67. The Old City of Delhi
On the 21st we went on eight miles to the Kutb Mînâr, across the range of sandstone hills, which rise to the height of about two hundred feet, and run north and south. The rocks are for the most part naked, but here and there the soil between them is covered with famished grass, and a few stunted shrubs; anything more unprepossessing can hardly be conceived than the aspect of these hills, which seem to serve no other purpose than to store up heat for the people of the great city of Delhi. We passed through a cut in this range of hills, made apparently by the stream of the river Jumna at some remote period, and about one hundred yards wide at the entrance. This cut is crossed by an enormous stone wall running north and south, and intended to shut in the waters, and form a lake in the opening beyond it. Along the brow of the precipice, overlooking the northern end of the wall, is the stupendous fort of Tughlakâbâd, built by the Emperor Tughlak the First[1] of the sandstones of the range of hills on which it stands, cut into enormous square blocks.[2]
On the brow of the opposite side of the precipice, overlooking the southern end of the wall, stands the fort of Muhammadâbâd, built by this Emperor's son and successor, Muhammad, and resembling in all things that built by his father.[3] These fortresses overlooked the lake, with the old city of Delhi spread out on the opposite side of it to the west. There is a third fortress upon an isolated hill, east of the great barrier wall, said to have been built in honour of his master by the Emperor Tughlak's barber.[4] The Emperor's tomb stands upon an isolated rock in the middle of the once lake, now plain, about a mile to the west of the barrier wall. The rock is connected with the western extremity of the northern fortress by a causeway of twenty-five arches, and about one hundred and fifty yards long. This is a fine tomb, and contains in a square centre room the remains of the Emperor Tughlak, his wife, and his son. The tomb is built of red sandstone, and surmounted by a dome of white marble. The three graves inside are built of brick covered with stucco work. The outer sides of the tomb slope slightly inwards from the base, in the form of a pyramid; but the inner walls are, of course, perpendicular.[5]
The impression left on the mind after going over these stupendous fortifications is that the arts which contribute to the comforts and elegancies of life must have been in a very rude state when they were raised. Domestic architecture must have been wretched in the extreme. The buildings are all of stone, and almost all without cement, and seem to have been raised by giants, and for giants, whose arms were against everybody, and everybody's arm against them. This was indeed the state of the Pathân sovereigns in India--they were the creatures of their armies; and their armies were also employed against the people, who feared and detested them all.[6]
The Emperor Tughlak, on his return at the head of the army, which he had led into Bengal to chastise some rebellious subjects, was met at Afghânpur by his eldest son, Jûnâ, whom he had left in the government of the capital. The prince had in three days raised here a palace of wood for a grand entertainment to do honour to his father's return; and when the Emperor signified his wish to retire, all the courtiers rushed out before him to be in attendance, and among the rest, Jûnâ himself. Five attendants only remained when the Emperor rose from his seat, and at that moment the building fell in and crushed them and their master. Jûnâ had been sent at the head of an army into the Deccan, where he collected immense wealth from the plunder of the palaces of princes and the temples of their priests, the only places in which much wealth was to be found in those days. This wealth he tried to conceal from his father, whose death he probably thus contrived, that he might the sooner have the free enjoyment of it with unlimited power.[7]
Only thirty years before, Alâ-ud-dîn, returning in the same manner at the head of an army from the Deccan loaded with wealth, murdered the Emperor Fîrôz the Second, the father of his wife, and ascended the throne.[8] Jûnâ ascended the throne under the name of Muhammad the Third;[9] and, after the remains of his father had been deposited in the tomb I have described, he passed in great pomp and splendour from the fortress of Tughlakâbâd, which his father had just then completed, to the city in which the Mînâr stands, with elephants before and behind loaded with gold and silver coins, which were scattered among the crowd, who everywhere hailed him with shouts of joy. The roads were covered with flowers, the houses adorned with the richest stuffs, and the streets resounded with music.
He was a man of great learning, and a great patron of learned men; he was a great founder of churches, had prayers read in them at the prescribed times, and always went to prayers five times a day himself.[10] He was rigidly temperate himself in his habits, and discouraged all intemperance in others. These things secured him panegyrists throughout the empire during the twenty-seven years that he reigned over it, though perhaps he was the most detestable tyrant that ever filled a throne. He would take his armies out over the most populous and peaceful districts, and hunt down the innocent and unoffending people like wild beasts, and bring home their heads by thousands to hang them on the city gates for his mere amusement. He twice made the whole people of the city of Delhi emigrate with him to Daulatâbâd in Southern India, which he wished to make the capital, from some foolish fancy; and during the whole of his reign gave evident signs of being in an unsound state of mind.[11] There was at the time of his father's death a saint at Delhi named Nizâmuddîn Aulia, or the Saint, who was supposed by supernatural means to have driven from Delhi one night in a panic a large army of Moghals under Tarmasharîn, who invaded India from Transoxiana in 1303, and laid close siege to the city of Delhi, in which the Emperor Alâ-ud-dîn was shut up without troops to defend himself, his armies being engaged in Southern India.[12] It is very likely that he did strike this army with a panic by getting some of their leaders assassinated in one night. He was supposed to have the 'dast ul ghaib', or supernatural purse' [literally, 'invisible hand'], as his private expenditure is said to have been more lavish even than that of the Emperor himself, while he had no ostensible source of income whatever. The Emperor was either jealous of his influence and display, or suspected him of dark crimes, and threatened to humble him when he returned to Delhi. As he approached the city, the friends of the saint, knowing the resolute spirit of the Emperor, urged him to quit the capital, as he had been often heard to say, 'Let me but reach Delhi, and this proud priest shall be humbled'.
The only reply that the saint would ever deign to give from the time the imperial army left Bengal, till it was within one stage of the capital, was 'Dihlî dûr ast'; 'Delhi is still far off'. This is now become a proverb over the East equivalent to our 'There is many a slip between the cup and the lip'. It is probable that the saint had some understanding with the son in his plans for the murder of his father; it is possible that his numerous wandering disciples may in reality have been murderers and robbers, and that he could at any time have procured through them the assassination of the Emperor. The Muhammadan Thugs, or assassins of India, certainly looked upon him as one of the great founders of their system, and used to make pilgrimages to his tomb as such; and, as he came originally from Persia, and is considered by his greatest admirers to have been in his youth a robber, it is not impossible that he may have been originally one of the 'assassins', or disciples of the 'old man of the mountains', and that he may have set up the system of Thuggee in India and derived a great portion of his income from it.[13] Emperors now prostrate themselves, and aspire to have their bones placed near it [scil. the tomb]. While wandering about the ruins, I remarked to one of the learned men of the place who attended us that it was singular Tughlak's buildings should be so rude compared with those of Iltutmish, who had reigned more than eighty years before him.[14] 'Not at all singular,' said he, 'was he not under the curse of the holy saint Nizâm-ud-dîn?' 'And what had the Emperor done to merit the holy man's curse?' 'He had taken by force to employ upon his palaces several of the masons whom the holy man was employing upon a church,' said he.
The Kutb Mînâr was, I think, more beyond my expectations than the Tâj; first, because I had heard less of it; and secondly, because it stands as it were alone in India--there is absolutely no other tower in this Indian empire of ours.[15]
Large pillars have been cut out of single stones, and raised in different parts of India to commemorate the conquests of Hindoo princes, whose names no one was able to discover for several centuries, till an unpretending English gentleman of surprising talents and industry, Mr. James Prinsep, lately brought them to light by mastering the obsolete characters in which they and their deeds had been inscribed upon them.[16] These pillars would, however, be utterly insignificant were they composed of many stones. The knowledge that they are cut out of single stones, brought from a distant mountain, and raised by the united efforts of multitudes when the mechanical arts were in a rude state, makes us still view them with admiration.[17] But the single majesty of this Mînâr of Kutb-ud- dîn, so grandly conceived, so beautifully proportioned, so chastely embellished, and so exquisitely finished, fills the mind of the spectator with emotions of wonder and delight; without any such aid, he feels that it is among the towers of the earth what the Tâj is among the tombs--something unique of its kind that must ever stand alone in his recollections.[18]
It is said to have taken forty-four years in building, and formed the left of two 'mînârs' of a mosque. The other 'mînâr' was never raised, but this has been preserved and repaired by the liberality of the British Government.[19] It is only 242 feet high, and 106 feet in circumference at the base. It is circular, and fluted vertically into twenty-seven semicircular and angular divisions. There are four balconies, supported upon large stone brackets, and surrounded with battlements of richly cut stone, to enable people to walk round the tower with safety. The first is ninety feet from the base, the second fifty feet further up, the third forty further; and the fourth twenty-four feet above the third. Up to the third balcony, the tower is built of fine, but somewhat ferruginous sandstone, whose surface has become red from exposure to the oxygen of the atmosphere. Up to the first balcony, the flutings are alternately semicircular and angular; in the second story they are all semicircular, and in the third all angular. From the third balcony to the top, the building is composed chiefly of white marble; and the surface is without the deep flutings. Around the first story there are five horizontal belts of passages from the Korân, engraved in bold relief, and in the Kufic character. In the second story there are four, and in the third three. The ascent is by a spiral staircase within, of three hundred and eighty steps; and there are passages from this staircase to the balconies, with others here and there for the admission of light and air.[20]
A foolish notion has prevailed among some people, over-fond of paradox, that this tower is in reality a Hindoo building, and not, as commonly supposed, a Muhammadan one. Never was paradox supported upon more frail, I might say absurd, foundations. They are these: 1st, that there is only one Mînâr, whereas there ought to have been two-- had the unfinished one been intended as the second, it would not have been, as it really is, larger than the first; 2nd, that other Mînârs seen in the present day either do not slope inward from the base up at all, or do not slope so much as this. I tried to trace the origin of this paradox, and I think I found it in a silly old 'munshî' (clerk) in the service of the Emperor. He told me that he believed it was built by a former Hindoo prince for his daughter, who wished to worship the rising sun, and view the waters of the Jumna from the top of it every morning.[21]
There is no other Hindoo building like, or of the same kind as this;[22] the ribbons or belts of passages from the Korân are all in relief; and had they not been originally inserted as they are, the whole surface of the building must have been cut down to throw them out in bold relief. The slope is the peculiar characteristic of all the architecture of the Pathâns, by whom the church to which this tower belongs was built.[23] Nearly all the arches of the church are still standing in a more or less perfect state, and all correspond in design, proportion, and execution to the tower. The ruins of the old Hindoo temples about the place, and about every other place in India, are totally different in all three; here they are all exceedingly paltry and insignificant, compared with the church and its tower, and it is evident that it was the intention of the founder to make them appear so to future generations of the faithful, for he has taken care to make his own great work support rather than destroy them, that they might for ever tend to enhance its grandeur.[24] It is sufficiently clear that the unfinished mînâr was commenced upon too large a scale, and with too small a diminution of the circumference from the base upwards. It is two-fifths larger than the finished tower in circumference, and much more perpendicular. Finding these errors when they had got some thirty feet from the foundation, the founder, Shams-ud-dîn (Îltutmish), began to work anew, and had he lived a little longer, there is no doubt that he would have raised the second tower in its proper place, upon the same scale as the one completed. His death was followed by several successive revolutions; five sovereigns succeeded each other on the throne of Delhi in ten years.[25] As usual on such occasions, works of peace were suspended, and succeeding sovereigns sought renown in military enterprise rather than in building churches. This church was entire, with the exception of the second mînâr, when Tamerlane invaded India.[26] He took back a model of it with him to Samarkand, together with all the masons he could find at Delhi, and is said to have built a church upon the same plan at that place, before he set out for the invasion of Syria.
The west face of the quadrangle, in which the tower stands, formed the church, which consisted of eleven large arched alcoves, the centre and largest of which contained the pulpit. In size and beauty they seem to have corresponded with the Mînâr, but they are now all in ruins.[27] In the front of the centre of these alcoves stands the metal pillar of the old Hindoo sovereign of Delhi, Prithî Râj, across whose temple all the great mosque, of which this tower forms a part, was thrown in triumph. The ruins of these temples he scattered all round the place, and consist of colonnades of stone pillars and pedestals, richly enough carved with human figures, in attitudes rudely and obscenely conceived. The small pillar is of bronze, or a metal which resembles bronze, and is softer than brass, and of the same form precisely as that of the stone pillar at Eran, on the Bînâ river in Mâlwâ, upon which stands the figure of Krishna, with the glory around his head.[28]
It is said that this metal pillar was put down through the earth, so as to rest upon the very head of the snake that supports the world; and that the sovereign who made it, and fixed it upon so firm a basis, was told by his spiritual advisers that his dynasty should last as long as the pillar remained where it was. Anxious to see that the pillar was really where the priests supposed it to be, that his posterity might be quite sure of their position, Prithî Râj had it taken up, and he found the blood and some of the flesh of the snake's head adhering to the bottom. By this means the charm was broken, and the priests told him that he had destroyed all the hopes of his house by his want of faith in their assurances. I have never met a Hindoo that doubted either that the pillar was really upon this snake's head, or that the king lost his crown by his want of faith in the assurance of his priests. They all believe that the pillar is still stuck into the head of the great snake, and that no human efforts of the present day could remove it. On my way back to my tents, I asked the old Hindoo officer of my guard, who had gone with me to see the metal pillar, what he thought of the story of the pillar?
'What the people relate about the "kîlî" (pillar) having been stuck into the head of the snake that supports the world, sir, is nothing more than a simple historical fact known to everybody. Is it not so, my brothers?' turning to the Hindoo sipâhîs and followers around us, who all declared that no fact could ever be better established.
'When the Râjâ,' continued the old soldier, 'had got the pillar fast into the head of the snake, he was told by his chief priest that his dynasty must now reign over Hindustan for ever. "But," said the Râjâ, "as all seems to depend upon the pillar being on the head of the snake, we had better see that it is so with our own eyes." He ordered it to be taken up; the clergy tried to dissuade him, but all in vain. Up it was taken--the flesh and blood of the snake were found upon it- -the pillar was replaced; but a voice was heard saying: "Thy want of faith hath destroyed thee--thy reign must soon end, and with it that of thy race."'
I asked the old soldier from whence the voice came.
He said this was a point that had not, he believed, been quite settled. Some thought it was from the serpent himself below the earth, others that it came from the high priest or some of his clergy. 'Wherever it came from,' said the old man, 'there is no doubt that God decreed the Râjâ's fall for his want of faith; and fall he did soon after.' All our followers concurred in this opinion, and the old man seemed quite delighted to think that he had had an opportunity of delivering his sentiments upon so great a question before so respectable an audience.
The Emperor Shams-ud-dîn Îltutmish is said to have designed this great Muhammadan church at the suggestion of Khwâja Kutb-ud-dîn, a Muhammadan saint from Ûsh in Persia, who was his religious guide and apostle, and died some sixteen years before him.[29] His tomb is among the ruins of this old city. Pilgrims visit it from all parts of India, and go away persuaded that they shall have all they have asked, provided they have given or promised liberally in a pure spirit of faith in his influence with the Deity. The tomb of the saint is covered with gold brocade, and protected by an awning--those of the Emperors around it he naked and exposed. Emperors and princes lie all around him; and their tombs are entirely disregarded by the hundreds that daily prostrate themselves before his, and have been doing so for the last six hundred years.[30] Among the rest I saw here the tomb of Mu'azzam, alias Bahâdur Shâh, the son and successor of Aurangzêb, and that of the blind old Emperor Shâh Alam, from whom the Honourable Company got their Dîwanî grant.[31] The grass grows upon the slab that covers the remains of Mu'azzam, the most learned, most pious, and most amiable, l believe, of the crowned descendants of the great Akbar. These kings and princes all try to get a place as near as they can to the remains of such old saints, believing that the ground is more holy than any other, and that they may give them a lift on the day of resurrection. The heir apparent to the throne of Delhi visited the tomb the same day that I did. He was between sixty and seventy years of age.[32]
I asked some of the attendants of the tomb, on my way back, what he had come to pray for; and was told that no one knew, but every one supposed it was for the death of the Emperor, his father, who was only fifteen years older, and was busily engaged in promoting an intrigue at the instigation of one of his wives, to oust him, and get one of her sons, Mirza Salîm, acknowledged as his successor by the British Government. It was the Hindoo festival of the Basant,[33] and all the avenues to the tomb of this old saint were crowded when I visited it. Why the Muhammadans crowded to the tomb on a Hindoo holiday I could not ascertain.
