11. Witchcraft
On leaving Jabêrâ,[1] I saw an old acquaintance from the eastern part of the Jubbulpore district, Kehrî Singh.
'I understand, Kehrî Singh', said I, 'that certain men among the Gonds of the jungle, towards the source of the Nerbudda, eat human flesh. Is it so?'
'No, sir; the men never eat people, but the Gond women do.'
'Where?'
'Everywhere, sir; there is not a parish, nay, a village, among the Gonds, in which you will not find one or more such women.'
'And how do they eat people?'
'They eat their livers, sir.'
'Oh, I understand; you mean witches?'
'Of course! Who ever heard of other people eating human beings?'
'And you really still think, in spite of all that we have done and said, that there are such things as witches?'
'Of course we do--do not we find instances of it every day? European gentlemen are too apt to believe that things like this are not to be found here, because they are not to be found in their own country. Major Wardlow, when in charge of the Seonî district, denied the existence of witchcraft for a long time, but he was at last convinced.'
'How?'
'One of his troopers, one morning after a long march, took some milk for his master's breakfast from an old woman without paying for it. Before the major had got over his breakfast the poor trooper was down upon his back, screaming from the agony of internal pains. We all knew immediately that he had been bewitched, and recommended the major to send for some one learned in these matters to find out the witch. He did so, and, after hearing from the trooper the story about the milk, this person at once declared that the woman from whom he got it was the criminal. She was searched for, found, and brought to the trooper, and commanded to cure him. She flatly denied that she had herself conjured him; but admitted that her household gods might, unknown to her, have punished him for his wickedness. This, however, would not do. She was commanded to cure the man, and she set about collecting materials for the "pûjâ" (worship); and before she could get quite through the ceremonies, all his pains had left him. Had we not been resolute with her, the man must have died before evening, so violent were his torments.'
'Did not a similar case occur to Mr. Fraser at Jubbulpore?'
'A "chaprâsî"[2] of his, while he had charge of the Jubbulpore district, was sent out to Mandlâ[3] with a message of some kind or other. He took a cock from an old Gond woman without paying for it, and, being hungry after a long journey, ate the whole of it in a curry. He heard the woman mutter something, but being a raw, unsuspecting young man, he thought nothing of it, ate his cock, and went to sleep. He had not been asleep three hours before he was seized with internal pains, and the old cock was actually heard crowing in his belly. He made the best of his way back to Jubbulpore, several stages, and all the most skilful men were employed to charm away the effect of the old woman's spell, but in vain. He died, and the cock never ceased crowing at intervals up to the hour of his death.'
'And was Mr. Fraser convinced?'
'I never heard, but suppose he must have been.'
'Who ate the livers of the victims? The witches themselves, or the evil spirits with whom they had dealings?'
'The evil spirits ate the livers; but they are set on to do so by the witches, who get them into their power by such accursed sacrifices and offerings. They will often dig up young children from their graves, bring them to life, and allow these devils to feed upon their livers, as falconers allow their hawks to feed on the breasts of pigeons. You "sâhib lôg" (European gentlemen) will not believe all this, but it is, nevertheless, all very true.'[4]
The belief in sorcery among these people owes its origin, in a great measure, to the diseases of the liver and spleen to which the natives, and particularly the children, are much subject in the jungly parts of Central India. From these affections children pine away and die, without showing any external marks of disease. Their death is attributed to witchcraft, and any querulous old woman, who has been in the habit of murmuring at slights and ill treatment in the neighbourhood, is immediately set down as the cause. Men who practise medicine among them are very commonly supposed to be at the same time wizards. Seeking to inspire confidence in their prescriptions by repeating prayers and incantations over the patient, or over the medicine they give him, they make him believe that they derive aid from supernatural power; and the patient concludes that those who can command these powers to cure can, if they will, command them to destroy. He and his friends believe that the man who can command these powers to cure one individual can command them to cure any other; and, if he does not do so, they believe that it arises from a desire to destroy the patient. I have, in these territories, known a great many instances of medical practitioners having been put to death for not curing young people for whom they were required to prescribe. Several cases have come before me as a magistrate in which the father has stood over the doctor with a drawn sword by the side of the bed of his child, and cut him down and killed him the moment the child died, as he had sworn to do when he found the patient sinking under his prescriptions.[5]
The town of Jubbulpore contains a population of twenty thousand souls,[6] and they all believed in this story of the cock. I one day asked a most respectable merchant in the town, Nâdû Chaudhrî, how the people could believe in such things, when he replied that he had no doubt witches were to be found in every part of India, though they abounded most, no doubt, in the central parts of it, and that we ought to consider ourselves very fortunate in having no such things in England. 'But', added he, 'of all countries that between Mandlâ and Katâk (Cuttack)[7] is the worst for witches. I had once occasion to go to the city of Ratanpur[8] on business, and was one day, about noon, walking in the market-place and eating a very fine piece of sugar-cane. In the crowd I happened, by accident, to jostle an old woman as she passed me. I looked back, intending to apologize for the accident, and heard her muttering indistinctly as she passed on. Knowing the propensities of these old ladies, I became somewhat uneasy, and on turning round to my cane I found, to my great terror, that the juice had been all turned to blood. Not a minute had elapsed, such were the fearful powers of this old woman. I collected my followers, and, leaving my agents there to settle my accounts, was beyond the boundaries of the old wretch's influence before dark; had I remained, nothing could have saved me. I should certainly have been a dead man before morning. It is well known', said the old gentleman, 'that their spells and curses can only reach a certain distance, ten or twelve miles; and, if you offend one of them, the sooner you place that distance between you the better.'
Jangbâr Khân, the representative of the Shâhgarh Râjâ,[9] as grave and reverend an old gentleman as ever sat in the senate of Venice, told me one day that he was himself an eye-witness of the powers of the women of Khilautî. He was with a great concourse of people at a fair held at the town of Râipur,[10] and, while sauntering with many other strangers in the fair, one of them began bargaining with two women of middle age for some very fine sugar-canes. They asked double the fair price for their canes. The man got angry, and took up one of them, when the women seized the other end, and a struggle ensued. The purchaser offered a fair price, seller demanded double. The crowd looked on, and a good deal of abuse of the female relations on both sides took place. At last a sepoy of the governor came up, armed to the teeth, and called out to the man, in a very imperious tone, to let go his hold of the cane. He refused, saying that 'when people came to the fair to sell, they should be made to sell at reasonable prices, or be turned out'. 'I', said Jangbâr Khân, 'thought the man right, and told the sepoy that, if he took the part of this woman, we should take that of the other, and see fair play. Without further ceremony the functionary drew his sword, and cut the cane in two in the middle; and, pointing to both pieces, 'There', said he, 'you see the cause of my interference'. We looked down, and actually saw blood running from both pieces, and forming a little pool on the ground. The fact was that the woman was a sorceress of the very worst kind, and was actually drawing the blood from the man through the cane, to feed the abominable devil from whom she derived her detestable powers. But for the timely interference of the sepoy he would have been dead in another minute; for he no sooner saw the real state of the case than he fainted. He had hardly any blood left in him, and I was afterwards told that he was not able to walk for ten days. We all went to the governor to demand justice, declaring that, unless the women were made an example of at once, the fair would be deserted, for no stranger's life would be safe. He consented, and they were both sewn up in sacks and thrown into the river; but they had conjured the water and would not sink. They ought to have been put to death, but the governor was himself afraid of this kind of people, and let them off. There is not', continued Jangbâr, 'a village, or a single family, without its witch in that part of the country; indeed, no man will give his daughter in marriage to a family without one, saying, "If my daughter has children, what will become of them without a witch to protect them from the witches of other families in the neighbourhood?" It is a fearful country, though the cheapest and most fertile in India.'
We can easily understand how a man, impressed with the idea that his blood had all been drawn from him by a sorceress, should become faint, and remain many days in a languid state; but how the people around should believe that they saw the blood flowing from both parts of the cane at the place cut through, it is not so easy to conceive.
I am satisfied that old Jangbâr believed the whole story to be true, and that at the time he thought the juice of the cane red; but the little pool of blood grew, no doubt, by degrees, as years rolled on and he related this tale of the fearful powers of the Khilautî witches.
Notes:
1. Ante, Chapter 9.
2. An orderly, or official messenger, who wears a 'chaprâs', or badge of office.
3. On the Nerbudda, fifty miles south-east of Jubbulpore.
4. Of the supposed powers and dispositions of witches among the Romans we have horrible pictures in the 5th Ode of the 6th Book of Horace, and in the 6th Book of Lucan's Pharsalia. [W. H. S.] The reference to Horace should be to the 5th Epode. The passage in the Pharsalia, Book VI, lines 420-830, describes the proceedings of Thessalian witches.
5. Such awkward incidents of medical practice are not heard of nowadays.
6. The population of Jabalpur (including cantonments) has increased steadily, and in 1911 was 100,651, as compared with 84,556 in 1891, and 76,023 in 1881.
7. Katâk, or Cuttack, a district, with town of same name, in Orissa.
8. In the Bilâspur district of the Central Provinces. The distance in a direct line between Mandlâ and Katâk is about 400 miles.
9. Shâhgarh was formerly a petty native state, with town of same name. The chief joined the rebels in 1857, with the result that his dominions were confiscated, and distributed between the districts of Sâgar and Damoh in the Central Provinces, and Jhânsî (formerly Lalitpur) in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. The town of Shâhgarh is in the Sâgar district.
10. Râipur is the chief town of the district of the same name in the Central Provinces, which was not finally annexed to the British dominions until 1854, when the Nâgpur State lapsed.
Chapter 12
The Silver Tree, or 'Kalpa Briksha'--The Singhâra or Trapa bispinosa, and the Guinea-Worm.
Poor old Salâmat Alî wept bitterly at the last meeting in my tent, and his two nice boys, without exactly knowing why, began to do the same; and my little son Henry[1] caught the infection, and wept louder than any of them. I was obliged to hurry over the interview lest I should feel disposed to do the same. The poor old Rânî,[2] too, suffered a good deal in parting from my wife, whom, she says, she can never hope to see again. Her fine large eyes shed many a tear as she was getting into her palankeen to return.
Between Jaberâ and Harduâ, the next stage, we find a great many of those large forest trees called 'kalap', or 'Kalpa Briksha' (the same which in the paradise of Indra grants what is desired), with a soft, silvery bark, and scarcely any leaves. We are told that the name of the god Râm (Râma) and his consort Sîtâ will be found written by the hand of God upon all.[3]
I had the curiosity to examine a good many in the forest on both sides of the road, and found the name of this incarnation of Vishnu written on everyone in Sanskrit characters, apparently by some supernatural hand; that is, there was a softness in the impression, as if the finger of some supernatural being had traced the characters. Nathû, one of our belted attendants[4] told me that we might search as deeply as we would in the forest, but we should certainly find the name of God upon every one; 'for', said he, 'it is God himself who writes it'. I tried to argue him out of this notion; but, unfortunately, could find no tree without these characters--some high up, and some lower down in the trunk--some large and others small--but still to be found on every tree. I was almost in despair when we came to a part of the wood where we found one of these trees down in a hollow, under the road, and another upon the precipice above. I was ready to stake my credit upon the probability that no traveller would take the trouble to go up to the tree above, or down to the tree below, merely to write the name of the god upon them; and at once pledged myself to Nathû that he should find neither the god's name nor that of his wife. I sent one man up, and another man down, and they found no letters on the trees; but this did not alter their opinion on the point. 'God', said one, 'had no doubt put his name on these trees, but they had somehow or other got rubbed off. He would in good time renew them, that men's eyes might be blessed with the sight of His holy name, even in the deepest forest, and on the most leafless tree.'[5] 'But', said Nathû, 'he might not have thought it worth while to write his name upon those trees which no travellers go to see.' 'Cannot you see', said I, 'that these letters have been engraved by man? Are they not all to be found on the trunk within reach of a man's hand?' 'Of course they are', replied he, 'because people would not be able conveniently to distinguish them if God were to write them higher up.'
Shaikh Sâdî has a very pretty couplet, 'Every leaf of the foliage of a green tree is, in the eye of a wise man, a library to teach him the wisdom of his Creator.'[6] I may remark that, where an Englishman would write his own name, a Hindoo would write that of his god, his parent, or his benefactor. This difference is traceable, of course, to the difference in their governments and institutions. If a Hindoo built a town, he called it after his local governor; if a local governor built it, he called it after the favourite son of the Emperor. In well regulated Hindoo families, one cannot ask a younger brother after his children in presence of the elder brother who happens to be the head of the family; it would be disrespectful for him even to speak of his children as his own in such presence--the elder brother relieves his embarrassment by answering for him.
On the 27th[7] we reached Damoh,[8] where our friends, the Browns, were to leave us on their return to Jubbulpore. Damoh is a pretty place. The town contains some five or six thousand people, and has some very handsome Hindoo temples. On a hill immediately above it is the shrine of a Muhammadan saint, which has a very picturesque appearance.
There are no manufactures at Damoh, except such as supply the wants of the immediate neighbourhood; and the town is supported by the residence of a few merchants, a few landholders, and agricultural capitalists, and the establishment of a native collector. The people here suffer much from the guinea-worm, and consider it to arise from drinking the water of the old tank, which is now very dirty and full of weeds. I have no doubt that it is occasioned either by drinking the water of this tank, or by wading in it: for I have known European gentlemen get the worm in their legs from wading in similar lakes or swamps after snipes, and the servants who followed them with their ammunition experience the same effect.[9] Here, as in most other parts of India, the tanks get spoiled by the water-chestnut, 'singhâra' (Trapa bispinosa), which is everywhere as regularly planted and cultivated in fields under a large surface of water, as wheat or barley is on the dry plains. It is cultivated by a class of men called Dhîmars, who are everywhere fishermen and palankeen bearers; and they keep boats for the planting, weeding, and gathering the 'singhâra'.[10] The holdings or tenements of each cultivator are marked out carefully on the surface of the water by long bamboos stuck up in it; and they pay so much the acre for the portion they till. The long straws of the plants reach up to the surface of the waters, upon which float their green leaves; and their pure white flowers expand beautifully among them in the latter part of the afternoon. The nut grows under the water after the flowers decay, and is of a triangular shape, and covered with a tough brown integument adhering strongly to the kernel, which is white, esculent, and of a fine cartilaginous texture. The people are very fond of these nuts, and they are carried often upon bullocks' backs two or three hundred miles to market. They ripen in the latter end of the rains, or in September, and are eatable till the end of November. The rent paid for an ordinary tank by the cultivator is about one hundred rupees a year. I have known two hundred rupees to be paid for a very large one, and even three hundred, or thirty pounds a year.[11] But the mud increases so rapidly from this cultivation that it soon destroys all reservoirs in which it is permitted; and, where it is thought desirable to keep up the tank for the sake of the water, it should be carefully prohibited. This is done by stipulating with the renter of the village, at the renewal of the lease, that no 'singhâra' shall be planted in the tank; otherwise, he will never forgo the advantage to himself of the rent for the sake of the convenience, and that only prospective, of the village community in general.
Notes:
1. Afterwards Captain H. A. Sleeman, He died in 1905.
2. Of Garhâ, see ante, Chapter 9, prior to note 10.
3. The real 'kalpa', which now stands in the garden of the god Indra in the first heaven, was one of the fourteen varieties found at the churning of the ocean by the gods and demons. It fell to the share of Indra. [W. H. S.] The tree referred to in the text perhaps may be the Erythrina arborescens, or coral-tree, which sheds its leaves after the hot weather.
4. That is to say, orderlies, or 'chaprâsîs'.
5. Every Hindoo is thoroughly convinced that the names of Râm and his consort Sîtâ are written on this tree by the hand of God, and nine- tenths of the Musalmâns believe the same.
Happy the man who sees a God employed In all the good and ill that chequer life, Resolving all events, with their effects And manifold results, into the will And arbitration wise of the Supreme.
COWPER. [W. H. S.]
The quotation is from The Task, Book II, line 161.
6. Sâdî (Sa'dî) is the poetic name, or nom de plume, of the celebrated Persian poet, whose proper name is said to have been Shaikh Maslah-ud-dîn, or, according to other authorities, Sharf-ud- dîn Mislah. He was born about A.D. 1194, and is supposed to have lived for more than a hundred years. Some writers say that he died in A.D. 1292. His best known works are the Gulistân and Bûstân. The editor has failed to trace in either of these works the couplet quoted. Sâdî says in the Gulistân, ii. 26, 'That heart which has an ear is full of the divine mystery. It is not the nightingale that alone serenades his rose; for every thorn on the rose-bush is a tongue in his or God's praise' (Ross's translation).
7. November, 1835.
8. Spelled Dhamow in the author's text. The town, the head-quarters of the district of the same name, is forty-five miles east of Sâgar, and fifty-five miles north-west of Jabalpur. The C. P. Gazetteer (1870) states the population to be 8,563. In 1901 it had grown to 13,335; and the town is still increasing in importance (I. G., 1908). Inscriptions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries at Damoh are noticed in A. S. R., vol. xxi, p. 168.
9. The guinea-worm (Filaria medinensis) is a very troublesome parasite, which sometimes grows to a length of three feet. It occurs in Africa, Arabia, Persia, and Turkistan, as well as in India.
10. The Dhîmars (Sanskrit dhîvara, 'fisherman') are the same caste as the Kahârs, or 'bearers'. The boats used by them are commonly 'dugout' canoes, exactly like those used in prehistoric Europe, and now treasured in museums.
11. In the author's time the rupee was worth two shillings, or more, that is to say, the ninth or tenth part of a sovereign. After 1873 the gold value of the rupee fell, so that at times it was worth little more than a shilling. Since 1899 special legislation has succeeded in keeping the rupee practically steady at 1s. 4d. In other words, fifteen rupees are the legal equivalent of a sovereign, and a hundred rupees are worth 6 pounds 13s. 4d.
13. Thugs and Poisoners
Lieutenant Brown had come on to Damoh chiefly with a view to investigate a case of murder, which had taken place at the village of Sujaina, about ten miles from Damoh, on the road to Hattâ.[1] A gang of two hundred Thugs were encamped in the grove at Hindoria in the cold season of 1814, when, early in the morning, seven men well armed with swords and matchlocks passed them, bearing treasure from the bank of Motî Kochia at Jubbulpore to their correspondents at Bânda,[2] to the value of four thousand five hundred rupees.[3] The value of their burden was immediately perceived by these keen-eyed sportsmen, and Kosarî, Drigpâl, and Faringia, three of the leaders, with forty of their fleetest and stoutest followers, were immediately selected for the pursuit. They followed seven miles unperceived; and, coming up with the treasure-bearers in a watercourse half a mile from the village of Sujaina, they rushed in upon them and put them all to death with their swords.[4] While they were doing so a tanner from Sujaina approached with his buffalo, and to prevent him giving the alarm they put him to death also, and made off with the treasure, leaving the bodies unburied. A heavy shower of rain fell, and none of the village people came to the place till the next morning early; when some females, passing it on their way to Hattâ, saw the bodies, and returning to Sujaina, reported the circumstance to their friends. The whole village thereupon flocked to the spot, and the body of the tanner was burned by his relations with the usual ceremonies, while all the rest were left to be eaten by jackals, dogs and vultures, who make short work of such things in India.[5]
We had occasion to examine a very respectable old gentleman at Damoh upon the case, Gobind Dâs, a revenue officer under the former Government,[6] and now about seventy years of age. He told us that he had no knowledge whatever of the murder of the eight men at Sujaina; but he well remembered another which took place seven years before the time we mentioned at Abhâna, a stage or two back, on the road to Jubbulpore. Seventeen treasure-bearers lodged in the grove near that town on their way from Jubbulpore to Sâgar. At night they were set upon by a large gang of Thugs, and sixteen of them strangled; but the seventeenth laid hold of the noose before it could be brought to bear upon his throat, pulled down the villain who held it, and made his way good to the town. The Râjâ, Dharak Singh, went to the spot with all the followers he could collect; but he found there nothing but the sixteen naked bodies lying in the grove, with their eyes apparently starting out of their sockets. The Thugs had all gone off with the treasure and their clothes, and the Râjâ searched for them in vain.
A native commissioned officer of a regiment of native infantry one day told me that, while he was on duty over some Thugs at Lucknow, one of them related with great seeming pleasure the following case, which seemed to him one of the most remarkable that he had heard them speak of during the time they were under his charge.
