Chapter 58
Declining Fertility of the Soil--Popular Notion of the Cause.
On the 18th[1] we came on ten miles to Sâhar, over a plain of poor soil, carelessly cultivated, and without either manure or irrigation. Major Godby left us at Govardhan to return to Agra. He would have gone on with us to Delhi; but having the command of his regiment, and being a zealous officer, he did not like to leave it so long during the exercising season. We felt much the loss of his society. He is a man of great observation and practical good sense; has an infinite fund of good humour, and a cheerfulness of temperament that never seems to flag--a more agreeable companion I have never met. The villages in these parts are literally crowded with peafowl. I counted no less than forty-six feeding close by among the houses of one hamlet on the road, all wild, or rather unappropriated, for they seemed on the best possible terms with the inhabitants. At Sâhar our water was drawn from wells eighty feet deep, and this is said to be the ordinary depth from which water is drawn; consequently irrigation is too expensive to be common. It is confined almost exclusively to small patches of garden cultivation in the vicinity of villages.
On the 14th we came on sixteen miles to Kosî, for the most part over a poor soil badly cultivated, and almost exclusively devoted to autumn crops, of which cotton is the principal. I lost the road in the morning before daylight,[2] and the trooper, who usually rode with me, had not come up. I got an old landholder from one of the villages to walk on with me a mile, and put me in the right road. I asked him what had been the state of the country under the former government of the Jâts and Marâthâs, and was told that the greater part was a wild jungle. 'I remember,' said the old man, 'when you could not have got out of the road hereabouts without a good deal of risk. I could not have ventured a hundred yards from the village without the chance of having my clothes stripped off my back. Now the whole face of the country is under cultivation, and the roads are safe; formerly the governments kept no faith with their landholders and cultivators, exacting ten rupees where they had bargained for five, whenever they found the crops good; but, in spite of all this "zulm"' (oppression), said the old man, 'there was then more "barkat" (blessings from above) than now. The lands yielded more returns to the cultivator, and he could maintain his little family better upon five acres than he can now upon ten.'
'To what, my old friend, do you attribute this very unfavourable change in the productive powers of your soil?'
'A man cannot, sir, venture to tell the truth at all times, and in all places,' said he.
'You may tell it now with safety, my good old friend; I am a mere traveller ("musafir") going to the hills in search of health, from the valley of the Nerbudda, where the people have been suffering much from blight, and are much perplexed in their endeavour to find a cause.'
'Here, sir, we all attribute these evils to the dreadful System of perjury, which the practices of your judicial courts have brought among the people. You are perpetually putting the Ganges water into the hands of the Hindoos, and the Korân into those of Muhammadans; and all kinds of lies are every day told upon them. God Almighty can stand this no longer; and the lands have ceased to be blessed with that fertility which they had before this sad practice began. This, sir, is almost the only fault we have, any of us, to find with your government; men, by this System of perjury, are able to cheat each other out of their rights, and bring down sterility upon the land, by which the innocent are made to suffer for the guilty.'
On reaching our tents, I asked a respectable farmer, who came to pay his respects to the Commissioner of the division, Mr. Fraser, what he thought of the matter, telling him what I had heard from my old friend on the road. 'The diminished fertility is,' said he, 'owing no doubt to the want of those salutary fallows which the fields got under former governments, when invasions and civil wars were things of common occurrence, and kept at least two-thirds of the land waste; but there is, on the other hand, no doubt that you have encouraged perjury a good deal in your courts of justice; and this perjury must have some effect in depriving the land of the blessing of God.[3] Every man now, who has a cause in your civil courts, seems to think it necessary either to swear falsely himself, or to get others to do it for him. The European gentlemen, no doubt, do all they can to secure every man his right, but, surrounded as they are by perjured witnesses, and corrupt native officers, they commonly labour in the dark.'
Much of truth is to be found among the village communities of India, where they have been carefully maintained, if people will go among them to seek it. Here, as almost everywhere else, truth is the result of self-government, whether arising from choice, under municipal institutions, or necessity, under despotism and anarchy; self- government produces self-esteem and pride of character.
Close to our tents we found the people at work, irrigating their fields from several wells, whose waters were all brackish. The crops watered from these wells were admirable--likely to yield at least fifteen returns of the seed. Wherever we go, we find the signs of a great government passed away--signs that must tend to keep alive the recollections, and exalt the ideas of it in the minds of the people. Beyond the boundary of our military and civil stations we find as yet few indications of our reign or character, to link us with the affections of the people. There is hardly anything to indicate our existence as a people or a government in this country; and it is melancholy to think that in the wide extent of country over which I have travelled there should be so few signs of that superiority in science and arts which we boast of, and really do possess, and ought to make conducive to the welfare and happiness of the people in every part of our dominions. The people and the face of the country are just what they might have been had they been governed by police officers and tax-gatherers from the Sandwich Islands, capable of securing life, property, and character, and levying honestly the means of maintaining the establishments requisite for the purpose.[4] Some time after the journey here described, in the early part of November, after a heavy fall of rain, I was driving alone in my buggy from Garhmuktesar on the Ganges to Meerut. The roads were very bad, the stage a double one, and my horse became tired, and unable to go on.[5] I got out at a small village to give him a little rest and food; and sat down, under the shade of one old tree, upon the trunk of another that the storm had blown down, while my groom, the only servant I had with me, rubbed down and baited my horse. I called for some parched gram from the same shop which supplied my horse, and got a draught of good water, drawn from the well by an old woman in a brass jug lent to me for the purpose by the shopkeeper.[6]
While I sat contentedly and happily stripping my parched gram of its shell, and eating it grain by grain, the farmer, or head landholder of the village, a sturdy old Râjpût, came up and sat himself, without any ceremony, down by my side, to have a little conversation. To one of the dignitaries of the land, in whose presence the aristocracy are alone entitled to chairs, this easy familiarity on the part of a poor farmer seems at first somewhat strange and unaccountable; he is afraid that the man intends to offer him some indignity, or, what is still worse, mistakes him for something less than the dignitary. The following dialogue took place.
'You are a Râjpût, and a "zamîndâr"?' (landholder).
'Yes; I am the head landholder of this village.'
'Can you tell me how that village in the distance is elevated above the ground? Is it from the debris of old villages, or from a rock underneath?'
'It is from the debris of old villages. That is the original seat of all the Râjpûts around; we all trace our descent from the founders of that village who built and peopled it many centuries ago.'
'And you have gone on subdividing your inheritances here, as elsewhere, no doubt, till you have hardly any of you anything to eat?'
'True, we have hardy any of us enough to eat; but that is the fault of the Government, that does not leave us enough, that takes from us as much when the season is bad as when it is good.'[7]
'But your assessment has not been increased, has it?' 'No, we have concluded a settlement for twenty years upon the same footing as formerly.'
'And if the sky were to shower down upon you pearls and diamonds, instead of water, the Government would never demand more from you than the rate fixed upon?'
'No.'
'Then why should you expect remissions in the bad seasons?'
'It cannot be disputed that the "barkat" (blessing from above) is less under you than it used to be formerly, and that the lands yield less to our labour.'
'True, my old friend, but do you know the reason why?'
'No.'
'Then I will tell you. Forty or fifty years ago, in what you call the times of the "barkat" (blessing from above), the cavalry of Sikh freebooters from the Panjâb used to sweep over this fine plain, in which stands the said village from which you are all descended; and to massacre the whole population of some villages, and a certain portion of that of every other village; and the lands of those killed used to be waste for want of cultivators. Is not this all true?'
'Yes, quite true.'
'And the fine groves which had been planted over the plain by your ancestors, as they separated from the great parent stock, and formed independent villages and hamlets for themselves, were all swept away and destroyed by the same hordes of freebooters, from whom your poor imbecile emperors, cooped up in yonder large city of Delhi, were utterly unable to defend you?'
'Quite true,' said the old man with a sigh. 'I remember when all this fine plain was as thickly studded with fine groves of mango-trees as Rohilkhand, or any other part of India.'
'You know that the land requires rest from labour, as well as men and bullocks, and that, if you go on sowing wheat and other exhausting crops, it will go on yielding less and less returns, and at last not be worth the tilling?'
'Quite well.'
'Then why do you not give the land rest by leaving it longer fallow, or by a more frequent alternation of crops relieve it?'
'Because we have now increased so much that we should not get enough to eat were we to leave it to fallow; and unless we tilled it with exhausting crops we should not get the means of paying our rents to the Government.'
'The Sikh hordes in former days prevented this; they killed off a certain portion of your families, and gave the land the rest which you now refuse it. When you had exhausted one part, you found another recovered by a long fallow, so that you had better returns; but now that we neither kill you, nor suffer you to be killed by others, you have brought all the cultivable lands into tillage; and under the old System of cropping to exhaustion, it is not surprising that they yield you less returns.'[8]
By this time we had a crowd of people seated around us upon the ground, as I went on munching my parched gram, and talking to the old patriarch.
They all laughed at the old man at the conclusion of my last speech, and he confessed I was right.
'This is all true, sir, but still your Government is not considerate; it goes on taking kingdom after kingdom, and adding to its dominions without diminishing the burden upon us, its old subjects. Here you have had armies away taking Afghanistan, but we shall not have one rupee the less to pay.'[9]
'True, my friend, nor would you demand a rupee less from those honest cultivators around us, if we were to leave you all your lands untaxed. You complain of the Government--they complain of you.' (Here the circle around us laughed at the old man again.) 'Nor would you subdivide the lands the less for having it rent-free; on the contrary, it would be every generation subdivided the more, inasmuch as there would be more of local ties, and a greater disinclination of families to separate and seek service abroad.'
'True, sir, very true--that is, no doubt, a very great evil.'
'And you know it is not an evil produced by us, but one arising out of your own laws of inheritance. You have heard, no doubt, that with us the eldest son gets the whole of the land, and the younger sons all go out in search of service, with such share as they can get of the other property of their father?'
'Yes, sir; but when shall we get service?--you have none to give us. I would serve to-morrow if you would take me as a soldier,' said he, stroking his white whiskers.
The crowd laughed heartily; and some wag observed that I should perhaps think him too old.
'Well,' said the old man, smiling, 'the gentleman himself is not very young, and yet I dare say he is a good servant of his Government.'
This was paying me off for making the people laugh at his expense.
'True, my old friend,' said I, 'but I began to serve when I was young, and have been long learning.'
'Very well,' said the old man, 'but I should be glad to serve the rest of my life upon a less salary than you got when you began to learn.'
'Well, my friend, you complain of our Government; but you must acknowledge that we do all we can to protect you, though it is true that we are often acting in the dark.'
'Often, sir? you are always acting in the dark; you, hardly any of you, know anything of what your revenue and police officers are doing; there is no justice or redress to be got without paying for it, and it is not often that those who pay can get it.'
'True, my old friend, that is bad all over the world. You cannot presume to ask anything even from the Deity Himself, without paying the priest who officiates in His temples; and if you should, you would none of you hope to get from your Deity what you asked for.'
Here the crowd laughed again, and one of them said that 'there was this certainly to be said for our Government, that the European gentlemen themselves never took bribes, whatever those under them might do'.
'You must not be too sure of that, neither. Did not the Lâl Bîbî, the Red Lady, get a bribe for soliciting the judge, her husband, to let go Amîr Singh, who had been confined in jail?'
'How did this take place?'
'About three years ago Amîr Singh was sentenced to imprisonment, and his friends spent a great deal of money in bribes to the native officers of the court, but all in vain. At last they were recommended to give a handsome present to the Red Lady. They did so, and Amîr Singh was released.'
'But did they give the present into the lady's own hand?'
'No, they gave it to one of her women.'
'And how do you know that she ever gave it to her mistress, or that her mistress ever heard of the transaction?'
'She might certainly have been acting without her mistress' knowledge; but the popular belief is that the Lâl Bîbî got the present.'
I then told the story of the affair at Jubbulpore, when Mrs. Smith's name had been used for a similar purpose, and the people around us were all highly amused; and the old man's opinion of the transaction with the Red Lady evidently underwent a change.[10]
We became good friends, and the old man begged me to have my tents, which he supposed were coming up, pitched among them, that he might have an opportunity of showing that he was not a bad subject, though he grumbled against the Government.
The next day at Meerut I got a visit from the chief native judge, whose son, a talented youth, is in my office. Among other things, I asked him whether it might not be possible to improve the character of the police by increasing the salaries of the officers, and mentioned my conversation with the landholder.
'Never, sir,' said the old gentleman; 'the man that now gets twenty- five rupees a month is contented with making perhaps fifty or seventy-five more; and the people subject to his authority pay him accordingly. Give him a hundred, sir, and he will put a shawl over his shoulders, and the poor people will be obliged to pay him at a rate that will make up his income to four hundred. You will only alter his style of living, and make him a greater burthen to the people. He will always take as long as he thinks he can with impunity.'
'But do you not think that when people see a man adequately paid by the Government they will the more readily complain of any attempt at unauthorized exactions?'
'Not a bit, sir, as long as they see the same difficulties in the way of prosecuting him to conviction. In the administration of civil justice' (the old gentleman is a civil judge), 'you may occasionally see your way, and understand what is doing; but in revenue and police you never have seen it in India, and never will, I think. The officers you employ will all add to their incomes by unauthorized means; and the lower these incomes, the less their pretensions, and the less the populace have to pay.'[11]
Notes:
1. January, 1836.
2. The old Anglo-Indian rose much earlier than his successor of the present day commonly does.
3. For other popular explanations of the alleged decrease in fertility of the soil, see ante, Chapter 27, where three explanations are offered, namely, the eating of beef, the prevalence of adultery, and the impiety of surveys.
4. The inapplicability of these observations of the author to the present time is a good measure of the material progress of India since his day. The Ganges Canal, the bridges over the Indus, Ganges, and other great rivers, and numberless engineering works throughout the empire, are permanent witnesses to the scientific superiority of the ruling race. Buildings which can claim any high degree of architectural excellence are, unfortunately, still rare, but the public edifices of Bombay will not suffer by comparison with those of most capital cities, and for some years past, considerable attention has been paid to architecture as an art. A great architectural experiment is in progress at the new official capital of Delhi (1914).
5. The road is now an excellent one.
6. Parched gram, or chick-pea, is commonly used by Indian travellers as a convenient and readily portable form of food. The 'brass jug' lent to the author could be purified by fire after his use of it.
7. Growls of this kind must not be interpreted too literally. Any village landholder, if encouraged, would grumble in the same strain.
8. This is the permanent difficulty of Indian revenue administration, which no Government measures can seriously diminish.
9. The mission to Kabul, under Captain Alexander Burnes, was not dispatched till September, 1837, and troops did not assemble before the conclusion of the treaty with the Sikhs in June, 1838. The army crossed the Indus in January, 1839. The conversation in the text is stated to have taken place 'some time after the journey herein described', and must, apparently, be dated in November, 1839. The author was in the North-Western Provinces in that year.
10. Some of Mrs. Smith's suitors entered into a combination to defraud a suitor in his court of a large sum of money, which he was to pay to Mrs. Smith as she walked in the garden. A dancing girl from the town of Jubbulpore was made to represent Mrs. Smith, and a suit of Mrs. Smith's clothes was borrowed for her from the washerman. The butler took the suitor to the garden, and introduced him to the supposed Mrs. Smith, who received him very graciously, and condescended to accept his offer of five thousand rupees in gold mohurs. The plot was afterwards discovered, and the old butler, washerman, and all, were sentenced to work in a rope on the roads. [W. H. S.]
Penal labour on the roads has been discontinued long since. Similar plots probably have often escaped detection. The whole conversation is a valuable illustration of Indian habits and modes of thought.
11. The subject of the police administration is more fully discussed post, in Chapter 69.
59. Concentration of Capital and its Effects
Kosî[1] stands on the borders of Fîrôzpur, the estate of the late Shams-ud-dîn, who was hanged at Delhi on the 3rd of October, 1835, for the murder of William Fraser, the representative of the Governor- General in the Delhi city and territories.[2] The Mewâtîs of Fîrôzpur are notorious thieves and robbers. During the Nawâb's time they dared not plunder within his territory, but had a free licence to plunder wherever they pleased beyond it.[3] They will now be able to plunder at home, since our tribunals have been introduced to worry prosecutors and their witnesses to death by the distance they have to go, and the tediousness of our process; and thereby to secure impunity to offenders, by making it the interest of those who have been robbed, not only to bear with the first loss without complaint, but largely to bribe police officers to conceal the crimes from their master, the magistrate, when they happen to come to their knowledge. Here it was that Jeswant Râo Holkâr gave a grand ball on the 14th of October, 1804, while he was with his cavalry covering the siege of Delhi by his regular brigade. In the midst of the festivity he had a European soldier of the King's 76th Regiment, who had been taken prisoner, strangled behind the curtain, and his head stuck upon a spear and placed in the midst of the assembly, where the 'nâch' (nautch) girls were made to dance round it. Lord Lake reached the place the next morning in pursuit of this monster; and the gallant regiment, who here heard the story, had soon an opportunity of revenging the foul murder of their comrade in the battle of Dîg, one of the most gallant passages of arms we have ever had in India.[4]
Near Kosî there is a factory in ruins belonging to the late firm of Mercer & Company. Here the cotton of the district used to be collected and screwed under the superintendence of European agents, preparatory to its embarkation for Calcutta on the river Jumna. On the failure of the firm, the establishment was broken up, and the work, which was then done by one great European merchant, is now done by a score or two of native merchants. There is, perhaps, nothing which India wants more than the concentration of capital; and the failure of a I [5] the great commercial houses in Calcutta, in the year 1833, was, unquestionably, a great calamity. They none of them brought a particle of capital into the country, nor does India want a particle from any country; but they concentrated it; and had they employed the whole, as they certainly did a good deal of it, in judiciously improving and extending the industry of the natives, they might have been the source of incalculable good to India, its people, and government.[6]
To this concentration of capital in great commercial and manufacturing establishments, which forms the grand characteristic of European in contradistinction to Asiatic societies in the present day, must we look for those changes which we consider desirable in the social and religions institutions of the people. Where land is liable to eternal subdivision by the law and the religion of both the Muhammadan and Hindoo population; where every great work that improves its productive powers, and facilitates the distribution of its produce among the people, in canals, roads, bridges, &c., is made by Government; where capital is nowhere concentrated in great commercial or manufacturing establishments, there can be no upper classes in society but those of office; and of all societies, perhaps that is the worst in which the higher classes are so exclusively composed. In India, public office has been, and must continue to be, the only road to distinction, until we have a law of primogeniture, and a concentration of capital. In India no man has ever thought himself respectable, or been thought so by others, unless he is armed with his little 'hukûmat'; his 'little brief authority' under Government, that gives him the command of some public establishment paid out of the revenues of the State.[7] In Europe and America, where capital has been concentrated in great commercial and manufacturing establishments, and free institutions prevail almost as the natural consequence, industry is everything; and those who direct and command it are, happily, looked up to as the source of the wealth, the strength, the virtue, and the happiness of the nation. The concentration of capital in such establishments may, indeed, be considered, not only as the natural consequence, but as the prevailing cause of the free institutions by which the mass of the people in European countries are blessed.[8] The mass of the people were as much brutalized and oppressed by the landed aristocracy as they could have been by any official aristocracy before towns and higher classes were created by the concentration of capital.
