakha, chief of the Agnikulas, and in proportion to its high and well-deserved pretensions on the score of honour, it has more infanticides than any other of the “thirty-six royal races.” Amongst those of this race out of the pale of feudalism, and subjected to powers not Rajput, the practice is fourfold greater, from the increased pressure of the cause which gave it birth, and the difficulty of establishing their daughters in wedlock. Raja Jai Singh’s enactment went far to remedy this. Conjoin his plan with Mr. Duncan’s, provide dowers, and infanticide will cease. It is only by removing the cause that the consequences can be averted.[4.24.9]
As to the almost universality of this practice amongst the Jarejas, the leading cause, which will also operate to its continuance, has been entirely overlooked. The Jarejas were Rajputs, a subdivision of the Yadus; but by intermarriage with the Muhammadans, to whose faith they became proselytes, they lost their caste. Political causes have disunited them from the Muhammadans, and they desire again to be considered as pure Rajputs; but having been contaminated, no Rajput will intermarry with them. The owner of a hyde of land, whether Sesodia, Rathor, or Chauhan, would scorn the hand of a Jareja princess. Can the “sic volo” be applied to men who think in this fashion?
=Johar.=—Having thus pointed out the causes of the sacrifice of widows and of infants, I shall touch on the yet more awful rite of Johar, when a whole tribe may become extinct, of which several instances have been recorded in the annals of Mewar. To the fair of other lands the fate of the Rajputni must appear one of appalling hardship. In each stage of life death is ready to claim her; by the poppy at its dawn, by the flames in riper years; while the safety of the interval depending on the uncertainty of war, at no period is her existence worth a twelve-month’s purchase. The loss of a battle, or the capture of a city, is a signal to avoid captivity and its horrors, which to the Rajputni are worse than death. To the doctrines of Christianity Europe owes the boon of protection to the helpless and the fair, who are [640] comparatively safe amidst the vicissitudes of war; to which security the chivalry of the Middle Ages doubtless contributed. But it is singular that a nation so refined, so scrupulous in its ideas with regard to females, as the Rajput, should not have entered into some national compact to abandon such proof of success as the bondage[4.24.10] of the sex. We can enter into the feeling, and applaud the deed, which ensured the preservation of their honour by the fatal johar, when the foe was the brutalized Tatar. But the practice was common in the international wars of the Rajputs; and I possess numerous inscriptions (on stone and on brass) which record as the first token of victory the captive wives of the foeman. When “the mother of Sisera looked out of the window, and cried through the lattice, Why tarry the wheels of his chariot—have they not sped? have they not divided the prey; to every man a damsel or two?”[4.24.11] we have a perfect picture of the Rajput mother expecting her son from the foray.
The Jewish law with regard to female captives was perfectly analogous to that of Manu; both declare them “lawful prize,” and both Moses and Manu establish rules sanctioning the marriage of such captives with the captors. “When a girl is made captive by her lover, after a victory over her kinsman,” marriage “is permitted by law.”[4.24.12] That forcible marriage in the Hindu law termed Rakshasa, namely, “the seizure of a maiden by force from her house while she weeps and calls for assistance, after her kinsman and friends have been slain in battle,”[4.24.13] is the counterpart of the ordinance regarding the usage of a captive in the Pentateuch,[4.24.14] excepting the “shaving of the head,” which is the sign of complete slavery with the Hindu.[4.24.15] When Hector, anticipating his fall, predicts the fate which awaits Andromache, he draws a forcible picture of the misery of the Rajput; but the latter, instead of a lachrymose and enervating harangue as he prepared for the battle with the same chance of defeat, would have spared her the pain of plying the “Argive loom” by her death. To prevent such degradation, the brave [641] Rajput has recourse to the johar, or immolation of every female of the family: nor can we doubt that, educated as are the females of that country, they gladly embrace such a refuge from pollution. Who would not be a Rajput in such a case? The very term widow (rand) is used in common parlance as one of reproach.[4.24.16]
Manu commands that whoever accosts a woman shall do so by the title of “sister,”[4.24.17] and that “way must be made for her, even as for the aged, for a priest, a prince, or a bridegroom”; and in the admirable text on the laws of hospitality, he ordains that “pregnant women, brides, and damsels shall have food before all the other guests”[4.24.18]; which, with various other texts, appears to indicate a time when women were less than now objects of restraint; a custom attributable to the paramount dominion of the Muhammadans, from whose rigid system the Hindus have borrowed. But so many conflicting texts are to be found in the pages of Manu, that we may pronounce the compilation never to have been the work of the same legislator: from whose dicta we may select with equal facility texts tending to degrade as to exalt the sex. For the following he would meet with many plaudits: “Let women be constantly supplied with ornaments at festivals and jubilees, for if the wife be not elegantly attired, she will not exhilarate her husband. A wife gaily adorned, the whole house is embellished.”[4.24.19] In the following text he pays an unequivocal compliment to her power: “A female is able to draw from the right path in this life, not a fool only, but even a sage, and can lead him in subjection to desire or to wrath.” With this acknowledgment from the very fountain of authority, we have some ground for asserting that les femmes font les mœurs, even in Rajputana; and that though immured and invisible, their influence on society is not less certain than if they moved in the glare of open day.