The Emperor Îltutmish, who died A.D. 1235, is buried close behind one end of the arched alcove, in a beautiful tomb without its cupola. He built the tomb himself, and left orders that there should be no 'parda' (screen) between him and heaven; and no dome was thrown over the building in consequence. Other great men have done the same, and their tombs look as if their domes had fallen in; they think the way should be left clear for a start on the day of resurrection.[34] The church is stated to have been added to it by the Emperor Balban, and the Mînâr finished.[35] About the end of the seventeenth century, it was so shaken by an earthquake that the two upper stories fell down. Our Government, when the country came into our possession, undertook to repair these two stories, and entrusted the work to Captain Smith, who built up one of stone, and the other of wood, and completed the repairs in three years. The one was struck by lightning eight or nine years after, and came down. If it was anything like the one that is left, the lightning did well to remove it.[36]
About five years ago, while the Emperor was on a visit to the tomb of Kutb-ud-dîn, a madman got into his private apartments. The servants were ordered to turn him out. On passing the Mînâr he ran in, ascended to the top, stood a few minutes on the verge, laughing at those who were running after him, and made a spring that enabled him to reach the bottom, without touching the sides. An eye-witness told me that he kept his erect position till about half-way down, when he turned over, and continued to turn till he got to the bottom, when his fall made a report like a gun. He was of course dashed to pieces. About five months ago another fell over by accident, and was dashed to pieces against the sides. A new road has been here cut through the tomb of the Emperor Alâ-ud-dîn, who murdered his father- in-law-the first Muhammadan conqueror of Southern India, and his remains have been scattered to the winds.[37]
A very pretty marble tomb, to the west of the alcoves, covers the remains of Imâm Mashhadî, the religious guide of the Emperor Akbar; and a magnificent tomb of freestone covers those of his four foster- brothers. This was long occupied as a dwelling-house by the late Mr. Blake, of the Bengal Civil Service, who was lately barbarously murdered at Jaipur. To make room for his dining-tables he removed the marble slab, which covered the remains of the dead, from the centre of the building, against the urgent remonstrance of the people, and threw it carelessly on one side against the wall, where it now lies. The people appealed in vain, it is said, to Mr. Fraser, the Governor- General's representative, who was soon after assassinated; and a good many attribute the death of both to this outrage upon the remains of the dead foster-brother of Akbar. Those of Alâ-ud-dîn were, no doubt, older and less sensitive. Tombs equally magnificent cover the remains of the other three foster-brothers of Akbar, but I did not enter them.[38]
Notes:
1. The Sultan, called by the author 'the Emperor Tughlak the First', as being the first of the Tughlak dynasty, was by birth a Karaunîah Turk, named Ghâzî Bêg Tughlak. He assumed the style of Ghiyâs-ud-dîn Tughlak Shâh when he seized the throne in A.D. 1320, and he reigned till A.D. 1325.
2. This gigantic fortress is close to the village of Badarpur, about four miles due east of the Kutb Mînâr, and ten or twelve miles south of the modern city. The building of it occupied more than three years, but the whole undertaking 'proved eminently futile, as his son removed his Court to the old city within forty days after his accession.' (Thomas, Chronicles of the Pathân Kings of Delhi, 1871, p. 192.) The fort is described by Cunningham in A.S.R., vol. i, p. 212, whose description is copied in the guide-books. See also Fanshawe, Delhi Past and Present (John Murray, 1902), p. 288 and plate. That work is cited as 'Fanshawe'.
3. Also called Adilâbâd. It is described in A.S.R., vol. i, p. 21; Carr Stephen, The Archaeology and Monumental Remains of Delhi, Ludhiana, 1876, p. 98; and Fanshawe, p. 291.
4. 'The Barber's House. This lies to the right of the road from Tughlâkâbad to Badarpur, and is close to the ruined city. It is said to have been built for Tughlak Shâh's barber about A.D. 1323. It is now a mere ruin.' (Harcourt, The New Guide to Delhi, Allahabad, 1866, p. 88.)
5. This fine tomb was built by Muhammad bin Tughlak (A.D. 1325-51). It is described by Cunningham in A.S.R., vol. i, p. 213. See also Ann. Rep. A. S., India, 1904-5, p. 19, fig. 11; H.F.A., p. 397, fig. 234; and Fanshawe, p. 290, with plate. Thomas (Chronicles, p. 192) and Cunningham both say that the causeway, or viaduct, has twenty-seven, not only twenty-five, arches, as stated in the text. The causeway is 600 feet in length. The sloping walls are characteristic of the period.
6. The blunder of calling the Sultâns of Delhi by the name Pathân, due to the translators of Firishta's History, has been perpetuated by Thomas's well-known work, The Chronicles of the Pathân Kings of Delhi, and in countless other books. The name is quite wrong. The only Pathân Sultâns were those of the Lodî dynasty, which immediately preceded Bâbur, and those of the Sûr dynasty, the rivals of Bâbur's son. 'He (scil. Ghiyâs-ud-dîn Balban) was a Turk of the Ilbarî tribe, but compilers of Indian Histories and Gazetteers, and archaeological experts, turn him, like many Turks, Tâjzîks, Jâts, and Sayyids, into Pathâns, which is synonymous with Afghan, it being the vitiated Hindî equivalent of Pushtûn, the name by which the people generally known as Afghans call themselves, in their own language. . . . It is quite time to give up Dow and Briggs' Ferishta.' (Raverty, in J.A.S.B., vol. lxi (1892), Part I, p. 164, note.)
7. The murder of Ghiyâs-ud-dîn Tughlak by his son Fakhr-ud-dîn Jûnâ, also called Ulugh Khân, occurred in the year A.H. 725, which began on 18th December, 1324 (o.s.). The testimony of the contemporary traveller Ibn Batûtâ establishes the fact that the fall of the pavilion was premeditated. (Thomas, Chronicles, pp. 187, 189.) The murderer, on his accession to the throne (1325), assumed the style of Muhammad bin Tughlak Shâh.
8. Jalâl-ud-dîn Fîrôz Shâh Khiljî was murdered by his son-in-law and nephew Alâ-ud-dîn at Karrâ on the Ganges in July, A.D. 1296. The murderer reigned until A.D. 1315 under the title of Alâ-ud-dîn Muhammad Shâh, Sikandar Sânî.
9. As already noted, his proper style is Muhammad bin Tughlak Shâh. The word bin means 'son of'. The Sultan is never called 'Muhammad the Third'.
10. A Muhammadan must, if he can, say his prayers with the prescribed forms five times in the twenty-four hours; and on Friday, which is their sabbath, he must, if he can, say three prayers in the church masjid. On other days he may say them where he pleases. Every prayer must begin with the first chapter of the Korân--this is the grace to every prayer. This said, the person may put in what other prayers of the Korân he pleases, and ask for that which he most wants, as long as it does not injure other Musalmâns. This is the first chapter of the Korân: 'Praise be to God the Lord of all creatures--the most merciful--the King of the day of judgement. Thee do we worship, and of Thee do we beg assistance. Direct us in the right way--in the way of those to whom Thou hast been gracious; not of those against whom Thou art incensed; nor of those who go astray.' [W. H. S.] The quotation is from Sale's version. The last clause may also be rendered, 'The way of those to whom Thou hast been gracious, against whom Thou art not incensed, and who have not erred,' as Sale points out in his note.
11. This mad tyrant, among other horrible deeds, flayed his nephew alive. He attempted to invade China through the Himâlayas, and for three years issued a forced currency of brass and copper, which he vainly tried to make people take as equal in value to silver. Strange to say, he was allowed to reign for nearly twenty-seven years, and to die peacefully in his bed. The hunts of the 'innocent and unoffending people' were organized rather to gain the benefit of 'sending infidels to hell' than for 'mere amusement'. Daulatâbâd was the name given by Muhammad bin Tughlak to the ancient fortress of Deogîr (Deogiri, Deoghur), situated about ten miles from Aurangâbâd, in what is now the Hyderabad State.
12. In the original edition the Moghal leader's name is printed as 'Turmachurn', the Tarmasharîn (with variations in spelling) of Muhammadan authors (see E. and D., iii. 42, 450, 507; v. 485; vi. 222). The name Turghi is given by Thomas, who says he invested Delhi in A.H. 703, corresponding to A.D. 1303-4; and refers to an article in J.A.S.B., vol. xxxv (1866), Part I, pp. 199-218, entitled 'Notes on the History and Topography of the Ancient Cities of Delhi', by O. Campbell. (Chronicles, p. 175, note.) Campbell writes the leader's name as Turghai Khân. Apparently Tarmasharîn was identical with Turghi or Turghai Khân, but I am not sure that he was. The Moghals made several raids during the reign of Alâ-ud-dîn Muhammad Shâh.
13. The tomb of Nizâm-ud-dîn is further noticed in the next chapter of this work. It is situated in an enclosure which contains other notable tombs. The following extract from the author's Ramaseeana (p. 121) gives additional particulars concerning this saint of questionable sanctity: 'Nizâm-ud-dîn Aulia.--A saint of the Sunnî sect of Muhammadans, said to have been a Thug of great note at some period of his life, and his tomb near Delhi is to this day visited as a place of pilgrimage by Thugs, who make votive offerings to it. He is said to have been of the Barsot class, born in the month of Safar [633], Hijrî, March A.D. 1236; died Rabî-ul-awwal, 725, October A.D. 1325. [The months as stated do not correspond.--Ed.] His tomb is visited by Muhammadan pilgrims from all parts as a place of great sanctity from containing the remains of so holy a man; but the Thugs, both Hindoo and Muhammadan, visit it as containing the remains of the most celebrated Thug of his day. He was of the Sunnî sect, and those of the Shîa sect find no difficulty in believing that he was a Thug; but those of his own sect will never credit it. There are perhaps no sufficient grounds to pronounce him one of the fraternity; but there are some to suspect that he was so at some period of his life. The Thugs say he gave it up early in life, but kept others employed in it till late, and derived an income from it; and the 'dast-ul-ghaib', or supernatural purse, with which he was supposed to be endowed, gives a colour to this. His lavish expenditure, so much beyond his ostensible means, gave rise to the belief that he was supplied from above with money.'
The 'old man of the mountains' with whom the author compares Nizâm- ud-dîn (or at least the original 'old man of the mountains', Shaikh- ul Jabal), was Hasan-ibn-Sabbâh (or, us-Sabbâh), who founded the sect of so-called Assassins in the mountains on the shores of the Caspian, and flourished from about A.D. 1089 to 1124. Hulâkû the Mongol broke the power of the sect in A.D. 1256 (Thatcher, in Encycl. Brit., 11th ed., 1910, s. v. 'Assassin').
14. Shams-ud-dîn Îltutmish, who had been a slave, reigned from A.D. 1210 to 1235. His Turkish name is variously written as Yulteemush, Altamsh, Alitmish, &c. The form Îltutmish is correct (Z.D.M.G., 1907, p. 192). His tomb is discussed post.
15. This is not quite accurate. A similar mînâr, or mosque tower, built in the middle of the thirteenth century, formerly existed at Koil in the Alîgarh district (A.S.R., i. 191), and two mosques at Bayâna in the Bharatpur State, have each only one mînâr, placed outside the courtyard (ibid., vol. iv, p. ix). Chitor in Rajputânâ possesses two noble Hindoo towers, one about 80 feet high, erected in connexion with Jain shrines, and the other, about 120 feet high, erected by Kumbha Rânâ as a tower or pillar of victory. (Fergusson, Hist. of Indian and Eastern Architecture, ed. 1910, vol. ii, pp. 57-61.)
16. The short life of James Prinsep extended only from August 20, 1799, to April 22, 1840, and practically terminated in 1838, when his brain began to fail from the undue strain caused by incessant and varied activity. His memorable discoveries in archaeology and numismatics are recorded in the seven volumes of the J.A.S.B. for the years 1832-8. His contributions to those volumes were edited by B. Thomas, and republished in 1868 under the title of Essays on Indian Antiquities. Sir Alexander Cunningham, who was one of Prinsep's fellow workers, gives interesting details of the process by which the discoveries were made, in the Introduction to the first volume of the Reports of the Archaeological Survey. No adequate account of James Prinsep's remarkable career has been published. He was singularly modest and unassuming. A good summary of his life is given in Higginbotham's Men whom India has Known, 2nd ed., Madras, 1874. See also the editor's paper, 'James Prinsep', in East and West, Bombay, July, 1906.
17. The monolith pillars alluded to in the text are chiefly those of the great Emperor Piyadasi, Beloved of the Gods, also known by the name of Asoka. So far from being memorials of a time when 'the mechanical arts were in a rude state', the Asoka columns exhibit the arts of the stone-cutter and sculptor in perfection. They were erected about 242 to 230 B.C., and the inscriptions on them contain a code of moral and religions precepts. They do not commemorate conquests, although the Asoka pillar at Allahabad has been utilized by later sovereigns for the recording of magniloquent inscriptions in praise of their grandeur. The best-known of the Asoka pillars are the two at Delhi, and the one at Allahabad. Many scholars have devoted themselves to the study of the inscriptions of Asoka, which may be said to form the foundation of authentic Indian history. The reader interested in the subject should consult Senart, Les Inscriptions de Piyadasi, t. I and II, Paris, 1881, 1886; V. A. Smith, Asoka, the Buddhist Emperor of India, 2nd ed.. Oxford, 1909; and 'The Monolithic Pillars or Columns of Asoka' (Z.D.M.G., 1911, pp. 221- 10). See also E.H.I., 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1914), chap. 6, 7, with Bibliography. Certain of the Gupta emperors in the fifth century A.C. also erected monolith pillars. Some of the pillars of the Gupta period commemorate victories; others are merely religious monuments.
18. Fergusson thought the Kutb Mînâr superior to Giotto's campanile at Florence in 'poetry of design and exquisite finish of detail'. He also held it to excel its taller Egyptian rival, the minaret of the mosque of Hasan at Cairo, in its nobler appearance, as well as in design and finish. To sum up, he held the Delhi monument to surpass any building of its class in the whole world. (Hist. of Indian and Eastern Architecture, ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 206.)
19. Fergusson (ibid.) was mistaken in supposing that the Kutb Mînâr was intended for anything else than a mâzina, or tower from which the call to prayers should be proclaimed. It is that and nothing else. Several examples of early mosques with only one mînâr each are known, at Koil and Bayâna, in India, as well as at Ghaznî and Cairo. The unfinished mînâr of Alâuddîn near the Kutb Mînâr was intended for a distinct building, namely, his addition to the original Kutb mosque. There was no 'other mînâr' connected with the Kutb Mînâr.(Cunningham, A.S.R. iv (1874), p. ix.)
The current name of the Kutb Mînâr refers to the saint Khwâja Kutb- ud-dîn of Ûsh, who lies near the tower, and not to Sultan Kutb-ud-dîn Aibak or Îbak. The mînâr was erected, about A.D. 1232, by Sultan Shams-ud-dîn Îltutmish (V. A. Smith, 'Who Built the Kutb Mînâr?' East and West, Bombay, Dec. 1907, pp. 1200-5; B. N. Munshi, The Kutb Mînâr, Delhi, Bombay, 1911).
All the important monuments at or near Delhi are now carefully conserved, Lord Curzon having organized effective arrangements for the purpose.
20. The original edition gives a coloured plate of the Kutb Mînâr. The total height stated in the text, 242 feet, is said by Fergusson (p. 205, note) to be that ascertained in 1794; the present height of the mînâr, since the modern pavilion on the top has been removed, is 238 feet 1 inch, according to Cunningham. (A.S.R., vol. i, p. 196.) Originally the building was ten, or perhaps twenty, feet higher. The deep flutings appear to have been suggested by the mînârs of Mahmûd at Ghaznî, 'which are star polygons in plan, with deeply indented angles'. The Kutb Mînâr was built by Sultan Îltutmish alone about A.D. 1232. The statement in most books, including Fanshawe (pp. 265-8, with plates), that it was begun by Sultan Kutb-ud-dîn, is erroneous.
21. The notion of the Hindoo origin of the Kutb Mînâr, which the author justly stigmatizes as 'foolish', was taken up by Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khân, the author of an Urdû work on the antiquities of Delhi, and by Sir A. Cunningham's assistant, Mr. Beglar, who wasted a great part of volume iv of the Archaeological Survey Reports in trying to prove the paradox. His speculations on the subject were conclusively refuted by his chief in the Preface (pp. v-x) of the same volume. The mînâr was built by Hindoo masons, and, in consequence, some of the details, notably its overlapping or corbelled arches, are Hindoo.
22. This is correct. The Hindoo 'towers of victory' are in a totally different style.
23. On the misnomer 'Pathâns', see ante, previous note 6.
24. The Kutb mosque was constructed from the materials of twenty- seven Hindoo temples. The colonnades retain much of their Hindoo character. (Fanshawe, p. 259 and plate.)
25. The author's description of the unfinished tower is far from accurate. The tower was begun, not by Shams-ud-dîn Îltutmish, but by Alâ-ud-dîn Muhammad Shâh, in the year A.H. 711 (A.D. 1311). It is about 82 feet in diameter, and when cased with marble, as was intended, would have been at least 85 feet in diameter, or nearly double that of the Kutb Mînâr, which is 48 feet 4 inches. The total height of the column as it now stands is about 75 feet above the plinth, or 87 feet above the ground level. (A.S.R., vol. i, p. 205; vol. iv, p. 62, pl. vii; Thomas, Chronicles, p. 173, citing original authorities.) Carr Stephen (p. 67) gives the circumference as 254 feet, and the height as about 80 feet.