'A stout Mogul[7] officer of noble bearing and singularly handsome countenance, on his way from the Punjab to Oudh, crossed the Ganges at Garhmuktesar Ghât, near Meerut, to pass through Murâdâbâd and Bareilly.[8] He was mounted on a fine Tûrkî horse, and attended by his "khidmatgâr" (butler) and groom. Soon after crossing the river, he fell in with a small party of well-dressed and modest-looking men going the same road. They accosted him in a respectful manner, and attempted to enter into conversation with him. He had heard of Thugs, and told them to be off. They smiled at his idle suspicions, and tried to remove them, but in vain. The Mogul was determined; they saw his nostrils swelling with indignation, took their leave, and followed slowly. The next morning he overtook the same number of men, but of a different appearance, all Musalmâns. They accosted him in the same respectful manner; talked of the danger of the road, and the necessity of their keeping together, and taking advantage of the protection of any mounted gentleman that happened to be going the same way. The Mogul officer said not a word in reply, resolved to have no companions on the road. They persisted--his nostrils began again to swell, and putting his hand to his sword, he bid them all be off, or he would have their heads from their shoulders. He had a bow and quiver full of arrows over his shoulders,[9] a brace of loaded pistols in his waist-belt, and a sword by his side, and was altogether a very formidable-looking cavalier. In the evening another party that lodged in the same "sarâi"[10] became very intimate with the butler and groom. They were going the same road; and, as the Mogul overtook them in the morning, they made their bows respectfully, and began to enter into conversation with their two friends, the groom and butler, who were coming up behind. The Mogul's nostrils began again to swell, and he bid the strangers be off. The groom and butler interceded, for their master was a grave, sedate man, and they wanted companions. All would not do, and the strangers fell in the rear. The next day, when they had got to the middle of an extensive and uninhabited plain, the Mogul in advance, and his two servants a few hundred yards behind, he came up to a party of six poor Musalmâns, sitting weeping by the side of a dead companion. They were soldiers from Lahore,[11] on their way to Lucknow, worn down by fatigue in their anxiety to see their wives and children once more, after a long and painful service. Their companion, the hope and prop of his family, had sunk under the fatigue, and they had made a grave for him; but they were poor unlettered men, and unable to repeat the funeral service from the holy Koran-would his Highness but perform this last office for them, he would, no doubt, find his reward in this world and the next. The Mogul dismounted--the body had been placed in its proper position, with its head towards Mecca. A carpet was spread--the Mogul took off his bow and quiver, then his pistols and sword, and placed them on the ground near the body--called for water, and washed his feet, hands, and face, that he might not pronounce the holy words in an unclean state. He then knelt down and began to repeat the funeral service, in a clear, loud voice. Two of the poor soldiers knelt by him, one on each side in silence. The other four went off a few paces to beg that the butler and groom would not come so near as to interrupt the good Samaritan at his devotions.
'All being ready, one of the four, in a low undertone, gave the "jhirnî" (signal),[12] the handkerchiefs were thrown over their necks, and in a few minutes all three--the Mogul and his servants-- were dead, and lying in the grave in the usual manner, the head of one at the feet of the one below him. All the parties they had met on the road belonged to a gang of Jamâldehî Thugs, of the kingdom of Oudh.[13] In despair of being able to win the Mogul's confidence in the usual way, and determined to have the money and jewels, which they knew he carried with him, they had adopted this plan of disarming him; dug the grave by the side of the road, in the open plain, and made a handsome young Musalmân of the party the dead soldier. The Mogul, being a very stout man, died almost without a struggle, as is usually the case with such; and his two servants made no resistance.'
People of great sensibility, with hearts overcharged with sorrow, often appear cold and callous to those who seem to them to feel no interest in their afflictions. An instance of this kind I will here mention; it is one of thousands that I have met with in my Indian rambles. It was mentioned to me one day that an old 'fakîr',[14] who lived in a small hut close by a little shrine on the side of the road near the town of Morâdâbâd, had lately lost his son, poisoned by a party of 'daturiâs', or professional poisoners,[15] that now infest every road throughout India. I sent for him, and requested him to tell me his story, as I might perhaps be able to trace the murderers. He did so, and a Persian writer took it down while I listened with all the coldness of a magistrate who wanted merely to learn facts and have nothing whatever to do with feelings. This is his story literally:
'I reside in my hut by the side of the road a mile and [a] half from the town, and live upon the bounty of travellers, and the people of the surrounding villages. About six weeks ago, I was sitting by the side of my shrine after saying prayers, with my only son, about ten years of age, when a man came up with his wife, his son, and his daughter, the one a little older, and the other a little younger than my boy. They baked and ate their bread near my shrine, and gave me flour enough to make two cakes. This I prepared and baked. My boy was hungry, and ate one cake and a half. I ate only half a one, for I was not hungry. I had a few days before purchased a new blanket for my boy, and it was hanging in a branch of the tree that shaded the shrine, when these people came. My son and I soon became stupefied. I saw him fall asleep, and I soon followed. I awoke again in the evening, and found myself in a pool of water. I had sense enough to crawl towards my boy. I found him still breathing, and I sat by him with his head in my lap, where he soon died. It was now evening, and I got up, and wandered about all night picking straws--I know not why. I was not yet quite sensible. During the night the wolves ate my poor boy. I heard this from travellers, and went and gathered up his bones and buried them in the shrine. I did not quite recover till the third day, when I found that some washerwomen had put me into the pool, and left me there with my head out, in hopes that this would revive me; but they had no hope of my son. I was then taken to the police of the town; but the landholders had begged me to say nothing about the poisoners, lest it might get them and their village community into trouble. The man was tall and fair, and about thirty- five; the woman short, stout, and fair, and about thirty; two of her teeth projected a good deal; the boy's eyelids were much diseased.'
All this he told me without the slightest appearance of emotion, for he had not seen any appearance of it in me, or my Persian writer; and a casual European observer would perhaps have exclaimed, 'What brutes these natives are! This fellow feels no more for the loss of his only son than he would for that of a goat'. But I knew the feeling was there. The Persian writer put up his paper, and closed his inkstand, and the following dialogue, word for word, took place between me and the old man:
Question.--What made you conceal the real cause of your boy's death, and tell the police that he had been killed, as well as eaten, by wolves?
Answer.--The landholders told me that they could never bring back my boy to life, and the whole village would be worried to death by them if I made any mention of the poison.
Question.--And if they were to be punished for this they would annoy you?
Answer.--Certainly. But I believed they advised me for my own good as well as their own.
Question.--And if they should turn you away from that place, could you not make another?
Answer.-Are not the bones of my poor boy there, and the trees that he and I planted and watched together for ten years?
Question.-Have you no other relations? What became of your boy's mother?
Answer.-She died at that place when my boy was only three months old. I have brought him up myself from that age; he was my only child, and he has been poisoned for the sake of the blanket! (Here the poor old man sobbed as if his heartstrings would break; and I was obliged to make him sit down on the floor while I walked up and down the room.)
Question.--Had you any children before?
Answer.--Yes, sir, we had several, but they all died before their mother. We had been reduced to beggary by misfortunes, and I had become too weak and ill to work. I buried my poor wife's bones by the side of the road where she died; raised the little shrine over them, planted the trees, and there have I sat ever since by her side, with our poor boy in my bosom. It is a sad place for wolves, and we used often to hear them howling outside; but my poor boy was never afraid of them when he knew I was near him. God preserved him to me, till the sight of the new blanket, for I had nothing else in the world, made these people poison us. I bought it for him only a few days before, when the rains were coming on, out of my savings-it was all I had. (The poor old man sobbed again, and sat down while I paced the room, lest I should sob also; my heart was becoming a little too large for its apartment.) 'I will never', continued he, 'quit the bones of my wife and child, and the tree that he and I watered for so many years. I have not many years to live; there I will spend them, whatever the landholders may do--they advised me for my own good, and will never turn me out.'
I found all the poor man stated to be true; the man and his wife had mixed poison with the flour to destroy the poor old man and his son for the sake of the new blanket which they saw hanging in the branch of the tree, and carried away with them. The poison used on such occasions is commonly the datura, and it is sometimes given in the hookah to be smoked, and at others in food. When they require to poison children as well as grown-up people, or women who do not smoke, they mix up the poison in food. The intention is almost always to destroy life, as 'dead men tell no tales'; but the poisoned people sometimes recover, as in the present case, and lead to the detection of the poisoners. The cases in which they recover are, however, rare, and of those who recover few are ever able to trace the poisoners; and, of those who recover and trace them, very few will ever undertake to prosecute them through the several courts of the magistrate, the sessions, and that of last instance in a distant district, to which the proceedings must be sent for final orders.
The impunity with which this crime is everywhere perpetrated, and its consequent increase in every part of India, are among the greatest evils with which the country is at this time affected. These poisoners are spread all over India, and are as numerous over the Bombay and Madras Presidencies as over that of Bengal. There is no road free from them, and throughout India there must be many hundreds who gain their subsistence by this trade alone. They put on all manner of disguises to suit their purpose; and, as they prey chiefly upon the poorer sort of travellers, they require to destroy the greater number of lives to make up their incomes. A party of two or three poisoners have very often succeeded in destroying another of eight or ten travellers with whom they have journeyed for some days, by pretending to give them a feast on the celebration of the anniversary of some family event. Sometimes an old woman or man will manage the thing alone, by gaining the confidence of travellers, and getting near the cooking-pots while they go aside; or when employed to bring the flour for the meal from the bazaar. The poison is put into the flour or the pot, as opportunity offers.
People of all castes and callings take to this trade, some casually, others for life, and others derive it from their parents or teachers. They assume all manner of disguises to suit their purposes; and the habits of cooking, eating, and sleeping on the side of the road, and smoking with strangers of seemingly the same caste, greatly facilitate their designs upon travellers. The small parties are unconnected with each other, and two parties never unite in the same cruise. The members of one party may be sometimes convicted and punished, but their conviction is accidental, for the system which has enabled us to put down the Thug associations cannot be applied, with any fair prospect of success, to the suppression of these pests to society.[16]
The Thugs went on their adventures in large gangs, and two or more were commonly united in the course of an expedition in the perpetration of many murders. Every man shared in the booty according to the rank he held in the gang, or the part he took in the murders; and the rank of every man and the part he took generally, or in any particular murder, were generally well known to all. From among these gangs, when arrested, we found the evidence we required for their conviction--or the means of tracing it--among the families and friends of their victims, or with persons to whom the property taken had been disposed of, and in the graves to which the victims had been consigned.
To give an idea of the system by which the Government of India has been enabled to effect so great a good for the people as the suppression of these associations, I will suppose that two sporting gentlemen, A at Delhi, and B in Calcutta, had both described the killing of a tiger in an island in the Ganges, near Hardwâr[17] and mentioned the names of the persons engaged with them. Among the persons thus named were C, who had since returned to America, D, who had retired to New South Wales, E to England, and F to Scotland. There were four other persons named who were still in India, but they are deeply interested in A and B's story not being believed. A says that B got the skin of the tiger, and B states that he gave it to C, who cut out two of the claws. Application is made to C, D, E, and F, and without the possibility of any collusion, or even communication between them, their statements correspond precisely with those of A and B, as to the time, place, circumstances, and persons engaged. Their statements are sworn to before magistrates in presence of witnesses, and duly attested. C states that he got the skin from B, and gave it to the Nawâb of Râmpur[18] for a hookah carpet, but that he took from the left forefoot two of the claws, and gave them to the minister of the King of Oudh for a charm for his sick child.
The Nawâb of Râmpur, being applied to, states that he received the skin from C, at the time and place mentioned, and that he still smokes his hookah upon it; and that it had lost the two claws upon the left forefoot. The minister of the King of Oudh states that he received the two claws nicely set in gold; that they had cured his boy, who still wore them round his neck to guard him from the evil eye. The goldsmith states that he set the two claws in gold for C, who paid him handsomely for his work. The peasantry, whose cattle graze on the island, declare that certain gentlemen did kill a tiger there about the time mentioned, and that they saw the body after the skin had been taken off, and the vultures had begun to descend upon it.
To prove that what A and B had stated could not possibly be true, the other party appeal to some of their townsmen, who are said to be well acquainted with their characters. They state that they really know nothing about the matter in dispute; that their friends, who are opposed to A and B, are much liked by their townspeople and neighbours, as they have plenty of money, which they spend freely, but that they are certainly very much addicted to field-sports, and generally absent in pursuit of wild beasts for three or four months every year; but whether they were or were not present at the killing of the great Garhmuktesar tiger, they could not say.
Most persons would, after examining this evidence, be tolerably well satisfied that the said tiger had really been killed at the time and place, and by the persons mentioned by A and B; but, to establish the fact judicially, it would be necessary to bring A, B, C, D, E, and F, the Nawâb of Râmpur, the minister of the King of Oudh, and the goldsmith to the criminal court at Meerut, to be confronted with the person whose interest it was that A and B should not be believed. They would all, perhaps, come to the said court from the different quarters of the world in which they had thought themselves snugly settled; but the thing would annoy them so much, and be so much talked of, that sporting gentlemen, nawâbs, ministers, and goldsmiths would in future take good care to have 'forgotten' everything connected with the matter in dispute, should another similar reference be made to them, and so A and B would never again have any chance.
Thug approvers, whose evidence we required, were employed in all parts of India, under the officers appointed to put down these associations; and it was difficult to bring all whose evidence was necessary at the trials to the court of the district in which the particular murder was perpetrated. The victims were, for the most part, money-carriers, whose masters and families resided hundreds of miles from the place where they were murdered, or people on their way to their distant homes from foreign service. There was no chance of recovering any of the property taken from the victims, as Thugs were known to spend what they got freely, and never to have money by them; and the friends of the victims, and the bankers whose money they carried, were everywhere found exceedingly averse to take share in the prosecution.
To obviate all these difficulties separate courts were formed, with permission to receive whatever evidence they might think likely to prove valuable, attaching to each portion, whether documentary or oral, whatever weight it might seem to deserve. Such courts were formed at Hyderabad, Mysore, Indore, Lucknow, Gwâlior, and were presided over by our highest diplomatic functionaries, in concurrence with the princes at whose courts they were accredited; and who at Jubbulpore, were under the direction of the representative of the Governor-General of India.[l9] By this means we had a most valuable species of unpaid agency; and I believe there is no part of their public life on which these high functionaries look back with more pride than that spent in presiding over such courts, and assisting the supreme Government in relieving the people of India from this fearful evil.[20]
Notes:
1. A town on the Allahabad and Sâgar road, sixty-one miles north-east of Sâgar. It was the head-quarters of the Damoh district from 1818 to 1835.
2. The chief town of the district of the same name in Bundêlkhand, situated on the Kên river, ninety-five miles south-west from Allahabad.
3. Worth at that time 450 pounds sterling, or a little more.
4. An unusual mode of procedure for professed Thugs to adopt, who usually strangled their victims with a cloth. Faringia (Feringheea) Brahman was one of the most noted Thug leaders. He is frequently mentioned in the author's Report on the Depredations committed by the Thug Gangs (1840), and the story of the Sujaina crime is fully told in the Introduction to that volume. Faringia became a valuable approver.
5. Lieutenant Brown was suddenly called back to Jubbulpore, and could not himself go to Sujaina. He sent, however, an intelligent native officer to the place, but no man could be induced to acknowledge that he had ever seen the bodies or heard of the affair, though Faringia pointed out to them exactly where they all lay. They said it must be quite a mistake--that such a thing could not have taken place and they know nothing of it. Lieutenant Brown was aware that all this affected ignorance arose entirely from the dread these people have of being summoned to give evidence to any of our district courts of justice; and wrote to the officer in the civil charge of the district to request that he would assure them that their presence would not be required. Mr. Doolan, the assistant magistrate, happened to be going through Sujaina from Sâgar on deputation at the time; and, sending for all the respectable old men of the place, he requested that they would be under no apprehension, but tell him the real truth, as he would pledge himself that not one of them should ever be summoned to any district court to give evidence. They then took him to the spot and pointed out to him where the bodies had been found, and mentioned that the body of the tanner had been burned by his friends. The banker, whose treasure they had been carrying, had an equal dislike to be summoned to court to give evidence, now that he could no longer hope to recover any portion of his lost money; and it was not till after Lieutenant Brown had given him a similar assurance, that he would consent to have his books examined. The loss of the four thousand five hundred rupees was then found entered, with the names of the men who had been killed at Sujaina in carrying it. These are specimens of some of the minor difficulties we had to contend with in our efforts to put down the most dreadful of all crimes. All the prisoners accused of these murders had just been tried for others, or Lieutenant Brown would not have been able to give the pledge he did. [W. H. S.] Difficulties of the same kind beset the administration of criminal justice in India to this day.
6. Of the Marâthâs. The district was ceded in 1818.
7. More correctly written Mughal. The term is properly applied to Muhammadans of Turk (Mongol) descent. Such persons commonly affix the title Beg to their names, and often prefix the Persian title Mîrzâ.
8. Meerut, the well-known cantonment, in the district of the same name. The name is written Meeruth by the author, and may be also written Mîrath. Ghât (ghaut) means a ferry, or crossing-place. Murâdâbâd and Bareilly (Barelî) are in Rohilkhand. The latter has a considerable garrison. Both places are large cities, and the head- quarter of districts.
9. The bow and quiver are now rarely seen, except, possibly, in remote parts of Râjputâna. A body of archers helped to hold the Shâh Najaf building at Lucknow against Sir Colin Campbell in 1858. Even in 1903-4 some of the Tibetans who resisted the British advance were armed with bows and arrows.
10. An inn of the Oriental pattern, often called caravanserai in books of travel.
11. Then the capital of Ranjit Singh, the great Sikh chief.
12. 'This is commonly given either by the leader of the gang or the belhâ, who has chosen the place for the murder.' It was usually some commonplace order, such as 'Bring the tobacco' (Ramaseeana, p.99, &c.). See also Meadows Taylor, Confessions of a Thug.
13. The Jamâldehî Thugs resided 'in Oude and some other parts east of the Ganges. They are considered very clever and expert, and more stanch to their oath of secrecy than most other classes' (ibid. p. 97). At the time referred to Oudh was a separate kingdom, which lasted as such until 1856. A map included in the printed Thuggee papers reveals the appalling fact that the Thugs had 274 fixed burying-places for their victims in the area of the small kingdom, about half the size of Ireland.
14. Fakîr (fakeer), a religious mendicant. The word properly applies to Muhammadans only, but is often laxly used to include Hindoo ascetics.
15. So called because the poison they use is made of the seeds of the 'datura' plant (Datura alba), and other species of the same genus. It is a powerful narcotic.
16. The crime of poisoning travellers is still prevalent, and its detection is still attended by the difficulties described in the text. In some cases the criminals have been proved to belong to families of Thug stranglers. The poisoning of cattle by arsenic, for the sake of their hides, was very prevalent forty years ago, especially in the districts near Benares, but is now believed to be less practised. It was checked under the ordinary law by numerous convictions and severe sentences.
17. In the Sahâranpur district, where the Ganges issues from the hills.
18. A small principality in Rohilkhand, between Murâdâbâd and Bareilly (Barêlî).
19. The special laws on the subject, namely: Acts xxx of 1836, xviii of 1837, xix of 1837, xviii of 1839, xviii of 1843, xxiv of 1843, xiv of 1844, v of 1847, x of 1847, iii of 1848, and xi of 1848, are printed in pp. 353-7 of the author's Report on Budhuk alias Bagree Decoits, &c. (1849). See Bibliography, ante. No. 12.
20. I may here mention the names of a few diplomatic officers of distinction who have aided in the good cause. Of the Civil Service- -Mr. F. C. Smith, Mr. Martin, Mr. George Stockwell, Mr. Charles Fraser, the Hon. Mr. Wellesley, the Hon. Mr. Shore, the Hon. Mr. Cavendish, Mr. George Clerk, Mr. L. Wilkinson, Mr, Bax; Majors- General--Cubbon and Fraser; Colonels--Low, Stewart, Alves, Spiers, Caulfield, Sutherland, and Wade; Major Wilkinson; and, among the foremost, Major Borthwick and Captain Paton. [W. H. S.]