The same observations are applicable to China. There the land all belongs to the sovereign, as in India; and, as in India, it is liable to the same eternal subdivision among the sons of those who hold it under him. Capital is nowhere more concentrated in China than in India; and all the great works that add to the fertility of the soil, and facilitate the distribution of the land labour of the country are formed by the sovereign out of the public revenue. The revenue is, in consequence, one of office;[9] and no man considers himself respectable,[10] unless invested with some office under Government, that is, under the Emperor. Subdivision of labour, concentration of capital, and machinery render an Englishman everywhere dependent upon the co-operation of multitudes; while the Chinaman, who as yet knows little of either, is everywhere independent, and able to work his way among strangers. But this very dependence of the Englishman upon the concentration of capital is the greatest source of his strength and pledge of his security, since it supports those members of the higher orders who can best understand and assert the rights and interests of the whole.[11]
If we had any great establishment of this sort in which Christians could find employment and the means of religious and secular instruction, thousands of converts would soon flock to them; and they would become vast sources of future improvement in industry, social comfort, municipal institutions, and religion. What chiefly prevents the spread of Christianity in India is the dread of exclusion from caste and all its privileges; and the utter hopelessness of their ever finding any respectable circle of society of the adopted religion, which converts, or would-be converts, to Christianity now everywhere feel. Form such circles for them, make the members of these circles happy in the exertion of honest and independent industry, let those who rise to eminence in them feel that they are considered as respectable and as important in the social system as the servants of Government, and converts will flock around you from all parts, and from all classes of the Hindoo community. I have, since I have been in India, had, I may say, at least a score of Hindoo grass-cutters turn Musalmâns, merely because the grooms and the other grass-cutters of my establishment happened to be of that religion, and they could neither eat, drink, nor smoke with them. Thousands of Hindoos all over India become every year Musalmâns from the same motive;[12] and we do not get the same number of converts to Christianity, merely because we cannot offer them the same advantages. I am persuaded that a dozen such establishments as that of Mr. Thomas Ashton of Hyde, as described by a physician at Manchester, and noticed in Mr. Baines's admirable work on the Cotton Manufactures of Great Britain (page 447), would do more in the way of conversion among the people of India than has ever yet been done by all the religious establishments, or ever will be done by them, without such aid.[13]
I have said that the great commercial houses of Calcutta, which in their ruin involved that of so many useful establishments scattered over India, like that of Kosî, brought no capital into the country.[14] They borrowed from one part of the civil and military servants of Government at a high interest that portion of their salary which they saved; and lent it at a higher interest to others of the same establishment, who for a time required or wished to spend more than they received; or they employed it at a higher rate of profit for great commercial and manufacturing establishments scattered over India, or spread over the ocean. Their great error was in mistaking nominal for real profits. Calculating their dividend on the nominal profits, and never supposing that there could be any such things as losses in commercial speculation, or bad debts from misfortunes and bad faith, they squandered them in lavish hospitality and ostentatious display, or allowed their retiring members to take them to England and to every other part of the world where their creditors might not find them, till they discovered that all the real capital left at their command was hardly sufficient to pay back with the stipulated interest one-tenth of what they had borrowed. The members of those houses who remained in India up to the time of the general wreck were of course reduced to ruin, and obliged to bear the burthen of the odium and indignation which the ruin of so many thousands of confiding constituents brought down upon them. Since that time the savings of civil and military servants have been invested either in Government securities at a small interest, or in banks, which make their profit in the ordinary way, by discounting bills of exchange, and circulating their own notes for the purpose, or by lending out their money at a high interest of 10 or 12 per cent. to other members of the same services.[15]
On the 16th of January we went on to Horal, ten miles over a plain, with villages numerous and large, and in every one some fine large building of olden times--sarâi, palace, temple, or tomb, but all going to decay.[16] The population much more dense than in any of the native states I have seen; villages larger and more numerous; trade in the transit of cotton, salt, sugar, and grain, much brisker. A great number of hares were here brought to us for sale at threepence apiece, a rate at which they sell at this season in almost all parts of Upper India, where they are very numerous, and very easily caught in nets.
Notes:
1. Kosî is twenty-five miles north-west of Mathurâ.
2. The story of the murder of Mr. Fraser is fully detailed post in Chapter 64. After the execution of Shams-ud-dîn, the estate of the criminal was taken possession of by Government, and the town of Fîrôzpur is now the head-quarters of a sub-collectorship of the Gurgâon district in the Panjâb. The Delhi territories were placed under the government of the Lieutenant-Governor of the Panjâb in 1858.
3. The Mewâtî depredations had gone on for centuries. The Sultân Balban (Ghiâs-ud-dîn, alias Ulugh Khan), who reigned from A.D. 1265- 87, temporarily suppressed them by punishments of awful cruelty, flaying the criminals alive, and so forth. The Mewâtîs now supply men to a few robber gangs, but are incapable of mischief on a large scale.
4. Delhi was most nobly defended against Holkâr by a very small force under Lieutenant-Colonel Burn, who 'repelled an assault, and defended a city ten miles in circumference, and which had ever before been given up at the first appearance of an enemy at its gates'.
The battle of Dîg was fought on November 13, 1804, by the division under the command of General Fraser on the one side, and Holkâr's infantry and artillery on the other. 'The 76th led the way, with its wonted alacrity and determination,' and forced its way into the village in advance of its supports. The fight resulted in the total defeat of the Marâthâs, who lost nearly two thousand men, and eighty- seven pieces of cannon. The English loss also was heavy, amounting to upwards of six hundred and forty killed and wounded, including the brave commander, who was mortally wounded, and survived the victory only a few days.
On the night of November 17, General Lake in person routed Holkâr and his cavalry, killing about three thousand men. The English loss on this occasion amounted to only two men killed, and about twenty wounded.
The fort of Dîg, with a hundred guns and a considerable quantity of ammunition and military stores, was captured on December 24 of the same year. (Thornton, History of British India, pp. 316-19, 2nd ed., 1859.)
5. Transcription note. This clause is not intelligible to the transcriber. The character '1' or 'I' appears in the text. Some words appear to be missing.
6. The author was grievously mistaken in supposing that India did not require 'a particle' of foreign capital. The railways, and the great tea, coffee, indigo, and other industries, built up and developed during the nineteenth century, and still growing, owe their existence to the hundreds of millions sterling of English capital poured into the country, and could not possibly have been financed from Indian resources. The author seems not to have expected the construction of railways in India, although when he wrote a beginning of the railway system in England had been made.
7. This sentiment is still potent, and explains the eagerness often shown by wealthy landholders of high social rank to obtain official appointments, which to the European mind seem unworthy of their acceptance.
8. Few readers are likely to accept this proposition.
9. This clause is not intelligible to the editor. The word 'revenue' probably is a misprint for 'aristocracy'.
10. The original edition prints, 'No man considers himself less respectable', which is nonsense.
11. This sentiment reads oddly in these days of social democracy and continual conflict between capital and labour.
12. The steady progress of Islam in Lower and Eastern Bengal, first made apparent by the census of 1872, has been confirmed by the enumerations of 1901 and 1911. The feeling that the religion of the Prophet gives its adherent a better position in both this world and the next than Hinduism can offer to a low-caste man is the most powerful motive for conversion. See Dr. James Wise's valuable treatise, 'The Muhammadans of Eastern Bengal' (J.A.S.B., Part III (1894), pp. 28-63), and the Census Reports from 1872 to 1911.
13. The author's whimsical notion that a development of commercial and manufacturing organization in India would cause converts to flock from all parts, and from all classes of the Hindoo community, has not been verified by experience. Much capital is now concentrated in the great cities, and the number of cotton, jute, and other factories is considerable, but Christian converts are not among the goods produced.
14. The modern commercial houses bring a large proportion of their capital from Europe.
15. The three Presidency Banks, the Bank of Bengal, the Bank of Madras, and the Bank of Bombay, in which the Indian Government is interested, are the leading Indian banks. The Bank of Bengal was opened in 1806. No bank in India is allowed to issue notes. The paper money in use is issued by the Paper Currency Department of the Government of India, and the notes are known as 'currency notes'. The issue of these notes began in 1862-3. (Balfour, Cyclopaedia, 3rd ed., s.v. 'Bank and Paper Currency'). Much Indian capital is now invested in joint-stock companies of every kind.
16. More correctly, Hodal.
60. Transit Duties in India--Mode of Collecting them
At Horal[1] resides a Collector of Customs with two or three uncovenanted European assistants as patrol officers.[2] The rule now is to tax only the staple articles of produce from the west on their transit down into the valley of the Jumna and Ganges, and to have only one line on which these articles shall be liable to duties.[3] They are free to pass everywhere else without search or molestation. This has, no doubt, relieved the people of these provinces from an infinite deal of loss and annoyance inflicted upon them by the former System of levying the Customs duties, and that without much diminishing the net receipts of Government from this branch of its revenues. But the time may come when Government will be constrained to raise a greater proportion of its collective revenues than it has hitherto done from indirect taxation, and when this time comes, the rule which confines the impost to a single line must of course be abandoned.[4] Under the former system, one great man, with a very high salary, was put in to preside over a host of native agents with very small salaries, and without any responsible intermediate agent whatever to aid him, and to watch over them. The great man was selected without any reference to his knowledge of, or fitness for, the duties entrusted to him, merely because he happened to be of a certain standing in a certain exclusive service, which entitled him to a certain scale of salary, or because he had been found unfit for judicial or other duties requiring more intellect and energy of character. The consequence was that for every one rupee that went into the public treasury, ten were taken by these harpies from the merchants, or other people over whom they had, or could pretend to have, a right of search.[5]
Some irresponsible native officer who happened to have the confidence of the great man (no matter in what capacity he served him) sold for his own profit, and for that of those whose goodwill he might think it worth while to conciliate, the offices of all the subordinate agents immediately employed in the collection of the duties. A man who was to receive an avowed salary of seven rupees a month would give him three or four thousand for his post, because it would give him charge of a detached post, in which he could soon repay himself with a handsome profit. A poor 'peon', who was to serve under others, and could never hope for an independent charge, would give five hundred rupees for an office which yielded him avowedly only four rupees a month. All arrogated the right of search, and the state of Indian society and the climate were admirably suited to their purpose. A person of any respectability would feel himself dishonoured were the females of his family to be seen, much less touched, while passing along the road in their palanquin or covered carnage; and to save himself from such dishonour he was everywhere obliged to pay these custom-house officers. Many articles that pass in transit through India would suffer much damage from being opened along the road at any season, and be liable to be spoiled altogether during that of the rains; and these harpies could always make the merchants open them, unless they paid liberally for their forbearance. Articles were rated to the duty according to their value; and articles of the same weight were often, of course, of very different values. These officers could always pretend that packages liable to injury from exposure contained within them, among the articles set forth in the invoice, others of greater value in proportion to their weight. Men who carried pearls, jewels, and other articles very valuable compared with their bulk, always depended for their security from robbers and thieves on their concealment; and there was nothing which they dreaded so much as the insolence and rapacity of these custom-house officers, who made them pay large bribes, or exposed their goods. Gangs of thieves had members in disguise at such stations, who were soon able to discover through the insolence of the officers, and the fears and entreaties of the merchants, whether they had anything worth taking or not.
A party of thieves from Datiyâ, in 1882, followed Lord William Bentinck's camp to the bank of the river Jumna near Mathurâ, where they found a poor merchant humbly entreating an insolent custom-house officer not to insist upon his showing the contents of the little box he carried in his carriage, lest it might attract the attention of thieves, who were always to be found among the followers of such a camp, and offering to give him anything reasonable for his forbearance. Nothing he could be got to offer would satisfy the rapacity of the man; the box was taken out and opened. It contained jewels which the poor man hoped to sell to advantage among the European ladies and gentlemen of the Governor-General's suite. He replaced his box in his carriage; but in half an hour it was travelling post-haste to Datiyâ, by relays of thieves who had been posted along the road for such occasions. They quarrelled about the division; swords were drawn, and wounds inflicted. One of the gang ran off to the magistrate at Sâgar, with whom he had before been acquainted;[6] and he sent him back with a small party, and a letter to the Datiyâ Râjâ requesting that he would get the box of jewels for the poor merchant. The party took the precaution of searching the house of the thieves before they delivered the letter to their friend the minister, and by this means recovered about half the jewels, which amounted in all to about seven thousand rupees. The merchant was agreeably surprised when he got back so much of his property through the magistrate of Mathurâ, and confirmed the statement of the thief regarding the dispute with the custom-house officer which enabled them to discover the value of the box.
Should Government by and by extend the System that obtains in this single line to the Customs all over India they may greatly augment their revenue without any injury, and with but little necessary loss and inconvenience to merchants. The object of all just taxation is to make the subjects contribute to the public burthen in proportion to their means, and with as little loss and inconvenience to themselves as possible. The people who reside west of this line enjoy all their salt, cotton, and other articles which are taxed on crossing the line without the payment of any duties, while those to the east of it are obliged to pay. It is, therefore, not a just line. The advantages are, first, that it interposes a body of most efficient officers between the mass of harpies and the heads of the department, who now virtually superintend the whole System, whereas they used formerly to do so merely ostensibly. They are at once the tapis of Prince Husain and the telescope of Prince Alî; they enable the heads of departments to be everywhere and see everything, whereas before they were nowhere and saw nothing.[7] Secondly, it makes the great staple articles of general consumption alone liable to the payment of duties, and thereby does away in a great measure with the odious right of search.
At Kosî our friend, Charles Fraser, left us to proceed through Mathurâ to Agra. He is a very worthy man and excellent public officer, one of those whom one always meets again with pleasure, and of whose society one never tires. Mr. Wilmot, the Collector of Customs, and Mr. Wright, one of the patrol officers, came to dine with us. The wind blew so hard all day that the cook and khânsâmân (butler) were long in despair of being able to give us any dinner at all. At last we managed to get a tent, closed at every crevice to keep out the dust, for a cook-room; and they were thus able to preserve their master's credit, which, no doubt, according to their notions, depended altogether on the quality of his dinner.
Notes:
1. The place is a small town in the Gurgâon District, Panjâb.
2. The term 'uncovenanted' may require explanation for readers not familiar with the details of Indian administration. The Civil Service of India, commonly called Indian Civil Service, which supplies most of the higher administrative and judicial officers, used to be known as the Covenanted service, because its members sign a covenant with the Secretary of State. All the other departmental services--Public Works, Postal and the rest--were grouped together as uncovenanted. In accordance with the Report of the Public Service Commission (1886-7) the terms 'covenanted' and 'uncovenanted' have been disused.
3. The text refers to what was known as the 'customs hedge'. Before the establishment of the British supremacy each of the innumerable native jurisdictions levied transit duties on many kinds of goods at each of its frontiers, to the infinite vexation of traders. Such duties were gradually abolished in British territory, and few, if any, are now enforced by native states. Salt cannot be manufactured in British India without a licence, and the Salt (formerly called Inland Customs) Department is charged with the duty of preventing the manufacture or sale of illicit salt. In its later developments the Customs hedge was used for the collection of the salt duty only. Sir John Strachey took a leading part in its abolition. To secure the levy of the duty on salt, he writes, 'there grew up gradually a monstrous system, to which it would be almost impossible to find a parallel in any tolerably civilized country. A Customs line was established which stretched across the whole of India, which in 1869 extended from the Indus to the Mahânadî in Madras, a distance of 2,300 miles; and it was guarded by nearly 12,000 men and petty officers, at an annual cost of £162,000. It would have stretched from London to Constantinople. . . . It consisted principally of an immense impenetrable hedge of thorny trees and bushes . . . A similar line, 280 miles in length, was maintained in the north-eastern part of the Bombay Presidency from Dohud to the Runn of Cutch.' In 1878 the salt duties were revised, and the necessary arrangements with the native states were made. With effect from the 1st April, 1879, the whole Customs line was abolished, with the exception of a small portion on the Indus. (Sir J. Strachey, The Finances and Public Works of India, 1869-81, London, 1882, pp. 219, 220, 225.) Great mines of rock salt are worked near the Indus.
4. Most people who know India intimately are of opinion that indirect taxation is more suitable to the circumstances of the country than direct taxation. For municipal purposes, indirect taxation, under the name of octroi, is levied by most considerable towns, and notwithstanding its inconveniences, is far less unpopular and far more productive than any form of direct taxation. The people have been accustomed to indirect taxation of divers kinds from the most remote times, and hate income tax or any other direct impost, however reasonable it may be in theory. Since 1895 the general customs duty is 5 per cent. ad valorem on commodities imported into British India by sea. (See I.G., 1907, vol. iv, chapter 8). The above remarks on the suitability of indirect taxation for India are not intended as a defence of the barbarous device of the 'Customs hedge', which was indefensible.