=Position of Rājput Women.=—Most erroneous ideas have been formed of the Hindu female from the pictures drawn by those who never left the banks of the Ganges. They are represented [642] as degraded beings, and that not one in many thousands can even read. I would ask such travellers whether they know the name of Rajput, for there are few of the lowest chieftains whose daughters are not instructed both to read and write; though the customs of the country requiring much form in epistolary writing, only the signature is made to letters. But of their intellect, and knowledge of mankind, whoever has had to converse with a Rajputni guardian of her son’s rights, must draw a very different conclusion.[4.24.20] Though excluded by the Salic law of India from governing, they are declared to be fit regents during minority; and the history of India is filled with anecdotes of able and valiant females in this capacity.[4.24.21]
=Rājput Character.=—The more prominent traits of character will be found disseminated throughout the annals; we shall therefore omit the customary summaries of nationalities, those fanciful debtor and creditor accounts, with their balanced amount, favourable or unfavourable according to the disposition of the observer; and from the anecdotes through these pages leave the reader to form his own judgement of the Rajput. High courage, patriotism, loyalty, honour, hospitality, and simplicity are qualities which must at once be conceded to them; and if we cannot vindicate them from charges to which human nature in every clime is obnoxious; if we are compelled to admit the deterioration of moral dignity, from the continual inroads of, and their consequent collision with, rapacious conquerors; we must yet admire the quantum of virtue which even oppression and bad example have failed to banish. The meaner vices of deceit and falsehood, which the delineators of national character attach to the Asiatic without distinction, I deny to be universal with the Rajputs, though some tribes may have been obliged from position to use these shields of the weak against continuous oppression. Every court in Rajasthan has [643] its characteristic epithet; and there is none held more contemptible than the affix of jhutha darbar, ‘the lying court,’ applied to Jaipur; while the most comprehensive measure of praise is the simple epithet of sachha,[4.24.22] ‘the truth-teller.’ Again, there are many shades between deceit and dissimulation: the one springs from natural depravity; the other may be assumed, as with the Rajput, in self-defence. But their laws, the mode of administering them, and the operation of external causes, must be attentively considered before we can form a just conclusion of the springs which regulate the character of a people. We must examine the opinions of the competent of past days, when political independence yet remained to the Rajputs, and not found our judgment of a nation upon a superficial knowledge of individuals. To this end I shall avail myself of the succinct but philosophical remarks of Abu-l-fazl, the wise minister of the wise Akbar, which are equally applicable to mankind at large, as to the particular people we are treating of. “If,” he says, speaking of the Hindus, “a diligent investigator were to examine the temper and disposition of the people of each tribe, he would find every individual differing in some respect or other. Some among them are virtuous in the highest degree, and others carry vice to the greatest excess. They are renowned for wisdom, disinterested friendship, obedience to their superiors, and many other virtues: but, at the same time, there are among them men whose hearts are obdurate and void of shame, turbulent spirits, who for the merest trifle will commit the greatest outrages.”[4.24.23]
Again: “The Hindus are religious, affable, courteous to strangers, cheerful, enamoured of knowledge, lovers of justice, able in business, grateful, admirers of truth, and of unbounded fidelity in all their dealings. Their character shines brightest in adversity. Their soldiers (the Rajputs) know not what it is to fly from the field of battle; but when the success of the combat becomes doubtful, they dismount from their horses, and throw away their lives in payment of the debt of valour.”[4.24.24]
I shall conclude this chapter with a sketch of their familiar habits, and a few of their indoor and outdoor recreations.
=Introduction of Melons, Grapes, Tobacco, Opium: the Use of Opium.=—To Babur, the founder of the Mogul dynasty, India is indebted for the introduction [644] of its melons and grapes; and to his grandson Jahangir for tobacco.[4.24.25] For the introduction of opium we have no date, and it is not even mentioned in the poems of Chand.[4.24.26] This pernicious plant has robbed the Rajput of half his virtues; and while it obscures these, it heightens his vices, giving to his natural bravery a character of insane ferocity, and to the countenance, which would otherwise beam with intelligence, an air of imbecility. Like all stimulants, its effects are magical for a time; but the reaction is not less certain: and the faded form or amorphous bulk too often attest the debilitating influence of a drug which alike debases mind and body. In the more ancient epics we find no mention of the poppy-juice as now used, though the Rajput has at all times been accustomed to his madhava ra piyala, or ‘intoxicating cup.’ The essence,[4.24.27] whether of grain, of roots, or of flowers, still welcomes the guest, but is secondary to the opiate. Amal lar khana, ‘to eat opium together,’ is the most inviolable pledge; and an agreement ratified by this ceremony is stronger than any adjuration. If a Rajput pays a visit, the first question is, amal khaya? ‘have you had your opiate?’—amal khao, ‘take your opiate.’ On a birthday, when all the chiefs convene to congratulate their brother on another ‘knot to his years,’ the large cup is brought forth, a lump of opiate put therein, upon which water is poured, and by the aid of a stick a solution is made, to which each helps his neighbour, not with a glass, but with the hollow of his hand held to his mouth. To judge by the wry faces on this occasion, none can like it, and to get rid of the nauseous taste, comfit-balls are handed round. It is curious to observe the animation it inspires; a Rajput is fit for nothing without his amal, and I have often dismissed their men of business to refresh their intellects by a dose, for when its effects are dissipating they become mere logs [645].[4.24.28] Opium to the Rajput is more necessary than food, and a suggestion to the Rana to tax it highly was most unpopular. From the rising generation the author exacted promises that they would resist initiation in this vice, and many grew up in happy ignorance of the taste of opium. He will be the greatest friend to Rajasthan who perseveres in eradicating the evil. The valley of Udaipur is a poppy garden, of every hue and variety, whence the Hindu Sri may obtain a coronet more variegated than ever adorned the Isis of the Nile.