26. Alâ-ud-dîn's additions were never completed. The sack of Delhi by Tîmûr Lang (Tamerlane) took place in December 1398. The Delhi sacked by him was the city known as Fîrôzâbâd.
27. The glory of the mosque is . . . the great range of arches on the western side, extending north and south for about 385 feet, and consisting of three greater and eight smaller arches; the central one 22 feet wide, and 53 feet high; the larger side-arches, 24 feet 4 inches, and about the same height as the central arch; the smaller arches, which are unfortunately much ruined, are about half these dimensions.' The great arch 'has since been carefully restored by Government under efficient superintendence, and is now as sound and complete as when first erected. The two great side arches either were never completed, or have fallen down in consequence of the false mode of construction.' (Fergusson, Hist. of I. and E. Archit., ed. 1910, vol. ii, pp. 203, 204). The centre arch bears an inscription dated in A.H. 594, or A.D. 1198 (Thomas, Chronicles, p. 24).
28. Most of the description of the Iron Pillar in the text is erroneous. The pillar has nothing to do with Prithî Râj, who was slain by the Muhammadans in A.D. 1192 (A.H. 588). The earliest inscription on it records the victories of a Râjâ Chandra, probably Chandra-varman, chief of Pokharan in Râjputâna in the fourth century A.C. (E.H.I., 3rd ed., 1914, p. 290, note). The pillar is by no means 'small' when its material is considered; on the contrary, it is very large. That material is not 'bronze, or a metal which resembles bronze', but is pure malleable iron, as proved by analysis. It has been suggested that this pillar must have been formed by gradually welding pieces together; if so, it has been done very skilfully, since no marks of such welding are to be seen. . . . The famous iron pillar at the Kutb, near Delhi, indicates an amount of skill in the manipulation of a large mass of wrought iron which has been the marvel of all who have endeavoured to account for it. It is not many years since the production of such a pillar would have been an impossibility in the largest foundries of the world, and even now there are comparatively few where a similar mass of metal could be tumed out. . . . The total weight must exceed six tons.' (V. Ball, Economic Geology of India, pp. 338, 339.) The metal is uninjured by rust, and the inscription is perfect. An exact facsimile is set up in the Indian Section of the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington, The pillar is shown, with the smaller arches of the mosque, in H.F.A. fig. 232. See also Fanshawe, pp. 260, 264, and plates. The inscription was edited by Fleet (Gupta Inscriptions, 1888, No. 32). The dimensions of the pillar are as follows: Height above ground (total), 22 ft,; height below ground, 1 ft. 8 in.; diameter at base, 16.4 in.; diameter at the capital, 12.05 in.; height of capital, 3 1/2 ft. At a distance of a few inches below the surface it expands in a bulbous form to a diameter of 2 ft. 4 in., and rests on a gridiron of iron bars, which are fastened with lead into the stone pavement. (A.S.R., vol. iv, p. 28, pl. v.)
This last prosaic fact, established by actual excavation, destroys the basis of all the current local legends and spurious traditions.
29. This name is printed Ouse in the author's text. The saint referred to is the celebrated Kutb-ud-dîn Bakhtyâr Kâkî, commonly called Kutb Shâh, who died on the 27th of November, A.D. 1235. Îltutmish died in April, A.D. 1236 (Beale).
30. The royal tombs are in the village of Mihraulî, close to the Kutb. See Carr Stephen, op. cit., pp. 180-4, and Fanshawe, pp. 280-4.
31. That is to say, the revenue administration of Bengal, Bihâr, and Orissa in 1765.
32. He is now Emperor, having succeeded his father, Akbar Shâh, in 1837. [W. H. S.] He is known as Bahâdur Shâh II. In consequence of his having joined the rebels in 1857, he was deposed and banished. He died at Rangoon in 1862, and with him ended the line of Emperors of Delhi. He was born on the 24th of October, 1775, and so was in his sixty-first year when the author met him. His father was about seventy-eight (eighty lunar) years of age at his death.
33. 'Basant' means the spring. The full name of this festival of the spring time is the Basant Panchamî.
34. According to Harcourt (The New Guide to Delhi, 1866), the tomb of Îltutmish was erected by his children, the Sultânas Rukn-ud-dîn and Razîa, who reigned in succession after him for short periods, that is to say, Rukn-ud-dîn Fîrôz Shâh for six months and twenty- eight days, and the Empress Razîa for about three years, from A.D. 1236 to 1239. (See Carr Stephen, p. 73.) Îltutmish died in April, A.D. 1236, not in 1235. Fergusson observes that this tomb is of special interest as being the oldest Muhammadan tomb known to exist in India. He also remarks (p. 509) that the effect at present is injured by the want of a roof, which, 'judging from appearance, was never completed, if ever commenced'. Harcourt (p. 120) states that 'Fîrôz Shâh, who reigned from A.D. 1351 to A.D. 1385 [sic, 1388], is said to have placed a roof to the building, but it is doubtful if there ever was one, as there are no traces of the same. Cunningham and Carr Stephen (p. 74) both find sufficient evidence remaining to satisfy them that a dome once existed. Fanshawe (p. 269) says 'that the chamber was intended to be roofed is clear from the remains of the lowest course of a dome on the top of the south wall; but, if it was built for her father by Sultan Raziya, as seems probable, it is quite possible that the dome was never completed'. The interior, a square of 29 1/2 feet, is beautifully and elaborately decorated, and in wonderful preservation considering its age and the exposure to which it has been subjected. The walls are over seven feet thick, the principal entrance being to the east. The tomb is built of red sandstone and marble; the sarcophagus is in the centre, and is of pale marble.
35. Sultan Ghiyâs-ud-dîn Balban reigned from February, A.D. 1266 to 1286. I cannot discover any authority for the statement that he finished the Kutb Mînâr, and 'added the church'. It is not clear which 'church', or mosque, the author refers to. For a notice of Balban's tomb and buildings, see Carr Stephen, pp. 79-81, He certainly did not finish the Kutb Mînâr.
36. See A.S.R., vol. i, p. 199. 'Top of the Kutb Mînâr.--This octagonal stone pavilion was put up in A.D. 1826 over the Mînâr by Major Smith, of the Engineers, who had the superintendence of the repairs of the Kutb, but it was taken down by the order of Government' (Harcourt, The New Guide to Delhi, p. 123). This 'grotesque ornament' was removed in 1848 by order of Lord Hardinge, and bereft of its wooden pavilion, which had carried a flag-staff (Carr Stephen, p. 64; Fanshawe, p. 266). It has now been moved farther and more out of sight.
37. This alleged outrage does not appear to have really occurred. The author seems to have been misinformed about the position of Alâ-ud- dîn's tomb, which still exits in the central room of a building, the eastern wall of which is in part identical with the western wall of the extension of the Kutb Mosque, built by Îltutmish (Carr Stephen, op. cit., p. 88). Fanshawe agrees (p. 272).
38. The tomb desecrated by Mr. Blake is on the right of the road leading from the Kutb Mînâr to the village of Mihraulî, and is either that of Adham Khân, whom Akbar put to death in A.D. 1562 for the murder of Shams-ud-dîn Muhammad Atgah Khân, one of the Emperor's foster fathers, or the neighbouring 'family grave enclosure' of his brothers, known as the Chaunsath Khambhâ, or Hall of Sixty-four Pillars. Adham Khân's tomb is still, or was until recently, used as a rest-house (Fanshawe, pp. 14, 228, 242, 256, 278; Carr Stephen, pp. 31, 200, pl. ii). The best-known of the 'kokahs', or foster-brothers, of Akbar is Azîz, the son of Shams-ud-dîn above mentioned. Azîz received the title of Khân-i-Azam (Von Noer, The Emperor Akbar, transl. by Beveridge, vol. i, pp. 78, 95; and Blochmann, Âîn-t- Akbarî, vol. i, pp. 321, 323, &c.). The young chief of Jaipur died in 1834, and in the course of disturbances which followed, the Political Agent was wounded, and Mr. Blake, his assistant, was killed (D. Boulger, Lord William Bentinck, 'Rulers of India' series, p. 143). I cannot find mention in any authority of Imâm Mashhadî. Mr. Fraser's murder has been fully described ante chapter 64.
68. New Delhi, or Shâhjahânâbâd
On the 22nd of January, 1836, we went on twelve miles to the new city of Delhi, built by the Emperor Shâhjahân, and called after him Shâhjahânâbâd; and took up our quarters in the palace of the Bêgam Samrû, a fine building, agreeably situated in a garden opening into the great street, with a branch of the great canal running through it, and as quiet as if it had been in a wilderness.[1] We had obtained from the Bêgam permission to occupy this palace during our stay. It was elegantly furnished, the servants were all exceedingly attentive, and we were very happy.
The Kutb Mînâr stands upon the back of the sandstone range of low hills, and the road descends over the north-eastern face of this range for half a mile, and then passes over a level plain all the way to the new city, which lies on the right bank of the river Jumna. The whole plain is literally covered with the remains of splendid Muhammadan mosques and mausoleums. These Muhammadans seem as if they had always in their thoughts the saying of Christ which Akbar has inscribed on the gateway at Fathpur Sîkrî: 'Life is a bridge which you are to pass over, and not to build your dwellings upon.'[2] The buildings which they have left behind them have almost all a reference to a future state--they laid out their means in a church, in which the Deity might be propitiated; in a tomb where leaned and pious men might chant their Korân over their remains, and youth be instructed in their duties; in a serai, a bridge, a canal built gratuitously for the public good, that those who enjoyed these advantages from generation to generation might pray for the repose of their souls. How could it be otherwise where the land was the property of Government, where capital was never concentrated or safe, when the only aristocracy was that of office, while the Emperor was the sole recognized heir of all his public officers?
The only thing that he could not inherit were his tombs, his temples, his bridges, his canals, his caravanserais. I was acquainted with the history of most of the great men whose tombs and temples I visited along the road; but I asked in vain for a sight of the palaces they occupied in their day of pride and power. They all had, no doubt, good houses agreeably situated, like that of the Bêgam Samrû, in the midst of well-watered gardens and shrubberies, delightful in their season; but they cared less about them--they knew that the Emperor was heir to every member of the great body to which they belonged, the aristocracy of office; and might transfer all their wealth to his treasury, and all their palaces to their successors, the moment the breath should be out of their bodies.[3] If their sons got office, it would neither be in the same grades nor in the same places as those of their fathers.
How different it is in Europe, where our aristocracy is formed upon a different basis; no one knows where to find the tombs in which the remains of great men who have passed away repose; or the churches and colleges they have founded; or the serâis, the bridges, the canals they formed gratuitously for the public good; but everybody knows where to find their 'proud palaces'; life is not to them 'a bridge over which they are to pass, and not build their dwellings upon'. The eldest sons enjoy all the patrimonial estates, and employ them as best they may to get their younger brothers into situations in the church, the army, the navy, and other public establishments, in which they may be honourably and liberally provided for out of the public purse.
About half-way between the great tower and the new city, on the left- hand side of the road, stands the tomb of Mansûr Alî Khân, the great- grandfather of the present King of Oudh. Of all the tombs to be seen in this immense extent of splendid ruins, this is perhaps the only one raised over a subject, the family of whose inmates are now in a condition even to keep it in repair. It is a very beautiful mausoleum, built after the model of the Tâj at Agra; with this difference, that the external wall around the quadrangle of the Tâj is here, as it were, thrown back, and closed in upon the tomb. The beautiful gateway at the entrance of the gardens of the Tâj forms each of the four sides of the tomb of Mansûr Alî Khân, with all its chaste beauty of design, proportion, and ornament.[4] The quadrangle in which this mausoleum stands is about three hundred and fifty yards square, surrounded by a stone wall, with handsome gateways, and filled in the same manner as that of the Tâj at Agra, with cisterns and fruit-trees. Three kinds of stones are used--white marble, red sandstone, and the fine white and flesh-coloured sandstone of Rupbâs. The dome is of white marble, and exactly of the same form as that of the Tâj; but it stands on a neck or base of sandstone with twelve sides, and the marble is of a quality very inferior to that of the Tâj. It is of coarse dolomite, and has become a good deal discoloured by time, so as to give it the appearance, which Bishop Heber noticed, of potted meat. The neck is not quite so long as that of the Tâj, and is better covered by the marble cupolas that stand above each face of the building. The four noble minarets are, however, wanting. The apartments are all in number and form exactly like those of the Tâj, but they are somewhat less in size. In the centre of the first floor lies the beautiful marble slab that bears the date of this small pillar of a tottering state, A.H. 1167;[5] and in a vault underneath repose his remains by the side of those of one of his grand-daughters. The graves that cover these remains are of plain earth strewed with fresh flowers, and covered with plain cloth. About two miles from this tomb to the east stands that of the father of Akbar, Humâyûn, a large and magnificent building. As I rode towards this building to see the slab that covers the head of poor Dârâ Shikoh, I frequently cast a lingering look behind to view, as often as I could, this very pretty imitation of the most beautiful of all the tombs of the earth.[6]
On my way I turned in to see the tomb of the celebrated saint, Nizâm- ud-dîn Auliâ, the defeater of the Transoxianian army under Tarmah Shîrîn in 1303, to which pilgrimages are still made from all parts of India.[7] It is a small building, surmounted by a white marble dome, and kept very clean and neat.[8] By its side is that of the poet Khusrû, his contemporary and friend, who moved about where he pleased through the palace of the Emperor Tughlak Shâh the First, five hundred years ago, and sang extempore to his lyre while the greatest and the fairest watched his lips to catch the expressions as they came warm from his soul. His popular songs are still the most popular; and he is one of the favoured few who live through ages in the every-day thoughts and feelings of many millions, while the crowned heads that patronized them in their brief day of pomp and power are forgotten, or remembered merely as they happened to be connected with them. His tomb has also a dome, and the grave is covered with rich brocade,[9] and attended with as much reverence and devotion as that of the great saint himself, while those of the emperors, kings, and princes that have been crowded around them are entirely disregarded. A number of people are employed to read the Korân over the grave of the old saint (scil. Nizâm-ud-dîn), who died A.H. 725 [A.D. 1324-5], and are paid by contributions from the present Emperor, and the members of his family, who occasionally come in their hour of need to entreat his intercession with the Deity in their favour, and by the humble pilgrims who flock from all parts for the same purpose. A great many boys are here educated by those readers of their sacred volume. All my attendants bowed their heads to the dust before the shrine of the saint, but they seemed especially indifferent to those of the royal family, which are all open to the sky. Respect shown or neglect towards them could bring neither good nor evil, while any slight to the tomb of the crusty old saint might be of serious consequence.
In an enclosure formed by marble screens beautifully carved is the tomb of the favourite son of the present Emperor,[10] Mirzâ Jahângîr, whom I knew intimately at Allahabad in 1816,[11] when he was killing himself as fast as he could with Hoffman's cherry brandy. 'This ', he would say to me, 'is really the only liquor that you Englishmen have worth drinking, and its only fault is that it makes one drunk too soon.' To prolong his pleasure, he used to limit himself to one large glass every hour, till he got dead drunk. Two or three sets of dancing women and musicians used to relieve each other in amusing him during this interval. He died, of course, soon, and the poor old Emperor was persuaded by his mother, the favourite sultana, that he had fallen a victim to sighing and grief at the treatment of the English, who would not permit him to remain at Delhi, where he was continually employed in attempts to assassinate his eldest brother, the heir apparent, and to stir up insurrections among the people. He was not in confinement at Allahabad, but merely prohibited from returning to Delhi. He had a splendid dwelling, a good income, and all the honours due to his rank.[12]
In another enclosure of the same kind are the Emperor Muhammad Shâh,[13]--who reigned when Nâdir Shâh invaded Delhi--his mother, wife, and daughter; and in another close by is the tomb which interested me most, that of Jahânârâ Bêgam, the favourite sister of poor Dârâ Shikoh, and daughter of Shâh Jahân.[14] It stands in the same enclosure, with the brother of the present Emperor on one side, and his daughter on the other. Her remains are covered with a marble slab hollow at the top, and exposed to the sky--the hollow is filled with earth covered with green grass. Upon her tomb is the following inscription, the three first lines of which are said to have been written by herself:-
Let no rich canopy cover my grave. This grass is the best covering for the tombs of the poor in spirit. The humble, the transitory Jahânârâ, The disciple of the holy men of Chisht, The daughter of the Emperor Shâh Jahân.'