5. That unsound System prevailed in all departments during the early years of the nineteenth century. 'In Bengal, the monopoly of salt in one form or other dates at least from the establishment of the Board of Trade there in 1765. The strict monopoly of salt commenced in 1780, under a System of agencies. The System introduced in 1780 continued in force with occasional modifications till 1862, when the several salt agencies were gradually abolished, leaving the Supply of salt, whether by importations or excise manufacture, to private enterprise. Since then, for Bengal Proper, the supply of the condiment has been obtained chiefly by importation, but in part by private manufacture under a System of excise.' (Balfour, Cyclopaedia, 3rd ed., s.v. Salt.) At present the Salt Department is controlled by a single Commissioner with the Government of India, The fee payable for a licence to manufacture salt is fifty rupees. It is inaccurate to describe the limitation imposed on the manufacture of salt as a monopoly. Any one can sell salt, but it can be made only under licence.
6. The author.
7. The same observations, mutatis mutandis, are applicable to the magistracy of the country; and the remedy for all the great existing evils must be sought in the same means, the interposition of a body of efficient officers between the magistrate and the 'thânadârs', or present head police officers of small divisions. [W. H. S.] Much has been done to carry out this advice. The 'most efficient officers' of the inland Customs department alluded to in the text were the European or Eurasian 'uncovenanted' Collectors of Customs and their assistants. The allusion to Prince Husain and Prince Alî refers to the well-known tale in the Arabian Nights, 'The story of Prince Ahmad and the Fairy Peri-Banu'. It is omitted, I believe, from Lane's version.
Chapter 61
Peasantry of India attached to no existing Government--Want of Trees in Upper India [1]--Cause and Consequence--Wells and Groves.
What strikes one most after crossing the Chambal is, I think, the improved size and bearing of the men; they are much stouter, and more bold and manly, without being at all less respectful. They are certainly a noble peasantry, full of courage, spirit, and intelligence; and heartily do I wish that we could adopt any system that would give our Government a deep root in their affections, or link their interests inseparably with its prosperity; for, with all its defects, life, property, and character are certainly more secure, and all their advantages more freely enjoyed under our Government than under any other they have ever heard of, or that exists at present in any other part of the country. The eternal subdivision of the landed property reduces them too much to one common level, and prevents the formation of that middle class which is the basis of all that is great and good in European societies--the great vivifying spirit which animates all that is good above it in the community.[2] It is a singular fact that the peasantry, and, I may say, the landed interest of the country generally, have never been the friends of any existing government, have never considered their interests and that of their government the same; and, consequently, have never felt any desire for its success or its duration.[3]
The towns and villages all stand upon high mounds formed of the debris of former towns and villages, that have been accumulating, most of them, for thousands of years. They are for the most part mere collections of wretched hovels built of frail materials, and destined only for a brief period.
Man wants but little here below, Nor wants that little long.[4]
And certainly there is no climate in the world where man wants less than in this of India generally, and Upper India particularly. The peasant lives in the open air; and a house to him is merely a thing to eat and sleep in, and to give him shelter in the storm, which comes upon him but seldom, and never in a pitiless shape. The society of his friends he enjoys in the open air, and he never furnishes his house for their reception or for display. The peasantry of India, in consequence of living and talking so much in the open air, have all stentorian voices, which they find it exceedingly difficult to modulate to our taste when they come into our rooms.
Another thing in this part of India strikes a traveller from other parts--the want of groves of fruit-trees around the villages and along the roads. In every other part of India he can at every stage have his tents pitched in a grove of mango-trees, that defend his followers from the direct rays of the sun in the daytime, and from the cold dews at night; but in the district above Agra, he may go for ten marches without getting the shelter of a grove in one.[5] The Sikhs, the Marâthâs, the Jâts, and the Pathâns destroyed them all during the disorders attending the decline of the Muhammadan empire; and they have never been renewed, because no man could feel secure that they would be suffered to stand ten years. A Hindoo believes that his soul in the next world is benefited by the blessings and grateful feelings of those of his fellow creatures who unmolested eat the fruit and enjoy the shade of the trees he has planted during his sojourn in this world; and, unless he can feel assured that the traveller and the public in general will be permitted to do so, he can have no hope of any permanent benefit from his good work. It might as well be cut down as pass into the hands of another person who had no feeling of interest in the eternal repose of the soul of the planter. That person would himself have no advantage in the next world from giving the fruit and the shade of the trees to the public, since the prayers of those who enjoyed them would be offered for the soul of the planter, and not for his--he, therefore, takes all their advantage to himself in this world, and the planter and the public are defrauded. Our Government thought they had done enough to encourage the renewal of these groves, when by a regulation they gave to the present lessees of villages the privilege of planting them themselves, or permitting others to plant them; but where they held their leases for a term of only five years, of course they would be unwilling to plant them. They might lose their lease when the term expired, or forfeit it before; and the successor would have the land on which the trees stood, and would be able to exclude the public, if not the proprietor, from the enjoyment of any of their advantages. Our Government has, in effect, during the thirty-five years that it has held the dominion of the North-Western Provinces,[6] prohibited the planting of mango groves, while the old ones are every year disappearing. On the resumption of rent-free lands, even the ground on which the finest of these groves stand has been recklessly resumed, and the proprietors told me that they may keep the trees they have, but cannot be allowed to renew them, as the lands are become the property of Government. The lands of groves that have been the pride of families for a century and a half have been thus resumed. Government is not aware of the irreparable mischief they do the country they govern by such measures.[7]
On my way back from Meerut, after the conversation already related with the farmer of a small village (ante, chapter 58, text at [7]), my tents were one day pitched, in the month of December, amidst some very fine garden cultivation in the district of Alîgarh;[8] and in the evening I walked out as usual to have some talk with the peasantry. I came to a neighbouring well at which four pair of bullocks were employed watering the surrounding fields of wheat for the market, and vegetables for the families of the cultivators. Four men were employed at the well, and two more in guiding the water into the little embanked squares into which they divide their fields.
I soon discovered that the most intelligent of the four was a Jât; and I had a good deal of conversation with him as he stood landing the leather buckets, as the two pair of bullocks on his side of the well drew them to the top, a distance of forty cubits from the surface of the water beneath.
'Who built this well?' I began.
'It was built by one of my ancestors, six generations ago.'
'How much longer will it last?'
'Ten generations more, I hope; for it is now just as good as when first made. It is of 'pakkâ' bricks without mortar cement.'[9]
'How many waterings do you give?'
'If there should be no rain, we shall require to give the land six waterings, as the water is sweet; had it been brackish four would do. Brackish water is better for wheat than sweet water; but it is not so good for vegetables or sugar-cane.'
'How many "bîghâs" are watered from this well?'
'We water twenty "bîghâs", or one hundred and five "jarîbs", from this well.'[10]
'And you pay the Government how much?'
'One hundred rupees, at the rate of five rupees the bîghâ. But only the five immediately around the well are mine, the rest belong to others.'
'But the well belongs to you; and I suppose you get from the proprietors of the other fifteen something for your water?'
'Nothing. There is more water for my five bîghâs, and I give them what they require gratis; they acknowledge that it is a gift from me, and that is all I want.'
'And what does the land beyond the range of your water of the same quality pay?'
'It pays at the rate of two rupees the bîghâ, and it is with difficulty that they can be made to pay that. Water, sir, is a great thing, and with that and manure we get good crops from the land.'[11]
'How many returns of the seed?'
'From these twenty bîghâs with six waterings, and cross ploughing, and good manure, we contrive to get twenty returns; that is, if God is pleased with us and blesses our efforts.'
'And you maintain your family comfortably out of the return from your five?'
'If they were mine I could; but we had two or three bad seasons seven years ago, and I was obliged to borrow eighty rupees from our banker at 24 per cent., for the subsistence of my family. I have hardly been able to pay him the interest with all I can earn by my labour, and I now serve him upon two rupees a month.'
'But that is not enough to maintain you and your family?'
'No; but he only requires my services for half the day, and during the other half I work with others to get enough for them.'
'And when do you expect to pay off your debt?'
'God only knows; if I exert myself, and keep a good "nîyat" (pure mind or intentions), he will enable me or my children to do so some day or other. In the meantime he has my five bîghâs of land in mortgage, and I serve him in the cultivation.'
'But under those misfortunes, you could surely venture to demand something from the proprietors of the other fifteen bîghâs for the water of your well?'
'Never, sir; it would be said all over the country that such an one sold God's water for his neighbours' fields, and I should be ashamed to show my face. Though poor, and obliged to work hard, and serve others, I have still too much pride for that.'
'How many bullocks are required for the tillage of these twenty bîghâs watered from your well?'
'These eight bullocks do all the work; they are dear now. This was purchased the other day on the death of the old one, for twenty-six rupees. They cost about fifty rupees a pair--the late famine has made them dear.'[12]
'What did the well cost in making?'
'I have heard that it cost about one hundred and twenty rupees; it would cost about that sum to make one of this kind in the present day, not more.'
'How long have the families of your caste been settled in these parts?'
'About six or seven generations; the country had before been occupied by a peasantry of the Kalâr caste. Our ancestors came, built up mud fortifications, dug wells, and brought the country under cultivation; it had been reduced to a waste; for a long time we were obliged to follow the plough with our swords by our sides, and our friends around us with their matchlocks in their hand, and their matches lighted.'
'Did the water in your well fail during the late seasons of drought?'
'No, sir, the water of this well never fails.'
'Then how did bad seasons affect you?'
'My bullocks all died one after the other from want of fodder, and I had not the means to till my lands; subsistence became dear, and to maintain my family, I was obliged to contract the debt for which my lands are now mortgaged. I work hard to get them back, and, if I do not succeed, my children will, I hope, with the blessing of God.'[13]
The next morning I went on to Kâkâ, fifteen miles; and finding tents, people, and cattle, without a tree to shelter them, I was much pleased to see in my neighbourhood a plantation of mango and other fruit-trees. It had, I was told, been planted only three years ago by Hîrâman and Môtîrâm, and I sent for them, knowing that they would be pleased to have their good work noticed by any European gentleman. The trees are now covered with cones of thatch to shelter them from the frost. The merchants came, evidently much pleased, and I had a good deal of talk with them.
'Who planted this new grove?'
'We planted it three years ago.'
'What did your well cost you, and how many trees have you?'
'We have about four hundred trees, and the well has cost us two hundred rupees, and will cost us two hundred more.'
'How long will you require to water them?'
'We shall require to water the mango and other large trees ten or twelve years; but the orange, pomegranate, and other small trees will always require watering.'
'What quantity of ground do the trees occupy?'
'They occupy twenty-two "bîghâs" of one hundred and five "jarîbs". We place them all twelve yards from each other, that is, the large trees; and the small ones we plant between them.'
'How did you get the land?'
'We were many years trying in vain to get a grant from the Government through the collector; at last we got him to certify on paper that, if the landholder would give us land to plant our grove upon, the Government would have no objection. We induced the landholder, who is a constituent of ours, to grant us the land; and we made our well, and planted our trees.'
'You have done a good thing; what reward do you expect?'
'We hope that those who enjoy the shade, the water, and the fruit, will think kindly of us when they are gone. The names of the great men who built the castles, palaces, and tombs at Delhi and Agra have been almost all forgotten, because no one enjoys any advantage from them; but the names of those who planted the few mango groves we see are still remembered and blessed by all who eat of their fruit, sit in their shade, and drink of their water, from whatever part of the world they come. Even the European gentlemen remember their names with kindness; indeed, it was at the suggestion of a European gentleman, who was passing this place many years ago, and talking with us as you are now, that we commenced this grove. "Look over this plain," said he, "it has been all denuded of the fine groves with which it was, no doubt, once studded; though it is tolerably well cultivated, the traveller finds no shelter in it from the noonday sun--even the birds seem to have deserted you, because you refuse them the habitations they find in other parts of India." We told him that we would have the grove planted, and we have done so; and we hope God will bless our undertaking.'
'The difficulty of getting land is, I suppose, the reason why more groves are not planted, now that property is secure?'
'How could men plant without feeling secure of the land they planted upon, and when Government would not guarantee it? The landholder could guarantee it only during the five years of lease;[14] and, if at the end of that time Government should transfer the lease of the estate to another, the land of the grove would be transferred with it. We plant not for worldly or immediate profits, but for the benefit of our souls in the next world--for the prayers of those who may derive benefit from our works when we are gone. Our landholders are good men, and will never resume the lands they have given us; and if the lands be sold at auction by Government, or transferred to others, we hope the certificate of the collector will protect us from his grasp.'[15]
'You like your present Government, do you not?'
'We like it much. There has never been a Government that gave so much security to life and property; all we want is a little more of public service, and a little more of trade; but we have no cause to complain; it is our own fault if we are not happy.'
'But I have been told that the people find the returns from the soil diminishing, and attribute it to the perjury that takes place in our courts occasionally.'
'That, sir, is no doubt true; there has been a manifest falling off in the returns; and people everywhere think that you make too much use of the Korân and the Ganges water in your courts. God does not like to hear lies told upon one or other, and we are apt to think that we are all punished for the sins of those who tell them. May we ask, sir, what office you hold?'
'It is my office to do the work which God assigns to me in this world.'
'The work of God, sir, is the greatest of all works, and those are fortunate who are chosen to do it.'
Their respect for me evidently increased when they took me for a clergyman. I was dressed in black.
'In the first place, it is my duty to tell you that God does not punish the innocent for the guilty, and that the perjury in courts has nothing to do with the diminution of returns from the soil. Where you apply water and manure, and alternate your crops, you always get good returns, do you not?'
'Very good returns; but we have had several bad seasons that have carried away the greater part of our population; but a small portion of our lands can be irrigated for want of wells, and we had no rain for two or three years, or hardly any in due season; and it was this deficiency of rain which the people thought a chastisement from heaven.'
'But the wells were not dried up, were they?'
'No.'
'And the people whose fields they watered had good returns, and high prices for produce?'
'Yes, they had; but their cattle died for want of food, for there was no grass any where to be found.'
'Still they were better off than those who had no wells to draw water from for their fields; and the only way to provide against such evils in future is to have a well for every field. God has given you the fields, and he has given you the water; and when it does not come from the clouds, you must draw it from your wells.'[16]
'True, sir, very true; but the people are very poor, and have not the means to form the wells they require.'
'And if they borrow the money from you, you charge them with interest?'
'From one to two per cent. a month according to their character and circumstances; but interest is very often merely nominal, and we are in most cases glad to get back the principal alone.'[17]
'And what security have you for the land of your grove in case the landholder should change his mind, or die and leave sons not so well disposed.'
'In the first place, we hold his bonds for a debt of nine thousand rupees which he owes us, and which we have no hopes of his ever paying. In the next, we have on stamped paper his deed of gift, in which he declares that he has given us the land, and that he and his heirs for ever shall be bound to make good the rents, should Government sell the estate for arrears of revenue. We wanted him to write this document in the regular form of a deed of sale; but he said that none of his ancestors had ever yet sold their lands, and that he would not be the first to disgrace his family, or record their disgrace on stamped paper--it should, he was resolved, be a deed of gift.'
'But, of course, you prevailed upon him to take the price?'
'Yes, we prevailed upon him to take two hundred rupees for the land, and got his receipt for the same; indeed, it is so mentioned in the deed of gift; but still the landlord, who is a near relation of the late chief of Hatrâs, would persist in having the paper made out as a deed, not of sale, but of gift. God knows whether, after all, our grove will be secure--we must run the risk now we have begun upon it.'
Notes:
1. This phrase is misleading. There is no want of trees in Upper India generally; only certain limited areas are ill wooded. Most of the districts in the plains of the Ganges and Jumna are well wooded.
2. This is a favourite doctrine of the author, often reiterated. The absence of a powerful middle class is a characteristic, not of India only, but of all Oriental despotisms, and the subdivision of landed property is only one of the causes of the non-existence of such a class.
3. This is quite true. The rural population want two things, first a light assessment, secondly the minimum of official interference, They do not care a straw who the ruler is, and they like best that ruler, be his name or nationality what it may, who worries them least, and takes least money from them.
4. Goldsmith, 'The Hermit' (in chapter 8 of The Vicar of Wakefield).
5. Groves are still scarce in the Agra country, but much planting has been done on the roads.
6. Gorakhpur, Azamgarh, and some other districts, forming half of the old province of Oudh, ceded by the ruler of Oudh in 1801, were long known as the Ceded Provinces. The western districts of the North- Western Provinces, known as the Conquered Provinces, were taken from the Marâthâs in 1803-5. The Province of Benares became British territory in 1775. The hill districts of the Kumaun Division were annexed in 1816, at the close of the war with Nepal. All the regions named are now included in the Agra Province of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, in which the editor served for twenty-nine years.
7. The author's remarks are not readily intelligible to readers unversed in the technicalities of Indian revenue administration. The author writes on the assumption that Government was the proprietor of the soil. While he was writing, the settlements under Regulation IX of 1833 were in progress. Those settlements, or revenue contracts, were ordinarily sanctioned for periods of thirty years, and the landholders, whom the author calls 'lessees', have gradually changed into 'proprietors', with full power over their land, subject only to the State lien for the 'land revenue' (Crown rent, or State share of the produce), and to the laws of inheritance and succession. The 'resumption of rent-free lands' simply means the subjection of those lands to the payment of 'land revenue'. It is inaccurate to say that the lands are become 'the property of Government' by reason of their being assessed. Even when land generally was regarded as the property of the State, and the landholders were considered to be only lessees, no objection would have been made to the planting of groves if payment of the 'land revenue' had been continued for the planted area as for cultivated land. Now that landholders have been recognized as proprietors, there is nothing to prevent them from planting as much land as they like with trees, although the State has not always been willing to exempt the whole planted area from assessment. No one ever objected to the renewal of trees except on the ground that the area under trees might be excluded from assessment. For many years past the Government of India has been most anxious to encourage tree- planting, and has sanctioned liberal rules respecting the exemption of grove land from assessment to 'land revenue', or 'rent', as the author calls it. The Government of the United Provinces certainly is not now liable to reproach for indifference to the value of groves. Enormous progress in the planting of road avenues has also been made. The deficiency of trees in the country about Agra is partly due to nature, much of the ground being cut up by ravines, and unfavourable for planting.
8. The Alîgarh district lies to the north and east of the Mathurâ district. The fort of Alîgarh is fifty-five miles north of Agra, and eighty-four miles south-east of Delhi.
9. 'pakkâ' here means 'burned in a kiln', as distinguished from 'sun- dried'.
10. The 'bîghâ' is the unit of superficial land measure, varying, but often taken as five-eighths of an acre. The 'jarîb' is a smaller measure.