=Pledge by eating Opium.=—A pledge once given by the Rajput, whether ratified by the “eating opium together,” “an exchange of turbans,” or the more simple act of “giving the right hand,” is maintained inviolable under all circumstances.
=Hunting and other Sports.=—Their grand hunts have been described. The Rajput is fond of his dog and his gun. The former aids him in pulling down the boar or hare, and with the stalking-horse he will toil for hours after the deer. The greater chieftains have their ramnas or preserves, where poaching would be summarily punished, and where the slaughter of all kinds of beasts, elk, hog, hyena, tiger, boar, deer, wild-dog, wolf, or hare, is indiscriminate. Riding in the ring with the lance in tournaments, without the spike, the point being guarded; defence of the sword against the lance, with every variety of “noble horsemanship,” such as would render the most expert in Europe an easy prey to the active Rajput, are some of the chief exercises. Firing at a mark with a matchlock, in which they attain remarkable accuracy of aim; and in some parts of the country throwing a dart or javelin from horseback, are favourite amusements. The practice of the bow is likewise a main source of pastime, and in the manner there adopted it requires both dexterity and strength[4.24.29] [646]. The Rajput is not satisfied if he cannot bury his arrow either in the earthern target, or in the buffalo, to the feather. The use of the bow is hallowed; Arjuna’s bow in the “great war,” and that of the Chauhan king, Prithiraj, with which the former gained Draupadi and the latter the fair Sanjogta, are immortalized like that of Ulysses. In these martial exercises the youthful Rajput is early initiated, and that the sight of blood may be familiar, he is instructed, before he has strength to wield a sword, to practise with his boy’s scimitar on the heads of lambs and kids. His first successful essay on the animals ‘ferae naturae’ is a source of congratulation to his whole family.[4.24.30] In this manner the spirit of chivalry is continually fed, for everything around him speaks of arms and strife. His very amusements are warlike; and the dance and the song, the burthen of which is the record of his successful gallantry, so far from enervating, serve as fresh incitements to his courage.
=Wrestling.=—The exhibition of the Jethis, or wrestlers,[4.24.31] is another mode of killing time. It is a state concern for every prince or chief to entertain a certain number of these champions of the glove. Challenges are sent by the most celebrated from one court to another; and the event of the akhara, as the arena is termed, is looked to with great anxiety.
=Armouries.=—No prince or chief is without his silah-khana, or armoury, where he passes hours in viewing and arranging his arms. Every favourite weapon, whether sword, matchlock, spear, dagger, or bow, has a distinctive epithet. The keeper of the armoury is one of the most confidential officers about the person of the prince. These arms are beautiful and costly. The sirohi,[4.24.32] or slightly curved blade, is formed like that of Damascus, and is the greatest favourite of all the variety of sabres throughout Rajputana. The long cut-and-thrust, like the Andrea Ferrara, is not uncommon; nor the khanda, or double-edged sword. The matchlocks both of Lahore and the country are often highly finished and inlaid with mother-of-pearl and gold: those of Bundi are the best. The shield of the rhinoceros-hide offers the best resistance, and is often ornamented with animals, beautifully painted, and enamelled in gold and silver. The bow is of buffalo-horn, and the arrows of reed, and barbed in a variety of fashions, as the crescent, the trident, the snake’s tongue, and other fanciful forms.