I went over the magnificent tomb of Humâyûn, which was raised over his remains by the Emperor Akbar. It stands in the centre of a quadrangle of about four hundred yards square, with a cloistered wall all round; but I must not describe any more tombs.[15] Here, under a marble slab, lies the head of poor Dârâ Shikoh, who, but for a little infirmity of temper, had perhaps changed the destinies of India, by changing the character of education among the aristocracy of the countries under his rule, and preventing the birth of the Marâthâ powers by leaving untouched the independent kingdoms of the Deccan, upon whose ruins, under his bigoted brother, the former rose. Secular and religions education were always inseparably combined among the Muhammadans, and invited to India from Persia by the public offices, civil and military, which men of education and courtly manners could alone obtain. These offices had long been exclusively filled by such men, who flocked in crowds to India from Khorâsân and Persia. Every man qualified by secular instruction to make his way at court and fill such offices was disposed by his religions instruction to assert the supremacy of his creed, and to exclude the followers of every other from the employments over which he had any control. The aristocracy of office was the ocean to which this stream of Muhammadan education flowed from the west, and spread all over India; and had Dârâ subdued his brothers and ascended the throne, he would probably have arrested the flood by closing the public offices against these Persian adventurers, and filling them with Christians and Hindoos. This would have changed the character of the aristocracy and the education of the people.[16]
While looking upon the slab under which his head reposes, I thought of the slight 'accidents by flood and field', the still slighter thought of the brain and feeling of the heart, on which the destinies of nations and of empires often depend--on the discovery of the great diamond in the mines of Golconda--on the accident which gave it into the hands of an ambitions Persian adventurer--on the thought which suggested the advantage of presenting it to Shâh Jahân--on the feeling which made Dârâ get off, and Aurangzêb sit on his elephant at the battle of Samûgarh, on which depended the fate of India, and perhaps the advancement of the Christian religion and European literature and science over India.[17] But for the accident which gave Charles Martel the victory over the Saracens at Tours,[18] Arabic and Persian had perhaps been the classical languages, and Islamism the religion of Europe; and where we have cathedrals and colleges we might have had mosques and mausoleums; and America and the Cape, the compass and the press, the steam-engine, the telescope, and the Copernican System, might have remained still undiscovered; and but for the accident which turned Hannibal's face from Rome after the battle of Cannae, or that which intercepted his brother Asdrubal's letter, we might now all be speaking the languages of Tyre and Sidon, and roasting our own children in offerings to Siva or Saturn, instead of saving those of the Hindoos. Poor Dârâ! but for thy little jealousy of thy father and thy son, thy desire to do all thy work without their aid, and those occasional ebullitions of passion which alienated from thee the most powerful of all the Hindoo princes, whom it was so much thy wish and thy interest to cherish, thy generous heart and enlightened mind had reigned over this vast empire, and made it, perchance, the garden it deserves to be made.
I visited the celebrated mosque known by the name of Jâmi (Jumma) Masjid, a fine building raised by Shâh Jahân, and finished in six years, A.H. 1060, at a cost of ten lâkhs of rupees or one hundred thousand pounds. Money compared to man's labour and subsistence is still four times more valuable in India than in England; and a similar building in England would cost at least four hundred thousand pounds. It is, like all the buildings raised by this Emperor, in the best taste and style.[19] I was attended by three well-dressed and modest Hindoos, and a Muhammadan servant of the Emperor. My attention was so much taken up with the edifice that I did not perceive, till I was about to return, that the doorkeepers had stopped my three Hindoos. I found that they had offered to leave their shoes behind, and submit to anything to be permitted to follow me; but the porters had, they said, strict orders to admit no worshippers of idols; for their master was a man of the book, and had, therefore, got a little of the truth in him, though unhappily not much, since his heart had not been opened to that of the Korân. Nathû could have told him that he also had a book, which he and some fourscore millions more thought as good as his or better; but he was afraid to descant upon the merits of his 'shâstras', and the miracles of Kishan Jî [Krishna], among such fierce, cut-throat-looking people; he looked, however, as if he could have eaten the porter, Korân and all, when I came to their rescue. The only volumes which Muhammadans designate by the name of the book are the Old and New Testaments, and the Korân.
I visited also the palace, which was built by the same Emperor. It stands on the right bank of the Jumna, and occupies a quadrangle surrounded by a high wall built of red sandstone, about one mile in circumference; one side looks down into the clear stream of the Jumna, while the others are surrounded by the streets of the city.[20] The entrance is by a noble gateway to the west;[21] and facing this gateway on the inside, a hundred and twenty yards distant, is the Dîwân-î-Amm, or the common hall of audience. This is a large hall, the roof of which is supported upon four colonnades of pillars of red sandstone, now white-washed, but once covered with stucco work and gilded. On one of these pillars is shown the mark of the dagger of a Hindoo prince of Chitôr, who, in the presence of the Emperor, stabbed to the heart one of the Muhammadan ministers who made use of some disrespectful language towards him. On being asked how he presumed to do this in the presence of his sovereign he answered in the very words almost of Roderic Dhu,
I right my wrongs where they are given, Though it were in the court of Heaven.[22]
The throne projects into the hall from the back in front of the large central arch; it is raised ten feet above the floor, and is about ten feet wide, and covered by a marble canopy, all beautifully inlaid with mosaic work exquisitely finished, but now much dilapidated. The room or recess in which the throne stands is open to the front, and about fifteen feet wide and six deep. There is a door at the back by which the Emperor entered from his private apartments, and one on his left, from which his prime minister or chief officer of state approached the throne by a flight of steps leading into the hall. In front of the throne, and raised some three feet above the floor, is a fine large slab of white marble, on which one of the secretaries stood during the hours of audience to hand up to the throne any petitions that were presented, and to receive and convey commands. As the people approached over the intervening one hundred and twenty yards between the gateway and the hall of audience they were made to bow down lower and lower to the figure of the Emperor, as he sat upon his throne, without deigning to show by any motion of limb or muscle that he was really made of flesh and blood, and not cut out of the marble he sat upon.
The marble walls on three sides of this recess are inlaid with precious stones representing some of the most beautiful birds and flowers of India, according to the boundaries of the country when Shâh Jahân built this palace, which included Kâbul and Kâshmîr, afterwards severed from it on the invasion of Nadir Shâh.[23]
On the upper part of the back wall is represented, in the same precious stones, and in a graceful attitude, a European in a kind of Spanish costume, playing upon his guitar, and in the character of Orpheus charming the birds and beasts which he first taught the people of India so well to represent in this manner. This I have no doubt was intended by Austin de Bordeaux for himself. The man from Shîrâz, Amânat Khân, who designed all the noble Tughra characters in which the passages from the Korân are inscribed upon different parts of the Tâj at Agra, was permitted to place his own name in the same bold characters on the right-hand side as we enter the tomb of the Emperor and his queen. It is inscribed after the date, thus, A.H. 1048 [A.D. 1638-9], 'The humble fakîr Amânat Khân of Shirâz.' Austin was a still greater favourite than Amânat Khân; and the Emperor Shâh Jahân, no doubt, readily acceded to his wishes to have himself represented in what appeared to him and his courtiers so beautiful a picture.[24]
The Dîwân-i-Khâs, or hall of private audience, is a much more splendid building than the other from its richer materials, being all built of white marble beautifully ornamented. The roof is supported upon colonnades of marble pillars. The throne stands in the centre of this hall, and is ascended by steps, and covered by a canopy, with four artificial peacocks on the four corners.[25] Here, thought I, as I entered this apartment, sat Aurangzêb when he ordered the assassination of his brothers Dârâ and Murâd, and the imprisonment and destruction by slow poison of his son Muhammad, who had so often fought bravely by his side in battle. Here also, but a few months before, sat the great Shâh Jahân to receive the insolent commands of this same grandson Muhammad when flushed with victory, and to offer him the throne, merely to disappoint the hopes of the youth's father, Aurangzêb. Here stood in chains the graceful Sulaimân, to receive his sentence of death by slow poison with his poor young brother Sipihr Shikoh, who had shared all his father's toils and dangers, and witnessed his brutal murder.[26] Here sat Muhammad Shâh, bandying compliments with his ferocious conqueror, Nâdir Shâh, who had destroyed his armies, plundered his treasury, stripped his throne, and ordered the murder of a hundred thousand of the helpless inhabitants of his capital, men, women, and children, in a general massacre. The bodies of these people lay in the streets tainting the air, while the two sovereigns sat here sipping their coffee, and swearing to the most deliberate lies in the name of their God, Prophet, and Korân;--all are now dust; that of the oppressor undistinguishable from that of the oppressed.[27]
Within this apartment and over the side arches at one end is inscribed in black letters the celebrated couplet, 'If there be a paradise on the face of the earth, it is this--it is this--it is this.[28] Anything more unlike paradise than this place now is can hardly be conceived. Here are crowded together twelve hundred kings and queens (for all the descendants of the Emperors assume the title of Salâtîn, the plural of Sultan) literally eating each other up.[29]
Government, from motives of benevolence, has here attempted to apportion out the pension they assign to the Emperor, to the different members of his great family circle who are to be subsisted upon it, instead of leaving it to his own discretion. This has perhaps tended to prevent the family from throwing off its useless members to mix with the common herd, and to make the population press against the means of subsistence within these walls. Kings and queens of the house of Tîmûr are to be found lying about in scores, like broods of vermin, without food to eat or clothes to cover their nakedness. It has been proposed by some to establish colleges for them in the palace to fit them by education for high offices under our Government. Were this done, this pensioned family, which never can possibly feel well affected towards our Government or any Government but their own, would alone send out men enough to fill all the civil offices open to the natives of the country, to the exclusion of the members of the humbler but better affected families of Muhammadans and Hindoos. If they obtained the offices they would be educated for, the evil to Government and to society would be very great; and if they did not get them, the evil would be great to themselves, since they would be encouraged to entertain hopes that could not be realized. Better let them shift for themselves and quietly sink among the crowd. They would only become rallying points for the dissatisfaction and multiplied sources of disaffection; everywhere doing mischief, and nowhere doing good. Let loose upon society, they everywhere disgust people by their insolence and knavery, against which we are every day required to protect the people by our interference; the prestige of their name will by degrees diminish, and they will sink by and by into utter insignificance. During his stay at Jubbulpore, Kâmbaksh, the nephew of the Emperor, whom I have already mentioned as the most sensible member of the family,[30] did an infinite deal of good by cheating almost all the tradesmen of the town. Till he came down among them with all his ragamuffins from Delhi, men thought the Padshâhs and their progeny must be something superhuman, something not to be spoken of, much less approached, without reverence. During the latter part of his stay my court was crowded with complaints; and no one has ever since heard a scion of the house of Tîmûr spoken of but as a thing to be avoided--a person more prone than others to take in his neighbours. One of these kings, who has not more than ten shillings a month to subsist himself and family upon, will, in writing to the representative of the British Government, address him as 'Fidwî Khâs', 'Your particular slave'; and be addressed in reply with 'Your majesty's commands have been received by your slave.'[31]
I visited the college which is in the mausoleum of Ghâzî-ud-dîn, a fine building, with its usual accompaniment of a mosque and a college. The slab that covers the grave, and the marble screens that surround the ground that contains it, are amongst the most richly cut things that I have seen. The learned and pious Muhammadans in the institution told me in my morning visit that there should always be a small hollow in the top of marble slabs, like that on Jahânârâ's, whenever any of them were placed over graves, in order to admit water, earth, and grass; but that, strictly speaking, no slab should be allowed to cover the grave, as it could not fail to be in the way of the dead when summoned to get up by the trumpet of Azraîl on the day of the resurrection.'[32] 'Earthly pride,' said they, 'has violated this rule; and now everybody that can afford it gets a marble slab put over his grave. But it is not only in this that men have been falling off from the letter and spirit of the law; for we now hear drums beating and trumpets sounding even among the tombs of the saints, a thing that our forefathers would not have considered possible. In former days it was only a prophet like Moses, Jesus, or Muhammad, that was suffered to have a stone placed over his head.' I asked them how it was that the people crowded to the tombs of their saints, as I saw them at that of Kutb Shâh in old Delhi, on the Basant, a Hindoo festival. 'It only shows,' said they 'that the end of the world is approaching. Are we not divided into seventy-two sects among ourselves, all falling off into Hinduism, and every day committing greater and greater follies? These are the manifest signs long ago pointed out by wise and holy men as indicating the approach of the last day.'[33]
A man might make a curious book out of the indications of the end of the world according to the notions of different people or different individuals. The Hindoos have had many different worlds or ages; and the change from the good to the bad, or the golden to the iron age, is considered to have been indicated by a thousand curious incidents.[34] I one day asked an old Hindoo priest, a very worthy man, what made the five heroes of the Mahâbhârata, the demigod brothers of Indian story, leave the plains and bury themselves no one knew where, in the eternal snows of the Himâlaya mountains. 'Why, sir,' said he, 'there is no question about that. Yudhisthira, the eldest, who reigned quietly at Delhi after the long war, one day sat down to dinner with his four brothers and their single wife, Draupadî; for you know, sir, they had only one among them all. The king said grace and the covers were removed, when, to their utter consternation, a full-grown fly was seen seated upon the dish of rice that stood before his majesty. Yudhisthira rose in consternation. 'When flies begin to blow upon men's dinners,' said his majesty, 'you may be sure, my brothers, that the end of the world is near--the golden age is gone--the iron one has commenced, and we must all be off; the plains of India are no longer a fit abode for gentlemen.' Without taking one morsel of food,' added the priest, 'they set out, and were never after seen or heard of. They were, however, traced by manifest supernatural signs up through the valley of the Ganges to the snow tops of the Himâlaya, in which they no doubt left their mortal coils.' They seem to feel a singular attachment for the birthplace of their great progenitrix, for no place in the world is, I suppose, more infested by them than Delhi, at present; and there a dish of rice without a fly would, in the iron, be as rare a thing as a dish with one in the golden, age.
Muhammadans in India sigh for the restoration of the old Muhammadan regime, not from any particular attachment to the descendants of Tîmûr, but with precisely the same feelings that Whigs and Tories sigh for the return to power of their respective parties in England; it would give them all the offices in a country where office is everything. Among them, as among ourselves, every man is disposed to rate his own abilities highly, and to have a good deal of confidence in his own good luck; and all think that if the field were once opened to them by such a change, they should very soon be able to find good places for themselves and their children in it. Perhaps there are few communities in the world among whom education is more generally diffused than among Muhammadans in India. He who holds an office worth twenty rupees a month commonly gives his sons an education equal to that of a prime minister. They learn, through the medium of the Arabic and Persian languages, what young men in our colleges learn through those of the Greek and Latin--that is, grammar, rhetoric, and logic. After his seven years of study, the young Muhammadan binds his turban upon a head almost as well filled with the things which appertain to these branches of knowledge as the young man raw from Oxford--he will talk as fluently about Socrates and Aristotle, Plato, and Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna: (alias Sokrât, Aristotalis, Aflâtûn, Bokrât, Jâlînus, and Bû Alî Sena); and, what is much to his advantage in India, the languages in which he has learnt what he knows are those which he most requires through life.[35] He therefore thinks himself as well fitted to fill the high offices which are now filled exclusively by Europeans, and naturally enough wishes the establishments of that power would open them to him. On the faculties and operations of the human mind, on man's passions and affections, and his duties in all relations of life, the works of Imâm Muhammad Ghazâlî[36] and Nâsir-ud-dîn Tûsî[37] hardly yield to those of Plato and Aristotle, or to those of any other authors who have written on the same subjects in any country. These works, the Ihya-ul-ulûm, epitomized into the Kîmiâ-i-Saâdat, and the Akhlâk-i-Nâsirî, with the didactic poems of Sâdî,[38] are the great 'Pierian spring' of moral instruction from which the Muhammadan delights to 'drink deep' from infancy to old age; and a better spring it would be difficult to find in the works of any other three men.
It is not only the desire for office that makes the educated Muhammadans cherish the recollection of the old regime in Hîndustan: they say, 'We pray every night for the Emperor and his family, because our forefathers ate the salt of his forefathers'; that is, our ancestors were in the service of his ancestors; and, consequently, were the aristocracy of the country. Whether they really were so matters not; they persuade themselves or their children that they were. This is a very common and a very innocent sort of vanity. We often find Englishmen in India, and I suppose in all the rest of our foreign settlements, sporting high Tory opinions and feelings, merely with a view to have it supposed that their families are, or at some time were, among the aristocracy of the land. To express a wish for Conservative predominance is the same thing with them as to express a wish for the promotion in the Army, Navy, or Church of some of their near relations; and thus to indicate that they are among the privileged class whose wishes the Tories would be obliged to consult were they in power.[39]
Man is indeed 'fearfully and wonderfully made'; to be fitted himself for action in the world, or for directing ably the actions of others, it is indispensably necessary that he should mix freely from his youth up with his fellow men. I have elsewhere mentioned that the state of imbecility to which a man of naturally average powers of intellect may be reduced when brought up with his mother in the seraglio is inconceivable to those who have not had opportunities of observing it.[40] The poor old Emperor of Delhi, to whom so many millions look up, is an instance. A more venerable-looking man it is difficult to conceive, and had he been educated and brought up with his fellow men, he would no doubt have had a mind worthy of his person.[41] As it is, he has never been anything but a baby. Râjâ Jîvan Râm, an excellent portrait painter, and a very honest and agreeable person, was lately employed to take the Emperor's portrait. After the first few sittings, the portrait was taken into the seraglio to the ladies. The next time he came, the Emperor requested him to remove the great blotch from under the nose. 'May it please your majesty, it is impossible to draw any person without a shadow; and I hope many millions will long continue to repose under that of your majesty.' 'True, Râjâ,' said his majesty, 'men must have shadows; but there is surely no necessity for placing them immediately under their noses. The ladies will not allow mine to be put there; they say it looks as if I had been taking snuff all my life, and it certainly has a most filthy appearance; besides, it is all awry, as I told you when you began upon it.' The Râjâ was obliged to remove from under the imperial, and certainly very noble, nose, the shadow which he had thought worth all the rest of the picture. Queen Elizabeth is said, by an edict, to have commanded all artists who should paint her likeness, 'to place her in a garden with a full light upon her, and the painter to put any shadow in her face at his peril'. The next time the Râjâ came, the Emperor took the opportunity of consulting him upon a subject that had given him a good deal of anxiety for many months, the dismissal of one of his personal servants who had become negligent and disrespectful. He first took care that no one should be within hearing, and then whispered in the artist's ear that he wished to dismiss this man. The Râjâ said carelessly, as he looked from the imperial head to the canvas, 'Why does your majesty not discharge the man if he displeases you?'