11. The rules now in force require assessing officers to make allowance for permanent improvements, such as the well described in the text, so as to give the fair benefit of the improvement to the maker. In the early settlements this important matter was commonly neglected.
12. Tolerable bullocks, fit for use at the well and in the plough, would now cost much more. This conversation appears to have taken place in the year 1839, The famine alluded to is that of 1837-8.
13. This conversation gives a very vivid and truthful picture of rural life in Northern India. Most revenue officers have held similar conversations with rustics, but the author is almost the only writer on Indian affairs who has perceived that exact notes of casual chats in the fields would be found interesting and valuable.
14. The early settlements were made for short terms.
15. The certificate would not be of much avail in a civil court.
16. The Alîgarh district is now irrigated by canals.
17. This is the lender's view of his business; the borrowers might have a different story.
Chapter 62
Public Spirit of the Hindoos--Tree Cultivation and Suggestions for extending it.
I may here be permitted to introduce as something germane to the matter of the foregoing chapter a recollection of Jubbulpore, although we are now far past that locality.
My tents are pitched where they have often been before, on the verge of a very large and beautiful tank in a fine grove of mango-trees, and close to a handsome temple. There are more handsome temples and buildings for accommodation on the other side of the tank, but they are gone sadly out of repair. The bank all round this noble tank is beautifully ornamented by fine banyan and pîpal trees, between which and the water's edge intervene numerous clusters of the graceful bamboo. These works were formed about eighty years ago by a respectable agricultural capitalist who resided at this place, and died about twenty years after they were completed. No relation of his can now be found in the district, and not one in a thousand of those who drink of the water or eat of the fruit knows to whom he is indebted. There are round the place some beautiful 'bâolîs', or large wells with flights of stone steps from the top to the water's edge, imbedded in clusters of beautiful trees. They were formed about the same time for the use of the public by men whose grandchildren have descended to the grade of cultivators of the soil, or belted attendants upon the present native collectors, without the means of repairing any of the injury which time is inflicting upon these magnificent works. Three or four young pîpal-trees have begun to spread their delicate branches and pale green leaves rustling in the breeze from the dome of this fine temple; which these infant Herculeses hold in their deadly grasp and doom to inevitable destruction. Pigeons deposit the seeds of the pîpal-tree, on which they chiefly feed, in the crevices of buildings.
No Hindoo dares, and no Christian or Muhammadan will condescend, to lop off the heads of these young trees, and if they did, it would only put off the evil and inevitable day; for such are the vital powers of their roots, when they have once penetrated deeply into a building, that they will send out their branches again, cut them off as often as you may, and carry on their internal attack with undiminished vigour.[1] No wonder that superstition should have consecrated this tree, delicate and beautiful as it is, to the gods. The palace, the castle, the temple, and the tomb, all those works which man is most proud to raise to spread and to perpetuate his name, crumble to dust beneath her withering grasp. She rises triumphant over them all in her lofty beauty, bearing high in air amidst her light green foliage fragments of the wreck she has made, to show the nothingness of man's greatest efforts.
While sitting at my tent-door looking out upon this beautiful sheet of water, and upon all the noble works around me, I thought of the charge, so often made against the people of this fine land, of the total want of public spirit among them, by those who have spent their Indian days in the busy courts of law, and still more busy commercial establishments of our great metropolis.
If by the term public spirit be meant a disposition on the part of individuals to sacrifice their own enjoyments, or their own means of enjoyment for the common good, there is perhaps no people in the world among whom it abounds so much as among the people of India. To live in the grateful recollections of their countrymen for benefits conferred upon them in great works of ornament and utility is the study of every Hindoo of rank and property.[2] Such works tend, in his opinion, not only to spread and perpetuate his name in this world, but, through the good wishes and prayers of those who are benefited by them, to secure the favour of the Deity in the next.
According to their notions, every drop of rain-water or dew that falls to the ground from the green leaf of a fruit-tree, planted by them for the common good, proves a refreshing draught for their souls in the next [world]. When no descendant remains to pour the funeral libations in their name, the water from the trees they have planted for the public good is destined to supply its place. Everything judiciously laid out to promote the happiness of their fellow creatures will in the next world be repaid to them tenfold by the Deity.
In marching over the country in the hot season, we every morning find our tents pitched on the green sward amid beautiful groves of fruit- trees, with wells of 'pakkâ' (brick or stone) masonry, built at great expense, and containing the most delicious water; but how few of us ever dream of asking at whose cost the trees that afford us and our followers such agreeable shade were planted, or the wells that afford us such copious streams of fine water in the midst of dry, arid plains were formed! We go on enjoying all the advantages which arise from the noble public spirit that animates the people of India to benevolent exertions, without once calling in question the truth of the assertion of our metropolitan friends that 'the people of India have no public spirit'.
Mânmôr, a respectable merchant of Mirzapore, who traded chiefly in bringing cotton from the valley of the Nerbudda and Southern India through Jubbulpore to Mirzapore, and in carrying back sugar and spices in return, learning how much travellers on this great road suffered from the want of water near the Hiliyâ pass, under the Vindhya range of hills, commenced a work to remedy the evil in 1822. Not a drop of wholesome water was to be found within ten miles of the bottom of the pass, where the laden bullocks were obliged to rest during the hot months, when the greatest thoroughfare always took place. Mânmôr commenced a large tank and garden, and had laid out about twenty thousand rupees in the work, when he died. His son, Lalû Mânmôr, completed the work soon after his father's death, at a cost of eighty thousand rupees more, that travellers might enjoy all the advantages that his good old father had benevolently intended for them. The tank is very large, always full of fine water even in the driest part of the dry season, with flights of steps of cut freestone from the water's edge to the top all round. A fine garden and shrubbery, with temples and buildings for accommodations, are attached, with an establishment of people to attend and keep them in order.[3]
All the country around this magnificent work was a dreary solitude-- there was not a human habitation within many miles on any side. Tens of thousands who passed this road every year were blessing the name of the man who had created it where it was so much wanted, when the new road from the Nerbudda to Mirzapore was made by the British Government to descend some ten miles to the north of it. As many miles were saved in the distance by the new cut, and the passage down made comparatively easy at great cost, travellers forsook the Hiliyâ road, and poor Mânmôr's work became comparatively useless. I brought the work to the notice of Lord William Bentinck, who, in passing Mirzapore some time after, sent for the son, and conferred upon him a rich dress of honour, of which he has ever since been extremely proud.[4]
Hundreds of works like this are undertaken every year for the benefit of the public by benevolent and unostentatious individuals, who look for their reward, not in the applause of newspapers and public meetings, but in the grateful prayers and good wishes of those who are benefited by them; and in the favour of the Deity in the next world, for benefits conferred upon his creatures in this.[5]
What the people of India want is not public spirit, for no men in the world have more of it than the Hindoos, but a disposition on the part of private individuals to combine their efforts and means in effecting great objects for the public good. With this disposition they will be, in time, inspired under our rule, when the enemies of all settled governments may permit us to divert a little of our intellect and our revenue from the duties of war to those of peace.[6]
In the year 1829, while I held the civil charge of the district of Jubbulpore, in this valley of the Nerbudda, I caused an estimate to be made of the public works of utility and ornament it contained. The population of the district at that time amounted to 500,000 souls, distributed among 4,053 occupied towns, villages, and hamlets. There were 1,000 villages more which had formerly been occupied, but were then deserted. There were 2,288 tanks, 209 'bâolîs', or large wells with flights of steps extending from the top down to the water when in its lowest stage; 1,560 wells lined with brick and stone, cemented with lime, but without stairs; 860 Hindoo temples, and 22 Muhammadan mosques. The estimated cost of these works in grain at the present price, had the labour been paid in kind at the ordinary rate, was R86,66,043 (866,604 pounds sterling).[7]
The labourer was estimated to be paid at the rate of about two-thirds the quantity of corn he would get in England if paid in kind, and corn sells here at about one-third the price it fetches in average seasons in England. In Europe, therefore, these works, supposing the labour equally efficient, would have cost at least four times the sum here estimated; and such works formed by private individuals for the public good, without any view whatever to return in profits, indicate a very high degree of public spirit.
The whole annual rent of the lands of this district amounts to R650,000 (65,000 pounds sterling), that is, 500,000 demandable by the Government, and 150,000 by those who hold the lands at lease immediately under Government, over and above what may be considered as the profits of their stock as farmers. These works must, therefore, have cost about thirteen times the amount of the annual rent of the whole of the lands of the district, or the whole annual rent for above thirteen years.[8]
But I have not included the groves of mango and tamarind, and other fine trees with which the district abounds. Two-thirds of the towns and villages are imbedded in fine groves of these trees, mixed with the banyan (Ficus Indica) and the pîpal (Ficus religiosa). I am sorry they were not numbered; but I should estimate them at three thousand, and the outlay upon a mango grove is, on an average, about four hundred rupees.
The groves of fruit-trees planted by individuals for the use of the public, without any view to a return in profit, would in this district, according to this estimate, have cost twelve lâkhs [12,00,000] more, or about twice the amount of the annual rent of the whole of the lands. It should be remarked that the whole of these works had been formed under former governments. Ours was established in the year 1817.[9]
The Upper Doâb and the Delhi Territories were denuded of their trees in the wars that attended the decline and fall of the Muhammadan empire, and the rise and progress of the Sikhs, Jâts, and Marâthâs in that quarter. These lawless freebooters soon swept all the groves from the face of every country they occupied with their troops, and they never attempted to renew them or encourage the renewal. We have not been much more sparing; and the finest groves of fruit-trees have everywhere been recklessly swept down by our barrack-masters to furnish fuel for their brick-kilns; and I am afraid little or no encouragement is given for planting others to supply their place in those parts of India where they are most wanted.
We have a regulation authorizing the lessee of a village to plant a grove in his grounds, but where the settlements of the land-revenue have been for short periods, as in all Upper and Central India, this authority is by no means sufficient to induce them to invest their property in such works. It gives no sufficient guarantee that the lessee for the next settlement shall respect a grant made by his predecessors; and every grove of mango-trees requires outlay and care for at least ten years. Though a man destines the fruit, the shade, and the water for the use of the public, he requires to feel that it will be held for the public in his name, and by his children and descendants, and never be exclusively appropriated by any man in power for his own use.
If the lands were still to belong to the lessee of the estate under Government, and the trees only to the planter and his heirs, he to whom the land belonged might very soon render the property in the trees of no value to the planter or his heirs.[10]
If Government wishes the Upper Doâb, the Delhi, Mathurâ, and Agra districts again enriched and embellished with mango groves, they will not delay to convey this feeling to the hundreds, nay, thousands, who would be willing to plant them upon a single guarantee that the lands upon which the trees stand shall be considered to belong to them and their heirs as long as these trees stand upon them.[11] That the land, the shade, the fruit, and the water will be left to the free enjoyment of the public we may take for granted, since the good which the planter's soul is to derive from such a work in the next world must depend upon their being so; and all that is required to be stipulated in such grants is that mango tamarind, pîpal, or 'bar' (i.e. banyan) trees, at the rate of twenty-five the English acre, shall be planted and kept up in every piece of land granted for the purpose; and that a well of 'pakkâ' masonry shall be made for the purpose of watering them, in the smallest, as well as in the largest, piece of ground granted, and kept always in repair.
If the grantee fulfil the conditions, he ought, in order to cover part of the expense, to be permitted to till the land under the trees till they grow to maturity and yield their fruit; if he fails, the lands, having been declared liable to resumption, should be resumed. The person soliciting such grants should be required to certify in his application that he had already obtained the sanction of the present lessee of the village in which he wishes to have his grove, and for this sanction he would, of course, have to pay the full value of the land for the period of his lease. When his lease expires, the land in which the grove is planted would be excluded from the assessment; and when it is considered that every good grove must cost the planter more than fifty times the annual rent of the land, Government may be satisfied that they secure the advantage to their people at a very cheap rate.[12]
Over and above the advantage of fruit, water, and shade for the public, these groves tend much to secure the districts that are well studded with them from the dreadful calamities that in India always attend upon deficient falls of rain in due season. They attract the clouds, and make them deposit their stores in districts that would not otherwise be blessed with them; and hot and dry countries denuded of their trees, and by that means deprived of a great portion of that moisture to which they had been accustomed, and which they require to support vegetation, soon become dreary and arid wastes. The lighter particles, which formed the richest portion of their soil, blow off, and leave only the heavy arenaceous portion; and hence, perhaps, those sandy deserts in which are often to be found the signs of a population once very dense.
In the Mauritius, the rivers were found to be diminishing under the rapid disappearance of the woods in the interior, when Government had recourse to the measure of preventing further depredations, and they soon recovered their size.
The clouds brought up from the southern ocean by the south-east trade wind are attracted, as they pass over the island, by the forests in the interior, and made to drop their stores in daily refreshing showers. In many other parts of the world governments have now become aware of this mysterious provision of nature; and have adopted measures to take advantage of it for the benefit of the people; and the dreadful sufferings to which the people of those of our districts, which have been the most denuded of their trees, have been of late years exposed from the want of rain in due season, may, perhaps, induce our Indian Government to turn its thoughts to the subject.[13]
The province of Mâlwâ, which is bordered by the Nerbudda on the south, Gujarât on the west, Râjputâna on the north, and Allahabad on the east, is said never to have been visited by a famine; and this exemption from so great a calamity must arise chiefly from its being so well studded with hills and groves. The natives have a couplet, which, like all good couplets on rural subjects, is attributed to Sahadêo, one of the five demigod brothers of the Mahâbhârata, to this effect: 'If it does not thunder on such a night, you, father, must go to Mâlwâ, and I to Gujarât', meaning, 'The rains will fail us here, and we must go to those quarters where they never fail'[14]
Notes:
1. The Archaeological Survey is engaged in unceasing battle with the pîpal seedlings.
2. This proposition is too general.
3. The Hiliyâ, or Haliyâ, Pass is near the town of the same name in the Mirzâpur district, thirty-one miles south-west of Mirzâpur. A bilingual inscription, in English and Hindî, on a large slab on the bank of the river, records the capture of the fort of Bhôpârî in 1811 by the 21st Regiment Native Infantry. The tank described in the text is at Dibhôr, twelve miles south of Haliyâ, and is 430 feet long by 352 broad. The full name of the builder is Srîmân Nâyak Mânmôr, who was the head of the Banjâra merchants of Mirzâpur. The inscription on his temple is dated 23 February, 1825, A.D. 'I suppose', remarks Cunningham, 'that the vagrant instinct of the old Banjâra preferred a jungle site. No doubt he got the ground cheap; and from this vantage point he was able to supply Mirzâpur with both wood and charcoal.' (A.S.R., vol. xxi, pp. 121-5, pl. xxxi.)
4. The new road passes through the Katrâ Pass. The pass via Dibhôr and Haliyâ, which the author calls the Hiliyâ Pass, is properly called the Kerahi (Kerâi) Pass. Both old and new roads are now little used. The construction of railways has altogether changed the course of trade, and Cawnpore has risen on the ruins of Mirzâpur. Lalû, Nâyak's 'grandson, died in comparative obscurity some years ago, and only a few female relatives remain to represent the family--a striking example, if one were needed, of the instability of Oriental fortunes.' (A.S.R., vol. xxi, p. 124, quoting Gazetteer.)
5. Within a few miles of Gosalpur, at the village of Talwâ, which stands upon the old high road leading to Mirzapore, is a still more magnificent tank with one of the most beautiful temples in India, all executed two or three generations ago at the expense of two or three lakhs of rupees for the benefit of the public, by a very worthy man, who became rich in the service of the former Government. His descendants, all save one, now follow the plough; and that one has a small rent-free village held on condition of appropriating the rents to the repair of the tank. [W. H. S.]
The name Talwâ is only the rustic way of pronouncing 'tâl', meaning the tank. Gosalpur is nineteen miles north-east of Jabalpur. Two or three lakhs of rupees were then (in eighteenth century) worth about 22,000 pounds to 33,000 pounds sterling.
6. India, except on the frontiers, has been at peace since 1858, and much revenue has been spent on the duties of peace, but the power of combination for public objects has developed among the people to a less degree than the author seems to have expected, though some development undoubtedly has taken place.
7. In the original edition these statistics are given in words. Figures have been used in this edition as being more readily grasped. The Central Provinces Gazetteer (1870) gives the following figures: Area of district, 4,261 square miles; population, 620,201; villages, 2,707; wells in use, 5,515. The Gazetteer figures apparently include wells of all kinds, and do not reckon hamlets separately. Wells are, of course, an absolute necessity, and their construction could not be avoided in a country occupied by a fixed population. The number of temples and mosques was very small for so large a population. Many of the tanks, too, are indispensably necessary for watering the cattle employed in agriculture. The 'bâolîs' may fairly be reckoned as the fruit of the public spirit of individuals. This chapter is a reprint of a paper entitled 'On the Public Spirit of the Hindoos'. See Bibliography, ante, No. 10.
8. The C.P. Gazetteer (1870) states that in 1868-9 the land-revenue was R5,70,434, as compared with R500,000 in the author's time. It has since been largely enhanced. The lessees (zamîndârs) have now become proprietors, and the land-revenue, according to the rule in force for many years past, should not exceed half the estimated profit rental. The early settlements were made in accordance with the theory of native Governments that the land is the property of the State, and that the lessees are entitled only to subsistence, with a small percentage as payment for the trouble of collection from the actual cultivators. The author's estimate gives the zamîndârs only 15/80ths, or 3/16ths of the profit rental.
9. The people of the Jubbulpore district must have been very different from those of the rest of India if they planted their groves solely for the public benefit. The editor has never known the fruit, not to mention the timber and firewood, of a grove to be available for the use of the general public. Universal custom allows all comers to use the shade of any established grove, but the fruit is always jealousy guarded and gathered by the owners. Even one tree is often the property of many sharing, and disputes about the division of mangoes and other fruits are extremely frequent. The framing of a correct record of rights in trees is one of the most embarrassing tasks of a revenue officer.
10. Under the modern System it often happens that the land belongs to one party, and the trees to another. Disputes, of course, occur, but, as a rule, the rights of the owner of the trees are not interfered with by the owner of the land. In thousands of such cases both parties exercise their rights without friction.