=Sheodān Singh. Music.=—The Maharaja Sheodan Singh (whose family are heirs presumptive to the throne) was one of my constant visitors; and the title of ‘adopted brother,’ which he conferred upon me, allowed him to make his visits unreasonably long. The Maharaja had many excellent qualities. He was the best shot in Mewar; he was well read in the classic literature of his nation; deeply versed in the secrets of the chronicles, not only of Mewar but of all Rajwara; conversant with all the mysteries of the bard, and could improvise on every occasion. He was a proficient in musical science [647], and could discourse most fluently on the whole theory of Sangita, which comprehends vocal and instrumental harmony. He could explain each of the ragas, or musical modes, which issued from the five mouths of Siva and his consort Mena, together with the almost endless variations of the ragas, to each of which are allotted six consorts or raginis. He had attached to his suite the first vocalists of Mewar, and occasionally favoured me by letting them sing at my house. The chief cantatrice had a superb voice, a contralto of great extent, and bore the familiar appellation of ‘Catalani.’ Her execution of all the basant or ‘spring-songs,’ and the megh or ‘cloud-songs’ of the monsoon, which are full of melody, was perfect. But she had a rival in a singer from Ujjain, and we made a point of having them together, that emulation might excite to excellence. The chieftain of Salumbar, the chief of the Saktawats, and others, frequently joined these parties, as well as the Maharaja: for all are partial to the dance and the song, during which conversation flows unrestrained. Saadatu-lla, whose execution on the guitar would have secured applause even at the Philharmonic, commanded mute attention when he played a tan or symphony, or when, taking any of the simple tappas of Ujjain as a theme, he wandered through a succession of voluntaries. In summer these little parties were held on the terrace or the house-top, where carpets were spread under an awning, while the cool breezes of the lake gave life after the exhaustion of a day passed under 96° of Fahrenheit. The subjects of their songs are various, love, glory, satire, etc. I was invited to similar assemblies by many of the chiefs; though none were so intellectual as those of the Maharaja. On birthdays or other festivals the chief Bardai often appears, or the bard of any other tribe who may happen to be present. Then all is mute attention, broken only by the emphatic “wah, wah!” the measured nod of the head, or fierce curl of the moustache, in token of approbation or the reverse.[4.24.33]
The Maharaja’s talents for amplification were undoubted, and by more than one of his friends this failing was attributed to his long residence at the court of Jaipur, whose cognomen will not have been forgotten. He had one day been amusing us with feats of his youth, his swimming from island to island, and [648] bestriding the alligators for an excursion.[4.24.34] Like Tell, he had placed a mark on his son’s head and hit it successfully. He could kill an eagle on the wing, and divide a ball on the edge of a knife, the knife itself unseen. While running on in this manner, my features betraying some incredulity, he insisted on redeeming his word. A day was accordingly appointed, and though labouring under an ague, he came with his favourite matchlocks. The more dangerous experiment was desisted from, and he commenced by dividing the ball on the knife. This he placed perpendicularly in the centre of an earthen vessel filled with water; and taking his station at about twenty paces, perforated the centre of the vessel, and allowed you to take up the fragments of the ball; having previously permitted you to load the piece, and examine the vessel, which he did not once approach himself. Another exhibition was striking an orange from a pole without perforating it. Again, he gave the option of loading to a bystander, and retreating a dozen paces, he knocked an orange off untouched by the ball, which, according to a preliminary proviso, could not be found: the orange was not even discoloured by the powder. He was an adept also at chess[4.24.35] and chaupar, and could carry on a conversation by stringing flowers in a peculiar manner. If he plumed himself upon his pretensions, his vanity was always veiled under a demeanour full of courtesy and grace; and Maharaja Sheodan Singh would be esteemed a well-bred and well-informed man at the most polished court of Europe.
Every chief has his band, vocal and instrumental; but Sindhia, some years since, carried away the most celebrated vocalists of Udaipur. The Rajputs are all partial to music. The tappa is the favourite measure. Its chief character is plaintive simplicity; and it is analogous to the Scotch, or perhaps still more to the Norman.[4.24.36]
The Rana, who is a great patron of the art, has a small band of musicians, whose only instrument is the shahna, or hautboy. They played their national [649] tappas with great taste and feeling; and these strains, wafted from the lofty terrace of the palace in the silence of the night, produced a sensation of delight not unmixed with pain, which its peculiarly melancholy character excites. The Rana has also a few flute or flageolet players, who discourse most eloquent music. Indeed, we may enumerate this among the principal amusements of the Rajputs; and although it would be deemed indecorous to be a performer, the science forms a part of education.[4.24.37]
Who that has marched in the stillness of night through the mountainous regions of Central India, and heard the warder sound the turai from his turreted abode, perched like an eyrie on the mountain-top, can ever forget its graduated intensity of sound, or the emphatic ham! ham! “all’s well,” which follows the lengthened blast of the cornet reverberating in every recess.[4.24.38]
=Bagpipes.=—A species of bagpipe, so common to all the Celtic races of Europe, is not unknown to the Rajputs. It is called the mashak,[4.24.39] but is only the rudiment of that instrument whose peculiar influence on the physical, through the moral agency of man, is described by our own master-bard. They have likewise the double flageolet; but in the same ratio of perfection to that of Europe as the mashak to the heart-stirring pipe of the north. As to their lutes, guitars, and all the varieties of tintinnabulants (as Dr. Johnson would call them), it would fatigue without interesting the reader to enumerate them.