The author's characteristic modesty has prevented him from dwelling upon his own services, which were greater than those of any other officer. Some idea of them may be gathered from the collection of papers entitled Ramaseeana, the contents of which are enumerated in the Bibliography, ante. No. 2. Colonel Meadows Taylor has given a more popular account of the measures taken for the suppression of Thuggee (thagî) in his Confessions of a Thug, written in 1837 (1st ed. 1839). The Thug organization dated from ancient times, but attracted little notice from the East India Company's Government until the author, then Captain Sleeman, submitted his reports on the subject while employed in the Sâgar and Nerbudda Territories, where he had been posted in 1820. He proved that the Thug crimes were committed by a numerous and highly organized fraternity operating in all parts of India. In consequence of his reports, Mr. F. C. Smith, Agent to the Governor-General in the Sâgar and Nerbudda Territories, was invested, in the year 1829, with special powers, and the author, then Major Sleeman, was employed, in addition to his district duties, as Mr, Smith's coadjutor and assistant. In 1835 the author was relieved from district work, and appointed General Superintendent of the operations for the suppression of the Thug gangs. He went on leave to the hills in 1836, and on resuming duty in February, 1839, was appointed Commissioner for the suppression of Thuggee and Dacoity, which office he continued to hold in addition to his other appointments.
Between 1826 and 1835, 1,562 prisoners were tried for the crime of Thuggee, of whom 1,404 were either hanged or transported for life. Some individuals are said to have confessed to over 200 murders, and one confessed to 719. The Thug approvers, whose lives were spared, were detained in a special prison at Jubbulpore, where the remnant of them, with their families, were kept under surveillance. They were employed in a tent and carpet factory, known as the School of Industry, founded in 1838 by the author and Captain Charles Brown. If released, they would certainly have resumed their hereditary occupation, which exercised an awful fascination over its votaries. Most of the Thug gangs had been broken up by 1860, but cases of Thuggee have occurred occasionally since that date. A gang of Kahârs (palanquin bearers) committed a series of Thug murders in, I think, 1877, at Etâwa, in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. The office of Superintendent of Thuggee and Dacoity was kept up until 1904, but the officer in charge was more concerned with Dacoity (that is to say, organized gang-robbery with violence) in the Native States than with the secret crime of Thuggee. Secret crime is now watched by the Central Criminal Intelligence Department under the direct control of the Government of India, and has to deal with novel forms of evil- doing. In India it is never safe to assume that any ancient practice has been suppressed, and I have little doubt that, if administrative pressure were relaxed, the old form of Thuggee would again be heard of. The occasional discovery of murdered beggars, who could not have been killed for the sake of their property, leads me to suppose that the Megpunnia variety of Thuggee, that is to say, murder of poor persons in order to kidnap and sell their children, is still sometimes practised.
Among the officers named by the author the best known is Sir Mark Cubbon, who came to India in 1800, and died at Suez in 1861. During the interval he had never quitted India. He ruled over Mysore for nearly thirty years with almost despotic power, and reorganized the administration of that country with conspicuous success (Buckland, Dict. of Indian Biography, Sonnenschein, 1906).
The Hon. Frederick John Shore, of the Bengal Civil Service, officiated in 1836 as Civil Commissioner and Political Agent of the Sâgar and Nerbudda Territories. In 1837 he published his Notes on Indian Affairs (London, 2 vols. 8vo), a series of articles dealing in the most outspoken way with the abuses and weaknesses of Anglo- Indian administration at that time.
Mr. F. C. Smith was Agent to the Governor-General at Jubbulpore in 1830 and subsequent years. The author was then immediately subordinate to him. Messrs. Martin and Wellesley were Residents at Holkar's court at Indore. Mr. Stockwell tried some of the Thug prisoners at Cawnpore and Allahabad as Special Commissioner, in addition to his ordinary duties: correspondence between him and the author is printed in Ramaseeana. Mr. Charles Fraser preceded the author in charge of the Sâgar district, and in January, 1832, resumed charge of the revenue and civil duties of that district, leaving the criminal work to the author. The Hon. Mr. Cavendish was Resident at Sindhia's court at Gwâlior. Mr. George Clerk became Sir George Clerk and Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces, Governor of Bombay, and Permanent Under-Secretary of State for India; he died at a great age in 1889. Mr. Lancelot Wilkinson, Political Agent in Bhopal, was considered by the author to be 'one of the most able and estimable members of the India Civil Service' (Journey, ii. 403). Mr. Bax was Resident at Indore; Colonel (afterwards Sir John) Low, was Resident at Lucknow, and had served at Jubbulpore; Colonel Stewart and Major-General Fraser were Residents at Hyderabad; Major (Colonel) Alves was Political Agent in Bhopal and Agent in Râjputâna; Colonel Spiers was Agent at Nîmach, and officiated as Agent in Râjputâna; Colonel Caulfield had been Political Agent at Harautî; Colonel Sutherland was Resident at Gwâlior, and afterwards Agent in Râjputâna; Colonel (Sir C. M.) Wade had been Political Agent at Lûdiâna; Major Borthwick was employed at Indore; Captain Paton was Assistant Resident at Lucknow (see Journey through Kingdom of Oudh, vol. ii, pp. 152-69).
Besides the officers above named, others are specified in Ramaseeana as having done good service.
Note.--Mr. Crooke suggests, and, I think, correctly, that the words Megpunnia and Megpunnaism (ante, note 20, and Bibliography No. 7) are corruptions of the Hindî Mêkh-phandiyâ, from mêkh, 'a peg', and phandâ, 'a noose', equivalent to the Persian tasmabâz, meaning 'playing tricks with a strap'. Creagh, a private in a British regiment at Cawnpore about 1803, is said to have initiated three men into the peg and strap trick, as practised by English rogues. These men became the leaders of three Tasmabâz Thug gangs, whose proceedings are described by Mr. R. Montgomery in Selections of the Records of Government, N.W.P., vol. i, p. 312. A strap is doubled and folded up in different shapes. The art consists in putting in a stick or peg in such a way that the strap when unfolded shall come out double. The Tasmabâz Thugs seem to be identical with the 'Megpunnia' (N.I.N.& Qu., vol. i, p. 108, note 721, September 1891).
General Hervey records seven modern instances of strangulation by Megpunnia Thugs in Râjputâna (Some Records of Crime (1867), vol. i, pp. 126-31).
Chapter 14
Basaltic Cappings of the Sandstone Hills of Central India--Suspension Bridge--Prospects of the Nerbudda Valley--Deification of a Mortal.
On the 29th[1] we came on to Pathariâ, a considerable little town thirty miles from Sâgar, supported almost entirely by a few farmers, small agricultural capitalists, and the establishment of a native collector,[2] On leaving Pathariâ, we ascend gradually along the side of the basaltic hills on our left to the south for three miles to a point whence we see before us this plane of basaltic cappings extending as far as the eye can reach to the west, south, and north, with frequent breaks, but still preserving one uniform level. On the top of these tables are here and there little conical elevations of laterite, or indurated iron clay.[3] The cappings everywhere repose immediately upon the sandstone of the Vindhya range; but they have occasional beds of limestone, formed apparently by springs rising from their sides, and strongly impregnated with carbonic acid gas. For the most part this is mere travertine, but in some places they get good lime from the beds for building.
On the 1st of December we came to the pretty village of Sanodâ, near the suspension bridge built over the river Biâs by Colonel Presgrave, while he was assay master of the Sâgar mint.[4] I was present at laying the foundation-stone of this bridge in December 1827. Mr. Maddock was the Governor-General's representative in these territories, and the work was undertaken more with a view to show what could be done out of their own resources, under minds capable of developing them, than to supply any pressing or urgent want.
The work was completed in June, 1830; and I have several times seen upon the bridge as many as it could hold of a regiment of infantry while it moved over; and, at other times, as many of a corps of cavalry, and often several elephants at once. The bridge is between the points of suspension two hundred feet, and the clear portion of the platform measures one hundred and ninety feet by eleven and a half. The whole cost of the work amounted to about fifty thousand rupees; and, under a less able and careful person than Colonel Presgrave, would have cost, perhaps, double the amount. This work has been declared by a very competent judge to be equal to any structure of the same kind in Europe, and is eminently calculated to show what genius and perseverance can produce out of the resources of a country even in the rudest state of industry and the arts.
The river Nerbudda neither is nor ever can, I fear, be made navigable, and the produce of its valley would require to find its way to distant markets over the Vindhya range of hills to the north, or the Sâtpura to the south. If the produce of the soil, mines, and industry of the valley cannot be transported to distant markets, the Government cannot possibly find in it any available net surplus revenue in money; for it has no mines of the precious metals, and the precious metals can flow in only in exchange for the produce of the land, and the industry of the valley that flows out. If the Government wishes to draw a net surplus revenue from the valley or from the districts that border upon it, that is, a revenue beyond its expenditure in support of the local public establishments, it must either draw it in produce, or for what can be got for that produce in distant markets.[5] Hitherto little beyond the rude produce of the soil has been able to find its way into distant markets from the valley of the Nerbudda; yet this valley abounds in iron mines,[6] and its soil, where unexhausted by cropping, is of the richest quality.[7] It is not then too much to hope that in time the iron of the mines will be worked with machinery for manufactures; and that multitudes, aided by this machinery, and subsisted on the rude agricultural produce, which now flows out, will invest the value of their labour in manufactured commodities adapted to the demand of foreign markets and better able from their superior value, compared with their bulk, to pay the cost of transport by land. Then, and not till then, can we expect to see these territories pay a considerable net surplus revenue to Government, and abound in a middle class of merchants, manufacturers, and agricultural capitalists.[8]
At Sanodâ there is a very beautiful little fortress or castle now unoccupied, though still entire. It was built by an officer of the Râjâ Chhatar Sâl of Bundêlkhand, about one hundred and twenty years ago.[9] He had a grant, on the tenure of military service, of twelve villages situated round this place; and a man who could build such a castle to defend the surrounding country from the inroads of freebooters, and to secure himself and his troops from any sudden impulse of the people's resentment, was as likely to acquire an increase of territorial possession in these parts as he would have been in Europe during the Middle Ages. The son of this chief, by name Râi Singh, was, soon after the castle had been completed, killed in an attack upon a town near Chitrakôt;[10] and having, in the estimation of the people, become a god, he had a temple and a tomb raised to him close to our encampment. I asked the people how he had become a god; and was told that some one who had been long suffering from a quartan ague went to the tomb one night, and promised Râi Singh, whose ashes lay under it, that if he could contrive to cure his ague for him, he would, during the rest of his life, make offerings to his shrine. After that he had never another attack, and was very punctual in his offerings. Others followed his example, and with like success, till Râi Singh was recognized among them universally as a god, and a temple raised to his name. This is the way that gods were made all over the world at one time, and are still made all over India. Happy had it been for mankind if those only who were supposed to do good had been deified.[11]
On the 2nd we came on to the village of Khojanpur (leaving the town and cantonments of Sâgar to our left), a distance of some fourteen miles. The road for a great part of the way was over the bare back of the sandstone strata, the covering of basalt having been washed off. The hills, however, are, at this distance from the city and cantonments of Sâgar, nicely wooded; and, being constantly intersected by pretty little valleys, the country we came over was picturesque and beautiful. The soil of all these valleys is rich from the detritus of the basalt that forms or caps the hills; but it is now in a bad state of cultivation, partly from several successive seasons of great calamity, under which the people have been suffering, and partly from over-assessment; and this posture of affairs is continued by that loss of energy, industry, and character, among the farmers and cultivators, which must everywhere result from these two evils. In India, where the people have learnt so well to govern themselves, from the want of settled government, good or bad government really depends almost altogether upon good or bad settlements of the land revenue. Where the Government demand is imposed with moderation, and enforced with justice, there will the people be generally found happy and contented, and disposed to perform their duties to each other and to the state; except when they have the misfortune to suffer from drought, blight, and other calamities of season.[l2]
I have mentioned that the basalt in the Sâgar district reposes for the most part immediately upon the sandstone of the Vindhya range; and it must have been deposited on the sand, while the latter was yet at the bottom of the ocean, though this range is now, I believe, nowhere less than from fifteen hundred to two thousand feet above the level of the sea. The marks of the ripple of the sea may be observed in some places where the basalt has been recently washed off, beautifully defined, as if formed only yesterday, and there is no other substance to be seen between the two rocks.
The texture of the sandstone at the surface, where it comes in contact with the basalt, has in some places been altered by it, but in others it seems to have been as little changed as the habitations of the people who were suffocated by the ashes of Vesuvius in the city of Pompeii. I am satisfied, from long and careful examination, that the greater part of this basalt, which covers the tableland of Central and Southern India, must have been held for some time in suspension in the ocean or lake into which it was first thrown in the shape of ashes, and then gradually deposited. This alone can account for its frequent appearance of stratification, for the gentle blending of its particles with those of the sand near the surface of the latter; and, above all, for those level steps, or tables, lying one above another horizontally in parallel bars on one range, corresponding exactly with the same parallel lines one above another on a range twenty or thirty miles across the valley. Mr. Scrope's theory is, I believe, that these are all mere flowing coulées of lava, which, in their liquid state, filled hollows, but afterwards became of a harder texture, as they dried and crystallized, than the higher rocks around them; the consequence of which is that the latter has been decomposed and washed away, while the basalt has been left to form the highest elevations. My opinion is that these steps, or stairs, at one time formed the beds of the ocean, or of great lakes, and that the substance of which they are composed was, for the most part, projected into the water, and there held in suspension till gradually deposited. There are, however, amidst these steps, and beneath them, masses of more compact and crystalline basalt, that bear evident signs of having been flows of lava.[l3]
Reasoning from analogy at Jubbulpore, where some of the basaltic cappings of the hills had evidently been thrown out of craters long after this surface had been raised above the waters, and become the habitation both of vegetable and animal life, I made the first discovery of fossil remains in the Nerbudda valley. I went first to a hill within sight of my house in 1828,[14] and searched exactly between the plateau of basalt that covered it and the stratum immediately below, and there I found several small trees with roots, trunks, and branches, all entire, and beautifully petrified. They had been only recently uncovered by the washing away of a part of the basaltic plateau. I soon after found some fossil bones of animals.[15] Going over to Sâgar, in the end of 1830, and reasoning there upon the same analogy, I searched for fossil remains along the line of contact between the basalt and the surface upon which it had been deposited, and I found a grove of silicified palm-trees within a mile of the cantonments. These palm-trees had grown upon a calcareous deposit formed from springs rising out of the basaltic range of hills to the south. The commissariat officer had cut a road through this grove, and all the European officers of a large military station had been every day riding through it without observing the geological treasure; and it was some time before I could convince them that the stones which they had every day seen were really petrified palm- trees. The roots and trunks were beautifully perfect.[l6]
Notes:
1. November, 1835.
2. In the Damoh District, twenty-four miles west of Damoh. The name appears to be derived from the 'great quantity of hewn stone (Hind. patthar or pâthar) lying about in all directions'. The C. P. Gazetteer (1870) calls the place 'a considerable village'.
3. A peculiar formation, of 'widespread occurrence in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world'. It is ordinarily of a reddish ferruginous or brick-dust colour, sometimes deepened into dark red. Apparently the special character which distinguishes laterite from other forms of red-coloured weathering is the presence of hydrous oxide of alumina in varying proportions. . . . 'Though there is still a great deal of uncertainty about the way in which laterite was formed, the facts which are known of its distribution seem to show that it is a distinct form of weathering, which is confined to low latitudes and humid climates; its formation seems to have been a slow process, only possible on flat or nearly flat surfaces, where surface rain-wash could not act' (Oldham, in The Oxford Survey of the British Empire, vol. ii, Asia, p. 10: Oxford, 1914). It hardens and darkens by exposure to air, and is occasionally used as a building stone.
4. The Sâgar mint was erected in 1820 by Captain Presgrave, the assay master, and used to employ four hundred men, but, after about ten or twelve years, the business was transferred to Calcutta, and the buildings converted to other uses (C. P. Gazetteer, 1870). Mints are now kept up at Calcutta and Bombay only. The Biâs is a small stream flowing into the Sunâr river, and belonging to the Jumna river system. The name is printed Beeose in the original edition.
5. Since the author's time the conditions have been completely changed by the introduction of railways. The East Indian, Great Indian Peninsular, and other railways now enter the Nerbudda Valley, so that the produce of most districts can be readily transported to distant markets. A large enhancement of the land revenue has been obtained by revisions of the settlement.
6. Details will be found in the Central Provinces Gazetteer (1870). The references are collected under the head 'Iron' in the index to that work. Chapter VIII of Ball's Economic Geology of India gives full information concerning the iron mines of the Central Provinces and all parts of India. That work forms Part III of the Manual of the Geology of India.
7. The soil of the valley of the Nerbudda, and that of the Nerbudda and Sâgar territories generally, is formed for the most part of the detritus of trap-rocks that everywhere covered the sandstone of the Vindhya and Sâtpura ranges which run through these territories. This basaltic detritus forms what is called the black cotton soil by the English, for what reason I know not. [W. H. S.] The reason is that cotton is very largely grown in the Nerbudda Valley, both on the black soil and other soils. In Bundêlkhand the black, friable soil, often with a high proportion of organic matter, is called 'mâr', and is chiefly devoted to raising crops of wheat, gram, or chick-pea (Cicer arietinum), linseed, and joâr (Holcus sorghum). Cotton is also sown in it, but not very generally. This black soil requires little rain, and is fertile without manure. It absorbs water too freely to be suitable for irrigation, and in most seasons does not need it. The 'black cotton soil' is often known as regur, a corruption of a Tamil word. 'The origin of regur is a doubtful question. . . . The dark coloration was attributed by earlier writers to vegetable matter, and taken to indicate a large amount of humus in the soil; more recent investigations make this doubtful, and in all probability the colour is due to mineral constitution rather than to the very scanty organic constituents of the soil,' It may possibly be formed of 'wind-borne dust', like the loess plains of China (Oldham, in The Oxford Survey of the British Empire, vol. ii, Asia, p. 9: Oxford, 1914).
8. The land revenue has been largely increased, and the resources and communications of the country have been greatly developed during the last half-century. The formation of the Central Provinces as a separate administration in 1861 secured for the Sâgar and Nerbudda territories the attention which they failed to obtain from the distant Government of the North-Western Provinces. Sir Richard Temple, the first Chief Commissioner, administered the Central Provinces with extraordinary energy and success.
9. Râjâ Chhatarsâl Bundela was Râjâ of Pannâ. The history of Chhatarsâl is related in I.G. (1908), vol. xix, p. 400, s.v. Panna State. In 1729 he called in the Marâthâs to help him against Muhammad Khan Bangash, and when he died in 1731 rewarded them by bequeathing one-third of his dominions to the Peshwa. The correct date of his death is Pûs Badi 3, Samvat 1788 (Hamîrpur Settlement Report (1880), note at end of chapter 2). The date is often given inaccurately.
10. Chitrakôt, in the Bânda district of Bundêlkhand, under the government of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, and seventy-one miles distant from Allahabad, is a famous place of pilgrimage, much frequented by the votaries of Râma. Large fairs are held there.
11. The performance of miraculous cures at the tomb is not necessary for the deification of a person who has been specially feared in his lifetime, or has died a violent death. Either of these conditions is enough to render his ghost formidable, and worthy of propitiation. Shrines to such persons are very numerous both in Bundêlkhand and other parts of India, Miracles, of course, occur at nearly every shrine, and are too common and well attested to attract much attention.
12. These observations are as true to-day as they were in the author's time. Disastrous cases of over-assessment were common in the early years of British rule, and the mischief so wrought has been sometimes traceable for generations afterwards. Since 1833 the error, though less common, has not been unknown.
13. Since writing the above, I have seen Colonel Sykes's notes on the formations of Southern India in the Indian Review. The facts there described seem all to support my conclusion, and his map would answer just as well for Central as for Southern India; for the banks of the Nerbudda and Chambal, Sôn, and Mahânadî, as well as for those of the Bâm and the Bîmâ. Colonel Sykes does not, I believe, attempt to account for the stratification of the basalt; he merely describes it. [W. H. S.]