11. This sentence shows clearly how remote from the author's mind was the idea of private property in land in India. Government has long since parted with the power of giving grants such as the author recommends. The upper Doâb districts of Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, and Sahâranpur now have plenty of groves.
12. The cost of establishing a grove varies much according to circumstances, of which the distance of water from the surface is the most important. Where water is distant, the cost of constructing and working a well is very high. Where water is near, these items of expense are small, because the roots of the trees soon reach a moist stratum, and can dispense with irrigation.
13. The author, in his appreciation of the value of arboriculture and forest conservancy, was far in advance of his Anglo-Indian contemporaries. A modern meteorologist might object to some of his phraseology, but the substance of his remarks is quite sound. His statement of the ways in which trees benefit climate is incomplete. One important function performed by the roots of trees is the raising of water from the depths below the surface, to be dispersed by the leaves in the form of vapour. Trees act beneficially in many other ways also, which it would be tedious to specify.
The Indian Government long remained blind to the importance of the duty of saving the country from denudation. The first forest conservancy establishments were organized in 1852 for Madras and Burma, and, by Act vii of 1865, the Forest Department was established on a legal basis. Its operations have since been largely extended, and trained foresters are now sent out each year to India. The Department at the present time controls many thousand square miles of forest. The reader may consult the article 'Forests' in Balfour, Cyclopaedia, 3rd ed., and sundry official reports for further details.
A yearly grant for arboriculture is now made to every district. Thousands of miles of roads have been lined with trees, and multitudes of groves have been established by both Government and private individuals. The author was himself a great tree-planter. In a letter dated 15th December, 1844, he describes the avenue which he had planted along the road from Maihar to Jubbulpore in 1829 and 1830, and another, eighty-six miles long, from Jhânsî Ghât on the Nerbudda to Châka. The trees planted were banyan, pîpal, mango, tamarind, and jâman (Eugenia jambolana). He remarks that these trees will last for centuries.
14. 'In 1899-1900 Mâlwâ suffered from a severe famine, such as had not visited this favoured spot for more than thirty years. The people were unused to, and quite unprepared for, this calamity, the distress being aggravated by the great influx of immigrants from Râjputâna, who had hitherto always been sure of relief in this region, of which the fertility is proverbial. In 1903 a new calamity appeared in the shape of plague, which has seriously reduced the agricultural population in some districts' (I.G., 1908, xvii. 105).
Chapter 63
Cities and Towns, formed by Public Establishments, disappear as Sovereigns and Governors change their Abodes.
On the 17th and 18th,[1] we went on twenty miles to Palwal,[2] which stands upon an immense mound, in some places a hundred feet high, formed entirely of the debris of old buildings. There are an immense number of fine brick buildings in ruins, but not one of brick or stone at present inhabited. The place was once evidently under the former government the seat of some great public establishments, which, with their followers and dependants, constituted almost the entire population. The occasion which keeps such establishments at a place no sooner passes away than the place is deserted and goes to ruin as a matter of course. Such is the history of Nineveh, Babylon,[3] and all cities which have owed their origin and support entirely to the public establishments of the sovereign--any revolution that changed the seat of government depopulated a city.
Sir Thomas Roe, the ambassador of James the First of England to the court of Delhi during the reign of Jahângîr, passing through some of the old capital cities of Western India, then deserted and in ruins, writes to the Archbishop of Canterbury: 'I know not by what policy the Emperors seek the ruin of all the ancient cities which were nobly built, but now be desolate and in rubbish. It must arise from a wish to destroy all the ancient cities in order that there might appear nothing great to have existed before their time.'[4] But these cities, like all which are supported in the same manner, by the residence of a court and its establishments, become deserted as the seat of dominion is changed. Nineveh, built by Ninus out of the spoils he brought back from the wide range of his conquests, continued to be the residence of the court and the principal seat of its military establishments for thirteen centuries to the reign of Sardanapalus. During the whole of this time it was the practice of the sovereigns to collect from all the provinces of the empire their respective quotas of troops, and to canton them within the city for one year, at the expiration of which they were relieved by fresh troops.' In the last years of Sardanapalus, four provinces of the empire, Media, Persia, Babylonia, and Arabia, are said to have furnished a quota of four hundred thousand; and, in the rebellion which closed his reign, these troops were often beaten by those from the other provinces of the empire, which could not have been much less in number. The successful rebel, Arbaces, transferred the court and his own appendages to its capital, and Nineveh became deserted, and for more than eighteen centuries lost to the civilized world.[5]
Babylon in the same manner; and Susa, Ecbatana, Persepolis, and Seleucia, all, one after the other, became deserted as sovereigns changed their residence, and with it the seats of their public establishments, which alone supported them. Thus Thebes became deserted for Memphis, Memphis for Alexandria, and Alexandria for Cairo, as the sovereigns of Egypt changed theirs; and thus it has always been in India, where cities have been almost all founded on the same bases--the residence of princes, and their public establishments, civil, military, or ecclesiastical.
The city of Kanauj, on the Ganges, when conquered by Mahmûd of Ghaznî,[6] is stated by the historians of the conqueror to have contained a standing army of five hundred thousand infantry, with a due proportion of cavalry and elephants, thirty thousand shops for the sale of 'pân' alone, and sixty thousand families of opera girls.[7] The 'pân' dealers and opera girls were part and parcel of the court and its public establishments, and as much dependent on the residence of the sovereign as the civil, military, and ecclesiastical officers who ate their 'pân', and enjoyed their dancing and music; and this great city no sooner ceased to be the residence of the sovereign, the great proprietor of all the lands in the country, than it became deserted.
After the establishment of the Muhammadan dominion in India almost all the Hindoo cities, within the wide range of their conquest, became deserted as the necessary consequence, as the military establishments were all destroyed or disbanded, and the religions establishments scattered, their lands confiscated, their idols broken, and their temples either reduced to ruins in the first ebullition of fanatical zeal, or left deserted and neglected to decay from want of those revenues by which alone they had been, or could be, supported.[8] The towns and cities of the Roman empire which owed their origin to the same cause, the residence of governors and their legions or other public establishments, resisted similar shocks with more endurance, because they had most of them ceased to depend upon the causes in which they originated, and began to rest upon other bases. When destroyed by wave after wave of barbarian conquest, they were restored for the most part by the residence of church dignitaries and their establishments; and the military establishments of the new order of things, instead of remaining as standing armies about the courts of princes, dispersed after every campaign like militia, to enjoy the fruits of the lands assigned for their maintenance, when alone they could be enjoyed in the rude state to which society had been reduced--upon the lands themselves.
For some time after the Muhammadan conquest of India, that part of it which was brought effectually under the new dominion can hardly be considered to have had more than one city with its dependent towns and villages;[9] because the emperor chose to concentrate the greater part of his military establishments around the seat of his residence, and this great city became deserted whenever he thought it necessary or convenient to change that seat.
But when the emperor began to govern his distant provinces by viceroys, he was obliged to confide to them a share of his military establishments, the only public establishments which a conqueror thought it worth while to maintain; and while they moved about in their respective provinces, the imperial camp became fixed. The great officers of state, enriched by the plunder of conquered provinces, began to spend their wealth in the construction of magnificent works for private pleasure or public convenience. In time, the viceroys began to govern their provinces by means of deputies, who moved about their respective districts, and enabled their masters, the viceroys of provinces, to convert their camps into cities, which in magnificence often rivalled that of the emperor their master. The deputies themselves in time found that they could govern their respective districts from a central point; and as their camps became fixed in the chosen spots, towns of considerable magnitude rose, and sometimes rivalled the capitals of the viceroys. The Muhammadans had always a greater taste for architectural magnificence, as well in their private as in their public edifices, than the Hindoos,[10] who sought the respect and good wishes of mankind through the medium of groves and reservoirs diffused over the country for their benefit. Whenever a Muhammadan camp was converted into a town or city almost all the means of individuals were spent in the gratification of this taste. Their wealth in money and movables would be, on their death, at the mercy of their prince--their offices would be conferred on strangers; tombs and temples, canals, bridges, and caravanserais, gratuitously for the public good, would tend to propitiate the Deity, and conciliate the goodwill of mankind, and might also tend to the advancement of their children in the service of their sovereign. The towns and cities which rose upon the sites of the standing camps of the governors of provinces and districts in India were many of them as much adorned by private and public edifices as those which rose upon the standing camps of the Muhammadan conquerors of Spain.[11] Standing camps converted into towns and cities, it became in time necessary to fortify with walls against any surprise under any sudden ebullition among the conquered people; and fortifications and strong garrisons often suggested to the bold and ambitions governors of distant provinces attempts to shake off the imperial yoke.[12] That portion of the annual revenue, which had hitherto flowed in copious streams of tribute to the imperial capital, was now arrested, and made to augment the local establishments, adorn the cities, and enrich the towns of the viceroys, now become the sovereigns of independent kingdoms. The lieutenant-governors of these new sovereigns, possessed of fortified towns, in their turn often shook off the yoke of their masters in the same manner, and became in their turn the independent sovereigns of their respective districts. The whole resources of the countries subject to their rule being employed to strengthen and improve their condition, they soon became rich and powerful kingdoms, adorned with splendid cities and populous towns, since the public establishments of the sovereigns, among whom all the revenues were expended, spent all they received in the purchase of the produce of the land and labour of the surrounding country, which required no other market.
Thus the successful rebellion of one viceroy converted Southern India into an independent kingdom; and the successful rebellion, of his lieutenant-governors in time divided it into four independent kingdoms, each with a standing army of a hundred thousand men, and adorned with towns and cities of great strength and magnificence.[13] But they continued to depend upon the causes in which they originated--the public establishments of the sovereign; and when the Emperor Akbar and his successors, aided by their own [sic] intestine wars, had conquered these sovereigns, and again reduced their kingdoms to tributary provinces, almost all these cities and towns became depopulated as the necessary consequence. The public establishments were again moving about with the courts and camps of the emperor and his viceroys; and drawing in their train all those who found employment and subsistence in contributing to their efficiency and enjoyment. It was not, as our ambassador in the simplicity of his heart supposed, the disinclination of the emperors to see any other towns magnificent, save those in which they resided, which destroyed them, but their ambition to reduce all independent kingdoms to tributary provinces.
Notes:
1. January, 1836.
2. A small town, thirty-six miles south of Delhi, situated in the Gurgâon district, now included in the Panjâb, but in the author's time attached to the North-Western Provinces. The town is the chief place in the 'pargana' of the same name.
3. Nineveh is not a well-chosen example, inasmuch as its decay was due to deliberate destruction, and not to mere desertion by a sovereign. It was deliberately burned and ruined by Nabopolassar, viceroy of Babylon, and his allies, about 606 B.C. The decay of Babylon was gradual. See note post, note 5.
4. Extract from a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, dated from Ajmêr, January 29, 1616. The words immediately following 'rubbish' are 'His own [i.e. the King's] houses are of stone, handsome and uniform. His great men build not, for want of inheritance; but, as far as I have yet seen, live in tents, or in houses worse than our cottages. Yet, when the King likes, as at Agra, because it is a city erected by him, the buildings, as is reported, are fair and of carved stone.' (Pinkerton's Collection, vol. viii, p. 45.) The passage is not reprinted in the Hakluyt Society edition (vol. i, p. 122), where only extracts from the letter are given.
5. The site of Nineveh was forgotten for a period even longer than that stated by the author. Mr. Claudius Rich, the Resident at Baghdad, was the first European to make a tentative identification of Nineveh with the mounds opposite Mosal, in 1818. Real knowledge of the site and its history dates from the excavations of Botta begun in 1843, and those of Layard begun two years later. (Bonomi, Nineveh and its Palaces, 2nd ed., 1853; Layard, Nineveh and its Remains, 2 vols, 1849.) The author's account of the fall of Nineveh, based on that of Diodorus Siculus, is not in accordance with the conclusions of the best modern authorities. The destruction of the city in or about 606 B.C. was really effected some years after the death of Sardanapalus (Assur-banipal), in 625 B.C., by Nabopolassar (Nabupal- uzur), the rebel viceroy of Babylon, in alliance with Necho of Egypt, Cyaxares of Media, and the King of Armenia. The Assyrian monarch who perished in the assault was not Sardanapalus (Assur-banipal), but his son Assur-ebel-ili, or, according to Professor Sayce, a king called Saracus, After the destruction of Nineveh, Babylon became the capital of the Mesopotamian empire, and under Nebuchadrezzar (Nebuchadnezzar), son of Nabopolassar, who came to the throne in 604 B.C., attained the height of glory and renown. It was occupied by Cyrus in 539 B.C., and decayed gradually, but was still a place of importance in the time of Alexander the Great. The eponymous hero, Ninus, is of course purely mythical. The results of modern research will be found in the Encycl. Brit., 11th ed., 1910, in the articles 'Babylon' (Sayce), 'Babylonia and Assyria' (Sayce and Jastrow), and 'Nineveh' (Johns). See also, ibid., 'Cyrus' (Meyer).
6. Kanauj, now in the Farrukhâbâd district of the United Provinces, was sacked by Mahmûd of Ghaznî in January, A.D. 1019. The name of Mahmûd's capital may be spelled Ghaznih, Ghaznî, or Ghaznîn. (Raverty, in J.A.S.B., Part I, vol. lxi (1892), p. 156, note.)
7. 'Pân', the well-known Indian condiment (ante, chapter 29, note 10). 'Opera girls' is a rather whimsical rendering of the more usual phrase 'nâch (nautch) girls', or 'dancing girls'. The traditional numbers cited must not be accepted as historical facts. See V. A. Smith, 'The History of the City of Kanauj' (J.R.A.S., 1908, pp. 767-93).
8. This statement is too general. Benares, Allahabad (Prayâg), and many other important Hindoo cities, were never deserted, and continued to be populous through all vicissitudes. It is true that in most places the principal temples were desecrated or destroyed, and were frequently converted into mosques.
9. The statement is much exaggerated. The Hindoo Râjâs who paid tribute to the Sultans of Delhi often maintained considerable courts in populous towns.
10. This proposition, which is not true of Southern India at all, applies only to secular buildings in Northern India. The temples of Khajurâho, Mount Abû, and numberless other places, equal in magnificence the architecture of the Muhammadans, or, indeed, that of any people in the world.
11. The anthor's remarks seem likely to convey wrong notions. Very few of the capitals of the Muhammadan viceroys and governors were new foundations. Nearly all of them were ancient Hindoo towns adopted as convenient official residences, and enlarged and beautified by the new rulers, much of the old beauties being at the same time destroyed. Fyzabad certainly was a new foundation of the Nawâb Wazîrs of Oudh, but it lies so close to the extremely ancient city of Ajodhya that it should rather be regarded as a Muhammadan extension of that city. Lucknow occupies the site of a Hindoo city of great antiquity.
12. It would be difficult to point out an example of a Muhammadan standing camp which was first converted into an open, and then into a fortified town.
13. This abstract of the history of the Deccan, or Southern India, is not quite accurate. The Emperor, or Sultan, Muhammad bin Tughlak, after A.D. 1325, reduced the Deccan to a certain extent to submission, but the country revolted in A.D. 1347, when Hasan Gango founded the Bâhmani dynasty of Gulbarga, afterwards known as that of Bîdar. At the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, the kingdom so founded broke up into five, not four, separate states, namely, Bîjâpur, Ahmadnagar, Golconda, Berâr, and Bîdar. The Berâr state had a separate existence for about eighty-five years, and then became merged in the kingdom of Ahmadnagar.
Chapter 64
Murder of Mr. Fraser, and Execution of the Nawâb Shams-ud-dîn.
At Palwal Mr. Wilmot and Mr. Wright, who had come on business, and Mr. Gubbins, breakfasted and dined with us. They complained sadly of the solitude to which they were condemned, but admitted that they should not be able to get through half so much business were they placed at a large station, and exposed to all the temptations and distractions of a gay and extensive circle, nor feel the same interest in their duties, or sympathy with the people, as they do when thrown among them in this manner. To give young men good feelings towards the natives, the only good way is to throw them among them at those out-stations in the early part of their career, when all their feelings are fresh about them. This holds good as well with the military as the civil officer, but more especially with the latter. A young officer at an outpost with his corps, or part of it, for the first season or two, commonly lays in a store of good feeling towards his men that lasts him for life; and a young gentleman of the Civil Service lays in, in the same manner, a good store of sympathy and fellow feeling with the natives in general.[1]
Mr. Gubbins is the Magistrate and Collector of one of the three districts into which the Delhi territories are divided, and he has charge of Fîrôzpur, the resumed estate of the late Nawâb Shams-ud- dîn, which yields a net revenue of about two hundred thousand rupees a year.[2] I have already stated that this Nawâb took good care that his Mewâtî plunderers should not rob within his own estate; but he not only gave them free permission to rob over the surrounding districts of our territory, but encouraged them to do so, that he might share in their booty.[3] He was a handsome young man, and an extremely agreeable companion; but a most unprincipled and licentious character. No man who was reputed to have a handsome wife or daughter was for a moment safe within his territories. The following account of Mr. William Fraser's assassination by this Nawâb may, I think, be relied upon.[4]
The Fîrôzpur Jâgîr was one of the principalities created under the principle of Lord Cornwallis's second administration, which was to make the security of the British dominions dependent upon the divisions among the independent native chiefs upon their frontiers. The person receiving the grant or confirmation of such principality from the British Government 'pledged himself to relinquish all claims to aid, and to maintain the peace in his own possessions.'[5] Fîrôzpur was conferred by Lord Lake, in 1805, upon Ahmad Baksh, for his diplomatic services, out of the territories acquired by us west of the Jumna during the Marâthâ wars. He had been the agent on the part of the Hindoo chiefs of Alwar in attendance upon Lord Lake during the whole of that war. He was a great favourite, and his lordship's personal regard for him was thought by those chiefs to have been so favourable to their cause that they conferred upon him the 'pargana' of Lohârû in hereditary rent-free tenure.