=Literature among the Rajputs. Observatories.=—We now come to the literary attainments of the lords of Rajasthan, of whom there is none without sufficient clerkship to read his grant or agreement for rakhwali or blackmail; and none either so ignorant, or so proud, as the boasted ancestral wisdom of England, whose barons could not even sign their names to the great charter of their liberties. The Rana of Udaipur has unlimited command of [650] his pen, and his letters are admirable; but we may say of him nearly what was remarked of Charles the Second—“he never wrote a foolish thing, and seldom did a wise one.” The familiar epistolary correspondence of the princes and nobles of Rajasthan would exhibit abundant testimony of their powers of mind: they are sprinkled with classical allusions, and evince that knowledge of mankind which constant collision in society must produce. A collection of these letters, which exist in the archives of every principality, would prove that the princes of this country are upon a par with the rest of mankind, not only in natural understanding, but, taking their opportunities into account, even in its cultivation. The prince who in Europe could quote Hesiod and Homer with the freedom that the Rana does on all occasions Vyasa and Valmiki, would be accounted a prodigy; and there is not a divine who could make application of the ordinances of Moses with more facility than the Rana of those of their great lawgiver Manu. When they talk of the wisdom of their ancestors, it is not a mere figure of speech. The instruction of their princes is laid down in rules held sacred, and must have been far more onerous than any system of European university education, for scarcely a branch of human knowledge is omitted. But the cultivation of the mind, and the arts of polished life, must always flourish in the ratio of a nation’s prosperity, and from the decline of the one, we may date the deterioration of the other with the Rajput. The astronomer has now no patron to look to for reward; there is no Jai Singh to erect such stupendous observatories as he built at Delhi, Benares, Ujjain, and at his own capital;[4.24.40] to construct globes and armillary spheres, of which, according to their own and our system, the Kotah prince has two, each three feet in diameter. The same prince (Jai Singh) collated De la Hire’s tables with those of Ulugh Beg, and presented the result to the last emperor of Delhi, worthy the name of the Great Mogul. To these tables he gave the name of Zij Muhammad Shahi. It was Jai Singh who, as already mentioned, sought to establish sumptuary laws throughout the nation, to regulate marriages, and thereby prevent infanticide; and who left his name to the capital he founded, the first in Rajasthan.
But we cannot march over fifty miles of country without observing traces of the genius, talent, and wealth of past days: though—whether the more abstruse sciences, or the lighter arts which embellish life—all are now fast disappearing [651]. Whether in the tranquillity secured to them by the destruction of their predatory foes, these arts and sciences may revive, and the nation regain its elevated tone, is a problem which time alone can solve.
=Household Furniture.=—In their household economy, their furniture and decorations, they remain unchanged during the lapse of a thousand years. No chairs, no couches adorn their sitting apartments, though the painted and gilded ceiling may be supported by columns of serpentine, and the walls one mass of mirrors, marble, or china;—nothing but a soft carpet, hidden by a white cloth, on which the guests seat themselves according to rank. In fine, the quaint description of the chaplain to the first embassy which England sent to India, more than two hundred years ago, applies now, as it probably will two hundred years hence. “And now for the furniture the greatest men have in them [their houses], it is curta supellex, very little, they (the rooms) being not beautified with hangings, nor with anything besides to line their walls; for they have no chairs, stools, couches, tables, beds enclosed with canopies, or curtains, in any of their rooms. And the truth is, that if they had them, the extreme heat would forbid the use of many of them; all their bravery is upon their floors, on which they spread most excellent carpets.”[4.24.41]
=Dress.=—It were useless to expatiate on dress, either male or female, the fashion varying in each province and tribe, though the texture and materials are everywhere the same: cotton in summer, and quilted chintz or broadcloth in winter. The ladies have only three articles of parure; the ghaghra, or ‘petticoat’; the kanchuli, ‘or corset’; and the dopatta, or ‘scarf,’ which is occasionally thrown over [652] the head as a veil. Ornaments are without number. For the men, trousers of every shape and calibre, a tunic girded with a ceinture, and a scarf, form the wardrobe of every Rajput. The turban is the most important part of the dress, and is the unerring mark of the tribe; the form and fashion are various, and its decorations differ according to time and circumstances. The balaband, or ‘silken fillet,’ was once valued as the mark of the sovereign’s favour, and was tantamount to the courtly “orders” of Europe. The colour of the turban and tunic varies with the season; and the changes are rung upon crimson, saffron, and purple, though white is by far the most common. Their shoes are mere slippers, and sandals are worn by the common classes. Boots are yet used in hunting or war, made of chamois leather, of which material the warrior often has a doublet, being more commodious, and less oppressive, than armour. The dagger or poniard is inseparable from the girdle.
=Cookery, Medicine.=—The culinary art will be discussed elsewhere, together with the medical, which is very low, and usurped by empyrics, who waste alike the purse and health of the ignorant by the sale of aphrodisiacs, which are sought after with great avidity. Gums, metals, minerals, all are compounded, and for one preparation, while the author was at Udaipur, 7000 rupees (nearly £1000) were expended by the court-physician.
=Superstitions.=—Their superstitions, incantations, charms, and phylacteries against danger, mental or bodily, will appear more appropriately where the subject is incidently introduced [653].
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Footnote 4.24.1:
Manu, Laws, v. 157, 160, 161.