The author's theory of the subaqueous origin of the greater part of the basalt of Central and Southern India, otherwise known as the 'Deccan Trap Series', had been supported by numerous excellent geologists, but W. T. Blanford proved the theory to be untenable, there being 'clear and unmistakable evidence that the traps were in great part of sub-aerial formation', The intercalation of sedimentary beds with fresh-water fossils is conclusive proof that the lava-flows associated with such beds cannot be submarine. The hypothesis that the lower beds of traps were poured out in a vast, but shallow, freshwater lake extending throughout the area over which the inter- trappean limestone formation extends appears to be extremely improbable. The lava seems to have been poured, during a long succession of ages, over a land surface, uneven and broken in parts, 'with intervals of rest sufficient for lakes, stocked with fresh- water mollusca, to form on the cold surfaces of several of the lava- flows' (Holland, in I.G. (1907), i. 88). A great tract of the volcanic region appears to have remained almost undisturbed to the present day, affected by sub-aerial erosion alone. The geological horizon of the Deccan trap cannot be precisely defined, but is now vaguely stated as 'the close of the cretaceous period'. The 'steps', or conspicuous terraces, traceable on the hill-sides for great distances, are explained as being 'due to the outcrop of the harder basaltic strata, or of those beds which resist best the disintegrating influences of exposure'.
The general horizontality of the Deccan trap over an area of not less than 200,000 square miles, and the absence of volcanic hills of the usual conical form, are difficulties which have caused much discussion. Some of the 'old volcanic vents' appear to have existed near Poona and Mahâblêshwar. The entire area has been subjected to sub-aerial denudation on a gigantic scale, which explains the occurrence of the basalt as the caps of isolated hills. Much further investigation is required to clear up details (Manual of the Geology of India, ed. 1, Part I, chap. 13)
14. The author took charge of the Jubbulpore District in March 1828.
15. The fossiliferous beds near Jubbulpore, described in the text, seem to belong to the group now classed as the Lamêtâ beds. The bones of a large dinosaurian reptile (Titanosaurus indicus) have been identified (I.G., 1907, vol. i, p. 88).
16. 'Many years ago Dr. Spry (Note on the Fossil Palms and Shells lately discovered on the Table-Land of Sâgar in Central India, in J.A.S.B. for 1833, vol. ii, p. 639) and, subsequently to him, Captain Nicholls (Journal of Asiatic Soc. of Bombay, vol. v, p. 614), studied and described certain trunks of palm-trees, whose silicified remains are found imbedded in the soft intertrappean mud- beds near Sâgar. . . . The trees are imbedded in a layer of calcareous black earth, which formed the surface soil in which they grew; this soil rests on, and was made up of the disintegration of, a layer of basalt. It is covered over by another and similar layer of the same rock near where the trees occur. . . . The palm-trees, now found fossilized, grew in the soil, which, in the condition of a black calcareous earthy bed, we now find lying round their prostrate stems. They fell (from whatever cause), and lay until their silicification was complete. A slight depression of the surface, or some local or accidental check of some drainage-course, or any other similar and trivial cause, may have laid them under water. The process of silicification proceeded gradually but steadily, and after they had there, in lapse of ages, become lapidified, the next outburst of volcanic matter overwhelmed them, broke them, partially enveloped, and bruised them, until long subsequent denudation once more brought them to light' (J. G. Medlicott, in Memoirs of the Geological Survey of India, vol. ii. Part II, pp. 200, 203, 204, 205, 216, as quoted in C. P. Gazetteer (1870), p. 435). The intertrappean fossils are all those of organisms which would occur in shallow fresh-water lakes or marshy ground.
Besides the author's friend and relative, Dr. H. H. Spry, Dr. Spilsbury contributed papers on the Nerbudda fossils to vols. iii, vi, viii, ix, x, and xiii of the J.A.S.B. Other writers also have treated of the subject, but it appears to be by no means fully worked out. James Prinsep, to whom no topic came amiss, discussed the Jubbulpore fossil bones in the volume in which Dr. Spry's paper appeared. Dr. Spry was the author of a work entitled Modern India: with Illustrations of the Resources and Capabilities of Hindustan (2 vols. 8vo, 1838). He became F.R.S.
Chapter 15
Legend of the Sâgar Lake--Paralysis from eating the Grain of the Lathyrus sativus.
The cantonments of Sâgar are about two miles from the city and occupied by three regiments of native infantry, one of local horse, and a company of European artillery.[1] The city occupies two sides of one of the most beautiful lakes of India, formed by a wall which unites two sandstone hills on the north side. The fort and part of the town stands upon this wall, which, according to tradition, was built by a wealthy merchant of the Banjâra caste.[2] After he had finished it, the bed of the lake still remained dry; and he was told in a dream, or by a priest, that it would continue so till he should consent to sacrifice his own daughter, then a girl, and the young lad to whom she was affianced, to the tutelary god of the place. He accordingly built a little shrine in the centre of the valley, which was to become the bed of the lake, put the two children in, and built up the doorway. He had no sooner done so than the whole of the valley became filled with water, and the old merchant, the priest, the masons, and spectators, made their escape with much difficulty. From that time the lake has been inexhaustible; but no living soul of the Banjâra caste has ever since been known to drink of its waters. Certainly all of that caste at present religiously avoid drinking the water of the lake; and the old people of the city say that they have always done so since they can remember, and that they used to hear from their parents that they had always done so. In nothing does the Founder of the Christian religion appear more amiable than in His injunction, 'Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not'. In nothing do the Hindoo deities appear more horrible than in the delight they are supposed to take in their sacrifice--it is everywhere the helpless, the female, and the infant that they seek to devour--and so it was among the Phoenicians and their Carthaginian colonies. Human sacrifices were certainly offered in the cities of Sâgar during the whole of the Marâtha government up to the year 1800, when they were put a stop to by the local governor, Âsâ Sâhib, a very humane man; and I once heard a very learned Brahman priest say that he thought the decline of his family and government arose from this innovation. 'There is', said he, 'no sin in not offering human sacrifices to the gods where none have been offered; but, where the gods have been accustomed to them, they are naturally annoyed when the rite is abolished, and visit the place and people with all kinds of calamities.' He did not seem to think that there was anything singular in this mode of reasoning, and perhaps three Brahman priests out of four would have reasoned in the same manner.[3]
On descending into the valley of the Nerbudda over the Vindhya range of hills from Bhopal, one may see by the side of the road, upon a spur of the hill, a singular pillar of sandstone rising in two spires, one turning above and rising over the other, to the height of from twenty to thirty feet. On a spur of a hill half a mile distant is another sandstone pillar not quite so high. The tradition is that the smaller pillar was the affianced bride of the taller one, who was a youth of a family of great eminence in these parts. Coming with his uncle to pay his first visit to his bride in the procession they call the 'barât', he grew more and more impatient as he approached nearer and nearer, and she shared the feeling. At last, unable to restrain himself, he jumped upon his uncle's shoulder, and looked with all his might towards the spot where his bride was said to be seated. Unhappily she felt no less impatient than he did, and raised 'the fringed curtains of her eye', as he raised his, [and] they saw each other at the same moment. In that moment the bride, bridegroom, and uncle were all converted into stone pillars; and there they stand to this day a monument, in the estimation of the people, to warn men and womankind against too strong an inclination to indulge curiosity. It is a singular fact that in one of the most extensive tribes of the Gond population of Central India, to which this couple is said to have belonged, the bride always goes to the bridegroom in the procession of the 'barât', to prevent a recurrence of this calamity. It is the bridegroom who goes to the bride among every other class of the people of India, as well Muhammadans as Hindoos. Whether the usage grew out of the tradition, or the tradition out of the usage, is a question that will admit of much being said on both sides. I can only vouch for the existence of both. I have seen the pillars, heard the tradition from the people, and ascertained the usage; as in the case of that of the Sâgar lake.
The Mahâdêo sandstone hills, which in the Sâtpura range overlook the Nerbudda to the south, rise to between four and five thousand feet above the level of the sea;[4] and in one of the highest parts a fair was formerly, and is, perhaps, still held[5] for the enjoyment of those who assemble to witness the self devotion of a few young men, who offer themselves as a sacrifice to fulfil the vows of their mothers. When a woman is without children she makes votive offerings to all the gods, who can, she thinks, assist her, and promises of still greater in case they should grant what she wants. Smaller promises being found of no avail, she at last promises her first- born, if a male, to the god of destruction, Mahâdêo. If she gets a son, she conceals from him her vows till he has attained the age of puberty; she then communicates it [sic] to him, and enjoins him to fulfil it. He believes it to be his paramount duty to obey his mother's call; and from that moment he considers himself as devoted to the god. Without breathing to any living soul a syllable of what she has told him, he puts on the habit of a pilgrim or religious mendicant, visits all the celebrated temples dedicated to this god in different parts of India;[6] and, at the annual fair on the Mahâdêo hills, throws himself from a perpendicular height of four or five hundred feet, and is dashed to pieces upon the rocks below.[7] If the youth does not feel himself quite prepared for the sacrifice on the first visit, he spends another year in pilgrimages, and returns to fulfil his mother's vow at the next fair. Some have, I believe, been known to postpone the sacrifice to a third fair; but the interval is always spent in painful pilgrimages to the celebrated temples of the god. When Sir R. Jenkins was the Governor-General's representative at the court of Nâgpur,[8] great efforts were made by him and all the European officers under him to put a stop to these horrors by doing away with the fair; and their efforts were assisted by the cholera morbus, which broke out among the multitude one season while they were so employed, and carried off the greater part of them. This seasonable visitation was, I believe, considered as an intimation on the part of the god that the people ought to have been more attentive to the wishes of the white men, for it so happens that Mahâdêo is the only one of the Hindoo gods who is represented with a white face.[9] He figures among the dramatis personae of the great pantomime of the Râmlîlâ[10] or fight for the recovery of Sitâ from the demon king of Ceylon; and is the only one with a white face. I know not whether the fair has ever been revived, but [I] think not.
In 1829 the wheat and other spring crops in this and the surrounding villages were destroyed by a severe hail-storm; in 1830 they were deficient from the want of seasonable rains; and in 1831 they were destroyed by blight. During these three years the 'teorî', or what in other parts of India is called 'kesârî' (the Lathyrus sativus of botanists), a kind of wild vetch, which, though not sown itself, is left carelessly to grow among the wheat and other grain, and given in the green and dry state to cattle, remained uninjured, and thrived with great luxuriance.[11] In 1831 they reaped a rich crop of it from the blighted wheat-fields, and subsisted upon its grain during that and the following years, giving the stalks and leaves only to their cattle. In 1833 the sad effects of this food began to manifest themselves. The younger part of the population of this and the surrounding villages, from the age of thirty downwards, began to be deprived of the use of their limbs below the waist by paralytic strokes, in all cases sudden, but in some cases more severe than in others. About half the youth of this village of both sexes became affected during the years 1833 and 1834, and many of them have lost the use of their lower limbs entirely, and are unable to move. The youth of the surrounding villages, in which the 'teorî' from the same causes formed the chief article of food during the years 1831 and 1832, have suffered to an equal degree. Since the year 1834 no new case has occurred; but no person once attacked had been found to recover the use of the limbs affected; and my tent was surrounded by great numbers of the youth in different stages of the disease, imploring my advice and assistance under this dreadful visitation. Some of them were very fine-looking young men of good caste and respectable families; and all stated that their pains and infirmities were confined entirely to the parts below the waist. They described the attack as coming on suddenly, often while the person was asleep, and without any warning symptoms whatever; and stated that a greater portion of the young men were attacked than of the young women. It is the prevailing opinion of the natives throughout the country that both horses and bullocks, which have been much fed upon 'teorî', are liable to lose the use of their limbs; but, if the poisonous qualities abound more in the grain than in the stalk or leaves, man, who eats nothing but the grain, must be more liable to suffer from the use of this food than beasts, which eat it merely as they eat grass or hay.
I sent the son of the head man of the village and another, who were among the young people least affected, into Sâgar with a letter to my friend Dr. Foley, with a request that he would try what he could do for them; and if he had any fair prospect of being able to restore these people to the use of their limbs, that measures might be adopted through the civil authorities to provide them with accommodation and the means of subsistence, either by private subscription, or by application to Government. The civil authorities, however, could find neither accommodation nor funds to maintain these people while under Dr. Foley's care; and several seasons of calamity had deprived them of the means of maintaining themselves at a distance from their families. Nor is a medical man in India provided with the means found most effectual in removing such affections, such as baths, galvanic batteries, &c. It is lamentable to think how very little we have as yet done for the country in the healing art, that art which, above all others, a benevolent and enlightened Government should encourage among the people of India.
All we have as yet done has been to provide medical attendants for our European officers; regiments, and jails. It must not, however, be supposed that the people of India are without medical advice, for there is not a town or considerable village in India without its practitioners, the Hindoos following the Egyptian (Misrânî), and the Musalmâns the Grecian (Yunânî) practice. The first prescribe little physic and much fasting; and the second follow the good old rules of Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna, with which they are all tolerably well acquainted. As far as the office of physician goes, the natives of India of all classes, high and low, have much more confidence in their own practitioners than in ours, whom they consider too reckless and better adapted to treat diseases in a cold than a hot climate. They cannot afford to give the only fees which European physicians would accept; and they see them, in their hospital practice, trust much to their native assistants, who are very few of them able to read any book, much less to study the profound doctrines of the great masters of the science of medicine.[12] No native ventures to offer an opinion upon this abstruse subject in any circle where he is not known to be profoundly read in either Arabic or Sanskrit lore; nor would he venture to give a prescription without first consulting, 'spectacles on nose', a book as large as a church Bible. The educated class, as indeed all classes, say that they do not want our physicians, but stand much in need of our surgeons. Here they feel that they are helpless, and we are strong; and they seek our aid whenever they see any chance of obtaining it, as in the present case.[13] Considering that every European gentleman they meet is more or less a surgeon, or hoping to find him so, people who are afflicted, or have children afflicted, with any kind of malformation, or malorganization, flock round them [sic] wherever they go, and implore their aid; but implore in vain, for, when they do happen to fall in with a surgeon, he is a mere passer-by, without the means or the time to afford relief. In travelling over India there is nothing which distresses a benevolent man so much as the necessity he is daily under of telling poor parents, who, with aching hearts and tearful eyes, approach him with their suffering children in their arms, that to relieve them requires time and means which are not at a traveller's command, or a species of knowledge which he does not possess; it is bitter thus to dash to the ground the cup of hope which our approach has raised to the lip of mother, father, and child; but he consoles himself with the prospect, that at no distant period a benevolent and enlightened Government will distribute over the land those from whom the afflicted will not seek relief in vain.[14]
Notes:
1. The garrison is stated in the Gazetteer (1870) to consist of a European regiment of infantry, two batteries of European artillery, one native cavalry and one native infantry regiment. In 1893 it consisted of one battery of Royal Artillery, a detachment of British Infantry, a regiment of Bengal Cavalry, and a detachment of Bengal Infantry. According to the census of 1911, the population of Sâgar was 45,908.
2. The Banjâras, or Brinjâras, are a wandering tribe, principally employed as carriers of grain and salt on bullocks and cows. They used to form the transport service of the Moghal armies, and of the Company's forces at least as late as 1819. Their organization and customs are in many ways peculiar. The development of roads and railways has much diminished the importance of the tribe. A good account of it will be found in Balfour, Cyclopaedia of India, 3rd ed., 1885, s. v. 'Banjâra'. Dubois (Hindu Manners, &c., 3rd ed. (1906), p. 70) states that 'of all the castes of the Hindus, this particular one is acknowledged to be the most brutal'.
3. See note on human sacrifice, ante, Chapter 8, note 8.
4. In the Hoshangâbâd district of the Central Provinces. The sandstone formation here attains its highest development, and is known to geologists as the 'Mahâdêo sandstones'. The new sanitarium of Pachmarhî is situated in these hills.
5. It has been long since suppressed.
6. Benares is the principal seat of the worship of Mahâdêo (Siva), but his shrines are found everywhere throughout India. One hundred and eight of these are reckoned as important. In Southern India the most notable, perhaps, is the great temple at Tanjore (see chap. 17 of Monier Williams's Religious Thought and Life in India).
7. 'This mode of suicide is called Bhrigu-pâtâ, "throwing one's self from a precipice". It was once equally common at the rock of Girnâr [in Kâthiâwâr], and has only recently been prohibited' (ibid. p. 349).
8. Nagpore (Nâgpur) was governed by Marâthâ rulers, with the title of Bhônslâ, also known as the Râjâs of Berâr. The last Râjâ, Raghojî, died without heirs in 1853. His dominions were then annexed as lapsed territory by Lord Dalhousie. Sir Richard Jenkins was Resident at Nâgpur from 1810 to 1827. Nâgpur is now the head-quarters of the Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces.
9. 'There is a legend that Siva appeared in the Kali age, for the good of the Brahmans, as "Sveta", "the white one", and that he had four disciples, to all of whom the epithet "Sveta" is applied' (Monier Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India, p. 80, note 2). Various explanations of the legend have been offered. Professor A. Weber is inclined to think that the various references to white teachers in Indian legends allude to Christian missionaries. The Mahâbhârata mentions the travels of Nârada and others across the sea to 'Sveta-dwîpa', the 'Island of the White Men', in order to learn the doctrine of the unity of God. This tradition appears to be intelligible only if understood to commemorate the journeys of pious Indians to Alexandria, and their study of Christianity there (Die Griechen in Indien, 1890, p. 34).
10. The Râmlîlâ, a performance corresponding to the mediaeval European 'miracle-play', is celebrated in Northern India in the month of Kuâr (or Asvin, September-October), at the same time as the Durgâ Pûjâ is solemnized in Bengal. Râma and his brother Lachhman are impersonated by boys, who are seated on thrones in state. The performance concludes by the burning of a wicker image of Râvana, the demon king of Lankâ (Ceylon), who had carried off Râma's queen, Sitâ. The story is the leading subject of the great epic called the Râmâyana.
11. The Lathyrus sativus is cultivated in the Punjab and in Tibet. Its poisonous qualities are attributed to its excessive proportion of nitrogenous matter, which requires dilution. Another species of the genus, L. cicer, grown in Spain, has similar properties. The distressing effects described in the text have been witnessed by other observers (Balfour, Cyclopaedia, 3rd ed., 1885, s.v. 'Lathyrus').
12. One of the tent-pitchers one morning, after pitching our tent, asked the loan of a small extra one for the use of his wife, who was about to be confined. The basket-maker's wife of the village near which we were encamped was called; and the poor woman, before we had finished our breakfast, gave birth to a daughter. The charge is half a rupee, or one shilling for a boy, and a quarter, or sixpence, for a girl. The tent-pitcher gave her ninepence, which the poor midwife thought very handsome, The mother had come fourteen miles upon a loaded cart over rough roads the night before; and went the same distance with her child the night after, upon the same cart. The first midwife in Europe could not have done her duty better than this poor basket-maker's wife did hers. [W. H. S.]
13. The 'present case' was of a medical, not a surgical, nature.
14. The Hindoo practitioners are called 'baid' (Sanskrit 'vaidya', followers of the Veda, that is to say, the Ayur Veda). The Musalmân practitioners are generally called 'hakîm'. The Egyptian school (Misrânî, Misrî, or Suryânî, that is, Syrian) never practise bleeding, and are partial to the use of metallic oxides. The Yunânî physicians approve of bleeding, and prefer vegetable drugs. The older writers on India fancied that the Hindoo system of medicine was of enormous antiquity, and that the principles of Galenical medical science were ultimately derived from India. Modern investigation has proved that Hindoo medicine, like Hindoo astronomy, is largely of Greek origin. This conclusion has been expressed in an exaggerated form by some writers, but its general truth appears to be established. The Hindoo books treating of medicine are certainly older than Wilson supposed, for the Bower manuscript, written in the second half of the fourth century of our era, contains three Sanskrit medical treatises. The writers had, however, plenty of time to borrow from Galen, who lived in the second century. The Indian aversion to European medicine, as distinguished from surgery, still exists, though in a degree somewhat less than in the author's time. Many municipal boards have insisted on employing 'baids' and 'hakîms' in addition to the practitioners trained in European methods. Well-to-do patients often delay resort to the English physician until they have exhausted all resources of the 'hakîm' and have been nearly killed by his drastic treatment. One medical innovation, the use of quinine as a febrifuge, has secured universal approbation. I never heard of an Indian who disbelieved in quinine. Chlorodyne also is fully appreciated, but most of the European medicines are regarded with little faith.