'Why do I not discharge him? I wish to do so, of course, and have wished to do so for many months, but kuchh tadbîr châhiye, some plan of operations must be devised.' 'If your majesty dislikes the man, you have only to order him outside the gates of the palace, and you are relieved from his presence at once.' 'True, man, I am relieved from his presence, but his enchantments may still reach me; it is them that I most dread--he keeps me in a continual state of alarm; and I would give anything to get him away in a good humour.'
When the Râjâ return to Meerut, he received a visit from one of the Emperor's sons or nephews, who wanted to see the place. His tents were pitched upon the plain not far from the theatre; he arrived in the evening, and there happened to be a play that night. Several times during the night he got a message from the prince to say that the ground near his tents was haunted by all manner of devils. The Râjâ sent to assure him that this could not possibly be the case. At last a man came about midnight to say that the prince could stand it no longer, and had given orders to prepare for his immediate return to Delhi; for the devils were increasing so rapidly that they must all be inevitably devoured before daybreak if they remained. The Râjâ now went to the prince's camp, here he found him and his followers in a state of utter consternation, looking towards the theatre. The last carriages were leaving the theatre, and going across the plain; and these silly people had taken them all for devils.[42]
The present pensioned imperial family f Delhi are commonly considered to be of the house of Tîmûr lang (the Lame), because Bâbur, the real founder of the dynasty, was descended from him in the seventh stage.[43] Tîmûr merely made a predatory inroad into India, to kill a few million of unbelievers,[44] plunder the country of all the movable valuables he and his soldiers could collect, and take back into slavery all the best artificers of all kinds that they could lay their hands upon. He left no one to represent him in India, he claimed no sovereignty, and founded no dynasty there. There is no doubt much in the prestige of a name; and though six generations had passed away, the people of Northern India still trembled at that of the lame monster. Bâbur wished to impress upon the minds of the people the notion that he had at his back the same army of demons that Tîmûr had commanded; and be boasted his descent from him for the same motive that Alexander boasted his from the horned and cloven- footed god of the Egyptian desert, as something to sanctify all enterprises, justify the use of all means, and carry before him the belief in his invincibility.
Bâbur was an admirable chief--a fit founder of a great dynasty--a very proper object for the imagination of future generations to dwell upon, though not quite so good as his grandson, the great Akbar. Tîmûr was a ferocious monster, who knew how to organize and command the set of demons who composed his army, and how best to direct them for the destruction of the civilized portion of mankind and their works; but who knew nothing else.[45] In his invasion of India he caused the people of the towns and villages through which he passed to be all massacred without regard to religion, age, or sex. If the soldiers in the town resisted, the people were all murdered because they did so; if they did not, the people were considered to have forfeited their lives to the conquerors for being conquered; and told to purchase them by the surrender of all their property, the value of which was estimated by commissaries appointed for the purpose. The price was always more than they could pay; and after torturing a certain number to death in the attempt to screw the sum out of them, the troops were let in to murder the rest; so that no city, town, or village escaped; and the very grain collected for the army, over and above what they could consume at any stage, was burned, lest it might relieve some hungry infidel of the country who had escaped from the general carnage.
All the soldiers, high and low, were murdered when taken prisoners, as a matter of course; but the officers and soldiers of Tîmûr's army, after taking all the valuable movables, thought they might be able to find a market for the artificers by whom they were made, and for their families; and they collected together an immense number of men, women, and children. All who asked for mercy pretended to be able to make something that these Tartars had taken a liking to. On coming before Delhi, Tîmûr's army encamped on the opposite or left bank of the river Jumna; and here he learned that his soldiers had collected together above one hundred thousand of these artificers, besides their women and children. There were no soldiers among them; but Tîmûr thought it might be troublesome either to keep them or to turn them away without their women and children; and still more so to make his soldiers send away these women and children immediately. He asked whether the prisoners were not for the most part unbelievers in his prophet Muhammad; and being told that the majority were Hindoos, he gave orders that every man should be put to death; and that any officer or soldier who refused to kill or have killed all such men, should suffer death. 'As soon as this order was made known,' says Tîmûr's historian and great eulogist, 'the officers and soldiers began to put it in execution; and, in less than one hour, one hundred thousand prisoners, according to the smallest computation, were put to death and their bodies thrown into the river Jumna. Among the rest, Mulânâ Nasîr-ud-dîn Amr, one of the most venerable doctors of the court, who would never consent so much as to kill a single sheep, was constrained to order fifteen slaves, whom he had in his tents, to be slain. Tîmûr then gave orders that one-tenth of his soldiers should keep watch over the Indian women, children, and camels taken in the pillage.'[46]
The city was soon after taken, and the people commanded, as usual, to purchase their lives by the surrender of their property--troops were sent in to take it--numbers were tortured to death--and then the usual pillage and massacre of the whole people followed without regard to religion, age, or sex; and about a hundred thousand more of innocent and unoffending people were murdered. The troops next massacred the inhabitants of the old city, which had become crowded with fugitives from the new;[47] the last remnant took refuge in a mosque, where two of Tîmûr's most distinguished generals rushed in upon them at the head of five hundred soldiers; and, as the amiable historian tells us, 'sent to the abyss of hell the souls of these infidels, of whose heads they erected towers, and gave their bodies for food to birds and beasts of prey'. Being at last tired of slaughter, the soldiers made slaves of the survivors, and drove them out in chains; and, as they passed, the officers were allowed to select any they liked except the masons, whom Tîmûr required to build for him at Samarkand a church similar to that of Îltutmish in old Delhi.
He now set out to take Meerut, which was at that time a fortified town of much note. The people determined to defend themselves, and happened to say that Tarmah Shirîn, who invaded India at the head of a similar body of Tartars a century before,[48] had been unable to take the place. This so incensed Tîmûr that he brought all his forces to bear on Meerut, took the place, and having had all the Hindoo men found in it skinned alive, he distributed their wives and children among his soldiers as slaves. He now sent out a division of his army to murder unbelievers, and collect plunder, over the cultivated plains between the Ganges and Jumna, while he led the main body on the same pious duty along the hills from Hardwâr[49] on the Ganges to the west. Having massacred a few thousands of the hill people, Tîmûr read the noon prayer, and returned thanks to God for the victories he had gained, and the numbers he had murdered through his goodness; and told his admiring army that a religions war like this produced two great advantages: it secured eternal happiness in heaven, and a good store of valuable spoils on earth--that his design in all the fatigues and labours which he had undertaken was solely to render himself pleasing to God, treasure up good works for his eternal happiness, and get riches to bestow upon his soldiers and the poor. The historian makes a grave remark upon this invasion: The Korân declares that the highest glory man can attain in this world is unquestionably waging a successful war in person against the enemies of his religion (no matter whether those against whom it is waged happen ever to have heard of this religion or not). Muhammad inculcated the same doctrine in his discourses with his friends; and, in consequence, the great Tîmûr always strove to exterminate all the unbelievers, with a view to acquire that glory, and to spread the renown of his conquests. 'My name', said he, 'has spread terror through the universe, and the least motion I make is capable of shaking the whole earth.'
Tîmûr returned to his capital of Samarkand in Transoxiana in May, 1399. His army, besides other things which they brought from India, had an immense number of men, women, and children, whom they had reduced to slavery, and driven along like flocks of sheep to forage for their subsistence in the countries through which they passed, or perish. After the murder on the banks of the Jumna of part of the multitude they had collected before taking the capital, amounting to one hundred thousand men, Tîmûr was obliged to assign one-tenth of his army to guard what were left, the women and children. 'After the murder in the capital of Delhi,' says the historian, an eye-witness, 'there were some soldiers who had a hundred and fifty slaves, men, women, and children, whom they drove out of the city before them; and some soldiers' boys had twenty slaves to their own share.' On reaching Samarkand, they employed these slaves as best they could; and Tîmûr employed his, the masons, in raising his great church from the quarries of the neighbouring hills.[50]
In October following, Tîmûr led this army of demons over the rich and polished countries of Syria, Anatolia, and Georgia, levelling all the cities, towns, and villages, and massacring the inhabitants without any regard to age or sex, with the same amiable view of correcting the notions of people regarding his creed, propitiating the Deity, and rewarding his soldiers. He sent to the Christian inhabitants of Smyrna, then one of the first commercial cities in the world, to request that they would at once embrace Muhammadanism, in the beauties of which the general and his soldiers had orders generously and diligently to instruct them. They refused, and Tîmûr repaired immediately to the spot, that he might 'share in the merit of sending their souls to the abyss of hell'. Bajazet, the Turkish emperor of Anatolia, had recently terminated an unavailing siege of seven years. Tîmûr took the city in fourteen days, December, 1402;[51] had every man, woman, and child that he found in it murdered; and caused some of the heads of the Christians to be thrown by his balistas or catapultas into the ships that had come from different European nations to their succour. All other Christian communities found within the wide range of this dreadful tempest were swept off in the same manner, nor did Muhammadan communities fare better. After the taking of Baghdad, every Tartar soldier was ordered to cut off and bring away the head of one or more prisoners, because some of the Tartar soldiers had been killed in the attack; 'and they spared', says the historian, 'neither old men of fourscore, nor young children of eight years of age; no quarter was given either to rich or poor, and the number of dead was so great that they could not be counted; towers were made of their heads to serve as an example to posterity.' Ninety thousand were murdered in cold blood, and one hundred and twenty pyramids were made of the heads for trophies. Damascus, Nice, Aleppo, Sebastê,[52] and all the other rich and populous cities of Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, and Georgia, then the most civilized region of the world, shared in the same fate; all were reduced to ruins, and their people, without regard to religion, age, or sex, barbarously and brutally murdered.
In the beginning of 1405, this man recollected that, among the many millions of unbelieving Christians and Hindoos 'whose souls he had sent to the abyss of hell', there were many Muhammadans, who had no doubt whatever in the divine origin or co-eternal existence of the Korân; and, as their death might, perhaps, not have been altogether pleasing to his God and his prophet, he determined to appease them both by undertaking the murder of some two hundred millions of industrious and unoffending Chinese; among whom there was little chance of finding one man who had ever even heard of the Korân-- much less believed in its divinity and co-eternity--or of its interpreter, Muhammad. At the head of between two and three hundred thousand well-mounted Tartars and their followers, he departed from his capital of Samarkand on the 8th of January, 1405, and crossed the Jaxartes[53] on the ice. In the words of his judicious historian, 'he thus generously undertook the conquest of China, which was inhabited only by unbelievers that by so good a work he might atone for what had been done amiss in other wars, in which the blood of so many of the faithful had been shed'.
'As all my vast conquests', said Tîmûr himself,[54] 'have caused the destruction of a good many of the faithful, I am resolved to perform some good action, to atone for the crimes of my past life; and to make war upon the infidels, and exterminate the idolaters of China, which cannot be done without very great strength and power. It is therefore fitting, my dear companions in arms, that those very soldiers, who were the instruments whereby those my faults were committed, should be the means by which I work out my repentance, and that they should march into China, to acquire for themselves and their Emperor the merit of that holy war, in demolishing the temples of those unbelievers and erecting good Muhammadan mosques in their places. By this means we shall obtain pardon for all our sins, for the holy Korân assures us that good works efface the sins of this world.' At the close of the Emperor's speech, the princes of the blood and other officers of rank besought God to bless his generous undertaking, unanimously applauding his sentiments, and loading him with praises. 'Let the Emperor but display his standard, and we will follow him to the end of the world.' Tîmûr died soon after crossing the Jaxartes, on the 1st of April, 1406, and China was saved from this dreadful scourge. But, as the philosophical historian, Sharaf- ud-dîn,[55] profoundly observes, 'The Korân remarks that if any one in his pilgrimage to Mecca should be surprised by death, the merit of the good work is still written in heaven in his name, as surely as if he had had the good fortune to accomplish it. It is the same with regard to the "ghaza" (holy war), where an eternal merit is acquired by troubles, fatigues, and dangers; and he who dies during the enterprise, at whatever stage, is deemed to have completed his design.' Thus Tîmûr the Lame had the merit, beyond all question of doubt, of sending to the abyss of hell two hundred millions of men, women, and children, for not believing in a certain book of which they had never heard or read; for the Tartars had not become Muhammadans when they conquered China in the beginning of the thirteenth century. Indeed, the amiable and profound historian is of opinion, after the most mature deliberation, that 'God himself must have arranged all this in favour of so great and good a prince; and knowing that his end was nigh, inspired him with the idea of undertaking this enterprise, that he might have the merit of having completed it; otherwise, how should he have thought of leading out his army in the dead of winter to cross countries covered with ice and snow?'
The heir to the throne, the Prince Pîr Muhammad, was absent when Tîmûr died; but his wives, who had accompanied him, were all anxious to share in the merit of the holy undertaking; and in a council of the chiefs held after his death, the opinions of these amiable princesses prevailed that the two hundred millions of Chinese ought still to be sent to 'the abyss of hell', since it had been the earnest wish of their deceased husband, and must undoubtedly have been the will of God, to send them thither without delay. Fortunately quarrels soon arose among his sons and grandsons about the succession, and the army recrossed the Jaxartes, still over the ice, in the beginning of April, and China was saved from this scourge. Such was Timûr the Lame, the man whose greatness and goodness are to live in the hearts of the people of India, nine-tenths of whom are Hindoos, and to fill them with overflowing love and gratitude towards his descendants.
In this brief sketch will perhaps be found the true history of the origin of the gipsies, the tide of whose immigration began to flow over all parts of Europe immediately after the return of Tîmûr from India. The hundreds of thousands of slaves which his army brought from India in men, women, and children, were cast away when they got as many as they liked from the more beautiful and polished inhabitants of the cities of Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, and Georgia, which were all, one after the other, treated in the same manner as Delhi had been. The Tartar soldiers had no time to settle down and employ them as they intended for their convenience; they were marched off to ravage Western Asia in October, 1399, about three months after their return from India. Tîmûr reached Samarkand in the middle of May, but he had gone on in advance of his army, which did not arrive for some time after. Being cast off, the slaves from India spread over those countries which were most likely to afford them the means of subsistence as beggars; for they knew nothing of the manners, the arts, or the language of those among whom they were thrown; and as Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Anatolia, Georgia, Circassia, and Russia, had been, or were being, desolated by the army of this Tartar chief, they passed into Egypt and Bulgaria, whence they spread over all other countries. Scattered over the face of these countries, they found small parties of vagrants who were from the same regions as themselves, who spoke the same language, and who had in all probability been drawn away by the same means of armies returning from the invasion of India. Chingîz Khân invaded India two centuries before; his descendant, Tarmah Shirîn, invaded India in 1303, and must have taken back with him multitudes of captives. The unhappy prisoners of Tîmûr the Lame gathered round these nuclei as the only people who could understand or sympathize with them. From his sixth expedition into India Mahmûd is said to have carried back with him to Ghaznî two hundred thousand Hindoo captives in a state of slavery, A.D. 1011. From his seventh expedition in 1017, his army of one hundred and forty thousand fighting men returned 'laden with Hindoo captives, who became so cheap, that a Hindoo slave was valued at less than two rupees'. Mahmûd made several expeditions to the west immediately after his return from India, in the same manner as Tîmûr did after him, and he may in the same manner have scattered his Indian captives. They adopted the habits of their new friends, which are indeed those of all the vagrant tribes of India, and they have continued to preserve them to the present day. I have compared their vocabularies with those of India, and find so many of the words the same that I think a native of India would, even in the present day, be able without much difficulty to make himself understood by a gang of gipsies in any part of Europe.[56]
A good Christian may not be able exactly to understand the nature of the merit which Tamerlane expected to acquire from sending so many unoffending Chinese to the abyss of hell. According to the Muhammadan creed, God has vowed 'to fill hell chock full of men and genii'. Hence his reasons for hardening their hearts against that faith in the Korân which might send them to heaven, and which would, they think, necessarily follow an impartial examination of the evidence of its divinity and certainty. Tîmûr thought, no doubt, that it would be very meritorious on his part to assist God in this his labour of filling the great abyss by throwing into it all the existing population of China: while he spread over their land in pastoral tribes the goodly seed of Muhammadanism, which would give him a rich supply of recruits for paradise.