Footnote 4.24.2:
Were all Manu’s maxims on this head collected, and with other good authorities, printed, circulated, and supported by Hindu missionaries, who might be brought to advocate the abolition of Satiism, some good might be effected. Let every text tending to the respectability of widowhood be made prominent, and degrade the opponents by enumerating the weak points they abound in. Instance the polyandry which prevailed among the Pandus, whose high priest Vyasa was an illegitimate branch; though above all would be the efficacy of the abolition of polygamy, which in the lower classes leaves women destitute, and in the higher condemns them to mortification and neglect. Whatever result such a course might produce, there can be no danger in the experiment. Such sacrifices must operate powerfully on manners; and, barbarous as is the custom, yet while it springs from the same principle, it ought to improve the condition of women, from the fear that harsh treatment of them might defeat the atonement hereafter. Let the advocate for the abolition of this practice by the hand of power read attentively Mr. Colebrooke’s essay, “On the Duties of a Faithful Hindu Widow,” in the fourth volume of the Asiatic Researches [Essays on the Religion and Philosophy of the Hindus, ed. 1858, p. 70 ff.], to correct the notion that there is no adequate religious ordinance for the horrid sacrifice. Mr. C. observes (p. 220): “Though an alternative be allowed, the Hindu legislators have shown themselves disposed to encourage widows to burn themselves with their husband’s corpse.” In this paper he will find too many authorities deemed sacred for its support; but it is only by knowing the full extent of the prejudices and carefully collecting the conflicting authorities, that we can provide the means to overcome it. Jahangir legislated for the abolition of this practice by successive ordinances. At first he commanded that no woman, being mother of a family, should under any circumstances be permitted, however willing, to immolate herself; and subsequently the prohibition was made entire when the slightest compulsion was required, “whatever the assurances of the people might be.” The royal commentator records no reaction. We might imitate Jahangir, and adopting the partially prohibitive ordinance, forbid the sacrifice where there was a family to rear. [The early texts on the subject of Sati have been collected by H. H. Wilson, Essays and Lectures chiefly on the Religion of the Hindus, 1881, ii. 270 ff. Also see Max Müller, Selected Essays on Language, Mythology, and Religion, 1881, i. 332 ff.
Footnote 4.24.3:
[On Sati shrines and records of their deaths at Bikaner see General G. Hervey, Some Records of Crime, i. 209 f., 238 ff.]
Footnote 4.24.4:
The Ghakkars, a Scythic race inhabiting the banks of the Indus, at an early period of history were given to infanticide. “It was a custom among them,” says Ferishta, “as soon as a female child was born, to carry her to the market-place and there proclaim aloud, holding the child in one hand and a knife in the other, that any person who wanted a wife might now take her; otherwise she was immediately put to death. By this means they had more men than women, which occasioned the custom of several husbands to one wife. When this wife was visited by one of her husbands, she set up a mark at the door, which being observed by any of the others who might be coming on the same errand, he immediately withdrew till the signal was taken away.”
[This quotation from Ferishta is taken from Dow (2nd ed. i. 138 f.). Compare Briggs’ trans., i. 183 f. This account is denied by the present members of the tribe (Rose, Glossary, ii. 275). Much that is said about them refers to the Khokhar tribe (Elliot-Dowson v. 166, note).]
Footnote 4.24.5:
Could they be induced to adopt the custom of the ancient Marsellois, infanticide might cease: “Marseille fut la plus sage des républiques de son temps: les dots ne pourraient passer cents écus en argent, et cinq en habits, dit Strabon” (De l’Esprit des Lois, chap. xv. liv. v. 21).
Footnote 4.24.6:
[Dr. L. P. Tesitori writes that the true form of this word is visar, ‘satire,’ which has no connexion with vis, ‘poison.’]
Footnote 4.24.7:
[This term and the custom of extravagant gifts at marriages still prevail. Pasārna means ‘to scatter, display’ (Russell, Tribes and Castes Central Provinces, ii. 256).]
Footnote 4.24.8:
[Asiatic Researches, iv. 353 f.; Calcutta Review, i. 377.]
Footnote 4.24.9:
[For recent measures proposed for reduction of marriage expenses, see Risley, The People of India, 2nd ed. 195 ff.]
Footnote 4.24.10:
Banda is ‘a bondsman’ in Persian; Bandi, ‘a female slave’ in Hindi. [These words have no connexion with “bondage.”]
Footnote 4.24.11:
Judges v. 28-30.
Footnote 4.24.12:
Manu, Laws, iii. 26.
Footnote 4.24.13:
Manu, Laws, iii. 33.
Footnote 4.24.14:
“When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the Lord thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive, and seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy wife; then thou shalt bring her home to thine house, and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails; and she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in thine house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month: and after that thou shalt go in unto her, and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife” (Deut. xxi. 10, 11, 12, 13).
Footnote 4.24.15:
[On head-shaving as a mark of slavery see Jātaka, Cambridge trans., v. 125; Anantha Krishna Iyer, Tribes and Castes of Cochin, ii. 337; BG, ix. Part i. 232.]
Footnote 4.24.16:
I remember in my subaltern days, and wanderings through countries then little known, one of my Rajput soldiers at the well, impatient for water, asked a woman for the rope and bucket by the uncivil term of rand: “Main Rajputni che,” ‘I am a Rajputni,’ she replied in the Hara dialect, to which tribe she belonged, “aur Rajput ki ma cho,” ‘and the mother of Rajputs.’ At the indignant reply the hands of the brave Kalyan were folded, and he asked her forgiveness by the endearing and respectful epithet of “mother.” It was soon granted, and filling his brass vessel, she dismissed him with the epithet of “son,” and a gentle reproof. Kalyan was himself a Rajput, and a bolder lives not, if he still exists; this was in 1807, and in 1817 he gained his sergeant’s knot, as one of the thirty-two firelocks of my guard, who led the attack, and defeated a camp of fifteen hundred Pindaris.