Since the author wrote, great progress has been made in providing hospital and dispensary accommodation. Each 'district', or unit of civil administration, has a fairly well equipped combined hospital and dispensary at head-quarters, and branch dispensaries exist in almost every district. An Inspector-General of Dispensaries supervises the medical administration of each province, and medical schools have been organized at Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Lahore, and Agra. During Lord Dufferin's Viceroyalty and afterwards, energetic steps were taken to improve the system of medical relief for females. Pandit Madhusadan Gupta, on January 10, 1836, was the first Hindoo who ventured to dissect a human body and teach anatomy. India can now boast of a considerable number of Hindoo and Musalmân practitioners, trained in European methods, and skilful in their profession. Much has been done, infinitely more remains to be done. Details will be found in I.G. (1907), vol. iv, chap. 14, 'Medical Administration', The article 'Medicine' in Balfour, Cyclopaedia, 3rd ed., 1885, on which I have drawn for some of the facts above stated, gives a good summary of the earlier history of medicine in India, but greatly exaggerates the antiquity of the Hindoo books. On this question Weber's paper, 'Die Griechen in Indien' (Berlin, 1890, p. 28), and Dr. Hoernle's remarks on the Bower manuscript (in J.A.S.B., vol. lx (1891), Part I, p. 145) may be consulted. Dr. Hoernle's annotated edition and translation of the Bower MS. were completed in 1912. Part of the work is reprinted with additions in the Ind. Ant. for 1913 and 1914.
16. Suttee Tombs--Insalubrity of deserted Fortresses
On the 3rd we came to Bahrol,[1] where I had encamped with Lord William Bentinck on the last day of December, 1832, when the quicksilver in the thermometer at sunrise, outside our tents, was down to twenty-six degrees of Fahrenheit's thermometer. The village stands upon a gentle swelling hill of decomposed basalt, and is surrounded by hills of the same formation. The Dasân river flows close under the village, and has two beautiful reaches, one above, the other below, separated by the dyke of basalt, over which lies the ford of the river.[2]
There are beautiful reaches of the kind in all the rivers in this part of India, and they are almost everywhere formed in the same manner. At Bahrol there is a very unusual number of tombs built over the ashes of women who have burnt themselves with the remains of their husbands. Upon each tomb stands erect a tablet of freestone, with the sun, the new moon, and a rose engraved upon it in bas-relief in one field;[3] and the man and woman, hand in hand, in the other. On one stone of this kind I saw a third field below these two, with the figure of a horse in bas-relief, and I asked one of the gentlemen farmers, who was riding with me, what it meant. He told me that he thought it indicated that the woman rode on horseback to bathe before she ascended the pile.[4] I asked him whether he thought the measure prohibiting the practice of burning good or bad.
'It is', said he, 'in some respects good, and in others bad. Widows cannot marry among us, and those who had no prospect of a comfortable provision among their husband's relations, or who dreaded the possibility of going astray, and thereby sinking into contempt and misery, were enabled in this way to relieve their minds, and follow their husbands, under the full assurance of being happily united to them in the next world.'
When I passed this place on horseback with Lord William Bentinck, he asked me what these tombs were, for he had never seen any of the kind before. When I told him what they were, he said not a word; but he must have felt a proud consciousness of the debt of gratitude which India owes to the statesman who had the courage to put a stop to this great evil, in spite of all the fearful obstacles which bigotry and prejudice opposed to the measure. The seven European functionaries in charge of the seven districts of the newly-acquired territories were requested, during the administration of Lord Amherst in 1826, to state whether the burning of widows could or should be prohibited; and I believe every one of them declared that it should not. And yet, when it was put a stop to only a few years after by Lord William, not a complaint or murmur was heard. The replies to the Governor- General's inquiries were, I believe, throughout India, for the most part, opposed to the measure.[5]
On the 4th we came to Dhamonî, ten miles. The only thing remarkable here is the magnificent fortress, which is built upon a small projection of the Vindhya range, looking down on each side into two enormously deep glens, through which the two branches of the Dasân river descend over the tableland into the plains of Bundêlkhand.[6] The rays of the sun seldom penetrate to the bottom of these glens, and things are, in consequence, grown there that could not be grown in parts more exposed.
Every inch of the level ground in the bed of the streams below seems to be cultivated with care. This fortress is said to have cost more than a million of money, and to have been only one of fifty-two great works, of which a former Râjâ of Bundêlkhand, Bîrsingh Deo, laid the foundation in the same happy hour which had been pointed out to him by his astrologers.[7] The works form an acute triangle, with the base towards the tableland, and the two sides hanging perpendicularly over the glens, while the apex points to the course of the streams as they again unite, and pass out through a deep chasm into the plains of Bundêlkhand.
The fortress is now entirely deserted, and the town, which the garrison supported, is occupied by only a small police-guard, stationed here to see that robbers do not take up their abode among the ruins. There is no fear of this. All old deserted fortresses in India become filled by a dense stream of carbonic acid gas, which is found so inimical to animal life that those who attempt to occupy them become ill, and, sooner or later, almost all die of the consequences. This gas, being specifically much heavier than common air, descends into the bottom of such unoccupied fortresses, and remains stagnant like water in old reservoirs. The current of pure air continually passes over, without being able to carry off the mass of stagnant air below; and the only way to render such places habitable is to make large openings in the walls on all sides, from the top to the bottom, so that the foul air may be driven out by the current of pure atmospheric air, which will then be continually rushing in. When these fortresses are thickly peopled, the continual motion within tends, I think, to mix up this gas with the air above; while the numerous fires lighted within, by rarefying that below, tend to draw down a regular supply of the atmospheric air from above for the benefit of the inhabitants. When natives enter upon the occupation of an old fortress of this kind, that has remained long unoccupied, they always make a solemn religions ceremony of it; and, having fed the priests, the troops, and a crowd of followers, all rush in at once with beat of drums, and as much noise as they can make. By this rush, and the fires that follow, the bad air is, perhaps, driven off, and never suffered to collect again while the fortress remains fully occupied. Whatever may be the cause, the fact is certain that these fortresses become deadly places of abode for small detachments of troops, or small parties of any kind. They all get ill, and few recover from the diseases they contract in them.
From the year 1817, when we first took possession of the Sâgar and Nerbudda Territories, almost all the detachments of troops we required to keep at a distance from the headquarters of their regiments were posted in these old deserted fortifications. Our collections of revenue were deposited in them; and, in some cases, they were converted into jails for the accommodation of our prisoners. Of the soldiers so lodged, I do not believe that one in four ever came out well; and, of those who came out ill, I do not believe that one in four survived five years. They were all abandoned one after the other; but it is painful to think how many hundreds, I may say thousands, of our brave soldiers were sacrificed before this resolution was taken. I have known the whole of the survivors of strong detachments that went in, in robust health, three months before, brought away mere skeletons, and in a hopeless and dying state. All were sent to their homes on medical certificate, but they almost all died there, or in the course of their journey.
Notes:
1. December, 1835. The name of the village is spelled Behrole by the author.
2. The Dasân river rises in the Bhopâl State, flows through the Sâgar district of the Central Provinces, and along the southern boundary of the Lalitpur subdivision of the Jhânsî District, United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. It also forms the boundary between the Jhânsî and Hamîrpur Districts, and falls into the Betwa after a course of about 220 miles. The name is often, but erroneously, written Dhasân. It is the Sanskrit Dasârna.
3. This emblem is a lotus, not a rose flower. The latter is never used in Hindoo symbolism. The lotus is a solar emblem, and intimately associated with the worship of Vishnu.
4. It rather indicates that the husband was on horseback when killed. The sculptures on satî pillars often commemorate the mode of death of the husband. Sometimes these pillars are inscribed. They usually face the east. An open hand is often carved in the upper compartment as well as the sun and moon. A drawing of such a pillar will be found in J.A.S.B., vol. xlvi. Part I, 1877, pl. xiv. A.S.R., vol. iii, p. 10; vol. vii, p. 137; vol. x, p. 75; and vol. xxi, p. 101, may be consulted.
5. The 'newly-acquired territories' referred to are the Sâgar and Nerbudda Territories, comprising the seven districts, Sâgar, Jubbulpore, Hoshangâbâd, Seonî, Damoh, Narsinghpur, and Baitûl, ceded in 1818, and now included in the Central Provinces. The tenor of the replies given to Lord Amherst's queries shows how far the process of Hindooizing had advanced among the European officials of the Company. Lord Amherst left India in March, 1828. See ante. Chapter 4 and Chapter 8, for cases of satî (suttees). For a good account of the suttee discussions and legislation, see D. Boulger, Lord William Bentinck (1897), chap. v, in 'Rulers of India' Series. No other biography of Lord William Bentinck exists.
6. Dhamonî is in the Sâgar district of the Central Provinces, about twenty-nine miles north of Sâgar. The fort was taken by General Marshall in 1818. It had been rebuilt by Râjâ Bîrsingh Deo of Orchhâ on an enormous scale about the end of the sixteenth century. In the original edition, the author's march is said to have taken place 'on the 24th'. This must be a mistake for 'on the 4th'; as the last date, that of the march to Bahrol, was the 3rd December. The author reached Agra on January 1, 1836,
7. The number fifty-two is one of the Hindoo favourite numbers, like seven, twelve, and eighty-four, held sacred for astronomical or astrological reasons. Bîrsingh Deo was the younger brother of Râmchand, head of the Bundêla clan. To oblige Prince Salîm, afterwards the Emperor Jahângîr, he murdered Abûl Fazl, the celebrated minister and historian of Akbar, on August 12, 1602, Jahângîr, after his accession, rewarded the murderer by allowing him to supersede his brother in the headship of his clan, and by appointing him to the rank of 'commander of three thousand'. The capital of Bîrsingh was Orchhâ. His successors are often spoken of as Râjâs of Tehrî. The murder is fully described in The Emperor Akbar by Count von Noer, translated by A. S. Beveridge, Calcutta, 1890, vol. ii, pp. 384-404. Orchhâ is described post, Chapters 22,23.
Chapter 17
Basaltic Cappings--Interview with a Native Chief--A Singular Character.
On the 5th[1] we came to the village of Seorî. Soon after leaving Dhamonî, we descended the northern face of the Vindhya range into the plains of Bundêlkhand. The face of this range overlooking the valley of the Nerbudda to the south is, as I have before stated, a series of mural precipices, like so many rounded bastions, the slight dip of the strata being to the north. The northern face towards Bundêlkhand, on the contrary, here descends gradually, as the strata dip slightly towards the north, and we pass down gently over their back. The strata have, however, been a good deal broken, and the road was so rugged that two of our carts broke down in descending. From the descent over the northern face of the tableland into Bundêlkhand to the descent over the southern face into the valley of the Nerbudda must be a distance of one hundred miles directly north and south.
The descent over the northern face is not everywhere so gradual; on the contrary, there are but few places where it is at all feasible; and some of the rivers of the tableland between Jubbulpore and Mirzapore have a perpendicular fall of more than four hundred feet over these mural precipices of the northern face of the Vindhya range.[2] A man, if he have good nerve, may hang over the summits, and suspend in his hand a plummet that shall reach the bottom.
I should mention that this tableland is not only intersected by ranges, but everywhere studded with isolated hills rising suddenly out of basins or valleys. These ranges and isolated hills are all of the same sandstone formation, and capped with basalt, more or less amygdaloidal. The valleys and cappings have often a substratum of very compact basalt, which must evidently have flowed into them after these islands were formed. The question is, how were these valleys and basins scooped out? 'Time, time, time!' says Mr. Scrope; 'grant me only time, and I can account for everything.' I think, however, that I am right in considering the basaltic cappings of these ranges and isolated hills to have once formed part of continued flat beds of great lakes. The flat parallel planes of these cappings, corresponding with each other, however distantly separated the hills they cover may be, would seem to indicate that they could not all have been subject to the convulsions of nature by which the whole substrata were upheaved above the ocean. I am disposed to think that such islands and ranges of the sandstone were formed before the deposit of the basalt, and that the form of the surface is now returning to what it then was, by the gradual decomposition and wearing away of the latter rock. Much, however, may be said on both sides of this, as of every other question. After descending from the sandstone of the Vindhya[3] range into Bundêlkhand, we pass over basalt and basaltic soil, reposing immediately on syenitic granite, with here and there beds and veins of pure feldspar, hornblende, and quartz.
Takht Singh, the younger brother of Arjun Singh, the Râjâ of Shâhgarh,[4] came out several miles to meet me on his elephant. Finding me on horseback, he got off from his elephant, and mounted his horse, and we rode on till we met the Râjâ himself, about a mile from our tents. He was on horseback, with a large and splendidly dressed train of followers, all mounted on fine sleek horses, bred in the Râjâ's own stables. He was mounted on a snow-white steed of his own breeding (and I have rarely seen a finer animal), and dressed in a light suit of silver brocade made to represent the scales of steel armour, surmounted by a gold turban. Takht Singh was more plainly dressed, but is a much finer and more intelligent-looking man. Having escorted us to our tents, they took their leave, and returned to their own, which were pitched on a rising ground on the other side of a small stream, half a mile distant. Takht Singh resides here in a very pretty fortified castle on an eminence. It is a square building, with a round bastion at each corner, and one on each face, rising into towers above the walls.
A little after midday the Râjâ and his brother came to pay us a visit; and about four o'clock I went to return it, accompanied by Lieutenant Thomas. As usual, he had a nautch (dance) upon carpets, spread upon the sward under awnings in front of the pavilion in which we were received. While the women were dancing and singing, a very fine panther was brought in to be shown to us. He had been caught, full-grown, two years before, and, in the hands of a skilful man, was fit for the chase in six months. It was a very beautiful animal, but, for the sake of the sport, kept wretchedly thin.[5] He seemed especially indifferent to the crowd and the music, but could not bear to see the woman whirling about in the dance with her red mantle floating in the breeze; and, whenever his head was turned towards her, he cropped his ears. She at last, in play, swept close by him, and with open mouth he attempted to spring upon her, but was pulled back by the keeper. She gave a shriek, and nearly fell upon her back in fright.
The Râjâ is a man of no parts or character, and, his expenditure being beyond his income, he is killing his goose for the sake of her eggs--that is, he is ruining all the farmers and cultivators of his large estate by exactions, and thereby throwing immense tracts of fine land out of tillage. He was the heir to the fortress and territory of Garhâ Kotâ, near Sâgar, which was taken by Sindhia's army, under the command of Jean Baptiste Filose,[6] just before our conquest in 1817. I was then with my regiment, which was commanded by Colonel, afterwards Major-General, G------,[7] a very singular character. When our surgeon. Dr. E------, received the newspaper announcing the capture of Garhâ Kotâ in Central India by Jean- Baptiste, an officer of the corps was with him, who called on the colonel on his way home, and mentioned this as a bit of news. As soon as this officer had left him, the colonel wrote off a note to the doctor: 'My dear Doctor,--I understand that that fellow, John the Baptist, has got into Sindhia's service, and now commands an army-- do send me the newspapers.' These were certainly the words of his note, and, at the only time I heard him speak on the subject of religion he discomfited his adversary in an argument at the mess by 'Why, sir, you do not suppose that I believe in those fellows, Luther, Calvin, and John the Baptist, do you?'
Nothing could stand this argument. All the party burst into a laugh, which the old gentleman took for an unequivocal recognition of his victory, and his adversary was silenced. He was an old man when I first became acquainted with him. I put into his hands, when in camp, Miss Edgeworth's novels, in the hope of being able to induce him to read by degrees; and I have frequently seen the tears stealing down over his furrowed cheeks, as he sat pondering over her pages in the corner of his tent. A braver soldier never lived than old G------; and he distinguished himself greatly in the command of his regiment, under Lord Lake, at the battle of Laswâri[8] and siege of Bharatpur.[9] It was impossible ever to persuade him that the characters and incidents of these novels were the mere creations of fancy--he felt them to be true--he wished them to be true, and he would have them to be true. We were not very anxious to undeceive him, as the illusion gave him pleasure and did him good. Bolingbroke says, after an ancient author, 'History is philosophy teaching by example.'[10] With equal truth may we say that fiction, like that of Maria Edgeworth, is philosophy teaching by emotion. It certainly taught old G------ to be a better man, to leave much of the little evil he had been in the habit of doing, and to do much of the good he had been accustomed to leave undone.
Notes:
1. December 5, 1835, The date is misprinted '3rd' in the original edition. See note 2 to last preceding chapter, p. 110.
2. A good view of the precipices of the Kaimûr range, the eastern continuation of the Vindhyan chain, is given facing page 41 of vol. i of Hooker's Himalayan Journals (ed. 1855).
3. The author's theory is untenable. He failed, to realize the vast effects of sub-aerial denudation. All the evidence shows that the successive lava outflows which make up the Deccan trap series ultimately converted the surface of the land over which they welled out into an enormous, nearly uniform, plain of basalt, resting on the Vindhyan sandstone and other rocks. This great sheet of lava, extending, east and west, from Nâgpur to Bombay, a distance of about five hundred miles, was then, in succeeding millenniums, subjected to the denuding forces of air and water, until gradually huge tracts of it were worn away, forming beds of conglomerate, gravel, and clay. The flat-topped hills have been carved out of the basaltic surface by the agencies which wore away the massive sheet of lava. The basaltic cappings of the hills certainly cannot have 'formed part of continued flat beds of great lakes'. See the notes to Chapter 14, ante. Mr. Scrope was quite right. Vast periods of time must be allowed for geological history, and millions of years must have elapsed since the flow of the Deccan lava.
4. In the Sâgar district. The last Raja joined the rebels in 1857, and so forfeited his rank and territory.
5. The name panther is usually applied only to the large, fulvous variety of Felis pardus (Linn.) (F. leopardus, Leopardus varius). The animal described in the text evidently was a specimen of the hunting leopard, Felis jubata (F. guttata, F. venatica).
6. This officer was one of the many 'condottieri' of various nationality who served the native powers during the eighteenth century, and the early years of the nineteenth. He commanded five infantry regiments at Gwâlior. His 'kingdom-taking' raid in 1815 or 1816 is described post in Chapter 49. The history of the family is given by Compton in European Military Adventures of Hindustan from 1784 to 1803 (Unwin, 1892), App. pp, 352-6. In 1911 Michael Filose of Gwâlior was appointed K.C.I.E.
7.'G------' appears to have been Robert Gregory C.B.
8. The fiercely contested battle of Laswâri was fought on November 1, 1803, between the British force under Lord Lake and the flower of Sindhia's army, known as the 'Deccan Invincibles'. Sindhia's troops lost about seven thousand killed and two thousand prisoners. The British loss in killed and wounded amounted to more than eight hundred. A medal to commemorate the victory was struck in London in 1851, and presented to the survivors. Laswâri is a village in the Alwar State, 128 miles south of Delhi.
9. Bharatpur (Bhurtpore), in the Jât State of the same name, is thirty-four miles west of Agra. In January and February, 1805, Lord Lake four times attempted to take it by assault, and each time was repulsed with heavy loss. On January 18, 1826, Lord Combermere stormed the fortress. The fortifications were then dismantled. A large portion of the walls is now standing, and presents an imposing appearance. They seem to have been repaired. See post, Chapter 62.
10. 'I will answer you by quoting what I have read somewhere or other--in Dionysius Halicarn., I think--that history is philosophy teaching by example' (Bolingbroke, Letters on the Study and Use of History, Letter II, p. 14 of vol. viii of edition printed by T. Cadell, London, 1770). The Greek words are. . . . . . . .
18. Birds' Nests--Sports of Boyhood
On the 6th[1] we came to Sayyidpur, ten miles, over an undulating country, with a fine soil of decomposed basalt, reposing upon syenite, with veins of feldspar and quartz. Cultivation partial, and very bad; and population extremely scanty. We passed close to a village, in which the children were all at play; while upon the bushes over their heads were suspended an immense number of the beautiful nests of the sagacious 'bayâ' bird, or Indian yellow- hammer,[2] all within reach of a grown-up boy, and one so near the road that a grown-up man might actually look into it as he passed along, and could hardly help shaking it. It cannot fail to strike a European as singular to see so many birds' nests, situated close to a village, remain unmolested within reach of so many boisterous children, with their little proprietors and families fluttering and chirping among them with as great a feeling of security and gaiety of heart as the children themselves enjoy.