In 1822, Ahmad Baksh declared Shams-ud-dîn, his eldest son, his heir, with the sanction of the British Government and the Râjâs of Alwar. In February, 1825, Shams-ud-dîn, at the request of his father, by a formal deed assigned over the pargana of Lohârû as a provision for his younger brothers by another mother, Amîn-ud-dîn and Ziâ-ud- dîn;[6] and in October 1826 he was finally invested by his father with the management; and the circumstance was notified to the British Government, through the Resident at Delhi, Sir Charles Metcalfe. Ahmad Baksh died in October, 1827. Disputes soon after arose between the brothers, and they expressed a desire to submit their claims to the arbitration of Sir Edward Colebrooke,[7] who had succeeded Sir Charles Metcalfe in the Residency of Delhi.[8] He referred the matter to the Supreme Government; and by their instructions, under date 11th of April, 1828, he was authorized to adjust the matter. He decided that Shams-ud-dîn should make a complete and unencumbered cession to his younger brothers of the pargana of Lohârû, without the reservation of any right of interference in the management, or of any condition of obedience to himself whatever; and that Amîn-ud-dîn should, till his younger brother came of age, pay into the Delhi treasury for him the annual sum of five thousand two hundred and ten rupees, as his half share of the net proceeds, to be there held in deposit for him; and that the estate should, from the time he came of age, be divided between them in equal shares. This award was confirmed by Government; but Sir Edward was recommended to alter it for an annual money payment to the two younger brothers, if he could do so with the consent of the parties.
The pargana was transferred, as the money payment could not be agreed upon; and in September Mr. Martin, who had succeeded Sir E. Colebrooke, proposed to Government that the pargana of Lohârû should be restored to Shams-ud-dîn in lieu of a fixed sum of twenty-six thousand rupees a year to be paid by him annually to his two younger brothers. This proposal was made on the ground that Amîn-ud-dîn could not collect the revenues from the refractory landholders (instigated, no doubt, by the emissaries of Shams-ud-dîn), and consequently could not pay his younger brother's revenue into the treasury. In calculating the annual net revenue of 10,420 rupees, 15,000 of the gross revenue had been estimated as the annual expenses of the mutual [sic] establishments of the two brothers. To the arrangement proposed by Mr. Martin the younger brothers strongly objected; and proposed in preference to make over the pargana to the British Government, on condition of receiving the net revenue, whatever might be the amount. Mr. Martin was desired by the Governor-General to effect this arrangement, should Amîn-ud-dîn appear still to wish it; but he preferred retaining the management of it in his own hands, in the hope that circumstances would improve.
Shams-ud-dîn, however, pressed his claim to the restoration of the pargana so often that it was at last, in September, 1833, insisted upon by Government, on the ground that Amîn-ud-dîn had failed to fulfil that article of the agreement which bound him to pay annually into the Delhi treasury 5,210 rupees for his younger brother, though that brother had never complained; on the contrary, lived with him on the best possible terms, and was as averse as himself to the retransfer of the pargana, on condition that they gave up their claims to a large share of the movable property of their late father, which had been already decided in their favour in the court of first instance. Mr. W. Fraser, who had succeeded to the office of Governor- General's representative in the Delhi Territories, remonstrated strongly against this measure; and wished to bring it again under the consideration of Government; on the grounds that Ziâ-ud-dîn had never made any complaint against his brother Amîn-ud-dîn for want of punctuality in the payment of his share of the net revenue after the payment of their mutual establishments; that the two brothers would be deprived by this measure of an hereditary estate to the value of sixty thousand rupees a year in perpetuity, burthened with the condition that they relinquished a suit already gained in the court of first instance, and likely to be gained in appeal, involving a sum that would of itself yield them that annual sum at the moderate interest of 6 per cent. The grounds alleged by him were not considered valid, and the pargana was made over to Shams-ud-dîn. The pargana now yields 40,000 rupees a year, and under good management may yield 70,000.
At Mr. Fraser's recommendation, Amîn-ud-dîn went himself to Calcutta, and is said to have prevailed upon the Government to take his case again into their consideration. Shams-ud-dîn had become a debauched and licentious character; and having criminal jurisdiction within his own estate, no one's wife or daughter was considered safe; for, when other means failed him, he did not scruple to employ assassins to effect his hated purposes, by removing the husband or father.[9] Mr. Fraser became so disgusted with his conduct that he would not admit him into his house when he came to Delhi, though he had, it may be said, brought him up as a child of his own; indeed he had been as fond of him as he could be of a child of his own; and the boy used to spend the greater part of his time with him. One day after Mr. Fraser had refused to admit the Nawâb to his house. Colonel Skinner, having some apprehensions that by such slights he might be driven to seek revenge by assassination, is said to have remonstrated with Mr. Fraser as his oldest and most valued friend.[10] Mr. Fraser told him that he considered the Nawâb to be still but a boy, and the only way to improve him was to treat him as such. It was, however, more by these slights than by any supposed injuries that Shams-ud-dîn was exasperated; and from that day he determined to have Mr. Fraser assassinated.[11]
Having prevailed upon a man, Karîm Khân, who was at once his servant and boon companion, he sent him to Delhi with one of his carriages, which he was to have sold through Mr. McPherson, a European merchant of the city. He was ordered to stay there ostensibly for the purpose of learning the process of extracting copper from the fossil containing the ore, and purchasing dogs for the Nawâb. He was to watch his opportunity and shoot Mr. Fraser whenever he might find him out at night, attended by only one or two orderlies; to be in no haste, but to wait till he found a favourable opportunity, though it should be for several months. He had with him a groom named Rûplâ, and a Mewâtî attendant named Aniâ, and they lodged in apartments of the Nawâb's at Daryâoganj. He rode out morning and evening, attended by Aniâ on foot, for three months, during which he often met Mr. Fraser, but never under circumstances favourable to his purpose; and at last, in despair, returned to Fîrôzpur. Aniâ, had importuned him for leave to go home to see his children, who had been ill, and Karîm Khân did not like to remain without him. The Nawâb was displeased with him for returning without leave, and ordered him to return to his post, and effect the object of his mission. Aniâ declined to return, and the Nawâb recommended Karîm to take somebody else, but he had, he said, explained all his designs to this man, and it would be dangerous to entrust the secret to another; and he could, moreover, rely entirely upon the courage of Aniâ on any trying occasion.
Twenty rupees were due to the treasury by Aniâ on account of the rent of the little tenement he held under the Nawâb; and the treasurer consented, at the request of Karîm Khân, to receive this by small instalments, to be deducted out of the monthly wages he was to receive from him. He was, moreover, assured that he should have nothing to do but to cook and eat; and should share liberally with Karîm in the one hundred rupees he was taking with him in money, and the letter of credit upon the Nawâb's bankers at Delhi for one thousand rupees more. The Nawâb himself came with them as far as the village of Nagîna, where he used to hunt; and there Karîm requested permission to change his groom, as he thought Rûplâ too shrewd a man for such a purpose. He wanted, he said, a stupid, sleepy man, who would neither ask nor understand anything; but the Nawâb told him that Rûplâ was an old and quiet servant, upon whose fidelity he could entirely rely; and Karîm consented to take him. Aniâ's little tenement, upon which his wife and children resided, was only two miles distant, and he went to give instructions about gathering in the harvest, and to take leave of them. He told his wife that he was going to the capital on a difficult and dangerous duty, but that his companion Karîm would do it all, no doubt. Aniâ asked Karîm before they left Nagîna what was to be his reward; and he told him that the Nawâb had promised them five villages in rent-free tenure. Aniâ wished to learn from the Nawâb himself what he might expect; and being taken to him by Karîm, was assured that he and his family should be provided for handsomely for the rest of their lives, if he did his duty well on this occasion.
On reaching Delhi they took up their quarters near Colonel Skinner's house, in the Bulvemar's Ward,[12] where they resided for two months. The Nawâb had told Karîm to get a gun made for his purpose at Delhi, or purchase one, stating that his guns had all been purchased through Colonel Skinner, and would lead to suspicion if seen in his possession. On reaching Delhi, Karîm purchased an old gun, and desired Aniâ to go to a certain man in the Chândnî Chauk, and get it made in the form of a short blunderbuss, with a peculiar stock, that would admit of its being concealed under a cloak; and to say that he was going to Gwâlior to seek service, if any one questioned him. The barrel was cut, and the instrument made exactly as Karîm wished it to be by the man whom he pointed out. They met Mr. Fraser every day, but never at night; and Karîm expressed regret that the Nawâb should have so strictly enjoined him not to shoot him in the daytime, which he thought he might do without much risk. Aniâ got an attack of fever, and urged Karîm to give up the attempt and return home, or at least permit him to do so. Karîm himself became weary, and said he would do so very soon if he could not succeed; but that he should certainly shoot some European gentleman before he set out, and tell his master that he had taken him for Mr. Fraser--to save appearances. Aniâ told him that this was a question between him and his master, and no concern of his.
At the expiration of two months, a peon came to learn what they were doing. Karîm wrote a letter by him to the Nawâb, saying that 'the dog he wished was never to be seen without ten or twelve people about him; and that he saw no chance whatever of finding him, except in the midst of them; but that if he wished, he would purchase this dog in the midst of the crowd'. The Nawâb wrote a reply, which was sent by a trooper, with orders that it should be opened in presence of no one but Aniâ. The contents were: 'I command you not to purchase the dog in presence of many persons, as its price will be greatly raised. You may purchase him before one person, or even two, but not before more; I am in no hurry, the longer the time you take the better; but do not return without purchasing the dog.'[13] That is, without killing Mr. Fraser.
They went on every day to watch Mr. Fraser's movements. Leaving the horse with the groom, sometimes in one old ruin of the city, and sometimes in another, ready saddled for flight, with orders that he should not be exposed to the view of passers-by, Karîm and Aniâ used to pace the streets, and on several occasions fell in with him, but always found him attended by too many followers of one kind or another for their purpose. At last, on Sunday, the 13th of March, 1835, Karîm heard that Mr. Fraser was to attend a 'nâch' (dance), given by Hindoo Râo, the brother of the Baiza Bâi,[14] who then resided at Delhi; and determining to try whether he could not shoot him from horseback, he sent away his groom as soon as he had ascertained that Mr. Fraser was actually at the dance. Aniâ went in and mixed among the assembly; and as soon as he saw Mr. Fraser rise to depart, he gave intimation to Karîm, who ordered him to keep behind, and make off as fast as he could, as soon as he should hear the report of his gun.
A little way from Hindoo Rao's house the road branches off; that to the left is straight, while that to the right is circuitous. Mr. Fraser was known always to take the straight road, and upon that Karîm posted himself, as the road up to the place where it branched off was too public for his purpose. As it happened, Mr. Fraser, for the first time, took the circuitous road to the right, and reached his home without meeting Karîm. Aniâ placed himself at the cross way, and waited there till Karîm came up to him. On hearing that he had taken the right road, Karîm said that 'a man in Mr. Fraser's situation must be a strange ('kâfir') unbeliever not to have such a thing as a torch with him in a dark night. Had he had what he ought', he said, 'I should not have lost him this time'.
They passed him on the road somewhere or other almost every afternoon after this for seven days, but could never fall in with him after dark. On the eighth day, Sunday, the 22nd of March, Karîm went, as usual, in the forenoon to the great mosque to say his prayers; and on his way back in the afternoon he purchased some plums which he was eating when he came up to Aniâ, whom he found cooking his dinner. He ordered his horse to be saddled immediately, and told Aniâ to make haste and eat his dinner, as he had seen Mr. Fraser at a party given by the Râjâ of Kishangarh. 'When his time is come,' said Karîm, 'we shall no doubt find an opportunity to kill him, if we watch him carefully.' They left the groom at home that evening, and proceeded to the 'dargâh' (church) near the canal. Seeing Aniâ with merely a Stick in his hand, Karîm bid him go back and change it for a sword, while he went in and said his evening prayers.
On being rejoined by Aniâ, they took the road to cantonments, which passed by Mr. Fraser's house; and Aniâ observed that the risk was hardly equal in this undertaking, he being on foot, while Karîm was on horseback; that he should be sure to be taken, while the other might have a fair chance of escape. It was now quite dark, and Karîm bid him stand by sword in hand; and if anybody attempted to seize his horse when he fired, cut him down, and be assured that while he had life he would never suffer him, Aniâ, to be taken. Karîm continued to patrol up and down on the high-road, that nobody might notice him, while Aniâ stood by the road-side. At last, about eleven o'clock, they heard Mr. Fraser approach, attended by one trooper, and two 'peons' on foot; and Karîm walked his horse slowly, as if he had been going from the city to the cantonments, till Mr. Fraser came up within a few paces of him, near the gate leading into his house. Karîm Khân, on leaving his house, had put one large ball into his short blunderbuss; and when confident that he should now have an opportunity of shooting Mr. Fraser, he put in two more small ones. As Mr. Fraser's horse was coming up on the left side, Karîm Khân tumed round his, and, as he passed, presented his blunderbuss, fired, and all three balls passed into Mr. Fraser's breast. All three horses reared at the report and flash, and Mr. Fraser fell dead on the ground. Karîm galloped off, followed at a short distance by the trooper, and the two peons went off and gave information to Major Pew and Cornet Robinson, who resided near the place. They came in all haste to the spot, and had the body taken to the deceased's own house; but no signs of life remained. They reported the murder to the magistrate, and the city gates were closed, as the assassin had been seen to enter the city by the trooper.
Aniâ ran home through the Kabul gate of the city, unperceived, while Karîm entered by the Ajmêr gate, and passed first through the encampment of Hindoo Rao, to efface the traces of his horse's feet. When he reached their lodgings, he found Aniâ there before him; and Rûplâ, the groom, seeing his horse in a sweat, told him that he had had a narrow escape--that Mr. Fraser had been killed, and orders given for the arrest of any horseman that might be found in or near the city. He told him to hold his tongue, and take care of the horse; and calling for a light, he and Aniâ tore up every letter he had received from Fîrôzpur, and dipped the fragments in water, to efface the ink from them. Aniâ asked him what he had done with the blunderbuss, and was told that it had been thrown into a well. Aniâ now concealed three flints that he kept about him in some sand in the upper story they occupied, and threw an iron ramrod and two spare bullets into a well near the mosque.
The next morning, when he heard that the city gates had been all shut to prevent any one from going out till strict search should be made, Karîm became a good deal alarmed, and went to seek counsel from Moghal Beg, the friend of his master; but when in the evening he heard that they had been again opened, he recovered his spirits; and the next day he wrote a letter to the Nawâb, saying that he had purchased the dogs that he wanted, and would soon return with them. He then went to Mr. McPherson, and actually purchased from him for the Nawâb some dogs and pictures, and the following day sent Rûplâ, the groom, with them to Fîrôzpur, accompanied by two bearers. A pilgrim lodged in the same place with these men, and was present when Karîm came home from the murder, and gave his horse to Rûplâ. In the evening, after the departure of Rûplâ with the dogs, four men of the Gûjar caste came to the place, and Karîm sat down and smoked a pipe with one of them,[15] who said that he had lost his bread by Mr. Fraser's death, and should be glad to see the murderer punished--that he was known to have worn a green vest, and he hoped he would soon be discovered. The pilgrim came up to Karîm shortly after these four men went away, and said that he had heard from some one that he, Karîm, was himself suspected of the murder. He went again to Moghal Beg, who told him not to be alarmed, that, happily, the Regulations were now in force in the Delhi Territory, and that he had only to stick steadily to one story to be safe.
He now desired Aniâ to return to Fîrôzpur with a letter to the Nawâb, and to assure him that he would be stanch and stick to one story, though they should seize him and confine him in prison for twelve years. He had, he said, already sent off part of his clothes, and Aniâ should now take away the rest, so that nothing suspicious should be left near him.
The next morning Aniâ set out on foot, accompanied by Islâmullah, a servant of Moghal Beg's, who was also the bearer of a letter to the Nawâb. They hired two ponies when they became tired, but both flagged before they reached Nagîna, whence Aniâ proceeded to Fîrôzpur, on a mare belonging to the native collector, leaving Islâmullah behind. He gave his letter to the Nawâb, who desired him to describe the affair of the murder. He did so. The Nawâb seemed very much pleased, and asked him whether Karîm appeared to be in any alarm. Aniâ told him that he did not, and had resolved to stick to one story, though he should be imprisoned for twelve years. 'Karîm Khân,' said the Nawâb, turning to the brother-in-law of the former, Wâsil Khân, and Hasan Alî, who stood near him--'Karîm Khân is a very brave man, whose courage may be always relied on.' He gave Aniâ eighteen rupees, and told him to change his name, and keep close to Wâsil Khân. They retired together; but, while Wâsil Khân went to his house, Aniâ stood on the road unperceived, but near enough to hear Hasan Alî urge the Nawâb to have him put to death immediately, as the only chance of keeping the fatal secret. He went off immediately to Wâsil Khân, and prevailed upon him to give him leave to go home for that night to see his family, promising to be back the next morning early.
He set out forthwith, but had not been long at home when he learned that Hasan Alî, and another confidential servant of the Nawâb, were come in search of him with some troopers. He concealed himself in the roof of his house, and heard them ask his wife and children where he was, saying they wanted his aid in getting out some hyaenas they had traced into their dens in the neighbourhood. They were told that he had gone back to Fîrôzpur, and returned; but were sent back by the Nawâb to make a more careful search for him. Before they came, however, he had gone off to his friends Kamruddîn and Joharî, two brothers who resided in the Râo Râjâ's territory. To this place he was followed by some Mewâtîs, whom the Nawâb had induced, under the promise of a large reward, to undertake to kill him. One night he went to two acquaintances, Makrâm and Shahâmat, in a neighbouring village, and begged them to send to some English gentleman in Delhi, and solicit for him a pardon, on condition of his disclosing all the circumstances of Mr. Fraser's murder. They promised to get everything done for him through a friend in the police at Delhi, and set out for that purpose, while Aniâ returned and concealed himself in the hills. In six days they came with a paper, purporting to be a promise of pardon from the court of Delhi, and desired Kamr-ud-dîn to introduce them to Aniâ. He told them to return to him in three days, and he would do so; but he went off to Aniâ in the hills, and told him that he did not think these men had really got the papers from the English gentlemen--that they appeared to him to be in the service of the Nawâb himself. Aniâ was, however, introduced to them when they came back, and requested that the paper might be read to him. Seeing through their designs, he again made off to the hills, while they went out in search, they pretended, of a man to read it, but in reality to get some people who were waiting in the neighbourhood to assist in securing him, and taking him off to the Nawâb.