Footnote 4.24.17:
Laws, ii. 129.
Footnote 4.24.18:
Ibid. iii. 114.
Footnote 4.24.19:
Ibid. iii. 57, 60, 61, 62, 63.
Footnote 4.24.20:
I have conversed for hours with the Bundi queen-mother on the affairs of her government and welfare of her infant son, to whom I was left guardian by his dying father. She had adopted me as her brother; but the conversation was always in the presence of a third person in her confidence, and a curtain separated us. Her sentiments showed invariably a correct and extensive knowledge, which was equally apparent in her letters, of which I had many. I could give many similar instances.
Footnote 4.24.21:
Ferishta in his history [ii. 217 ff.] gives an animated picture of Durgavati, queen of Garha, defending the rights of her infant son against Akbar’s ambition. Like another Boadicea, she headed her army, and fought a desperate battle with Asaf Khan, in which she was wounded and defeated; but scorning flight, or to survive the loss of independence, she, like the antique Roman in such a predicament, slew herself on the field of battle. [For Durgāvati see Badaoni, trans. W. H. Lowe, ii. 65; Elliot-Dowson v. 169, 288, vi. 118 ff.; Sleeman, Rambles, 190 f.
Whoever desires to judge of the comparative fidelity of the translations of this writer, by Dow [ii. 224 ff.] and Briggs, cannot do better than refer to this very passage. The former has clothed it in all the trappings of Ossianic decoration: the latter gives “a plain unvarnished tale,” which ought to be the aim of every translator.
Footnote 4.24.22:
Sachha is very comprehensive; in common parlance it is the opposite of ‘untrue’; but it means ‘loyal, upright, just.’
Footnote 4.24.23:
[Āīn, iii. 114.]
Footnote 4.24.24:
[Ibid. iii. 8.]
Footnote 4.24.25:
The autobiography of both these noble Tatar princes are singular compositions, and may be given as standards of Eastern intellectual acquirement. They minutely note the progress of refinement and luxury. [The sweet melon was probably introduced from Persia, but some varieties of the plant seem to be indigenous. India, however, has a strong claim to ancient cultivation of the vine. Doubtless to the Portuguese may be assigned the credit of having conveyed both the tobacco plant and the knowledge of its properties to India and China (Watt, Econ. Dict. ii. 626, 628, vi. Part iv. 263, v. 361; Id. Comm. Prod. 437 f., 796, 1112; Yule, Hobson-Jobson, 2nd ed. 924 ff.)].
Footnote 4.24.26:
[If the Greeks discovered opium, the Arabs were chiefly concerned in disseminating in the East the knowledge of the plant and its uses (Watt, Econ. Dict. vi. Part i. 24 ff.; Comm. Prod. 846).]
Footnote 4.24.27:
‘Araq, ‘essence’; whence arrack and rack.
Footnote 4.24.28:
Even in the midst of conversation, the eye closes and the head nods as the exciting cause is dissipating, and the countenance assumes a perfect vacuity of expression. Many a chief has taken his siesta in his chair while on a visit to me: an especial failing of my good friend Raj Kalyan of Sadri, the descendant of the brave Shama, who won “the right hand” of the prince at Haldighat. The lofty turban worn by the Raj, which distinguishes this tribe (the Jhala), was often on the point of tumbling into my lap, as he unconsciously nodded. When it is inconvenient to dissolve the opium, the chief carries it in his pocket, and presents it, as we would a pinch of snuff in Europe. In my subaltern days the chieftain of Senthal, in Jaipur, on paying me a visit, presented me with a piece of opium, which I took and laid on the table. Observing that I did not eat it, he said he should like to try the Farangi ka amal, ‘the opiate of the Franks.’ I sent him a bottle of powerful Schiedam, and to his inquiry as to the quantity of the dose, I told him he might take from an eighth to the half, as he desired exhilaration or oblivion. We were to have hunted the next morning; but having no sign of my friend, I was obliged to march without ascertaining the effect of the barter of aphim for the waters of Friesland; though I have no doubt that he found them quite Lethean. [The Rājputs ascribed a divine power to opium owing to the mental exhilaration caused by the drug: hence the taking of it with a chief was a form of solemn communion, and a renewal of the pledge of loyalty (Russell, Tribes and Castes, Central Provinces, i. 170, iii. 164, iv. 425). For opium drinking among Rājputs see Malcolm, Memoir, Central India, 2nd ed. ii. 146 f.; Forbes, Rāsmāla, 557).]
Footnote 4.24.29:
[The use of the bow has now disappeared except among forest tribes. For its use in Mogul times see Irvine, Army of the Indian Moghuls, 91 ff.]
Footnote 4.24.30:
The author has now before him a letter written by the queen-mother of Bundi desiring his rejoicings on Lalji, ‘the beloved’s,’ coup d’essai on a deer, which he had followed most pertinaciously to the death. On this occasion a court was held, and all the chiefs presented offerings and congratulations.
Footnote 4.24.31:
[For the Jethi wrestlers in S. India see Thurston, Tribes and Castes, ii. 456 ff.]