In any part of Europe not a nest of such a colony could have lived an hour within reach of such a population; for the bayâ bird has no peculiar respect paid to it by the people here, like the wren and robin-redbreast in England. No boy in India has the slightest wish to molest birds in their nests; it enters not into their pastimes, and they have no feeling of pride or pleasure in it. With us it is different--to discover birds' nests is one of the first modes in which a boy exercises his powers, and displays his love of art. Upon his skill in finding them he is willing to rest his first claim to superior sagacity and enterprise. His trophies are his string of eggs; and the eggs most prized among them are those of the nests that are discovered with most difficulty, and attained with most danger. The same feeling of desire to display their skill and enterprise in search after birds' nests in early life renders the youth of England the enemy almost of the whole animal creation throughout their after career. The boy prides himself on his dexterity in throwing a stone or a stick; and he practises on almost every animal that comes in his way, till he never sees one without the desire to knock it down, or at least to hit it; and, if it is lawful to do so, he feels it to be a most serious misfortune not to have a stone within his reach at the time. As he grows up, he prides himself upon his dexterity in shooting, and he never sees a member of the feathered tribe within shot, without a desire to shoot it, or without regretting that he has not a gun in his hand to shoot it. That he is not entirely destitute of sympathy, however, with the animals he maims for his amusement is sufficiently manifest from his anxiety to put them out of pain the moment he gets them.
A friend of mine, now no more, Captain Medwin, was once looking with me at a beautiful landscape painting through a glass. At last he put aside the glass, saying: 'You may say what you like, S--, but the best landscape I know is a fine black partridge[3] falling before my Joe Manton.'
The following lines of Walter Scott, in his Rokeby, have always struck me as very beautiful:-
As yet the conscious pride of art Had steel'd him in his treacherous part; A powerful spring of force unguessed That hath each gentler mood suppressed, And reigned in many a human breast; From his that plans the rude campaign, To his that wastes the woodland reign, &c.[4]
Among the people of India it is very different. Children do not learn to exercise their powers either in discovering and robbing the nests of birds, or in knocking them down with stones and staves; and, as they grow up, they hardly ever think of hunting or shooting for mere amusement. It is with them a matter of business; the animal they cannot eat they seldom think of molesting.
Some officers were one day pursuing a jackal, with a pack of dogs, through my grounds. The animal passed close to one of my guard, who cut him in two with his sword, and held up the reeking blade in triumph to the indignant cavalcade; who, when they came up, were ready to eat him alive. 'What have I done', said the poor man, 'to offend you?' 'Have you not killed the jackal?' shouted the whipper- in, in a fury.
'Of course I have; but were you not all trying to kill him?' replied the poor man. He thought their only object had been to kill the jackal, as they would have killed a serpent, merely because he was a mischievous and noisy beast.
The European traveller in India is often in doubt whether the peacocks, partridges, and ducks, which he finds round populous villages, are tame or wild, till he asks some of the villagers themselves, so assured of safety do these creatures become, and so willing to take advantage of it for the food they find in the suburbs. They very soon find the difference, however, between the white-faced visitor and the dark-faced inhabitants. There is a fine date-tree overhanging a kind of school at the end of one of the streets in the town of Jubbulpore, quite covered with the nests of the bayâ birds; and they are seen, every day and all day, fluttering and chirping about there in scores, while the noisy children at their play fill the street below, almost within arm's length of them. I have often thought that such a tree so peopled at the door of a school in England might work a great revolution in the early habits and propensities of the youth educated in it. The European traveller is often amused to see the pariah dog[5] squatted close in front of the traveller during the whole time he is occupied in cooking and eating his dinner, under a tree by the roadside, assured that he shall have at least a part of the last cake thrown to him by the stranger, instead of a stick or a stone. The stranger regards him with complacency, as one that reposes a quiet confidence in his charitable disposition, and flings towards him the whole or part of his last cake, as if his meal had put him in the best possible humour with him and all the world.
Notes:
1. December, 1835. The name of the village is given in the author's text as Seindpore. It seems to be the place which is called Siedpore in the next chapter.
2. The common weaver bird, Phoceus baya, Blyth. 'Ploceinae, the weaver birds. . . . They build nests like a crucible, with the opening downwards, and usually attach them to the tender branches of a tree hanging over a well or tank. P. baya is found throughout India; its nest is made of grasses and strips of the plantain or date-palm stripped while green. It is easily tamed and taught some tricks, such as to load and fire a toy cannon, to pick up a ring, &c,' (Balfour, Cyclopaedia, 3rd ed., 1885, s.v. 'Ploceinae').
3. Francolinus vulgaris; a capital game bird.
4. Canto V, stanza 22, line 3.
5. The author spells the word Pareear. The editor has used the form now customary. The word is the Tamil appellation of a large body of the population of Southern India, which stands outside the orthodox Hindoo castes, but has a caste organization of its own. Europeans apply the term to the low-caste mongrel dogs which infest villages and towns throughout India. See Yule and Burnell, Glossary of Anglo- Indian Words (Hobson-Jobson), in either edition, s.v.; and Dubois, Hindu Manners, &c., 3rd ed. (1906, index, s.v.).
19. Feeding Pilgrims--Marriage of a Stone with a Shrub
At Sayyidpur[1] we encamped in a pretty little mango grove, and here I had a visit from my old friend Jânkî Sewak, the high priest of the great temple that projects into the Sâgar lake, and is called Bindrâban.[2] He has two villages rent free, worth a thousand rupees a year; collects something more through his numerous disciples, who wander over the country; and spends the whole in feeding all the members of his fraternity (Bairâgîs), devotees of Vishnu, as they pass his temple in their pilgrimages. Every one who comes is considered entitled to a good meal and a night's lodging; and he has to feed and lodge about a hundred a day. He is a man of very pleasing manners and gentle disposition, and everybody likes him. He was on his return from the town of Ludhaura,[3] where he had been, at the invitation of the Râjâ of Orchhâ, to assist at the celebration of the marriage of Sâlagrâm with the Tulasî,[4] which there takes place every year under the auspices and at the expense of the Râjâ, who must be present. 'Sâlagrâms'[5] are rounded pebbles which contain the impressions of ammonites, and are washed down into the plains of India by the rivers from the limestone rocks in which these shells are imbedded in the mountains of the Himalaya.[6] The Spiti valley[7] contains an immense deposit of fossil ammonites and belemnites[8] in limestone rocks, now elevated above sixteen thousand feet above the level of the sea; and from such beds as these are brought down the fragments, which, when rounded in their course, the poor Hindoo takes for representatives of Vishnu, the preserving god of the Hindoo triad. The Sâlagrâm is the only stone idol among the Hindoos that is essentially sacred, and entitled to divine honours without the ceremonies of consecration.[9] It is everywhere held most sacred. During the war against Nepâl,[10] Captain B------, who commanded a reconnoitring party from the division in which I served, one day brought back to camp some four or five Sâlagrâms, which he had found at the hut of some priest within the enemy's frontier. He called for a large stone and hammer, and proceeded to examine them. The Hindoos were all in a dreadful state of consternation, and expected to see the earth open and swallow up the whole camp, while he sat calmly cracking their gods with his hammer, as he would have cracked so many walnuts. The Tulasî is a small sacred shrub (Ocymum sanctum), which is a metamorphosis of Sîtâ, the wife of Râma, the seventh incarnation of Vishnu.
This little pebble is every year married to this little shrub; and the high priest told me that on the present occasion the procession consisted of eight elephants, twelve hundred camels, four thousand horses, all mounted and elegantly caparisoned. On the leading elephant of this cortège, and the most sumptuously decorated, was carried the pebble god, who was taken to pay his bridal visit (barât) to the little shrub goddess. All the ceremonies of a regular marriage are gone through; and, when completed, the bride and bridegroom are left to repose together in the temple of Ludhaura[11] till the next season. 'Above a hundred thousand people', the priest said, 'were present at the ceremony this year at the Râjâ's invitation, and feasted upon his bounty.'[12]
The old man and I got into a conversation upon the characters of different governments, and their effects upon the people; and he said that bad governments would sooner or later be always put down by the deity; and quoted this verse, which I took down with my pencil:
Tulasî, gharîb na sâtâe, Burî gharîb kî hai; Marî khâl ke phûnk se Lohâ bhasm ho jâe.
'Oh, Râjâ Tulasî! oppress not the poor; for the groans of the wretched bring retribution from heaven. The contemptible skin (in the smith's bellows) in time melts away the hardest iron.'[13]
On leaving our tents in the morning, we found the ground all round white with hoar frost, as we had found it for several mornings before;[14] and a little canary bird, one of the two which travelled in my wife's palankeen, having, by the carelessness of the servants been put upon the top without any covering to the cage, was killed by the cold, to her great affliction. All attempts to restore it to life by the warmth of her bosom were fruitless.
On the 7th[15] we came nine miles to Bamhaurî over a soil still basaltic, though less rich, reposing upon syenite, which frequently rises and protrudes its head above the surface, which is partially and badly cultivated, and scantily peopled. The silent signs of bad government could not be more manifest. All the extensive plains, covered with fine long grass, which is rotting in the ground from want of domestic cattle or distant markets. Here, as in every other part of Central India, the people have a great variety of good spontaneous, but few cultivated, grasses. They understand the character and qualities of these grasses extremely well. They find some thrive best in dry, and some in wet seasons; and that of inferior quality is often prized most because it thrives best when other kinds cannot thrive at all, from an excess or a deficiency of rain. When cut green they all make good hay, and have the common denomination of 'sahîa'. The finest of these grasses are two which are generally found growing spontaneously together, and are often cultivated together-'kêl' and 'musêl'; the third 'parwana'; fourth 'bhawâr', or 'gûniâr'; fifth 'sainâ'.[16]
Notes:
1. Spelled Siedpore in the author's text.
2. More correctly Brindâban (Vrindâvana). The name originally belongs to one of the most sacred spots in India, situated near Mathurâ (Muttra) on the Jumna, and the reputed scene of the dalliance between Krishna and the milkmaids (Gopîs); also associated with the legend Râma.
3. Twenty-seven miles north-west of Tehrî in the Orchhâ State.
4. The Tulasî plant, or basil, Ocymum sanctum, is 'not merely sacred to Vishnu or to his wife Lakshmî; it is pervaded by the essence of these deities, and itself worshipped as a deity and prayed to accordingly. . . . The Tulasî is the object of more adoration than any other plant at present worshipped in India. . . .It is to be found in almost every respectable household throughout India. It is a small shrub, not too big to be cultivated in a good-sized flower-pot, and often placed in rooms. Generally, however, it is planted in the courtyard of a well-to-do man's house, with a space round it for reverential circumambulation. In real fact the Tulasî is par excellence a domestic divinity, or rather, perhaps, a woman's divinity' (M. Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India, p. 333).
5. The fossil ammonites found in India include at least fifteen species. They occur between Trichinopoly and Pondicherry as well as in the Himalayan rocks. They are particularly abundant in the river Gandak, which rises near Dhaulagiri in Nepâl, and falls into the Ganges near Patna. The upper course of this river is consequently called Sâlagrâmî. Various forms of the fossils are supposed to represent various avatârs of Vishnu (Balfour, Cyclopaedia, 3rd ed., s.v. 'Ammonite', 'Gandak', 'Salagrama'; M. Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India, pp. 69, 349). A good account of the reverence paid to both sâlagrâms and the tulasî plant will be found in Dubois, Hindu Manners, &c., 3rd ed. (1906), pp. 648-51.
6. The author writes 'Himmalah'. The current spelling Himalaya is correct, but the word should be pronounced Himâlaya. It means 'abode of snow'.
7. The north-eastern corner of the Punjâb, an elevated valley along the course of the Spiti or the Li river, a tributary of the Satlaj.
8. Fossils of the genus Belemnites and related genera are common, like the ammonites, near Trichinopoly, as well as in the Himalaya.
9. This statement is not quite correct. The pebbles representing the Linga of Siva, called Bâna-linga, or Vâna-linga, and apparently of white quartz, which are found in the Nerbudda river, enjoy the same distinction. 'Both are held to be of their own nature pervaded by the special presence of the deity, and need no consecration. Offerings made to these pebbles--such, for instance, as Bilwa leaves laid on the white stone of Vishnu--are believed to confer extraordinary merit' (M. Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India, p. 69).
10. In 1814-16.
11. 'Sadora' in author's text, which seems to be a misprint for Ludora or Ludhaura.
12. The Tulasî shrub is sometimes married to an image of Krishna, instead of to the sâlagrâma, in Western India (M. Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India, p. 334). Compare the account of the marriage between the mango-tree and the jasmine, ante, Chapter 5, Note [3].
13. These Hindî verses are incorrectly printed, and loosely rendered by the author. The translation of the text, after necessary emendation, is: 'Tulasî, oppress not the poor; evil is the lot of the poor. From the blast of the dead hide iron becomes ashes.' Mr. W. Crooke informs me that the verses are found in the Kabîrkî Sakhî, and are attributable to Kabîr Dâs, rather than to Tulasî Dâs. But the authorship of such verses is very uncertain. Mr. Crooke further observes that the lines as given in the text do not scan, and that the better version is:
Durbal ko na satâiye, Jâki mâti hai; Mûê khâl ke sâns se Sâr bhasm ho jâe.
Sâr means iron. The author was, of course, mistaken in supposing the poet Tulasî Dâs to be a Râjâ. As usual in Hindî verse, the poet addresses himself by name.
14. Such slight frosts are common in Bundêlkhand, especially near the rivers, in January, but only last for a few mornings. They often cause great damage to the more delicate crops. The weather becomes hot in February.
15. December, 1835.
16. 'Musêl' is a very sweet-scented grass, highly esteemed as fodder. It belongs to the genus Anthistiria; the species is either cimicina or prostrata. 'Bhawâr' is probably the 'bhaunr' of Edgeworth's list, Anthistiria scandens. I cannot identify the other grasses named in the text. The haycocks in Bundêlkhand are a pleasant sight to English eyes. Edgeworth's list of plants found in the Bândâ district, as revised by Messrs. Waterfield and Atkinson, is given in N.W.P. Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. i, pp. 78-86.
20. The Men-Tigers
Râm Chand Râo, commonly called the Sarîmant, chief of Deorî,[1] here overtook me. He came out from Sâgar to visit me at Dhamonî[2] and, not reaching that place in time, came on after me. He held Deorî under the Peshwâ, as the Sâgar chief held Sâgar, for the payment of the public establishments kept up by the local administration. It yielded him about ten thousand a year, and, when we took possession of the country, he got an estate in the Sâgar district, in rent-free tenure, estimated at fifteen hundred a year. This is equal to about six thousand pounds a year in England. The tastes of native gentlemen lead them always to expend the greater part of their incomes in the wages of trains of followers of all descriptions, and in horses, elephants, &c.; and labour and the subsistence of labour are about four times cheaper in India than in England. By the breaking up of public establishments, and consequent diminution of the local demand for agricultural produce, the value of land throughout all Central India, after the termination of the Mahrâtha War in 1817, fell by degrees thirty per cent.; and, among the rest, that of my poor friend the Sarîmant. While I had the civil charge of the Sâgar district in 1831 I represented this case of hardship; and Government, in the spirit of liberality which has generally characterized their measures in this part of India, made up to him the difference between what he actually received and what they had intended to give him; and he has ever since felt grateful to me.[3] He is a very small man, not more than five feet high, but he has the handsomest face I have almost ever seen, and his manners are those of the most perfect native gentleman. He came to call upon me after breakfast, and the conversation turned upon the number of people that had of late been killed by tigers between Sâgar and Deorî, his ancient capital, which lies about midway between Sâgar and the Nerbudda river.
One of his followers, who stood beside his chair, said[4] that 'when a tiger had killed one man he was safe, for the spirit of the man rode upon his head, and guided him from all danger. The spirit knew very well that the tiger would be watched for many days at the place where he had committed the homicide, and always guided him off to some other more secure place, when he killed other men without any risk to himself. He did not exactly know why the spirit of the man should thus befriend the beast that had killed him; but', added he, 'there is a mischief inherent in spirits; and the better the man the more mischievous is his ghost, if means are not taken to put him to rest.' This is the popular and general belief throughout India; and it is supposed that the only sure mode of destroying a tiger who has killed many people is to begin by making offerings to the spirits of his victims, and thereby depriving him of their valuable services.[5] The belief that men are turned into tigers by eating of a root is no less general throughout India.
The Sarîmant, on being asked by me what he thought of the matter, observed 'there was no doubt much truth in what the man said: but he was himself of opinion that the tigers which now infest the wood from Sâgar to Deorî were of a different kind--in fact, that they were neither more nor less than men turned into tigers--a thing which took place in the woods of Central India much more often than people were aware of. The only visible difference between the two', added the Sarîmant, 'is that the metamorphosed tiger has no tail, while the bora, or ordinary tiger, has a very long one. In the jungle about Deorî', continued he, 'there is a root, which, if a man eat of, he is converted into a tiger on the spot; and if, in this state, he can eat of another, he becomes a man again--a melancholy instance of the former of which', said he, 'occurred, I am told, in my own father's family when I was an infant. His washerman, Raghu, was, like all washermen, a great drunkard; and, being seized with a violent desire to ascertain what a man felt in the state of a tiger, he went one day to the jungle and brought home two of these roots, and desired his wife to stand by with one of them, and the instant she saw him assume the tiger shape, to thrust it into his mouth. She consented, the washerman ate his root, and became instantly a tiger; but his wife was so terrified at the sight of her husband in this shape that she ran off with the antidote in her hand. Poor old Raghu took to the woods, and there ate a good many of his old friends from neighbouring villages; but he was at last shot, and recognized from the circumstance of his having no tail. You may be quite sure,' concluded Sarîmant, 'when you hear of a tiger without a tail, that it is some unfortunate man who has eaten of that root, and of all the tigers he will be found the most mischievous.'
How my friend had satisfied himself of the truth of this story I know not, but he religiously believes it, and so do all his attendants and mine; and, out of a population of thirty thousand people in the town of Sâgar, not one would doubt the story of the washerman if he heard it.
I was one day talking with my friend the Râjâ of Maihar.[6] on the road between Jubbulpore and Mirzapore, on the subject of the number of men who had been lately killed by tigers at the Katrâ Pass on that road,[7] and the best means of removing the danger. 'Nothing', said the Râjâ, 'could be more easy or more cheap than the destruction of these tigers, if they were of the ordinary sort; but the tigers that kill men by wholesale, as these do, are, you may be sure, men themselves converted into tigers by the force of their science, and such animals are of all the most unmanageable.'
'And how is it. Râjâ Sâhib, that these men convert themselves into tigers?'
'Nothing', said he, 'is more easy than this to persons who have once acquired the science; but how they learn it, or what it is, we unlettered men know not.'
'There was once a high priest of a large temple, in this very valley of Maihar, who was in the habit of getting himself converted into a tiger by the force of this science, which he had thoroughly acquired. He had a necklace, which one of his disciples used to throw over his neck the moment the tiger's form became fully developed. He had, however, long given up the practice, and all his old disciples had gone off on their pilgrimages to distant shrines, when he was one day seized with a violent desire to take his old form of the tiger. He expressed the wish to one of his new disciples, and demanded whether he thought he might rely on his courage to stand by and put on the necklace. 'Assuredly you may', said the disciple; 'such is my faith in you, and in the God we serve, that I fear nothing.' The high priest upon this put the necklace into his hand with the requisite instructions, and forthwith began to change his form. The disciple stood trembling in every limb, till he heard him give a roar that shook the whole edifice, when he fell flat upon his face, and dropped the necklace on the floor. The tiger bounded over him, and out of the door, and infested all the roads leading to the temple for many years afterwards.'
'Do you think, Râjâ Sahib, that the old high priest is one of the tigers at the Katrâ Pass?'
'No, I do not; but I think they may be all men who have become imbued with a little too much of the high priest's science--when men once acquire this science they can't help exercising it, though it be to their own ruin, and that of others.'
'But, supposing them to be ordinary tigers, what is the simple plan you propose to put a stop to their depredations, Râjâ Sahib?'