The following dialogue took place one day between me and the 'muftî', or head Muhammadan law officer, of one of our regulation courts.[57]
'Does it not seem to you strange, Muftî Sâhib, that your prophet, who, according to your notions, must have been so well acquainted with the universe and the laws that govern it, should not have revealed to his followers some great truths hitherto unknown regarding these laws, which might have commanded their belief, and that of all future generations, in his divine mission?'
'Not at all,' said the Muftî; 'they would probably not have understood him; and if they had, those who did not believe in what he did actually reveal to them, would not have believed in him had he revealed all the laws that govern the universe.'
'And why should they not have believed in him?'
'Because what he revealed was sufficient to convince all men whose hearts had not been hardened in unbelief. God said, "As for the unbelievers, it is the same with them whether you admonish them or do not admonish them; they will not believe. God hath sealed up their hearts, their ears, and their eyes; and a grievous punishment awaits them."'[58]
'And why were the hearts of any men thus hardened to unbelief, when by unbelief they were to incur such dreadful penalties?'
'Because they were otherwise wicked men.'
'But you think, of course, that there was really much of good in the revelations of your prophet?'
'Of course we do.'
'And that those who believed in it were likely to become better men for their faith?'
'Assuredly.'
'Then why harden the hearts of even bad men against a faith that might make them good?'
'Has not God said, "If we had pleased, we had certainly given unto every soul its direction; but the word which hath proceeded from me must necessarily be fulfilled when I said, Verily, I will fill hell with men and genii altogether ".[59] And again, "Had it pleased the Lord, he would have made all men of one religion; but they shall not cease to differ among them, unless those on whom the Lord shall have mercy; and unto this hath he created them; for the word of thy Lord shall be fulfilled when he said, Verily, I will fill hell altogether with genii and men".'[60]
'You all believe that the devil, like all the angels, was made of fire?'
'Yes.'
'And that he was doomed to hell because he would not fall down and worship Adam, who was made of clay?'
'Yes, God commanded him to bow down to Adam; and when he did not do as he was bid, God said, "Why, Iblîs, what hindered thee from bowing down to Adam as the other angels did?" He replied, "It is not fit that I should worship man, whom thou hast formed of dried clay, or black mud". God said, "Get thee, therefore, hence, for thou shalt be pelted with stones; and a curse shall be upon thee till the day of judgement". The devil said, "O Lord, give me respite unto the day of resurrection". God said, "Verily, thou shalt be respited until the appointed time ".'[61]
'And does it not appear to you, Mufti Sâhib, that in respiting the devil Iblîs till the day of resurrection, some injustice was done to the children of Adam?'
'How?'
'Because he replies, "O Lord, because thou hast seduced me, I will surely tempt men to disobedience in the earth".'
'No, sir, because he could only tempt those who were predestined to go astray, for he adds, "I will seduce all, except such of them as shall be thy chosen servants". God said, "This is the right way with me. Verily, as to my servants, thou shalt have no power over them; but over those only who shall be seduced, and who shall follow thee; and hell is surely denounced to them all ".'[62]
'Then you think, Mufti Sâhib, that the devil could seduce only such as were predestined to go astray, and who would have gone astray whether he, the devil, had been respited or not?'
'Certainly I do.'
'Does it not then appear to you that it is as unjust to predestine men to do that for which they are to be sent to hell, as it would be to leave them all unguided to the temptations of the devil?'
'These are difficult questions,' replied the Muftî, 'which we cannot venture to ask even ourselves. All that we can do is to endeavour to understand what is written in the holy book, and act according to it. God made us all, and he has the right to do what he pleases with what he has made; the potter makes two vessels, he dashes the one on the ground, but the other he sells to stand in the palaces of princes.'
'But a pot has no soul, Muftî Sâhib, to be roasted to all eternity in hell!'
'True, sir; these are questions beyond the reach of human understanding.'
'How often do you read over the Korân?'
'I read the whole over about three times a month,' replied the Muftî.[63]
I mentioned this conversation one day to the Nawâb Alî-ud-dîn,[64] a most estimable old gentleman of seventy years of age, who resides at Murâdâbâd, and asked him whether he did not think it a singular omission on the part of Muhammad, after his journey to heaven, not to tell mankind some of the truths that have since been discovered regarding the nature of the bodies that fill these heavens, and the laws that govern their motions. Mankind could not, either from the Korân, or from the traditions, perceive that he was at all aware of the errors of the System of astronomy that prevailed in his day, and among his people.'
'Not at all', replied the Nawâb; 'the prophets had, no doubt, abundant opportunities of becoming acquainted with the heavenly bodies, and the laws which govern them, particularly those who, like Muhammad, had been up through the seven heavens; but their thoughts were so entirely taken up with the Deity that they probably never noticed the objects by which he was surrounded; and if they had noticed them, they would not, perhaps, have thought it necessary to say anything about them. Their object was to direct men's thoughts towards God and his commandments, and to instruct them in their duties towards him and towards each other.
'Suppose', continued the Nawâb, 'you were to be invited to see and converse with even your earthly sovereign, would not your thoughts be too much taken up with him to admit of your giving, on your return, an account of the things you saw about him? I have been several times to see you, and I declare that I have been so much taken up with the conversations which have passed, that I have never noticed the many articles I now see around me, nor could I have told any one on my return home what I had seen in your room--the wall-shades, the pictures, the sofas, the tables, the book-cases,' continued he, casting his eyes round the room,' all escaped my notice, and might have escaped it had my eyes been younger and stronger than they are. What then must have been the state of mind of those great prophets, who were admitted to see and converse with the great Creator of the universe, and were sent by him to instruct mankind?
'I told my old friend that I thought his answer the best that could be given; but still, that we could not help thinking that if Muhammad had really been acquainted with the nature of the heavenly bodies, and the laws which govern them, he would have taken advantage of his knowledge to secure more firmly their faith in his mission, and have explained to them the real state of the case, instead of talking about the stars as merely made to be thrown at devils, to give light to men upon this little globe of ours, and to guide them in their wanderings upon it by sea and land.
'But what', said the Nawâb, 'are the great truths that you would have had our holy prophet to teach mankind?'
'Why, Nawâb Sahib, I would have had him tell us, amongst other things, of that law which makes this our globe and the other planets revolve round the sun, and their moons around them. I would have had him teach us something of the nature of the things we call comets, or stars with large tails, and of that of the fixed stars, which we suppose to be suns, like our sun, with planets revolving round them like ours, since it is clear that they do not borrow their light from our sun, nor from anything that we can discover in the heavens. I would also have had him tell us the nature of that white belt which crosses the sky, which you call the ovarious belt, "Khatt-i-abyâz", and we the milky-way, and which we consider to be a collection of self-lighted stars, while many orthodox but unlettered Musalmâns think it the marks made in the sky by "Borak", the rough-shod donkey, on which your prophet rode from Jerusalem to heaven. And you think, Nawâb Sâhib, that there was quite evidence enough to satisfy any person whose heart had not been hardened to unbelief? and that no description of the heavenly bodies, or of the laws which govern their motion, could have had any influence on the minds of such people? '[65]
'Assuredly I do, sir! Has not God said, "If we should open a gate in the heavens above them, and they should ascend thereto all the day long, they would surely say, our eyes are only dazzled, or rather we are a people deluded by enchantments."[66] Do you think, sir, that anything which his majesty Moses could have said about the planets, and the comets, and the milky way, would have tended so much to persuade the children of Israel of his divine mission as did the single stroke of his rod, which brought a river of delicious water gushing from a dry rock when they were all dying from thirst? When our holy prophet', continued the Nawâb (placing the points of the four fingers of his right hand on the table), 'placed his blessed hand thus on the ground, and caused four streams to gush out from the dug plain, and supply with fresh water the whole army which was perishing from thirst; and when out of only five small dates he afterwards feasted this immense army till they could eat no more, he surely did more to convince his followers of his divine mission than he could have done by any discourse about the planets, and the milky way (Khatt-i-abyâz).'
'No doubt, Nawâb Sâhib, these were very powerful arguments for those who saw them, or believed them to have been seen; and those who doubt the divinity of your prophets mission are those who doubt their ever having been seen.'
'The whole army saw and attested them, sir, and that is evidence enough for us; and those who saw them, and were not satisfied, must have had their hearts hardened to unbelief.'
'And you think, Nawâb Sâhib, that a man is not master of his own belief or disbelief in religions matters; though he is rewarded by an eternity of bliss in paradise for the one, and punished by an eternity of scorching in hell for the other?
'I do, sir, faith is a matter of feeling; and over our feelings we have no control. All that we can do is to prevent their influencing our actions, when these actions would be mischievous. I have a desire to stretch out this arm, and crush that fly on the table, I can control the act, and do so; but the desire is not under my control.'
'True, Nawâb Sâhib; and in this life we punish men not for their feelings, which are beyond their control, but for their acts, over which they have no control; and we are apt to think that the Deity will do the same.'
'There are, sir,' continued the Nawâb, 'three kinds of certainty--the moral certainty, the mathematical, and the religious certainty, which we hold to be the greatest of all--the one in which the mind feels entire repose. This repose I feel in everything that is written in the Korân, in the Bible, and, with the few known exceptions, in the New Testament.[67] We do not believe that Christ was the son of God, though we believe him to have been a great prophet sent down to enlighten mankind; nor do we believe that he was crucified. We believe that the wicked Jews got hold of a thief, and crucified him in the belief that he was the Christ; but the real Christ was, we think, taken up into heaven, and not suffered to be crucified.'
'But, Nawâb Sâhib, the Sikhs have their book, in which they have the same faith.'
'True, sir, but the Sikhs are unlettered, ignorant brutes; and you do not, I hope, call their "Granth" a book--a thing written only the other day, and full of nonsense. No "book" has appeared since the Korân came down from heaven; nor will any other come till the day of judgement. And how', said the Nawâb, 'have people in modern days made all the discoveries you speak of in astronomy?'
'Chiefly, Nawâb Sâhib, by means of the telescope, which is an instrument of modern invention.'
'And do you suppose, sir, that I would put the evidence of your "dûrbîns" (telescopes) in opposition to that of the holy prophet? No, sir, depend upon it that there is much fallacy in a telescope--it is not to be relied upon. I have conversed with many excellent European gentlemen, and their great fault appears to me to be in the implicit faith they put in these telescopes--they hold their evidence above that of the prophets, Moses, Abraham, and Elijah. It is dreadful to think how much mischief these telescopes may do. No, sir, let us hold fast by the prophets; what they tell us is the truth, and the only truth that we can entirely rely upon in this life. I would not hold the evidence of all the telescopes in the world as anything against one word uttered by the humblest of the prophets named in the Old or New Testament, or the holy Korân. The prophets, sir, keep to the prophets, and throw aside your telescopes--there is no truth in them; some of them turn people upside down, and make them walk upon their heads; and yet you put their evidence against that of the prophets.'[68]
Nothing that I could say would, after this, convince the Nawâb that there was any virtue in telescopes; his religions feeling had been greatly excited against them; and had Galileo, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Newton, Laplace, and the Herschels, all been present to defend them, they would not have altered his opinion of their demerits. The old man has, I believe, a shrewd suspicion that they are inventions of the devil to lead men from the right way; and were he told all that these great men have discovered through their means, he would be very much disposed to believe that they were incarnations of his satanic majesty playing over again with 'dûrbîns' (telescopes) the same game which the serpent played with the apple in the garden of Eden.
Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid; Leave them to God above: him serve and fear; Of other creatures, as him pleases best, Wherever placed, let him dispose: joy thou In what he gives to thee, this Paradise And thy fair Eve: heaven is for thee too high To know what passes there: be lowly wise: Think only what concerns thee, and thy being: Dream not of other worlds, what creatures there Live, in what state, condition, or degree: Contented that thus far hath been revealed, Not of earth only, but of highest heaven.'[69]
Notes:
1. Chapter 75 post is devoted to the history of the Bêgam Samrû (Sumroo). The 'great street' is the celebrated Chândnî Chauk, a very wide thoroughfare. The branch of the canal which runs down the middle of it is now covered over. The Bêgam's house is now occupied by the Delhi Bank (Fanshawe, p, 49).
2. Ante, chapter 54, note 14.
3. The Emperors were not in the least ashamed of this practice, and robbed the families of rich merchants as well as those of officials. In fact they levied in a rough way the high 'death duties' so much admired by Radicals with small expectations. Some remarkable cases are related in detail by Bernier (Bernier, Travels, ed. Constable, and V. A. Smith (1914), pp. 163-7). When Aurangzêb heard of the death of the Governor of Kâbul, he gave orders to seize the belongings of the deceased, so that 'not even a piece of straw be left' (Bilimoria, Letters of Aurungzebe, No. xcix).
4. The meaning of this sentence is obscure.
5. Corresponding to A.D. 1753-4. In the original edition the date is misprinted A.D. 1167.
6. The tomb of Mansûr Alî Khân is better known as that of Safdar Jang, which was the honorary title of the noble over whom the edifice was raised. He was the wazîr, or chief minister, of the Emperor Ahmad Shâh from 1748 to 1752, and was practically King of Oudh, where he had succeeded to the power of his father-in-law, the well-known Saâdat Khân: Safdar Jang died in A.D. 1754 and was succeeded in Oudh by his son Shujâ-ud-daula.
The author's praise of the beauty of Safdar Jang's tomb will seem extravagant to most critics. In the editor's judgement the building is a very poor attempt to imitate the inimitable Tâj. Fergusson (ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 324, pl. xxxiv) gives it the qualified praise that 'it looks grand and imposing at a distance, but it will not bear close inspection'. See Fanshawe, p. 246 and plate. In the original edition a coloured plate of this mausoleum is given.
7. Nizâm-ud-dîn was the disciple of Farîd-ud-dîn Ganj Shakar, so called from his look being sufficient to convert cods of earth into lumps of sugar. Farîd was the disciple of Kutb-ud-dîn of Old Delhi, who was the disciple of Mûin-ud-dîn of Ajmêr, the greatest of all their saints. [W. H. S.] Mûin-ud-dîn died A.D. 1236. For further particulars of the three saints see Beale, Oriental Biographical Dictionary, ed. Keene, 1894. Dr. Horn (Ep. Ind. ii, 145 n., 426 n.) gives information about the Persian biographies of Nizâm-ud-dîn and other Chishtî saints.
8. For the personal history of Nizâm-ud-dîn see the last preceding chapter, [13]. His tomb is situated in a kind of cemetery, which also contains the tombs of the poet Khusrû, the Princess Jahânârâ, and the Emperor Muhammad Shâh, which will be noticed presently. Fanshawe (p. 236) gives a plan of the enclosure. Nizâm-ud-dîn's tomb 'has a very graceful appearance, and is surrounded by a verandah of white marble, while a cut screen encloses the sarcophagus, which is always covered with a cloth. Round the gravestone runs a carved wooden guard, and from the four corners rise stone pillars draped with cloth, which support an angular wooden frame-work, and which has something the appearance of a canopy to a bed. Below this wooden canopy there is stretched a cloth of green and red, much the worse for wear. The interior of the tomb is covered with painted figures in Arabic, and at the head of the grave is a stand with a Korân. The marble screen is very richly cut, and the roof of the arcade-like verandah is finely painted in a flower pattern. Altogether there is a quaint look about the building which cannot fail to strike any one. A good deal of money has at various times been spent on this tomb; the dome was added to the roof in Akbar's time by Muhammad Imâm-ud-dîn Hasan, and in the reign of Shâh Jahân (A.D. 1628 [sic., leg. 1627]-58) the whole building was put into thorough repair. . . . The tomb is in the village of Ghyâspur, and is reached after passing through the 'Chaunsath Khambhâ'. (Harcourt, The New Guide to Delhi (1866), p. 107.)
In the original edition a small coloured illustration of this tomb, from a miniature, is given on Plate 24. Carr Stephen (pp. 102-7) gives a good and full account of Nizâm-ud-dîn and his tomb.
9. According to Harcourt (p. 108), the tomb of Khusrû was erected about A.D. 1350, but this is a misprint for 1530. The poet, whose proper name was Abûl Hasan, is often called Amîr Khusrû, and was of Turkish origin. He was born A.D. 1253, and died in September, 1325. His works are numerous. (Beale.) The grave, and wooden railing round it, were built in A.H. 937 (A.D. 1530-1). . . . The present tomb was built in A.H. 1014 (A.D. 1605-6) by Imâd-ud-dîn Hasan, in the reign of Jahângîr, and this date occurs in an inscription under the dome and over the red sandstone screens. (Carr Stephen, p. 115.) In the original edition a small coloured illustration of this tomb, from a miniature, is given on Plate 24. See Fanshawe, p. 241.