Footnote 4.24.32:
[It takes its name from the town where they were made. The blade is slightly curved, one specimen being rather narrower and lighter than the ordinary sword (talwār), (Egerton, Handbook of Indian Arms, 1880, p. 105; Irvine, Army of the Indian Moghuls, 76 f.).]
Footnote 4.24.33:
Poetic impromptus pass on these occasions unrestricted by the fear of the critic, though the long yawn now and then should have given the hint to my friend the Maharaja that his verses wanted Attic. But he had certainly talent, and he did not conceal his light, which shone the stronger from the darkness that surrounded him: for poverty is not the school of genius, and the trade of the schoolmaster has ever been the least lucrative in a capital where rapine has ruled.
Footnote 4.24.34:
There are two of these alligators quite familiar to the inhabitants of Udaipur, who come when called “from the vasty deep” for food; and I have often exasperated them by throwing an inflated bladder, which the monsters greedily received, only to dive away in angry disappointment. It was on these that my friend affirmed he had ventured.
Footnote 4.24.35:
Chaturanga, so called from imitating the formation of an army. The ‘four’ (chatur) ‘bodied’ (anga) array; or elephants, chariots, horse, and foot. His chief antagonist at chess was a blind man of the city. [Chaupar is played with oblong dice on a board with two transverse bars in the form of a cross, like chausar and pachīsī.]
Footnote 4.24.36:
The tappa belongs to the very extremity of India, being indigenous as far as the Indus and the countries watered by its arms; and though the peculiar measure is common in Rajasthan, the prefix of panjabi shows its origin. I have listened at Caen to the viola or hurdy-gurdy, till I could have fancied myself in Mewar.
Footnote 4.24.37:
Chand remarks of his hero, the Chauhan, that he was “master of the art,” both vocal and instrumental. Whether profane music was ever common may be doubted; but sacred music was a part of early education with the sons of kings. Rama and his brothers were celebrated for the harmonious execution of episodes from the grand epic, the Ramayana. The sacred canticles of Jayadeva were set to music, and apparently by himself, and are yet sung by the Chaubes. The inhabitants of the various monastic establishments chant their addresses to the deity; and I have listened with delight to the modulated cadences of the hermits, singing the praises of Pataliswara from their pinnacled abode of Abu. It would be injustice to touch incidentally on the merits of the minstrel Dholi, who sings the warlike compositions of the sacred Bardai of Rajasthan.
Footnote 4.24.38:
The turai is the sole instrument of the many of the trumpet kind which is not dissonant. The Kotah prince has the largest band, perhaps, in these countries; instruments of all kinds—stringed, wind, and percussion. But as it is formed by rule, in which the sacred and shrill conch-shell takes precedence, it must be allowed that it is anything but harmonious.
Footnote 4.24.39:
[Mashak is the name of the leather water-bag. One of the late Rājas of Jind in the Panjāb had a bagpipe band, the musicians wearing kilts and pink leggings to make them look like their Highland originals. The Yanādis, a forest tribe in Madras, play the bagpipe (Thurston, Tribes and Castes, vii. 431).]
Footnote 4.24.40:
[For these observatories see A. ff. Garrett, Pandit Chandradhar Guleri, The Jaipur Observatory and its Builder, Allahabad, 1902; Fanshawe, Delhi Past and Present, 247 f.; M. A. Sherring, The Sacred City of the Hindus, 131 ff.; Asiatic Researches, v. 177 ff.]
Footnote 4.24.41:
[E. Terry, A Voyage to East India, ed. 1777, p. 185.] Those who wish for an opinion “of the most excellent moralities which are to be observed amongst the people of these nations” cannot do better than read the 14th section of the observant, intelligent, and tolerant chaplain, who is more just, at least on one point, than the modern missionary, who denies to the Hindu filial affection. “And here I shall insert another most needful particular to my present purpose which deserves a most high commendation to be given unto that people in general, how poor and mean soever they be; and that is, the great exemplary care they manifest in their piety to their parents, that notwithstanding they serve for very little, but five shillings a moon for their whole livelihood and subsistence, yet if their parents be in want, they will impart, at the least, half of that little towards their necessities, choosing rather to want themselves than that their parents should suffer need.” It is in fact one of the first precepts of their religion. The Chaplain thus concludes his chapter “On the Moralities of the Hindu” [232 f.]: “O! what a sad thing is it for Christians to come short of Indians, even in moralities; come short of those, who themselves believe to come short of heaven!” The Chaplain closes his interesting and instructive work with the subject of Conversion, which is as remote from accomplishment at this day as it was at that distant period. “Well known it is that the Jesuits there, who, like the Pharisees that would ‘compass sea and land to make one proselyte’ (Matt. xxiii. 15), have sent into Christendom many large reports of their great conversions of infidels in East India. But all these boastings are but reports; the truth is, that they have there spilt the precious water of Baptism upon some few faces, working upon the necessity of some poor men, who for want of means, which they give them, are contented to wear crucifixes; but for want of knowledge in the doctrine of Christianity are only in name Christians.”[4.24.41.A]
Footnote 4.24.41.A:
A Voyage to East India, 427.
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PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF THE AUTHOR