'I propose', said he, 'to have the spirits that guide them propitiated by proper prayers and offerings; for the spirit of every man or woman who has been killed by a tiger rides upon his head, or runs before him, and tells him where to go to get prey, and to avoid danger. Get some of the Gonds, or wild people from the jungles, who are well skilled in these matters--give them ten or twenty rupees, and bid them go and raise a small shrine, and there sacrifice to these spirits. The Gonds will tell them that they shall on this shrine have regular worship, and good sacrifices of fowls, goats, and pigs, every year at least, if they will but relinquish their offices with the tigers and be quiet. If this is done, I pledge myself', said the Raja, 'that the tigers will soon get killed themselves, or cease from killing men. If they do not, you may be quite sure that they are not ordinary tigers, but men turned into tigers, or that the Gonds have appropriated all you gave them to their own use, instead of applying it to conciliate the spirits of the unfortunate people.'[8]
Notes:
1. Deorî, in the Sâgar district, about forty miles south-east of Sâgar. In 1767, the town and attached tract called the Panj Mahâl were bestowed by the Peshwâ, rent-free, on Dhôndo Dattâtraya, a Marâtha pundit, ancestor of the author's friend. The Panj Mahal was finally made part of British territory by the treaty with Sindhia in 1860, and constitutes the District called Pânch Mâhals in the Northern Division of the Bombay Presidency. The vernacular word pânch like the Persian panj, means 'five'. The title Sarîmant appears to be a popular pronunciation of the Sanskrit srîmant or srîmân, 'fortunate', and is still used by Marâthâ nobles.
2. Ante, Chapter 16, note 6. The name is here erroneously printed 'Dhamoree' in the author's text.
3. He had good reason for his gratitude, inasmuch as the depression in rents was merely temporary.
4. An Indian chief is generally accompanied into the room by a confidential follower, who frequently relieves his master of the trouble of talking, and answers on his behalf all questions.
5. When Agrippina, in her rage with her son Nero, threatens to take her stepson, Britannicus, to the camp of the Legion, and there assert his right to the throne, she invokes the spirit of his father, whom she had poisoned, and the manes of the Silani, whom she had murdered. 'Simul attendere manus, aggerere probra; consecratum Claudium, infernos Silanorum manes invocare, et tot invita fari nova.'- (Tacitus, lib, xviii, sec. 14.) [W. H. S.] The quotation is from the Annals. Another reading of the concluding words is 'et tot irrita facinora', which gives much better sense. In the author's text 'aggerere' is printed 'aggere'.
6. A small principality, detached from the Pannâ State. Its chief town is about one hundred miles north-east of Jubbulpore, on the route from Allahabad to Jubbulpore. The state is now traversed by the East Indian Railway. It is under the superintendence of the Political Agent of Baghêlkhand, resident at Rîwâ.
7. This pass is sixty-three miles south-east of Allahabad, on the road from that city to Rîwâ.
8. These myths are based on the well-known facts that man-eating tigers are few, and exceptionally wary and cunning. The conditions which predispose a tiger to man-eating have been much discussed. It seems to be established that the animals which seek human prey are generally, though not invariably, those which, owing to old wounds or other physical defects, are unable to attack with confidence the stronger animals. The conversations given in the text are excellent illustrations of the mode of formation of modern myths, and of the kind of reasoning which satisfies the mind of the unconscious myth- maker.
The text may be compared with the following passage from the Journey through the Kingdom of Oudh (vol. i, p. 124): 'I asked him (the Râjâ of Balrâmpur), whether the people in the Tarâi forest were still afraid to point out tigers to sportsmen. "I was lately out with a party after a tiger", he said, "which had killed a cowherd, but his companions refused to point out any trace of him, saying that their relative's spirit must be now riding upon his head, to guide him from all danger, and we should have no chance of shooting him. We did shoot him, however", said the Râjâ exultingly, "and they were all afterwards very glad of it. The tigers in the Tarâi do not often kill men, sir, for they find plenty of deer and cattle to eat,"'
21. Burning of Deorî by a Freebooter--A Suttee
Sarîmant had been one of the few who escaped from the flames which consumed his capital of Deorî in the month of April 1813, and were supposed to have destroyed thirty thousand souls. I asked him to tell me how this happened, and he referred me to his attendant, a learned old pundit, Râm Chand, who stood by his side, as he was himself, he said, then only five years of age, and could recollect nothing of it.
'Mardân Singh,' said the pundit, 'the father of Râjâ Arpan Singh, whom you saw at Seorî, was then our neighbour, reigning over Garhâ Kotâ;[1] and he had a worthless nephew, Zâlim Singh, who had collected together an army of five thousand men, in the hope of getting a little principality for himself in the general scramble for dominion incident on the rise of the Pindhârîs and Amîr Khan,[2] and the destruction of all balance of power among the great sovereigns of Central India. He came to attack our capital, which was an emporium of considerable trade and the seat of many useful manufactures, in the expectation of being able to squeeze out of us a good sum to aid him in his enterprise. While his troops blocked up every gate, fire was, by accident, set to the fence of some man's garden within. There had been no rain for six months; and everything was so much dried up that the flames spread rapidly; and, though there was no wind when they began, it soon blew a gale. The Sarîmant was then a little boy with his mother in the fortress, where she lived with his father[3] and nine other relations. The flames soon extended to the fortress, and the powder-magazine blew up. The house in which they lived was burned down, and every soul, except the lieutenant [sic] himself, perished in it. His mother tried to bear him off in her arms, but fell down in her struggle to get out with him and died. His nurse, Tulsî Kurmin,[4] snatched him up, and ran with him outside of the fortress to the bank of the river, where she made him over unhurt to Harirâm, the Mârwârî merchant.[5] He was mounted on a good horse, and, making off across the river, he carried him safely to his friends at Gaurjhâmar; but poor Tulsî the Kurmin fell down exhausted when she saw her charge safe, and died.
'The wind appeared to blow in upon the poor devoted city from every side; and the troops of Zâlim Singh, who at first prevented the people from rushing out at the gates, made off in a panic at the horrors before them. All our establishments had been driven into the city at the approach of Zâlim Singh's troops; and scores of elephants, hundreds of camels, and thousands of horses and ponies perished in the flames, besides twenty-five thousand souls. Only about five thousand persons escaped out of thirty thousand, and these were reduced to beggary and wretchedness by the loss of their dearest relations and their property. At the time the flames first began to spread, an immense crowd of people had assembled under the fortress on the bank of the Sonâr river to see the widow of a soldier burn herself. Her husband had been shot by one of Zâlim Singh's soldiers in the morning; and before midday she was by the side of his body on the funeral pile. People, as usual, begged her to tell them what would happen, and she replied, "The city will know in less than four hours"; in less than four hours the whole city had been reduced to ashes; and we all concluded that, since the event was so clearly foretold, it must have been decreed by God.'[6]
'No doubt it was,' said Sarîmant; 'how could it otherwise happen? Do not all events depend upon His will? Had it not been His will to save me, how could poor Tulsî the Kurmin have carried me upon her shoulders through such a scene as this, when every other member of our family perished?'
'No doubt', said Râm Chand, 'all these things are brought about by the will of God, and it is not for us to ask why.'[7]
I have heard this event described by many other people, and I believe the account of the old pundit to be a very fair one.
One day, in October 1833, the horse of the district surgeon, Doctor Spry, as he was mounting him, reared, fell back with his head upon a stone, and died upon the spot. The doctor was not much hurt, and the little Sarîmant called a few days after, and offered his congratulations upon his narrow escape. The cause of so quiet a horse rearing at this time, when he had never been known to do so before, was discussed; and he said that there could be no doubt that the horse, or the doctor himself, must have seen some unlucky face before he mounted that morning--that he had been in many places in his life, but in none where a man was liable to see so many ugly or unfortunate faces; and, for his part, he never left his house till an hour after sunrise, lest he should encounter them.[8]
Many natives were present, and every one seemed to consider the Sarîmant's explanation of the cause quite satisfactory and philosophical. Some days after, Spry was going down to sleep in the bungalow where the accident happened. His native assistant and all his servants came and prayed that he would not attempt to sleep in the bungalow, as they were sure the horse must have been frightened by a ghost, and quoted several instances of ghosts appearing to people there. He, however, slept in the bungalow, and, to their great astonishment, saw no ghost and suffered no evil.[9]
Notes:
1. A fortress, twenty-five miles cast of Sâgar, captured by a British force under General Watson in October 1818, For Seorî and Râjâ Arjun Singh see ante, Chapter 17, text by notes 1 and 4.
2. Amîr Khân, a leader of predatory horse, has been justly described as 'one of the most atrocious villains that India ever produced'. He first came into notice in 1804, as an officer in Holkar's service, and in the following year opposed Lord Lake at Bharatpur. A treaty made with him in 1817 put an end to his activity. The Pindhârîs were organized bands of mounted robbers, who desolated Northern and Central India during the period of anarchy which followed the dissolution of the Moghal empire. They were associated with the Marâthâs in the war which terminated with the capture of Asîrgarh in April 1819. In the same year the Pindhârî forces ceased to exist as a distinct and recognized, body.
My father was an Afghân, and came from Kandahar: He rode with Nawâb Amir Khan in the old Marâthâ war: From the Dekhan to the Himalay, five hundred of one clan, They asked no leave of prince or chief as they swept thro' Hindusthan.
(Sir A. Lyall, 'The Old Pindaree'; in Verses written in India, London, 1889).
3. Named Govind Râo. The proper name of the Sarîmant was Râmchand Râo (C.P. Gazetteer, 1870).
4. Kurmin is the feminine of Kurmî, the name of a widely spread and most industrious agricultural caste, closely connected, at least in Bundêlkhand, with the similar Lodhî caste.
5. Mârwâr, or Jodhpur, is one of the leading states in Râjputâna. It supplies the rest of India with many of the keenest merchants and bankers.
6. See ante, Chapter 4, note 6, for remarks on the supposed prophetic gifts of satî women.
7. Such feelings of resignation to the Divine will, or fate, are common alike to Hindoos and Musalmâns.
8. 'One of a wife's duties should be to keep all bad omens out of her husband's way, or manage to make him look at something lucky in the early morning. . . . Different lists of inauspicious objects are given, which, if looked upon in the early morning, might cause disaster' (M. Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India, p. 397).
9. Dr. Spry died in 1842, and his estate was administered by the author. The doctor's works are described ante, Chapter 14, note 16.
Chapter 22
Interview with the Râjâ who marries the Stone to the Shrub--Order of the Moon and the Fish.
On the 8th,[1] after a march of twelve miles, we readied Tehrî, the present capital of the Râjâ of Orchhâ.[2] Our road lay over an undulating surface of soil composed of the detritus of the syenitic rock, and poor, both from its quality and want of depth. About three miles from our last territory we entered the boundary of the Orchhâ Râjâ's territory, at the village of Aslôn, which has a very pretty little fortified castle, built upon ground slightly elevated in the midst of an open grass plain.
This, and all the villages we have lately passed, are built upon the bare back of the syenitic rock, which seems to rise to the surface in large but gentle swells, like the broad waves of the ocean in a calm after a storm. A great difference appeared to me to be observable between the minds and manners of the people among whom we were now travelling, and those of the people of the Sâgar and Nerbudda territories. They seemed here to want the urbanity and intelligence we find among our subjects in the latter quarters.
The apparent stupidity of the people when questioned upon points the most interesting to them, regarding their history, their agriculture, their tanks, and temples, was most provoking; and their manners seemed to me more rude and clownish than those of people in any other part of India I had travelled over. I asked my little friend the Sarîmant, who rode with me, what he thought of this.
'I think', said he, 'that it arises from the harsh character of the government under which they live; it makes every man wish to appear a fool, in order that he may be thought a beggar and not worth the plundering.'
'It strikes me, my friend Sarîmant, that their government has made them in reality the beggars and the fools that they appear to be.'
'God only knows', said Sarîmant; 'certain it is that they are neither in mind nor in manners what the people of our districts are.'
The Râjâ had no notice of our approach till intimation of it reached him at Ludhaura, the day before we came in. He was there resting, and dismissing the people after the ceremonies of the marriage between the Salagrâm and the Tulasî. Ludhaura is twenty-seven miles north- west of Tehrî, on the opposite side from that on which I was approaching. He sent off two men on camels with a 'kharîtâ' (letter),[3] requesting that I would let him know my movements, and arrange a meeting in a manner that might prevent his appearing wanting in respect and hospitality; that is, in plain terms, which he was too polite to use, that I would consent to remain one stage from his capital, till he could return and meet me half-way, with all due pomp and ceremony. These men reached me at Bamhaurî,[4] a distance of thirty-nine miles, in the evening, and I sent back a kharîtâ, which reached him by relays of camels before midnight. He set out for his capital to receive me, and, as I would not wait to be met half-way in due form, he reached his palace, and we reached our tents at the same time, under a salute from his two brass field-pieces.
We halted at Tehrî on the 9th, and about eleven o'clock the Râjâ came to pay his visit of congratulation, with a magnificent cortège of elephants, camels, and horses, all mounted and splendidly caparisoned, and the noise of his band was deafening. I had had both my tents pitched, and one of them handsomely fitted up, as it always is, for occasions of ceremony like the present. He came to within twenty paces of the door on his elephant, and from its back, as it sat down, he entered his splendid litter, without alighting on the ground.[5] In this vehicle he was brought to my tent door, where I received him, and, after the usual embraces, conducted him up through two rows of chairs, placed for his followers of distinction and my own, who are always anxious to assist in ceremonies like these.
At the head of this lane we sat upon chairs placed across, and facing down the middle of the two rows; and we conversed upon all the subjects usually introduced on such occasions, but more especially upon the august ceremonies of the marriage of the Salagrâm with the Tulasî, in which his highness had been so piously engaged at Ludhaura.[6] After he had sat with me an hour and a half he took his leave, and I conducted him to the door, whence he was carried to his elephant in his litter, from which he mounted without touching the ground.
This litter is called a 'nâlkî'. It is one of the three great insignia which the Mogul Emperors of Delhi conferred upon independent princes of the first class, and could never be used by any person upon whom, or upon whose ancestors, they had not been so conferred. These were the nâlkî, the order of the Fish, and the fan of the peacock's feathers. These insignia could be used only by the prince who inherited the sovereignty of the one on whom they had been originally conferred. The order of the Fish, or Mahî Marâtib, was first instituted by Khusrû Parvîz, King of Persia, and grandson of the celebrated Naushîrvân the Just. Having been deposed by his general, Bahrâm, Khusrû fled for protection to the Greek emperor, Maurice, whose daughter, Shîrîn, he married, and he was sent back to Persia, with an army under the command of Narses, who placed him on the throne of his ancestors in the year A.D. 591.[7] He ascertained from his astrologer, Araz Khushasp, that when he ascended the throne the moon was in the constellation of the Fish, and he gave orders to have two balls made of polished steel, which were to be called Kaukabas (planets),[8] and mounted on long poles. These two planets, with large fish made of gold, upon a third pole in the centre, were ordered to be carried in all regal processions immediately after the king, and before the prime minister, whose cortège always followed immediately after that of the king. The two kaûkabas are now generally made of copper, and plated, and in the shape of a jar, instead of quite round as at first; but the fish is still made of gold. Two planets are always considered necessary to one fish, and they are still carried in all processions between the prince and his prime minister.
The court of this prince Khusrû Pârvîz was celebrated throughout the East for its splendour and magnificence; and the chaste love of the poet Farhad for his beautiful queen Shîrîn is the theme of almost as many poems in the East as that of Petrarch's for Laura is in the West. Nûh Samânî, who ascended the throne of Persia after the Sassanians,[9] ascertained that the moon was in the sign Leo at the time of his accession, and ordered that the gold head of a lion should thenceforward accompany the fishes, and the two balls, in all royal processions. The Persian order of knighthood is, therefore, that of the Fish, the Moon, and the Lion, and not the Lion and Sun, as generally supposed. The emperors of the house of Taimûr in Hindustan assumed the right of conferring the order upon all whom they pleased, and they conferred it upon the great territorial sovereigns of the country without distinction as to religion. He only who inherits the sovereignty can wear the order, and I believe no prince would venture to wear or carry the order who was not generally reputed to have received the investiture from one of the emperors of Delhi.[10]
As I could not wait another day, it was determined that I should return his visit in the afternoon; and about four o'clock we set out upon our elephant--Lieutenant Thomas, Sarîmant, and myself, attended by all my troopers and those of Sarîmant. We had our silver-stick men with us; but still all made a sorry figure compared with the splendid cortège of the Râjâ. We dismounted at the foot of the stairs leading to the Râjâ's hall of audience, and were there met by his two chief officers of state, who conducted us to the entrance of the hall, when we were received by the Râjâ himself, who led us up through two rows of chairs laid out exactly as mine had been in the morning. In front were assembled a party of native comedians, who exhibited a few scenes of the insolence of office in the attendants of great men, and the obtrusive importunity of place-seekers, in a manner that pleased us much more than a dance would have done. Conversation was kept up very well, and the visit passed off without any feeling of ennui, or anything whatever to recollect with regret. The ladies looked at us from their apartments through gratings, and without our being able to see them very distinctly. We were anxious to see the tombs of the late Râjâ, the elder brother of the present, who lately died, and that of his son, which are in progress in a very fine garden outside the city walls, and, in consequence, we did not sit above half an hour. The Râjâ conducted us to the head of the stairs, and the same two officers attended us to the bottom, and mounted their horses, and attended us to the tombs.
After the dust of the town raised by the immense crowd that attended us, and the ceremonies of the day, a walk in this beautiful garden was very agreeable, and I prolonged it till dark. The Râjâ had given orders to have all the cisterns filled during our stay, under the impression that we should wish to see the garden; and, as soon as we entered, the jets d'eau poured into the air their little floods from a hundred mouths. Our old cicerone told us that, if we would take the old capital of Orchhâ in our way, we might there see the thing in perfection, and amidst the deluges of the rains of Sâwân and Bhâdon (July and August) see the lightning and hear the thunder. The Râjâs of this, the oldest principality in Bundêlkhand, were all formerly buried or burned at the old capital of Orchhâ, even after they had changed their residence to Tehrî. These tombs over the ashes of the Râjâ, his wife, and son, are the first that have been built at Tehrî, where their posterity are all to repose in future.
Notes:
1. December, 1835.
2. The State of Orchhâ, also known as Tehrî or Tîkamgarh, situated to the south of the Jhânsî district, is the oldest and the highest in rank of the Bundela principalities. The town of Tehrî is seventy-two miles north-west of Sâgar. The town of Orchhâ, founded in A.D. 1531, is 131 miles north of Sâgar, and about forty miles from Tehrî. Tîkamgarh is the fort of Tehrî.
3. A kharîtâ is a letter enclosed in a bag of rich brocade, contained in another of fine muslin. The mouth is tied with a string of silk, to which hangs suspended the great seal, which is a flat round mass of sealing-wax, with the seal impressed on each side of it. This is the kind of letter which passes between natives of great rank in India, and between them and the public functionaries of Government. [W. H. S.]
4. Ante, Chapter 19, after note [15].
5. The Râjâ's unwillingness to touch the ground is an example of a very widespread and primitive belief. 'Two of those rules or taboos by which . . . the life of divine kings or priests is regulated. The first is . . . that the divine personage may not touch the ground with his foot.' This prohibition applies to the Mikado of Japan and many other sacred personages. 'The second rule is that the sun may not shine upon the sacred person.' This second rule explains the use of the umbrella as a royal appendage in India and Burma. (Frazer, The Golden Bough, 1st ed., vol. ii, pp. 224, 225.)
6 Ante, Chapter 19, note 3.
7. During the time he remained the guest of the emperor he resided at Hierapolis, and did not visit Constantinople. The Greeks do not admit that Shîrîn was the daughter of Maurice, though a Roman by birth and a Christian by religion. The Persians and Turks speak of her as the emperor's daughter. [W. H. S.] Khusrû Pârvîz (Eberwiz), or Khusrû II, reigned as King of Persia from A.D. 591 to 628. In the course of his wars he took Jerusalem, and reduced Egypt, and a large part of northern Africa, extending for a time the bounds of the Persian empire to the Aegean and the Nile. Khusrû I, surnamed Naushîrvân, or (more correctly) Anushîrvân, reigned from A.D. 531 to 579. His successful wars with the Romans and his vigorous internal administration captivated the Oriental imagination, and he is generally spoken of as Âdil, or The Just. His name has become proverbial, and to describe a superior as rivalling Naushîrvân in justice is a commonplace of flattery. The prophet Muhammad was born during his reign, and was proud of the fact. The alleged expedition of Naushîrvân into India is discredited by the best modern writers. Gibbon tells the story of the wars between the two Khusrûs and the Romans in his forty-sixth chapter, and a critical history of the reigns of both Khusrû (Khosrau) I and Khusrû II will be found in Professor Rawlinson's Seventh Great Oriental Monarchy (London, 1876). European authors have, until recently, generally written the name Khusrû in its Greek form as Chosroes. The name of Shîrîn is also written Sira.