10. Akbar II, who died in 1837.
11. When the author was with his regiment, after the close of the Nepalese war.
12. Harcourt (p. 109) truly observes that this tomb 'is a most exquisite piece of workmanship. The tomb itself, raised some few feet from the ground, is entered by steps, and is enclosed in a beautiful cut marble screen, the sarcophagus being covered with a very artistic representation of leaves and flowers carved in marble. Mirzâ Jahângîr was the son of Akbar II, and the tomb was built in A.D. 1832 '.
'He was, in consequence of having fired a pistol at Mr. Seton, the Resident at Delhi, sent as a State prisoner to Allahabad, where he resided in the garden of Sultân Khusro for several years, and died there in A.D. 1821 (A.H. 1236), aged thirty-one years; a salute of thirty-one guns was fired from the ramparts of the fort of Allahabad at the time of his burial. He was at first interred in the same garden, and subsequently his remains were transferred to Delhi, and buried in the courtyard of the mausoleum of Nizâm-ud-dîn Auliâ.' (Beale, Dictionary.) The young man's 'overt act of rebellion' occurred in 1808, and his body was removed to Delhi in 1832. The form of the monument is that ordinarily used for a woman, 'but it was put over the remains of the Prince on a dispensation being granted for the purpose by Muhammadan lawyers'. (Carr Stephen, p. 111.)
13. Muhammad Shâh reigned feebly from September, 1719, to April, 1748. 'He is the last of the Mughals who enjoyed even the semblance of power, and has been called "the seal of the house of Bâbar", for "after his demise everything went to wreck".' (Lane-Poole, p. xxxviii.) Nadir Shâh occupied Delhi in 1738, and is said to have massacred 120,000 people. The tomb is described by Carr Stephen, p. 110.
14. Jahânârâ Bêgam, or the Bêgam Sâhib, was the elder daughter of Shâhjahân, a very able intriguer, the partisan of Dârâ Shikoh and the opponent of Aurangzêb during the struggle for the throne. She was closely confined in Agra till her father's death in 1666. After that event she was removed to Delhi, where she died in 1682. (Tavernier, Travels, transl. Ball, vol. i, p. 345.) She built the Bêgam Sarâi at Delhi. Her amours, real or supposed, furnished Bernier with some scandalous and sensational stories. (Bernier, Travels, transl. Constable, and V. A. Smith (1914), pp. 11-14.) Some writers credit her with all the virtues, e.g., Beale in his Oriental Biographical Dictionary. The author has omitted the last line of the inscription- 'May God illuminate his intentions. In the year 1093 ', corresponding to A.D. 1682. The first line is, 'Let nothing but the green [grass] conceal my grave.' (Carr Stephen, p. 109.)
15. The tomb of Humâyûn was erected by the Emperor's widow, Hâjî Bêgam, or Bêgâ Bêgam, not by Akbar. She was the senior widow of Humâyûn, entitled Hâjî or 'pilgrim ', because she performed the pilgrimage to Mecca. Carr Stephen and other writers confound her with Hamîda Bânû Bêgam, the mother of Akbar. For her true history see Beveridge, The History of Humâyûn by Gulbadan Begam (R.A.S., 1902). Carr Stephen (p. 203) says that the mausoleum was completed in A.D. 1565, or, according to some, in A.D. 1569, at a coat of fifteen lâkhs of rupees. The true date is A.D. 1570, late in A.H. 977 (Badûouî, tr. Lowe, ii. 135). It is of special interest as being one of the earliest specimens of the architecture of the Moghal dynasty, The massive dome of white marble is a landmark for many miles round. The body of the building is of red sandstone with marble decorations. It stands on two noble terraces. Humâyûn rests in the central hall under an elaborately carved marble sarcophagus. The head of Dârâ Shikoh and the bodies of many members of the royal family are interred in the side rooms. After the fall of Delhi in September, 1857, the rebel princes took refuge in this mausoleum. The story of their execution by Hodson on the road to Delhi is well known, and has been the occasion of much controversy.
In the original edition a small coloured illustration of this tomb, from a miniature, is given on Plate 24. See Fergusson, ed. 1910, pl. xxxiii; H.F.A., fig. 240; Fanshawe, p. 230 and plate.
16. The tragic history of Dârâ Shikoh, the elder brother, and unsuccessful rival, of Aurangzêb, is fully given by Bernier. The notes in Constable's edition of that traveller's work and those to Irvine's Storia do Mogor (John Murray, 1907, 1908) give many additional particulars. Dârâ Shikoh was executed by Aurangzêb in 1659, and it is alleged that with a horrid refinement of cruelty, the emperor, acting on the advice of his sister, Roshanârâ Bêgam, caused the head to be embalmed and sent packed in a box as a present to the old ex-emperor, Shâh Jahân, the father of the three, in his prison at Agra. The prince died invoking the aid of Jesus, and was favourably disposed towards Christianity. He was also attracted by the doctrines of Sûfism, or heretical Muhammadan mysticism, and by those of the Hindoo Upanishads. In fact, his religions attitude seems to have much resembled that of his great-grandfather Akbar. The 'Broad Church' principles and practice of Akbar failed to leave any permanent mark on Muhammadan institutions or the education of the people, and if Dârâ Shikoh had been victorious in the contest for the throne, it is not probable that he would have been able to effect lasting reforms which were beyond the power of his illustrious ancestor. The name of the unfortunate prince was Dârâ Shikoh ('in splendour like Darius'), not merely Dârâ (Darius), as Bernier has it.
17. The 'great diamond' alluded to is the Kohinûr, presented by the 'Persian adventurer', Amîr Jumla, to Shâh Jahân, who was advised to attack and conquer the country which produced such gems, (Ante, Chapter 48.) The decisive battle between Dârâ Shikoh, on the one aide, and Aurangzêb, supported by his brother and dupe, Murâd Baksh, on the other, was fought on the 28th May, 1658 [O. S.], at the small village of Samûgarh (Samogar), four miles from Agra. Dârâ Shikoh was winning the battle, when a traitor persuaded him to come down from his conspicuous seat on an elephant and mount a horse. The report quickly spread that the prince had been killed. 'In a few minutes', says Bernier, 'the army seemed disbanded, and (strange and sudden reverse!) the conqueror became the vanquished. Aurangzêb remained during a quarter of an hour steadily on his elephant, and was rewarded with the crown of Hindustan; Dârâ left his own elephant a few minutes too soon, and was hurled from the pinnacle of glory, to be numbered among the most miserable of Princes; so short-sighted is man, and so mighty are the consequences which sometimes flow from the most trivial incident.'
According to another account the prince's change from the elephant to the horse was due to want of personal courage, and not to treacherous advice. (Bernier, Travels, ed. Constable, and V. A. Smith (1914), p. 54.)
18. Battle fought between Tours and Poitiers, A.D. 732.
19. The principal mosque of every town is known as the Jâmi Masjid, and is filled by large congregations on Fridays. The great mosque of Delhi stands on a natural rocky eminence, completely covered by the building, and approached on three sides by magnificent flights of steps, which give it peculiar dignity. It is, perhaps, the finest mosque in the world, and certainly has few rivals. It differs from most mosques in that its exterior is more magnificent than its interior. The two minarets are each about 130 feet high. The year A.H. 1060 corresponds to A.D. 1650. The mosque was begun in that year, and finished six years later. It is close to the palace, and seems to have been designed to serve as the mosque for the palace, as well as the city, for which reason no place of worship was included in his residence by Shâh Jahân. The pretty little Motî Masjid in the private apartments was added by Aurangzêb. Fergusson (ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 319) gives a view of the mosque. Carr Stephen (pp. 260-6) gives approximate measurements, translations of the inscriptions, and many details. See Fanshawe, pp. 44-8 and plates.
20. Since the Mutiny multitudes of houses between the palace and the mosque have been cleared away.
21. 'Entering within its deeply recessed portal, you find yourself beneath the vaulted hall, the sides of which are in two stories, and with an octagonal break in the centre. This hall, which is 375 feet in length over all, has very much the effect of the nave of a gigantic Gothic cathedral, and forms the noblest entrance known to belong to any existing palace' (Fergusson, ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 309). This is the Lahore Gate.
22. What recked the Chieftain if he stood On Highland heath, or Holy-rood? He rights such wrong where it is given, If it were in the court of heaven.' --(Scott, Lady of the Lake, Canto V, stanza 6).
23. The foundation-stone of the palace was laid on the 12th of May, 1639 (N.S.--9 Muharrum, A.H. 1049). (E. & D., vii, p. 86), and the work continued for nine years, three months, and some days. Nadir Shâh's invasion took place in 1738. Kâshmîr was annexed by Akbar in 1587. Kâbul had been more or less closely united with the empire since Bâbur's time.
24. 'In front, at the entrance, was the Naubat Khâna, or music hall, beneath which the visitor entered the second or great court of the palace, measuring 550 feet north and south, by 385 feet east and west. In the centre of this stood the Dîwân-i-Amm, or great audience hall of the palace, very similar in design to that at Agra, but more magnificent. Its dimensions are about 200 feet by 100 feet over all. In its centre is a highly ornamental niche, in which on a platform of marble richly inlaid with previous stones, and directly facing the entrance, once stood the celebrated peacock throne, the most gorgeous example of its class that perhaps even the East could ever boast of. Behind this again was a garden-court; on its eastern side was the Rang Mahall, or painted hall, containing a bath and other apartments' (Fergusson, ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 310).
The inlaid pictures were carried off, sold by the spoiler to Government, set as table-tops, and deposited in the Indian Section of the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington (Hist. of Ind. and E. Archit., ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 311, note); but in November, 1902, the Orpheus mosaic, along with several other inlaid panels, was returned to Delhi, where the panels were reset in due course. The representation of Orpheus is 'a bad copy from Raphael's picture of Orpheus charming the beasts'. Austin de Bordeaux has been already noticed. Many of the mosaics in the panels which had not been disturbed were renewed by Signor Menegatti of Florence during the years 1906-9.
The peacock throne and the six other thrones in the palace are fully described by Tavernier. (Transl. and ed. by V. Ball, vol. i, pp. 381- 7.) Further details will be found in Carr Stephen, Archaeology of Delhi, pp. 220-7.
25. The throne here referred to was a makeshift arrangement used by the later emperors. Nâdir Shâh in 1738 cleared the palace of the peacock throne and almost everything portable of value. The little that was left the Marâthâs took. Their chief prize was the silver filagree ceiling of the Dîwân-i-Khâs. This hall was, 'if not the most beautiful, certainly the most highly ornamented of all Shâh Jahân's buildings. It is larger certainly, and far richer in ornament than that of Agra, though hardly so elegant in design; but nothing can exceed the beauty of the inlay of precious stones with which it is adored, or the general poetry of the design, It is round the roof of this hall that the famous inscription runs: "If there is a heaven on earth, it is this, it is this ", which may safely be rendered into the sober English assertion that no palace now existing in the world possesses an apartment of such singular elegance as this' (Fergusson, ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 311).
26. All the events alluded to are related in detail by Bernier and Manucci. Sulaimân and Sipihr Shikoh were the sons of Dârâ Shikoh. The author makes a slip in saying that Shâh Jahân sat in the palace at Delhi to negotiate with his grandson. During that negotiation Shâh Jahân was at Agra.
27. It is related that the coffee was delivered to the two sovereigns in this room upon a gold salver by the most polished gentleman of the court. His motions, as he entered the gorgeous apartment, amidst the splendid train of the two Emperors, were watched with great anxiety; if he presented the coffee first to his own master, the furious conqueror, before whom the sovereign of India and all his courtiers trembled, might order him to instant execution; if he presented it to Nâdir first, he would insult his own sovereign out of fear of the stranger. To the astonishment of all, he walked up with a steady step direct to his own master. 'I cannot', said he, 'aspire to the honour of presenting the cup to the king of kings, your majesty's honoured guest, nor would your majesty wish that any hand but your own should do so.' The Emperor took the cup from the golden salver, and presented it to Nâdir Shâh, who said with a smile as he took it, 'Had all your officers known and done their duty like this man, you had never, my good cousin, seen me and my Kizil Bâshis at Delhi; take care of him for your own sake, and get round you as many like him as you can.' [W. H. S.]
28. The famous inscription of Saâd-Ullah Khân, supposed to be in the handwriting of Rashîd, the greatest caligraphist of his time; Agar Firdaus bar rûe zamîn ast--hamîn ast, to hamîn ast, to hamîn ast' (Carr Stephen, p. 229; Fanshawe, p. 35 and plate).
29. All these people were cleared out by the events of 1867, and the few beautiful fragments of the palace which have retained anything of their original magnificence are now clean and in good order. The elaborate decorations of the Dîwân-i-Khâs have been partially restored, and the interior of this building is still extremely rich and elegant.
'Of the public parts of the palace all that now remains is the entrance hall, the Naubat Khâna, Dîwân-i-Amm and Khâs, and the Rang Mahall--now used as a mess-room, and one or two small pavilions. They are the gems of the palace it is true, but without the courts and corridors connecting them they lose all their meaning and more than half their beauty. Being now situated in the middle of a British barrack-yard, they look like precious stones torn from their settings in some exquisite piece of Oriental jeweller's work and set at random in a bed of the commonest plaster' (Fergusson, ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 312). Since Fergusson wrote an immense amount of work has been done in restoration and conservation, but it is difficult to obtain a general view of the result.
The books about Delhi are even more tantalising and unsatisfactory than those which deal with Agra. Mr. Beglar's contribution to Vol. IV of the Archaeological Survey Reports is a little, but very little, better than Mr. Carlleyle's disquisition on Agra in that volume. Sir A. Cunningham's observations in the first and twentieth volumes of the same series are of greater value, but are fragmentary and imperfect, and scarcely notice at all the city of Shâhjahân. Fergusson's criticisms, so far as they go, are of permanent importance, though the scheme of his work did not allow him to treat in detail of any particular section. Guide-books by Beresford Cooper, Harcourt, and Keene, of which Keene's is the latest, and, consequently, in some respects the best, are all extremely unsatisfactory. Mr. H. C. Fanshawe's Delhi Past and Present (John Murray, 1902), a large, handsome work something between a guide-book and a learned treatise, is not quite satisfying. The late Mr. Carr Stephen, a resident of Delhi, wrote a valuable book on the Archaeology of the city, but it has no illustrations, except a few plans on a small scale. (8vo, Ludhiana, 1876.) A good critical, comprehensive, well illustrated description of the remains of the cities, said to number thirteen, all grouped together by European writers under the name of Delhi, does not exist, and it seems unlikely that the Panjâb Government will cause the blank to be filled. No Government in India has such opportunities, or has done so little, to elucidate the history of the country, as the Government of the Panjâb. But it has shown greater interest in the matter of late. The reorganized Archaeological Survey of India, under the capable guidance of Sir J. H. Marshall, C.I.E., has not yet had time to do much at Delhi beyond the work of conservation. A fourteenth Delhi is now being built (1914).
30. Ante, chapter 53, [19].
31. These epistolary formulas mean no more than the similar official phrases in English, 'Your most obedient humble servant', and the like. The 'fortunate occurrence' of the Mutiny--for such it was, in spite of all the blood and suffering--cut out many plague-spots from the body politic of India. Among these the reeking palace swarm of Delhi was not the least malignant.
32. Azraîl is the angel of death, whose duty it is to separate the souls from the bodies of men. Isrâfîl is entrusted with the task of blowing the last trump.
33. The resurrection, and the signs foretelling it, are described in the Mishkat-ul-Masâbih, book xxiii, chapters 3 to 11. (Matthews, vol. ii, pp. 556-620.)
34. The Hindoo 'ages' are (1) Krita, or Satya, (2) Treta, (3) Dwâpara, (4) Kali, the present evil age. The long periods assigned to these are merely the result of the calculations of astronomers, who preferred integral to fractional numbers.
35. This kind of education does not now pay, and is, consequently, going out of fashion. The Muhammadans are slowly, and rather unwillingly, yielding to the pressure of necessity and beginning to accept English education.
36. Imam Muhammad Ghazzâlî, who is also entitled Hujjat-ul-Islâm, is the surname of Abu Hâmid Muhammad Zain-ud-dîn Tûsî, one of the greatest and most celebrated Musalmân doctors, who was born A.D. 1058, and died A.D. 1111. (Beale, s.v. 'Ghazzâlî'.) The length of these Muhammadan names is terrible. They are much mangled in the original edition. See ante, chapter 53, note 10, and Blochmann (Aîn) pp. 103, 182.
37. Khwâja Nâsir-ud-dîn Tûsî, the famous philosopher and astronomer, the most universal scholar that Persia ever produced. Born A.D. 1201, died A.D. 1274. (Beale.) See ante, loc. cit.
38. Especially the Bûstân and Gulistân. Beale gives a list of Sâdî's works. See ante, chapter 12, note 6.
39. This is a very cynical and inadequate explanation of the prevalence of Conservative opinions among Englishmen in the East.
40. Ante, chapter 30, [6].
41. In the original edition the portrait of Akbar II is twice given, namely, in the frontispiece of Volume I as a full-page plate, and again as a miniature, dated 1836, in the frontispiece of Volume II.