Finding on their return that Aniâ had escaped, they offered high rewards to the two brothers if they would assist in tracing him out; and Joharî was taken to the Nawâb, who offered him a very high reward if he would bring Aniâ to him, or, at least, take measures to prevent his going to the English gentlemen. This was communicated to Aniâ, who went through Bharatpur to Bareilly, and from Bareilly to Secunderabad, where he heard, in the beginning of July, that both Karîm and the Nawâb were to be tried for the murder, and that the judge, Mr. Colvin, had already arrived at Delhi to conduct the trial. He now determined to go to Delhi and give himself up. On his way he was met by Mr. Simon Fraser's man, who took him to Delhi, when he confessed his share in the crime, became king's evidence at the trial, and gave an interesting narrative of the whole affair.
Two water-carriers, in attempting to draw up the brass jug of a carpenter, which had fallen into the well the morning after the murder, pulled up the blunderbuss which Karîm Khân had thrown into the same well. This was afterwards recognized by Aniâ, and the man whom he pointed out as having made it for him. Two of the four Gûjars, who were mentioned as having visited Karîm immediately after the murder, went to Brigadier Fast, who commanded the troops at Delhi, fearing that the native officers of the European civil functionaries might be in the interest of the Nawâb, and get them made away with. They told him that Karîm Khân seemed to answer the description of the man named in the proclamation as the murderer of Mr. Fraser; and he sent them with a note to the Commissioner, Mr. Metcalfe, who sent them to the Magistrate, Mr. Fraser, who accompanied them to the place, and secured Karîm, with some fragments of important papers. The two Mewâtîs, who had been sent to assassinate Aniâ, were found, and they confessed the fact: the brother of Aniâ, Rahmat, was found and he described the difficulty Aniâ had to escape from the Nawâb's people sent to murder him. Rûplâ, the groom, deposed to all that he had seen during the time he was employed as Karîm's groom at Delhi. Several men deposed to having met Karîm, and heard him asking after Mr. Fraser a few days before the murder. The two peons, who were with Mr. Fraser when he was shot, deposed to the horse which he rode at the time, and which was found with him.
Karîm Khân and the Nawâb were both convicted of the crime, sentenced to death, and executed at Delhi, I should mention that suspicion had immediately attached to Karîm Khân; he was known for some time to have been lurking about Delhi, on the pretence of purchasing dogs; and it was said that, had the Nawâb really wanted dogs, he would not have sent to purchase them by a man whom he admitted to his table, and treated on terms of equality. He was suspected of having been employed on such occasions before--known to be a good shot, and a good rider, who could fire and reload very quickly while his horse was in full gallop, and called in consequence the 'Bharmârû.'[16] His horse, which was found in the stable by the Gûjar spies, who had before been in Mr. Fraser's service, answered the description given of the murderer's horse by Mr. Fraser's attendants; and the Nawâb was known to cherish feelings of bitter hatred against Mr. Fraser.
The Nawâb was executed some time after Karîm, on Thursday morning, the 3rd of October, 1835, close outside the north, or Kashmir Gate, leading to the cantonments. He prepared himself for the execution in an extremely rich and beautiful dress of light green, the colour which martyrs wear; but he was made to exchange this, and he then chose one of simple white, and was too conscious of his guilt to urge strongly his claim to wear what dress he liked on such an occasion.
The following corps were drawn up around the gallows, forming three sides of a square: the 1st Regiment of Cavalry, the 20th, 39th, and 69th Regiments of Native Infantry, Major Pew's Light Field Battery, and a strong party of police. On ascending the scaffold, the Nawâb manifested symptoms of disgust at the approach to his person of the sweeper, who was to put the rope round his neck;[17] but he soon mastered his feelings, and submitted with a good grace to his fate. Just as he expired his body made a last turn, and left his face towards the west, or the tomb of his Prophet, which the Muhammadans of Delhi considered a miracle, indicating that he was a martyr--not as being innocent of the murder, but as being executed for the murder of an unbeliever. Pilgrimages were for some time made to the Nawâb's tomb,[18] but I believe they have long since ceased with the short gleam of sympathy that his fate excited. The only people that still recollect him with feelings of kindness are the prostitutes and dancing women of the city of Delhi, among whom most of his revenues were squandered[19] In the same manner was Wazîr Ali recollected for many years by the prostitutes and dancing women of Benares, after the massacre of Mr. Cherry and all the European gentlemen of that station, save one, Mr. Davis, who bravely defended himself, wife, and children against a host with a hog spear on the top of his house. No European could pass Benares for twenty years after Wazîr Alî's arrest and confinement in the garrison of Fort William, without hearing from the Windows songs in his praise, and in praise of the massacre.[20]
It is supposed that the Nawâb Faiz Muhammad Khan of Jhajjar was deeply implicated in this murder, though no proof of it could be found. He died soon after the execution of Shams-ud-dîn, and was succeeded in his fief by his eldest son, Faiz Alî Khân.[21] This fief was bestowed on the father of the deceased, whose name was Najâbat Alî Khân, by Lord Lake, on the termination of the war in 1805, for the aid he had given to the retreating army under Colonel Monson.[22]
One circumstance attending the execution of the Nawâb Shams-ud-dîn seems worthy of remark. The magistrate, Mr. Frascott, desired his crier to go through the city the evening before the execution, and proclaim to the people that those who might wish to be present at the execution were not to encroach upon the line of sentries that would be formed to keep clear an allotted space round the gallows, nor to carry with them any kind of arms; but the crier, seemingly retaining in his recollection only the words arms and sentries, gave out after his 'Oyes, Oyes,'[23] that the sentries had orders to use their arms, and shoot any man, woman, or child that should presume to go outside the wall to look at the execution of the Nawâb. No person, in consequence, ventured out till the execution was over, when they went to see the Nawâb himself converted into smoke; as the general impression was that as life should leave it, the body was to be blown off into the air by a general discharge of musketry and artillery. Moghal Bêg was acquitted for want of judicial proof of his guilty participation in the crime.
Notes:
1. The author's remarks concerning military officers refer to officers serving with native regiments, now known as the Indian Army. Before the institution of the reformed police in 1861 the native troops used to be much scattered in detachments, guarding treasuries, and performing other duties since entrusted to the police. Detachments are now rarely sent out, except on frontier service.
2. Fîrôzpur, the Fîrozpur-Jhirka of the I.G., is now the head- quarters of a sub-collectorate in the Gurgâon district. The three Districts of the Delhi Territories in Sleeman's time seem to have been Delhi, Pânîpat (= Karnâl), and Rohtak, which were under the jurisdiction of the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces. In 1858, after the Mutiny, they were transferred to the Panjâb. Since then, many administrative changes have occurred. The latest took place on October 1, 1912, on the occasion of Delhi becoming the official capital of India, instead of Calcutta. The city of Delhi with a small surrounding area, 557 square miles in all, now forms a tiny distinct province, ruled by a Chief Commissioner under the direct orders of the Government of India. The Delhi Division has ceased to exist, and six Districts, namely, Hissar, Rohtak, Karnâl, Ambâla (Umballa), Gurgâon, and Simla, now constitute the Commissioner's Division of Ambâla in the Panjâb.
3. Ante, chapter 31, text between [10] and [11]. Some great landholders of the present day pursue the same policy.
4. The story of the murder of Fraser is told very differently in Bosworth-Smith's Life of Lord Lawrence, where all the detective credit is given to Lord L., apparently on his own authority. See also an article in the Quarterly Review for April 1883, by Sir H. Yule, and another in Blackwoods Magazine for January 1878.
Miniature medallion portraits of Nawâb Shams-ud-dîn and his servant Karîm Khân are given on the frontispiece of Volume II in the original edition.
5. The inglorious second administration of Lord Cornwallis lasted only from 30th of July, 1805, the date on which he relieved the Marquis Wellesley, to the 5th of October of the same year, the date of his death at Ghâzîpur. 'The Marquis Cornwallis arrived in India, prepared to abandon, as far as might be practicable, all the advantages gained for the British Government by the wisdom, energy, and perseverance of his predecessor; to relax the bands by which the Marquis Wellesley had connected the greater portion of the states of India with the British Government; and to reduce that Government from the position of arbiter of the destinies of India to the rank of one among many equals.' His policy was zealously carried out by Sir George Barlow, who succeeded him, and held office till July, 1807. That statesman was not ashamed to write that 'the British possessions in the Doâb will derive additional security from the contests of the neighbouring states'. (Thornton, The History of the British Empire in India, chap. 21.) This fatuous policy produced twelve years of anarchy, which were terminated by the Marquis of Hastings's great war with the Marâthâs and Pindhârîs in 1817, so often referred to in this book. Lord Lake addressed the most earnest remonstrances to Sir George Barlow without avail.
6. Amîn-ud-dîn and Ziâ-ud-dîn's mother was the Bhâo Bêgam, or wife; Shams-ud-dîn's the Bhâo Khânum, or mistress. [W. H. S.]
7. Sir James Edward, third baronet, who died November 5, 1838. He was paternal uncle of Henry Thomas Colebrooke, F.R.S., the greatest of Anglo-Indian Sanskritists. The fifth baronet, Edward Arthur, was created Baron Colebrooke in 1906.
8. Sir Charles Metcalfe was for a time Assistant Resident at Delhi, and was first appointed to the Residency at the extraordinarily early age of twenty-six. He was then transferred to other posts. In 1824 he returned to the Delhi Residency, superseding Sir David Ochterlony, whose measures had been disapproved by the Government of India. He left the Residency in 1827.
9. The editor once had occasion to deal with a similar case, which resulted in the loss by the offending Râjâ of his rank and title. The orders were passed by the Government of Lord Dufferin.
10. Colonel Skinner, who raised the famous troops known as Skinner's Horse, died in 1841, and was buried in the church of St. James at Delhi which he had built. The church still exists. The Colonel erected opposite the church, as a memorial of his friend Fraser, a fine inlaid marble cross, which was destroyed in the Mutiny (General Hervey, Some Records of Crime, vol. i, p. 403).
11. According to General Hervey, the provocation was that Mr. Fraser had inquired from the Nawâb about his sister by name (op. cit., p. 279).
12. I print this word 'Bulvemar's' as it stands in the original edition, not knowing what it means.
13. The habits of Europeans have now changed, and to most people escorts have become distasteful. High officials now constantly go about unattended, and could be assassinated with little difficulty. Happily crimes of the kind are rare, except on the Afghan frontier, where special precautions are taken.
14. For the 'Bâiza Bai' see ante, chapter 50 note 4. Hindoo Râo's house became famous in 1857 as the head-quarters of the British force on the Ridge, during the siege of Delhi.
15. Many of the Gûjar caste are Muhammadans.
16. That is to say 'load and fire', or 'sharpshooter'.
17. No one but a member of one of the 'outcaste castes', if the 'bull' be allowable, will act as executioner.
18. This sinister incident shows clearly the real feeling of the Muhammadan populace towards the ruling power. That feeling is unchanged, and is not altogether confined to the Muslim populace. See the following remark about the populace of Benares.
19. This remark was evidently written some time after the author's first visit to Delhi, and probably was written in the year 1839.
20. On the death of Âsaf-ud-daula, Wazîr Alî was, in spite of doubts as to his legitimacy, recognized by Sir John Shore (Lord Teignmouth) as the Nawâb Wazîr of Oudh, in 1797. On reconsideration, the Governor-General cancelled the recognition of Wazîr Alî, and recognized his rival Saâdat Alî. Wazîr Alî was removed from Lucknow, but injudiciously allowed to reside at Benares. The Marquis Wellesley, then Earl of Mornington, took charge of the office of Governor-General in 1798, and soon resolved that it was expedient to remove Wazîr Alî to a greater distance from Lucknow. Mr. Cherry, the Agent to the Governor-General, was accordingly instructed to remove him from Benares to Calcutta. The outbreak alluded to in the text occurred on January 14, 1799, and was the expression of Wazîr Ali's resentment at these orders. It is described as follows by Thornton (History, chap. xvii): 'A visit which Wazîr Alî made, accompanied by his suite, to the British Agent, afforded the means of accomplishing the meditated revenge. He had engaged himself to breakfast with Mr. Cherry, and the parties met in apparent amity. The usual compliments were exchanged. Wazîr Alî then began to expatiate on his wrongs; and having pursued this subject for some time, he suddenly rose with his attendants, and put to death Mr. Cherry and Captain Conway, an English gentleman who happened to be present. The assassins then rushed out, and meeting another Englishman named Graham, they added him to the list of their victims. They thence proceeded to the house of Mr. Davis, judge and magistrate, who had just time to remove his family to an upper terrace, which could only be reached by a very narrow staircase. At the top of this staircase, Mr. Davis, armed with a spear, took his post, and so successfully did he defend it, that the assailants, after several attempts to dislodge him, were compelled to retire without effecting their object. The benefit derived from the resistance of this intrepid man extended beyond his own family: the delay thereby occasioned afforded to the rest of the English inhabitants opportunity of escaping to the place where the troops stationed for the protection of the city were encamped. General Erskine, on learning what had occurred, dispatched a party to the relief of Mr. Davis, and Wazîr Alî thereupon retired to his own residence.' Wazîr Alî escaped, but was ultimately given up by a chief with whom he had taken refuge, 'on condition that his life should be spared, and that his limbs should not be disgraced by chains'. Some of his accomplices were executed. 'He was confined at Port William, in a sort of iron cage, where he died in May, 1817, aged thirty-six, after an imprisonment of seventeen years and some odd months.' (Men whom India has Known, 2nd ed., 1874, art. 'Vizier Ali.') But Beale asserts that after many years' captivity in Calcutta, the prisoner was removed to Vellore, where he died (Or. Biogr. Dict., ed. Keene, 1894, p. 416). It will be observed that the author was mistaken in supposing that 'all the European gentlemen, except Mr. Davis and his family, were included in the massacre.'
21. These names stand in the original edition as 'Tyz Mahomed Khan, of Ghujper,' and 'Tyz Alee Khan'. In 1857 the then Nawâb of Jhajjar joined the rebels. He was accordingly hanged, and his estate was confiscated. It is now included in the Rohtak District. See Fanshawe's Settlement Report of that District.
22. The disastrous retreat of Colonel Monson before Jeswant Râo Holkâr during the rainy season of 1804 is one of the few serious reverses which have interrupted the long series of British victories in India. A considerable force under the command of Colonel Monson, sent out by General Lake at the beginning of May in pursuit of Holkâr, was withdrawn too far from its base, and was compelled to retreat through Râjputâna, and fall back on Agra. During the retreat the rains broke, and, under pressure caused by the difficulties of the march and incessant attacks of the enemy, the Company's troops became disorganized, and lost their guns and baggage. The shattered remnants of the force straggled into Agra at the end of August. The disgrace of this retreat was speedily avenged by the great victory of Dîg.
23. This old Norman-French formula. Oyez, Oyez, meaning 'Hear!' is still, or recently was, used at the Assizes in the High Court, Calcutta. The formula would not now be heard at Delhi, or elsewhere beyond the precincts of the High Court.
65. Marriage of a Jât Chief
ON the 19th[1] we came on to Balamgarh,[2] fifteen miles over a plain, better cultivated and more studded with trees than that which we had been coming over for many days before. The water was near the surface, more of the field were irrigated, and those which were not so looked better--[a] range of sandstone hills, ten miles off to the west, running north and south. Balamgarh is held in rent-free tenure by a young Jât chief, now about ten years of age. He resides in a mud fort in a handsome palace built in the European fashion. In an extensive orange garden, close outside the fort, he is building a very handsome tomb over the spot where his father's elder brother was buried. The whole is formed of white and black marble, and the firm white sandstone of Rûpbâs, and so well conceived and executed as to make it evident that demand is the only thing wanted to cover India with works of art equal to any that were formed in the palmy days of the Muhammadan empire.[3] The Râjâ's young sister had just been married to the son of the Jât chief of Nâbhâ, who was accompanied in his matrimonial visit (barât) by the chief of Ludhaura, and the son of the Sikh chief of Patiâlâ,[4] with a cortège of one hundred elephants, and above fifteen thousand people.[5]
The young chief of Balamgarh mustered a cortège of sixty elephants and about ten thousand men to attend him out in the 'istikbâl', to meet and welcome his guests. The bridegroom's party had to expend about six hundred thousand rupees in this visit alone. They scattered copper money all along the road from their homes to within seven miles of Balamgarh. From this point to the gate of the fort they had to scatter silver, and from this gate to the door of the palace they scattered gold and jewels of all kinds. The son of the Patiâlâ chief, a lad of about ten years of age, sat upon his elephant with a bag containing six hundred gold mohurs of two guineas each, mixed up with an infinite variety of gold earrings, pearls, and precious stones, which he scattered in handfuls among the crowd. The scattering of the copper and silver had been left to inferior hands. The costs of the family of the bride are always much greater than that of the bridegroom; they are obliged to entertain at their own expense all the bridegroom's guests as well as their own, as long as they remain; and over and above this, on the present occasion, the Râjâ gave a rupee to every person that came, invited or uninvited. An immense concourse of people had assembled to share in this donation, and to scramble for the money scattered along the road; and ready money enough was not found in the treasury. Before a further supply could be got, thirty thousand more had collected, and every one got his rupee. They have them all put into pens like sheep. When all are in, the doors are opened at a signal given, and every person is paid his rupee as he goes out. Some European gentlemen were standing upon the top of the Râjâ's palace, looking at the procession as it entered the fort, and passed underneath; and the young chief threw up some handfuls of pearls, gold, and jewels among them. Not one of them would of course condescend to stoop to take up any; but their servants showed none of the same dignified forbearance.[6]
Notes:
1. January, 1836.
2. 'Balamgarh' is a mistake for Ballabgarh of I. G. (properly Ballabhgarh), which is about twenty-four miles from Delhi. In 1857 the chief was hanged for rebellion. The estate was confiscated and included in the Delhi District, under the Panjâb Government. From October 1, 1912, that District ceased to exist. Part of the Ballabhgarh sub-district has been included in the new Chief Commissioner's Province of Delhi, and part in the Gurgâon District.