'With the name of Shirin and the rock of Bahistun the Persians have associated one of those poetic romances so dear to the national genius. Ferhad, the most famous sculptor of his time, who was very likely employed by Chosroes II to execute these bas-reliefs, is said in the legend to have fallen madly in love with Shîrîn, and to have received a promise of her from the king, if he would cut through the rock of Behistun, and divert a stream to the Kermanshah plain. The lover set to work, and had all but completed his gigantic enterprise (of which the remains, however interpreted, are still to be seen), when he was falsely informed by an emissary from the king of his lady's death. In despair he leaped from the rock, and was dashed to pieces. The legend of the unhappy lover is familiar throughout the East, and is used to explain many traces of rock-cutting or excavation as far east as Beluchistan' (Persia and the Persian Question, by the Hon. George N. Curzon, M.P. (London, 1892), vol. i, p. 562, note. See also Malcolm, History of Persia, vol. i, p. 129).
8. Kaukab in Arabic means 'a star'. Steingass (Persian Dictionary) defines Kaukaba as 'a polished steel ball suspended to a long pole, and carried as an ensign before the king; a star of gold, silver, or tinsel, worn as ornament or sign of rank; a concourse of people; a royal train, retinue, cavalcade; splendour'.
9. Yezdegird III (Isdigerd), the last of the Sassanians, was defeated in A.D. 641 at the battle of Nahavend by the Arab Nomân, general of the Khalîf Omar, and driven from his throne. The supremacy of the Khalîfs over Persia lasted till A.D. 1258. The subordinate Samâni dynasty ruled over Khurâsân, Seistân, Balkh, and the countries of Trans-Oxiana in the tenth century. Two of the princes of this line were named Nûh, or Noah. The author probably refers to the better known of the two, Amir Nûh II (Malcolm, History of Persia, ed. 1829, vol. i, pp. 158-66).
10. The poor old blind emperor. Shâh Alam, when delivered from the Marâthâs in 1803 by Lord Lake, did all he could to show his gratitude by conferring on his deliverer honours and titles, and among them the 'Mahî Maratîb'. The editor has been unable to discover the source of the author's story of the origin of the Persian order of knighthood. Malcolm, an excellent authority, gives the following very different account: 'Their sovereigns have, for many centuries, preserved as the peculiar arms of the country,[e] the sign or figure of Sol in the constellation of Leo; and this device, a lion couchant and the sun rising at his back, has not only been sculptured upon their palaces[f] and embroidered upon their banners.[g] but has been converted into an Order,[h] which in the form of gold and silver medals, has been given to such as have distinguished themselves against the enemies of their country.[i]
Note e. The causes which led to the sign of Sol in Leo becoming the arms of Persia cannot be distinctly traced, but there is reason to believe that the use of this symbol is not of very great antiquity. We meet with it upon the coins of one of the Seljukian princes of Iconium; and, when this family had been destroyed by Hulâkû [A.D. 1258], the grandson of Chengiz, that prince, or his successors, perhaps adopted this emblem as a trophy of their conquest, whence it has remained ever since among the most remarkable of the royal insignia. A learned friend, who has a valuable collection of Oriental coins, and whose information and opinion have enabled me to make this conjecture, believes that the emblematical representation of Sol in Leo was first adopted by Ghiâs-ud-din Kai Khusrû bin Kaikobâd, who began to reign A.H. 634, A.D. 1236, and died A.H. 642, A.D. 1244; and this emblem, he adds, is supposed to have reference either to his own horoscope or to that of his queen, who was a princess of Georgia.
Note f. Hanway states, vol. i, p. 199, that over the gate which forms the entrance of the palace built by Shah Abbâs the Great [A.D. 1586 to 1628] at Ashrâf, in Mazenderan, are 'the arms of Persia, being a lion, and the sun rising behind it'.
Note g. The emblem of the Lion and Sun is upon all the banners given to the regular corps of infantry lately formed. They are presented to the regiments with great ceremony. A mûllâ, or priest, attends, and implores the divine blessing on them.
Note h. This order, with additional decorations, has been lately conferred upon several ministers and representatives of European Governments in alliance with Persia.
Note i. The medals which have been struck with this symbol upon them have been chiefly given to the Persian officers and men of the regular corps who have distinguished themselves in the war with the Russians. An English officer, who served with these troops, informs me that those on whom these medals have been conferred are very proud of this distinction, and that all are extremely anxious to obtain them (History of Persia, ed. 1829, vol. ii, p. 406).
In Curzon's figure the lion is standing, not 'couchant', as stated by Malcolm, and grasps a scimitar in his off forepaw.
23. The Râjâ of Orchhâ--Murder of his many Ministers
The present Râjâ, Mathurâ Dâs, succeeded his brother Bikramâjît, who died in 1834. He had made over the government to his only son, Râjâ Bahâdur, whom he almost adored; but, the young man dying some years before him, the father resumed the reins of government, and held them till his death. He was a man of considerable capacity, but of a harsh and unscrupulous character. His son resembled him; but the present Râjâ is a man of mild temper and disposition, though of weak intellect. The fate of the last three prime ministers will show the character of the Râjâ and his son, and the nature of their rule.
The minister at the time the old man made over the reins of government to his son was Khânjû Purôhit.[1] Wishing to get rid of him a few years after, this son, Râjâ Bahâdur, employed Muhram Singh, one of his feudal Râjpût barons, to assassinate him. As a reward for this service he received the seals of office; and the Râjâ confiscated all the property of the deceased, amounting to four lakhs of rupees[2] and resumed the whole of the estates held by the family.
The young Râjâ died soon after; and his father, when he resumed the reins of government, wishing to remove the new minister, got him assassinated by Gambhîr Singh, another feudal Râjpût baron, who, as his reward, received in his turn the seals of office. This man was a most atrocious villain, and employed the public establishments of his chief to plunder travellers on the high road. In 1833 his followers robbed four men, who were carrying treasure to the amount of ten thousand rupees from Sâgar to Jhânsî through Tehrî, and intended to murder them; but, by the sagacity of one of the party, and a lucky accident, they escaped, made their way back to Sâgar, and complained to the magistrate.[3] The[4] minister discovered the nature of their burdens as they lodged at Tehrî on their way, and sent after them a party of soldiers, with orders to put them in the bed of a rivulet that separated the territory of Orchhâ from that of the Jhânsî Râjâ. One of the treasure party discovered their object; and, on reaching the bank of the rivulet in a deep grass jungle, he threw down his bundle, dashed unperceived through the grass, and reached a party of travellers whom he saw ascending a hill about half a mile in advance. The myrmidons of the minister, when they found that one had escaped, were afraid to murder the others, but took their treasure. In spite of great obstacles, and with much danger to the families of three of those men, who resided in the capital of Tehrî, the magistrate of Sâgar brought the crime home to the minister, and the Râjâ, anxious to avail himself of the occasion to fill his coffers, got him assassinated. The Râjâ was then about eighty years of age, and his minister was a strong, athletic, and brave man. One morning while he was sitting with him in private conversation, the former pretended a wish to drink some of the water in which his household god had been washed (the 'chandan mirt'),[5] and begged the minister to go and fetch it from the place where it stood by the side of the idol in the court of the palace. As a man cannot take his sword before the idol, the minister put it down, as the Râjâ knew he would, and going to the idol, prostrated himself before it preparatory to taking away the water. In that state he was cut down by Bihârî,[6] another feudal Râjpût baron, who aspired to the seals, and some of his friends, who had been placed there on purpose by the Râjâ. He obtained the seals by his service, and, as he was allowed to place one brother in command of the forces, and to make another chamberlain, he hoped to retain them longer than any of his predecessors had done. Gambhîr Singh's brother, Jhujhâr Singh, and the husband of his sister, hearing of his murder, made off, but were soon pursued and put to death. The widows were all three put into prison, and all the property and estates were confiscated. The movable property amounted to three lakhs of rupees.[7] The Râjâ boasted to the Governor- General's representative in Bundêlkhand of this act of retributive justice, and pretended that it was executed merely as a punishment for the robbery; but it was with infinite difficulty the merchants could recover from him any share of the plundered property out of that confiscated. The Râjâ alleged that, according to our rules, the chief within whose boundary the robbery might have been committed, was obliged to make good the property. On inspection, it was found that the robbery was perpetrated upon the very boundary line, and 'in spite of pride, in erring reason's spite', the Jhânsî Râjâ was made to pay one-half of the plundered treasure.
The old Râjâ, Bikramâjît, died in June, 1834; and, though his death had been some time expected, he no sooner breathed his last than charges of 'dînaî', slow poison, were got up, as usual, in the zenana (seraglio).
Here the widow of Râjâ Bahâdur, a violent and sanguinary woman, was supreme; and she persuaded the present Râjâ, a weak old man, to take advantage of the funeral ceremonies to avenge the death of his brother. He did so; and Bihârî, and his three brothers, with above fifty of his relations, were murdered. The widows of the four brothers were the only members of all the families left alive. One of them had a son four months old; another one of two years; the four brothers had no other children. Immediately after the death of their husbands, the two children were snatched from their mothers' breasts, and threatened with instant death unless their mothers pointed out all their ornaments and other property. They did so; and the spoilers having got from them property to the amount of one hundred and fifty thousand rupees, and been assured that there was no more, threw the children over the high wall, by which they were dashed to pieces. The poor widows were tendered as wives to four sweepers, the lowest of all low castes; but the tribe of sweepers would not suffer any of its members to take the widows of men of such high caste and station as wives, notwithstanding the tempting offer of five hundred rupees as a present, and a village in rent-free tenure.[8] I secured a promise while at Tehrî that these poor widows should be provided for, as they had, up to that time, been preserved by the good feeling of a little community of the lowest of castes, on whom they had been bestowed as a punishment worse than death, inasmuch as it would disgrace the whole class to which they belonged, the Parihâr Râjpûts.[9]
Tehrî is a wretched town, without one respectable dwelling-house tenanted beyond the palace, or one merchant, or even shopkeeper of capital and credit. There are some tolerable houses unoccupied and in ruins; and there are a few neat temples built as tombs, or cenotaphs, in or around the city, if city it can be called. The stables and accommodations for all public establishments seem to be all in the same ruinous state as the dwelling-houses. The revenues of the state are spent in feeding Brahmans and religious mendicants of all kinds; and in such idle ceremonies as those at which the Râjâ and all his court have just been assisting--ceremonies which concentrate for a few days the most useless of the people of India, the devotee followers (Bairâgîs) of the god Vishnu, and tend to no purpose, either useful or ornamental, to the state or to the people.
This marriage of a stone to a shrub, which takes place every year, is supposed to cost the Râjâ, at the most moderate estimate, three lakhs of rupees a year, or one-fourth of his annual revenue.[10] The highest officers of which his government is composed receive small beggarly salaries, hardly more than sufficient for their subsistence; and the money they make by indirect means they dare not spend like gentlemen, lest the Râjâ might be tempted to take their lives in order to get hold of it. All his feudal barons are of the same tribe as himself, that is, Râjpûts; but they are divided into three clans-- Bundêlas, Pawârs, and Chandêls. A Bundêla cannot marry a woman of his own clan, he must take a wife from the Pawârs or Chandêls; and so of the other two clans--no member of one can take a wife from his own clan, but must go to one of the other two for her. They are very much disposed to fight with each other, but not less are they disposed to unite against any third party, not of the same tribe. Braver men do not, I believe, exist than the Râjpûts of Bundêlkhand, who all carry their swords from their infancy.[11]
It may be said of the Râjpûts of Mâlwa and Central India generally, that the Mogul Emperors of Delhi made the same use of them that the Emperors of Germany and the Popes made of the military chiefs and classes of Europe during the Middle Ages. Industry and the peaceful arts being reduced to agriculture alone under bad government or no government at all, the land remained the only thing worth appropriating; and it accordingly became appropriated by those alone who had the power to do so--by the Hindoo military classes collected around the heads of their clans, and powerful in their union. These held it under the paramount power on the feudal tenure of military service, as militia; or it was appropriated by the paramount power itself, who let it out on allodial tenure to peaceful peasantry. The one was the Zamîndârî, and the other the Mâlguzârî tenure of India.[12]
The military chiefs, essentially either soldiers or robbers, were continually fighting, either against each other, or against the peasantry, or public officers of the paramount power, like the barons of Europe; and that paramount power, or its delegates, often found that the easiest way to crush one of these refractory vassals was to put him, as such men had been put in Germany, to the ban of the empire, and offer his lands, his castles, and his wealth to the victor. This victor brought his own clansmen to occupy the lands and castles of the vanquished; and, as these were the only things thought worth living for, the change commonly involved the utter destruction of the former occupants. The new possessors gave the name of their leader, their clan, or their former place of abode, to their new possession, and the tract of country over which they spread. Thus were founded the Bundêlas, Pawârs, and Chandêls [sic] upon the ruin of the Chandêls of Bundêlkhand, the Baghêlas in Baghêlkhand, or Rîwâ, the Kachhwâhâs, the Sakarwârs, and others along the Chambal river, and throughout all parts of India.[13]
These classes have never learnt anything, or considered anything worth learning, but the use of the sword; and a Râjpût chief, next to leading a gang of his own on great enterprises, delights in nothing so much as having a gang or two under his patronage for little ones.
There is hardly a single chief of the Hindoo military class in the Bundêlkhand or Gwâlior territories, who does not keep a gang of robbers of some kind or other, and consider it as a very valuable and legitimate source of revenue; or who would not embrace with cordiality the leader of a gang of assassins by profession who should bring him home from every expedition a good horse, a good sword, or a valuable pair of shawls, taken from their victims. It is much the same in the kingdom of Oudh, where the lands are for the most part held by the same Hindoo military classes, who are in a continual state of war with each other, or with the Government authorities. Three-fourths of the recruits for native infantry regiments are from this class of military agriculturists of Oudh, who have been trained up in this school of contest; and many of the lads, when they enter our ranks, are found to have marks of the cold steel upon their persons. A braver set of men is hardly anywhere to be found; or one trained up with finer feelings of devotion towards the power whose salt they eat.[14] A good many of the other fourth of the recruits for our native infantry are drawn from among the Ujainî Râjpûts, or Râjpûts from Ujain,[15] who were established many generations ago in the same manner at Bhôjpur on the bank of the Ganges.[16]
Notes:
1. A purôhit is a Brahman family priest.
2. Four hundred thousand rupees, worth at that time more than forty thousand pounds sterling.
3. The magistrate was the author.
4. 'That' in author's text.
5. The water of the Ganges, with which the image of the god Vishnu has been washed, is considered a very holy draught, fit for princes. That with which the image of the god Siva, alias Mahâdêo, is washed must not be drunk. The popular belief is that in a dispute between him and his wife, Pârvatî, alias Kâlî, she cursed the person that should thenceforward dare to drink of the water that flowed over his images on earth. The river Ganges is supposed to flow from the top- knot of Siva's head, and no one would drink of it after this curse, were it not that the sacred stream is supposed to come first from the heel of Vishnu, the Preserver. All the little images of Siva, that are made out of stones taken from the bed of the Nerbudda river, are supposed to be absolved from this curse, and water thrown upon them can be drunk with impunity. [W. H. S.] The natural emblems of Siva, the Bâna-linga quartz pebbles found in the Nerbudda, have already been referred to in the note to Chapter 19, ante, note 9. In the Marâthâ country the 'household gods' generally comprise five sacred symbols, namely, the sâlagrâma stone of Vishnu, the bâna-linga of Siva, a metallic stone representing the female principle in nature (Sakti), a crystal representing the sun, and a red stone representing Ganesh, the remover of obstacles. The details of the tiresome ritual observed in the worship of these objects occupy pp. 412 to 416 of Monier Williams's Religious Thought and Life in India.
6. 'Beearee' in author's text.
7. Then worth more than thirty thousand pounds sterling.
8. On the customs of the sweeper caste, see ante, Chapter 8, following note [11].
9. The Parihârs were the rulers of Bundêlkhand before the Chandêls. The chief of Uchhahara belongs to this clan.
10. Wealthy Hindoos, throughout India, spend money in the same ceremonies of marrying the stone to the shrub. [W. H. S.] Three lakhs of rupees were then worth thirty thousand pounds sterling or more.
11. The numerous clans, more or less devoted to war, grouped together under the name of Râjpûts (literally 'king's sons'), are in reality of multifarious origin, and include representatives of many races. They are the Kshatriyas of the law-books, and are still often called Chhattrî (E.H.I., 3rd ed., pp. 407-15). In some parts of the country the word Thâkur is more familiar as their general title. Thirty-six clans are considered as specially pure-blooded and are called, at any rate in books, the 'royal races'. All the clans follow the custom of exogamy. The Chandêls (Chandella) ruled Bundêlkhand from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries. Their capital was Mahoba, now a station on the Midland Railway. The Bundêlas became prominent at a later date, and attained their greatest power under Chhatarsâl (circa A.D. 1671-1731). Their territory is now known as Bundêlkhand. The country so designated is not an administrative division. It is partly in the United Provinces, partly in the Central Provinces, and partly in Native States. It is bounded on the north by the Jumna; on the north and west by the Chambal river; on the south by the Central Provinces, and on the south and east by Rîwâ and the Kaimûr hills. The traditions of both the Bundêlas and Chandellas show that there is a strain of the blood of the earlier, so--called aboriginal, races in both clans. The Pawâr (Pramara) clan ranks high, but is now of little political importance (See N.W.P. Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. vii, p. 68).
12. The paramount power often assigned a portion of its reserved lands in 'Jâgîr' to public officers for the establishments they required for the performance of the duties, military or civil, which were expected from them. Other portions were assigned in rent-free tenure for services already performed, or to favourites; but, in both cases, the rights of the village or land owner, or allodial proprietors, were supposed to be unaffected, as the Government was presumed to assign only its own claim to a certain portion as revenue. [W. H. S.] The term 'ryotwar' (raiyatwâr) is commonly used to designate the system under which the cultivators hold their lands direct from the State. The subject of tenures is further discussed by the author in Chapters 70, 71.
13. For elaborate comparisons between the Râjpût policy and the feudal system of Europe, Tod's Rajasthân may be consulted. The parallel is not really so close as it appears to be at first sight. In some respects the organization of the Highland clans is more similar to that of the Râjpûts than the feudal system is. The Chambal river rises in Mâlwâ, and, after a course of some five hundred and seventy miles, falls into the Jumna forty miles below Etâwa. The statement in the text concerning the succession of clans is confused. The ruling family of Rîwâ still belongs to the Baghêl clan. The Maharâjâ of Jaipur (Jeypore) is a Kachhwâha.
14. The barbarous habit of alliance and connivance with robber gangs is by no means confined to Râjpût nobles and landholders. Men of all creeds and castes yield to the temptation and magistrates are sometimes startled to find that Honorary Magistrates, Members of District Boards, and others of apparently the highest respectability, are the abettors and secret organizers of robber bands. A modern example of this fact was discovered in the Meerut and Muzaffarnagar Districts of the United Provinces in 1890 and 1891. In this case the wealthy supporters of the banditti were Jâts and Muhammadans.
The unfortunate condition of Oudh previous to the annexation in 1856 is vividly described in the author's Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, published in 1858. The tour took place in 1849-50. Some districts of the kingdom, especially Hardoî, are still tainted by the old lawlessness.
The remarks on the fine feelings of devotion shown by the sepoys must now be read in the light of the events of the Mutiny. Since that time the army has been reorganized, and depends on Oudh for its recruits much less than it did in the author's day.
15. Ujain (Ujjain, Oojeyn) is a very ancient city, on the river Sipra, in Mâlwa, in the dominions of Sindhia, the chief of Gwâlior.
16. Bhajpore in the author's text. The town referred to is Bhôjpur in the Shâhâbâd district of South Bihâr.