3. Few observers will accept this proposition without considerable reservation.
4. Patiâlâ is the principal of the Cis-Satlaj Sikh Protected States. Nâbhâ belongs to the same group. Both states are very loyal, and supply Imperial Service troops. For a sketch of their history see chapters 2 and 9 of Sir Lepel Griffin's Ranjît Singh.
5. The Sikh is a military nation formed out of the Jâts (who were without a place among the castes of the Hindoos),[a] by that strong bond of union, the love of conquest and plunder. Their religions and civil codes are the Granths, books written by their reputed prophets, the last of whom was Guru Govind,[b] in whose name Ranjît Singh stamps his gold coins with this legend: 'The sword, the pot, victory, and conquest were quickly found in the grace of Guru Govind Singh,'[c] This prophet died insane in the end of the seventeenth century. He was the son of a priest Têg Bahâdur, who was made a martyr of by the bigoted Muhammadans of Patna in 1675. The son became a Peter the Hermit, in the same manner as Hargovind before him, when his father, Arjun Mal, was made a martyr by the fanaticism of the same people. A few more such martyrdoms would have set the Sikhs up for ever. They admit converts freely, and while they have a fair prospect of conquest and plunder they will find them; but, when they cease, they will be swallowed up in the great ocean of Hinduism, since they have no chance of getting up an 'army of martyrs' while we have the supreme power.[d] They detest us for the same reason that the military followers of the other native chiefs detest us, because we say 'Thus far shall you go, and no farther' in your career of conquest and plunder.[e] As governors, they are even worse than the Marâthâs--utterly detestable. They have not the slightest idea of a duty towards the people from whose industry they are provided. Such a thing was never dreamed of by a Sikh. They continue to receive in marriage the daughters of Jâts, as in this case; but they will not give their daughters to Jâts. [W. H. S.]
6. The Emperors of Delhi, from Jahângîr onwards, used to strike special coins, generally of small size, bearing the word nisâr, which means 'scattering', for the purpose of distribution among the crowd on the occasion of a wedding, or other great festivity.
a. It has already been observed that the author was completely mistaken in his estimate of the social position of Jâts. It is not correct to say that they 'were without a place among the castes of the Hindoos'. 'The Jât is in every respect the most important of the Panjâb peoples. . . . The distinction between Jât and Râjpût is social rather than ethnic. . . . Socially the Jât occupies a position which is shared by the Rôr, the Gûjar, and the Ahîr; all four eating and smoking together. Among the races of purely Hindoo origin I think that the Jât stands next after the Brahman, the Râjpût, and the Khatrî. . . . There are Jâts and Jâts. . . . His is the highest of the castes practising widow marriage.' (Ibbetson, Outlines of Panjâb Ethnography, Calcutta, 1883, pp. 220 sqq.) The Jâts in the United Provinces occupy much the same relative position.
b. The Sikhs are mostly, but not all, Jâts. The organization is essentially a religions one, and a few Brahmans and many members of various other castes join it. Even sweepers are admitted with certain limitations. The word Sikh means 'disciple'. Nânak Shâh, the founder, was born in A.D. 1469. The Âdi Granth, the Sikh Bible, containing compositions by Nânak, his next four successors, and other persons, was completed in 1604. A second Granth was compiled in 1734 by Govind Singh, the tenth Guru. The only authoritative version of the Sikh scriptures is the great work by Macauliffe, The Sikh Religion (Oxford, 1909, 6 vols.).
The political power of the sect rested on the institutions of Guru Govind, as framed between 1690 and 1708. In 1764 the Sikhs occupied Lahore. Full details of their history will be found in Cunningham, A History of the Sikhs (1st ed., 2 vols. 8vo, London, 1849, suppressed and scarce; 2nd ed. 1853); and more briefly in Sir Lepel Griffin's excellent little book, Ranjît Singh (Oxford, 'Rulers of India' series, 1892).
c. See R. 0. Temple, 'The Coins of the Modern Chiefs of the Panjâb' (Ind. Ant., vol. xviii (1889), pp. 321-41); and C. J. Rodgers, 'On the Coins of the Sikhs' (J.A.S.B., vol. 1. Part I (1881), pp. 71- 93). The couplet is in Persian, which may be transliterated thus:--
Dêg, têgh, wa fath, wa nasrat bê darang Yâft az Nânak Gûrû Govind Singh.
The word dêg, meaning pot or cauldron, is used as a symbol of plenty. The correct rendering is:--
Plenty, the sword, victory, and help without delay, Gûrû Govind Singh obtained from Nânak.
d. This prophecy has not been fulfilled. The annexation of the Panjâb in 1849 put an end to Sikh hopes of 'conquest and plunder', and yet the sect has not been 'swallowed up in the great ocean of Hinduism'. At the census of 1881 its numbers were returned as 1,853,426, or nearly two millions, for all India. The corresponding figure for 1891 is 1,907,833. At the time of the first British census of 1855 the outside influences were depressing: the great Khâlsa army had fallen, and Sikh fathers were slow to bring forward their sons for baptism (pâhul). The Mutiny, in the suppression of which the Sikhs took so great a part, worked a change. The Sikhs recovered their spirits and self-respect, and found honourable careers open in the British army and constabulary. 'Thus the creed received a new impulse, and many sons of Sikhs, whose baptism had been deferred, received the pâhul, while new candidates from among the Jâts and lower caste Hindoos joined the faith.' Some reaction then, perhaps, took place, but, on the whole, the numbers of the sect have been maintained or increased. (Sir Lepel Griffin, Ranjît Singh, pp. 25-34.) For various reasons, which I have not space to explain, the statistics of Sikhism are untrustworthy. The returns for 1911 show an increase of 37 per cent. in the Panjâb. We may, at least, be assured that the numbers are not diminishing.
e. The Sikhs do not now detest us. They willingly furnish soldiers and military police of the best class, equal to the Gôrkhâs, and fit to fight in line with English soldiers. The Panjâb chieftains have been among the foremost in offers of loyal assistance to the Government of India in times of danger, and in organizing the Imperial Service troops. The Sikh states are now sufficiently well governed.
66. Collegiate Endowment of Muhammadan Tombs and Mosques
On the 20th[1] we came to Badarpur, twelve miles over a plain, with the range of hills on our left approaching nearer and nearer the road, and separating us from the old city of Delhi. We passed through Farîdpur, once a large town, and called after its founder, Shaikh Farîd, whose mosque is still in good order, though there is no person to read or hear prayers in it.[2] We passed also two fine bridges, one of three, and one of four arches, both over what were once streams, but are now dry beds of sand.[3] The whole road shows signs of having been once thickly peopled, and highly adorned with useful and ornamental works when Delhi was in its glory.
Every handsome mausoleum among Muhammadans was provided with its mosque, and endowed by the founder with the means of maintaining men of learning to read their Korân over the grave of the deceased and in his chapel; and, as long as the endowment lasted, the tomb continued to be at the same time a college. They read the Korân morning and evening over the grave, and prayers in the chapel at the stated periods; and the rest of their time is commonly devoted to the instruction of the youths of their neighbourhood, either gratis or for a small consideration. Apartments in the tomb were usually set aside for the purpose, and these tombs did ten times more for education in Hindustan than all the colleges formed especially for the purpose.[4] We might suppose that rulers who formed and endowed such works all over the land must have had more of the respect and the affections of the great mass of the people than we, who, as my friend upon the Jumna has it, 'build nothing but private dwelling- houses, factories, courts of justice, and jails', can ever have; but this conclusion would not be altogether just.[5] Though every mosque and mausoleum was a seat of learning, that learning, instead of being a source of attraction and conciliation between the Muhammadans and Hindoos, was, on the contrary, a source of perpetual repulsion and enmity between them--it tended to keep alive in the breasts of the Musalmâns a strong feeling of religions indignation against the worshippers of idols; and of dread and hatred in those of the Hindoos.
The Korân was the Book of books, spoken by God to the angel Gabriel in parts as occasion required, and repeated by him to Muhammad; who, unable to write himself, dictated them to any one who happened to be present when he received the divine communications;[6] it contained all that it was worth man's while to study or know--it was from the Deity, but at the same time coeternal with Him--it was His divine eternal spirit, inseparable from Him from the beginning, and therefore, like Him, uncreated. This book, to read which was of itself declared to be the highest of all species of worship, taught war against the worshippers of idols to be of all merits the greatest in the eye of God; and no man could well rise from the perusal without the wish to serve God by some act of outrage against them. These buildings were, therefore, looked upon by the Hindoos, who composed the great mass of the people, as a kind of religions volcanoes, always ready to explode and pour out their lava of intolerance and outrage upon the innocent people of the surrounding country.
If a Hindoo fancied himself injured or insulted by a Muhammadan he was apt to revenge himself upon the Muhammadans generally, and insult their religion by throwing swine's flesh, or swine's blood, into one of their tombs or churches; and the latter either flew to arms at once to revenge their God, or retaliated by throwing the flesh or the blood of the cow into the first Hindoo temple at hand, which made the Hindoos fly to arms. The guilty and the wicked commonly escaped, while numbers of the weak, the innocent and the unoffending were slaughtered. The magnificent buildings, therefore, instead of being at the time bonds of union, were commonly sources of the greatest discord among the whole community, and of the most painful humiliation to the Hindoo population. During the bigoted reign of Aurangzêb and his successors a Hindoo's presence was hardly tolerated within sight of these tombs or churches; and had he been discovered entering one of them, he would probably have been hunted down like a mad dog. The recollection of such outrages, and the humiliation to which they gave rise, associated as they always are in the minds of the Hindoos with the sight of these buildings, are perhaps the greatest source of our strength in India; because they at the same time feel that it is to us alone they owe the protection which they now enjoy from similar injuries. Many of my countrymen, full of virtuous indignation at the outrages which often occur during the processions of the Muharram, particularly when these happen to take place at the same time with some religious procession of the Hindoos, are very anxious that our Government should interpose its authority to put down both. But these processions and occasional outrages are really sources of great strength to us; they show at once the necessity for the interposition of an impartial tribunal, and a disposition on the part of the rulers to interpose impartially. The Muhammadan festivals are regulated by the lunar, and those of the Hindoos by the solar year, and they cross each other every thirty or forty years, and furnish fair occasions for the local authorities to interpose effectually.[7] People who receive or imagine insults or injuries commonly postpone their revenge till these religious festivals come round, when they hope to be able to settle their accounts with impunity among the excited crowd. The mournful procession of the Muharram, when the Muhammadans are inflamed to madness by the recollection of the really affecting incidents of the massacre of the grandchildren of their prophet, and by the images of their tombs, and their sombre music,[8] crosses that of the Holî[9] (in which the Hindoos are excited to tumultuous and licentious joy by their bacchanalian songs and dances) every thirty-six years; and they reign together for some four or five days, during which the scene in every large town is really terrific. The processions are liable to meet in the street, and the lees of the wine of the Hindoos, or the red powder which is substituted for them, is liable to fall upon the tombs of the others. Hindoos pass on, forgetting in their saturnalian joy all distinctions of age, sex, or religion, their clothes and persons besmeared with the red powder, which is moistened and thrown from all kinds of machines over friend and foe; while meeting these come the Muhammadans, clothed in their green mourning, with gloomy downcast looks, beating their breasts, ready to kill themselves, and too anxious for an excuse to kill anybody else. Let but one drop of the lees of joy fall upon the image of the tomb as it passes, and a hundred swords fly from their scabbards; many an innocent person falls; and woe be to the town in which the magistrate is not at hand with his police and military force. Proudly conscious of their power, the magistrates refuse to prohibit one class from laughing because the other happens to be weeping; and the Hindoos on such occasions laugh the more heartily to let the world see that they are free to do so.
A very learned Hindoo once told me in Central India that the oracle of Mahâdêo had been at the same time consulted at three of his greatest temples--one in the Deccan, one in Râjputâna, and one, I think, in Bengal--as to the result of the government of India by Europeans, who seemed determined to fill all the high offices of administration with their own countrymen, to the exclusion of the people of the country. A day was appointed for the answer; and when the priest came to receive it they found Mahâdêo (Siva) himself with a European complexion, and dressed in European clothes. He told them that their European Government was in reality nothing more than a multiplied incarnation of himself; and that he had come among them in this shape to prevent their cutting each other's throats as they had been doing for some centuries past; that these, his incarnations, appeared to have no religion themselves in order that they might be the more impartial arbitrators between the people of so many different creeds and sects who now inhabited the country; that they must be aware that they never had before been so impartially governed, and that they must continue to obey these their governors, without attempting to pry further into futurity or the will of the gods. Mahâdêo performs a part in the great drama of the Râmâyana, or the Rape of Sîta, and he is the only figure there that is represented with a white face.[10]
I was one day praising the law of primogeniture among ourselves to a Muhammadan gentleman of high rank, and defending it on the ground that it prevented that rivalry and bitterness of feeling among brothers which were always found among the Muhammadans, whose law prescribes an equal division of property, real and personal, among the sons, and the choice of the wisest among them as successor to the government.[11] 'This', said he, 'is no doubt the source of our weakness, but why should you condemn a law which is to you a source of so much strength? I, one day', said he, 'asked Mr. Seaton, the Governor-General's representative at the court of Delhi, which of all things he had seen in India he liked best. "You have", replied he, smiling, "a small species of melon called 'phût' (disunion); this is the thing we like best in your land." There was', continued my Muhammadan friend, 'an infinite deal of sound political wisdom in this one sentence. Mr. Seaton was a very good and a very wise man. Our European governors of the present day are not at all the same kind of thing. I asked Mr. B., a judge, the same question many years afterwards, and he told me that he thought the rupees were the best things he had found in India. I asked Mr. T., the Commissioner, and he told me that he thought the tobacco which he smoked in his hookah was the best thing. And pray, sir, what do you think the best thing?'
'Why, Nawâb Sâhib, I am always very well pleased when I am free from pain, and can get my nostrils full of cool air, and my mouth full of cold water in this hot land of yours; and I think most of my countrymen are the same. Next to these, the thing we all admire most in India, Nawâb Sâhib, is the entire exemption which you and I and every other gentleman, native or European, enjoy from the taxes which press so heavily upon them in other countries.[12] In Kâshmîr, no midwife is allowed to attend a woman in her confinement till a heavy tax has been paid to Ranjît Singh for the infant; and in England, a man cannot let the light of heaven into his house till he has paid a tax for the window.'[13]
'Nor keep a dog, nor shoot a partridge in the jungle, I am told,' said the Nawâb.
'Quite true, Nawâb Sâhib.'
'Hindustan, sir,' said he, 'is, after all, the best country in the world; the only thing wanted is a little more (rozgâr) employment for the educated classes under Government.'
'True, Nawâb Sâhib, we might, no doubt, greatly multiply this employment to the advantage of those who got the places, but we should have to multiply at the same time the taxes, to the great disadvantage of those who did not get them.'
'True, very true, sir,' said my old friend.
Notes:
1. January, 1836.
2. Farîdpur is a mistake for Farîdâbâd, a small town sixteen miles from Delhi, founded in 1607 by Shaikh Farîd, treasurer of Jahângîr, to protect the high road between Agra and Delhi.
3. The beds are dry in the cold season, but the streams, which flow from the hills to the south of Delhi, are torrents in the rainy season.
4. But the education in such schools is of very little value, being commonly confined to the committing of the Korân to memory by boys ignorant of Arabic.
5. In modern India the British buildings are far more varied, and many aspire to some architectural merit.
6. Muhammad is said to have received these communications in all situations; sometimes when riding along the road on his camel, he became suddenly red in the face, and greatly agitated; he made his camel sit down immediately, and called for some one to write. His rhapsodies were all written at the time on leaves and thrown into a box. Gabriel is believed to have made him repeat over the whole once every year during the month of Ramazân. In the year he died Muhammad told his followers that the angel had made him repeat them over twice that year, and that he was sure he would not live to receive another visit. [W. H. S.]
7. The Muhammadan year consists of twelve lunar months of 30 and 29 days alternately. The common year, therefore, consists of only 354 days. But, when intercalary days in certain years are allowed for, the mean year consists of 354 11/30 days. Inasmuch as a solar year consists of about 365 1/4 days, the difference amounts to nearly 11 days, and any given month in the Muhammadan year consequently goes the round of the seasons in course of time.
8. The Muharram celebration takes its name from the first month of the Muhammadan year, during which it takes place. Alî, the cousin of Muhammad, was married to the prophet's daughter Fatima, and, according to the Shîa sect, must be regarded as the lawful successor of Muhammad, who died in June, A.D. 632. But, as a matter of fact, Omar, Abû Bakr, and Othmân (Usmân) in turn succeeded to the Khalîfate, and Alî did not take possession of the office till A.D. 655. After five and a half years' reign he was assassinated in January, A.D. 661, and his son Hasan, who for a few months had held the vacant office, was poisoned in A.D. 670. Husain, the younger son of Alî, strove to assert his rights by force of arms, but was slain on the tenth day of the month Muharram (10th October, A.D. 680) in a great battle fought at Karbalâ near the Euphrates. These events are commemorated yearly by noisy funeral processions. Properly, the proceedings ought to be altogether mournful, and confined to the Shîa sect, but in practice, Sunnî Muhammadans, and even Hindoos, take part in the ceremonies, which are regarded by many of the populace as no more solemn than a Lord Mayor's show.
9. The disgusting festival of the Holî, celebrated with drunkenness and obscenity, takes place in March, and is supposed to be the festival of the vernal equinox (see ante, chapter 27 note 16). The magistrates in India have no duty which requires more tact, discretion, and firmness than the regulation of conflicting religions processions. The general disarmament of the people has rendered collisions less dangerous and sanguinary than they used to be, but, in spite of all precautions, they still occur occasionally. The total prohibition of processions likely to cause collisions is, of course, impracticable.
10. Ante chapter 15 text at [9].
11. Muslim daughters also succeed, each taking half the share of a son.
12. Tempora mutantur. The land revenue, in the author's time, fully preserved its character of rent, and obviously was not a tax. Later legislation has obscured its real nature, and made it look like a tax. When the author wrote, the only taxes levied were indirect ones, as that on salt, which was paid unconsciously. The modern income-tax, local rates, municipal taxation, and gun licences were all unknown.
13. The window tax was levied at varying rates from 1697 to 1851.