42. The most secluded native prince of the present day could not be guilty of this absurdity.
43. Bâbur was sixth in descent from Tîmûr, not seventh. Bâbur's grandfather, Abu Sayyid, was great-grandson of Tîmûr. Bâbur, not Bâbar, is the correct spelling.
44. This may be an exaggeration. The undoubted facts are sufficiently horrible.
45. Tîmûr was a man of surpassing ability, and knew much 'else'. See Malcolm, History of Persia, ed. 1859, chapter 11.
46. Tîmûr's 'historian and great eulogist' was Sharaf-ud-dîn (died 1446), whose Zafarnâma, or 'Book of Victories', was translated into French by Petis de la Croix in 1722. That version was used by Gibbon and rendered into English in 1723, Copious extracts from an independent rendering are given in E. & D., iii, pp. 478-522. The details do not always agree exactly with Sleeman's account.
47. The 'old city' was that of Kutb-ud-dîn and Îltutmish; the 'new city' was that of Fîrôz Shâh, which partly coincided with the existing city, and partly lay to the south, outside the Delhi gate.
48. In A.D. 1303.
49. Now in the Sahâranpur district.
50. This is a repetition of the statement made above. According to Encycl. Brit., ed. 1910, Tîmûr returned to his capital in April not May.
51. Bajazet, or more accurately Bayazîd I, was defeated by Tîmûr at the battle of Angora in 1402, and died the following year. The story of his confinement in an iron cage is discredited by modern critics, though Gibbon (chapter 65) shows that it is supported by much good evidence. Anatolia is a synonym for Asia Minor. It is a vague term, the Greek equivalent of 'the Levant'.
52. Sebastê, also called Elaeusa or Ayash, was in Cilicia.
53. Otherwise called Sihôn, or Syr Daryâ.
54. Two autobiographical works, the Malfûzât and the Tuzukât, are attributed to Tîmûr and probably were composed under his direction. The latter was translated by Major Davey (Oxford, 1783), and the former, in part, by Major Stewart (Or. Transl. Fund, 1830). An independent version of the portion of the Malfûzât relating to India will be found in E. & D., iii, pp. 389-477.
55. Alî Yazdî, commonly called Sharaf-ud-dîn, author of the Zafarnâma in Persian (see ante, chapter 68, note 46), Ibn Arabshâh, in an Arabic work, describes Tîmûr from a hostile point of view. (Encycl. Brit., 11th ed., s. v. 'Timûr').
56. It is impossible within the limits of a note to discuss the problem of the origin of the gipsies. Much has been written about it, though nothing quite satisfactory. The gipsy, or Romany, language (Romani chiv, or 'tongue') certainly is closely related to, though not derived from, the existing languages of Northern India. Some of the forms are very archaic. A valuable English-Gipsy vocabulary compiled by Mr. (Sir George) and Mrs. Grierson was published in Ind. Ant., vols. xv, xvi (1886,1887). The author's theory does not tally with the facts. Gipsies existed in Persia and Europe long before Tîmûr's time. It is practically certain that they did not come through Egypt. The article 'Gypsies' by F. H. Groome in Chambers's Encycl. (1904) is good, and seems to the editor to be preferable to Dr. Gaster's article 'Gipsies' in Encycl. Brit., 11th ed., 1910.
57. Before the Codes were passed (1859-1861) the criminal law administered in India was, in the main, that of the Muhammadans, and each judge's court had a Muhammadan law officer attached, who pronounced a 'fatwa', or decision, intimating the law applicable to the case, and the penalty which might be inflicted. Several examples of these 'fatwas' will be found among the papers bound up with the author's 'Ramaseeana'.
58. See Korân, chapter 2. [W. H. S.] The passage is the second sentence in chapter 2. The wording, as quoted, differs slightly from Sale's version.
59. See Korân, chapter 32. [W. H. S.]
60. Ibid., chapter 11. [W. H. S.] Sale's version, with trifling verbal differences. The 'muftî's' reasoning has been heard in Europe.
61. See Korân, chapter 15. [W. H. S.] Sale's version, with modifications.
62. 'This is a revelation of the most mighty, the merciful God; that thou mayest warn a people whose fathers were not warned, and who live in negligence. Our sentence hath justly been pronounced against the greater part of them, wherefore they shall not believe. It shall be equal unto them whether thou preach unto them, or do not preach unto them; they shall not believe.' Korân, chapter 36. [W. H. S.] From beginning of the chapter. Sale's version; a sentence being omitted between 'believe' and 'It shall'.
63. I have never met another man so thoroughly master of the Korân as the Muftî, and yet he had the reputation of being a very corrupt man in his office. [W. H. S.]
64. Aleeoodeen; an unusual name; probably a misprint for Alâ-ud-dîn.
65. The 17th chapter of the Korân opens with the words, 'Praise be unto him who transported his servant by night from the sacred temple of Mecca to the farther temple of Jerusalem', 'from whence', as Sale observes, 'he was carried through the seven heavens to the presence of God, and brought back again to Mecca the same night'. The commentators dispute whether the journey to heaven was corporeally performed, or merely in a vision. 'But the received opinion is that it was no vision, but that he was actually transported in the body to his journey's end; and if any impossibility be objected, they think it a sufficient answer to say that it might easily be effected by an omnipotent agent.'
66. See Korân, chapter 15. [W. H. S.]
67. The Muhammadans believe that the Christians have tampered with the Scriptures.
68. It would be difficult to give more vivid expression to the eternal conflict between the theological and the scientific spirit. Compare the remarks ante, chapter 26, note 11, on the attitude of Hindoos towards modern science.
69. Paradise Lost, Book VIII. [W. H. S.] Line 167; from Raphael's address to Adam.
69. Indian Police--Its Defects--and their Cause and Remedy
On the 26th[1] we crossed the river Jumna, over a bridge of boats, kept up by the King of Oudh for the use of the public, though his majesty is now connected with Delhi only by the tomb of his ancestor;[2] and his territories are separated from the imperial city by the two great rivers, Ganges and Jumna.
We proceeded to Farrukhnagar, about twelve miles over an execrable road running over a flat but rugged surface of unproductive soil.[3] India is, perhaps, the only civilized country in the world where a great city could be approached by such a road from the largest military Station in the empire,[4] not more than three stages distant. After breakfast the head native police officer of the division came to pay his respects. He talked of the dreadful murders which used to be perpetrated in this neighbourhood by miscreants, who found shelter in the territories of the Bêgam Samrû,[5] whither his followers dared not hunt for them; and mentioned a case of nine persons who had been murdered just within the boundary of our territories about seven years before, and thrown into a dry well. He was present at the inquest held on their bodies, and described their appearance; and I found that they were the bodies of a news writer from Lahore, who, with his eight companions, had been murdered by Thugs on his way back to Rohilkhand. I had long before been made acquainted with the circumstances of this murder and the perpetrators had all been secured, but we wanted this link in the chain of evidence. It had been described to me as having taken place within the boundary of the Bêgam's territory, and I applied to her for a report on the inquest. She declared that no bodies had been discovered about the time mentioned; and I concluded that the ignorance of the people of the neighbourhood was pretended, as usual in such cases, with a view to avoid a summons to give evidence in our courts. I referred forthwith to the magistrate of the district, and found the report that I wanted, and thereby completed the chain of evidence upon a very important case. The Thânadâr seemed much surprised to find that I was so well acquainted with the circumstances of this murder, but still more that the perpetrators were not the poor old Bêgam's subjects, but our own.
The police officers employed on our borders find it very convenient to trace the perpetrators of all murders and gang robberies into the territories of native chiefs, whose subjects they accuse often when they know that the crimes have been committed by our own. They are, on the one hand, afraid to seize or accuse the real offenders, lest they should avenge themselves by some personal violence, or by thefts or robberies, which they often commit with a view to get them tumed out of office as inefficient; and, on the other, they are tempted to conceal the real offenders by a liberal share of the spoil, and a promise of not offending again within their beat. Their tenure of office is far too insecure, and their salaries are far too small. They are often dismissed summarily by the magistrate if they send him in no prisoners; and also if they send in to him prisoners who are not ultimately convicted, because a magistrate's merits are too often estimated by the proportion that his convictions bear to his acquittals among the prisoners committed for trial to the sessions. Men are often ultimately acquitted for want of judicial proof, when there is abundance of that moral proof on which a police officer or magistrate has to act in the discharge of his duties; and in a country where gangs of professional and hereditary robbers and murderers extend their depredations into very remote parts, and seldom commit them in the districts in which they reside, the most vigilant police officer must often fail to discover the perpetrators of heavy crimes that take place within his range.[6]
When they cannot find them, the native officers either seize innocent persons, and frighten them into confession, or else they try to conceal the crime, and in this they are seconded by the sufferers in the robbery, who will always avoid, if they can, a prosecution in our courts, and by their neighbours, who dread being summoned to give evidence as a serious calamity. The man who has been robbed, instead of being an object of compassion among his neighbours, often incurs their resentment for subjecting them to this calamity; and they not only pay largely themselves, but make him pay largely, to have his losses concealed from the magistrate. Formerly, when a district was visited by a judge of circuit to hold his sessions only once or twice a year, and men were constantly bound over to prosecute and appear as evidence from sessions to sessions, till they were wearied and worried to death, this evil was much greater than at present, when every district is provided with its judge of sessions, who is, or ought to be, always ready to take up the cases committed for trial by the magistrate.[7] This was one of the best measures of Lord W. Bentinck's admirable, though much abused, administration of the government of India.[8] Still, however, the inconvenience and delay of prosecution in our courts are so great, and the chance of the ultimate conviction of great offenders is so small, that strong temptations are held out to the police to conceal or misrepresent the character of crimes; and they must have a great feeling of security in their tenure of office, and more adequate salaries, better chances of rising, and better supervision over them, before they will resist such temptation. These Thânadârs, and all the public officers under them, are all so very inadequately paid that corruption among them excites no feeling of odium or indignation in the minds of those among whom they live and serve. Such feelings are rather directed against the government that places them in such situations of so much labour and responsibility with salaries so inadequate; and thereby confers upon them virtually a licence to pay themselves by preying upon those whom they are employed ostensibly to protect. They know that with such salaries they can never have the reputation of being honest, however faithfully they may discharge their duties; and it is too hard to expect that men will long submit to the necessity of being thought corrupt, without reaping some of the advantages of corruption. Let the Thânadârs have everywhere such salaries as will enable them to maintain their families in comfort, and keep up that appearance of respectability which their station in society demands; and over every three or four Thânadârs' jurisdiction let there be an officer appointed upon a higher scale of salary, to supervise and control their proceedings, and armed with powers to decide minor offences. To these higher stations the Thânadârs will be able to look forward as their reward for a faithful and zealous discharge of their duties.[9]
He who can suppose that men so inadequately paid, who have no promotion to look forward to, and feel no security in their tenure of office, and consequently no hope of a provision for old age,[10] will be zealous and honest in the discharge of their duties, must be very imperfectly acquainted with human nature, and with the motives by which men are influenced in all quarters of the world; but we are none of us so ignorant, for we all know that the same motives actuate public servants in India as elsewhere. We have acted successfully upon this knowledge in the scale of salaries and gradation of rank assigned to European civil functionaries, and to all native functionaries employed in the judicial and revenue branches of the public service; and why not act upon it in that of the salaries assigned to the native officers employed in the police? The magistrate of a district gets a salary of from two thousand to two thousand five hundred rupees a month.[11] The native officer next under him is the Thânadâr, or head native police officer of a subdivision of his district, containing many towns and villages, with a population of a hundred thousand souls. This officer gets a salary of twenty-five rupees a month. He cannot possibly do his duty unless he keeps one or two horses; indeed, he is told by the magistrate that he cannot; and that he must have one or two horses, or resign his post. The people, seeing how much we expect from the Thânadâr, and how little we give him, submit to his demands for contributions without murmuring, and consider almost any demand trivial from a man so employed and so paid. They are confounded at our inconsistency, and say, 'We see you giving high salaries and high prospects of advancement to men who have nothing to do but collect your rents, and decide our disputes about pounds, shillings, and pence, which we used to decide much better ourselves, when we had no other court but that of our elders--while those who are to protect life and property, to keep peace over the land, and enable the industrious to work in security, maintain their families, and pay the government revenue, are left with hardly any pay at all.'
There is really nothing in our rule in India which strikes the people so much as this inconsistency, the evil effects of which are so great and manifest; the only way to remedy the evil is to give a greater feeling of security in the tenure of office, a higher rate of salary, the hope of a provision for old age, and, above all, the gradation of rank, by interposing the officers I speak of between the Thânadârs and the magistrate.[12] This has all been done in the establishments for the collection of the revenue, and administration of civil justice.
Hobbes, in his Leviathan, says, 'And seeing that the end of punishment is not revenge and discharge of choler, but correction, either of the offender, or of others by his example, the severest punishments are to be inflicted for those crimes that are of most danger to the public; such as are those which proceed from malice to the government established; those that spring from contempt of justice; those that provoke indignation in the multitude; and those which, unpunished, seem authorized, as when they are committed by sons, servants, or favourites of men in authority.[13] For indignation carrieth men, not only against the actors and authors of injustice, but against all power that is likely to protect them; as in the case of Tarquin, when, for the insolent act of one of his sons, he was driven out of Rome, and the monarchy itself dissolved.' (Para. 2, chapter 30.) Almost every one of our Thânadârs is, in his way, a little Tarquin, exciting the indignation of the people against his rulers; and no time should be lost in converting him into something better.
By the obstacles which are still everywhere opposed to the conviction of offenders, in the distance of our courts, the forms of procedure, and other causes of 'the law's delay', we render the duties of our police establishment everywhere 'more honoured in the breach than the observance', by the mass of the people among whom they are placed. We must, as I have before said, remove some of these obstacles to the successful prosecution of offenders in our criminal courts, which tend so much to deprive the government of all popular aid and support in the administration of justice; and to convert all our police establishments into instruments of oppression, instead of what they should be, the efficient means of protection to the persons, property, and character of the innocent. Crimes multiply from the assurance the guilty are everywhere apt to feel of impunity to crime; and the more crimes multiply, the greater is the aversion the people everywhere feel to aid the government in the arrest and conviction of criminals, because they see more and more the innocent punished by attendance upon distant courts at great cost and inconvenience, to give evidence upon points which seem to them unimportant, while the guilty escape owing to technical difficulties which they can never understand.[14]
The best way to remove these obstacles is to interpose officers between the Thânadâr and the magistrate, and arm them with judicial powers to try minor cases, leaving an appeal open to the magistrate, and to extend the final jurisdiction of the magistrate to a greater range of crimes, though it should involve the necessity of reducing the measure of punishment annexed to them.[15] Beccaria has justly observed that 'Crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty than by the severity of punishment. The certainty of a small punishment will make a stronger impression than the fear of one more severe, if attended with the hope of escaping; for it is the nature of mankind to be terrified at the approach of the smallest inevitable evil; whilst hope, the best gift of Heaven, has the power of dispelling the apprehensions of a greater, especially if supported by examples of impunity, which weakness or avarice too frequently affords.'
I ought to have mentioned that the police of a district, in our Bengal territories, consists of a magistrate and his assistant, who are European gentlemen of the Civil Service; and a certain number of Thânadârs, from twelve to sixteen, who preside over the different sub-divisions of the district in which they reside with their establishments. These Thânadârs get twenty-five rupees a month, have under them four or five Jemadârs upon eight rupees, and thirty or forty Barkandâzes upon four rupees a month. The Jemadârs are, most of them, placed in charge of 'nâkas', or sub-divisions of the Thânadâr's jurisdiction, the rest are kept at their headquarters, ready to move to any point where their services may be required. These are all paid by government; but there is in each village one watchman, and in larger villages more than one, who are appointed by the heads of villages, and paid by the communities, and required daily or periodically to report all the police matters of their villages to the Thânadârs.[16]
The distance between the magistrates and Thânadârs is at present immeasurable; and an infinite deal of mischief is done by the latter and those under them, of which the magistrates know nothing whatever. In the first place, they levy a fee of one rupee from every village at the festival of the Holî in February, and another at that of the Dasehra in October, and in each Thânadâr's jurisdiction there are from one to two hundred villages. These and numerous other unauthorized exactions they share with those under them, and with the native officers about the person of the magistrate, who, if not conciliated, can always manage to make them appear unfit for their places.[17]
A robbery affords a rich harvest. Some article of stolen property is found in one man's house, and by a little legerdemain it is conveyed to that of another, both of whom are made to pay liberally; the man robbed also pays, and all the members of the village community are made to do the same. They are all called to the court of the Thânadâr to give evidence as to what they have seen or heard regarding either the fact or the persons in the remotest degree connected with it--as to the arrests of the supposed offenders--the search of their house-- the character of their grandmothers and grandfathers--and they are told that they are to be sent to the magistrate a hundred miles distant, and then made to stand at the door among a hundred and fifty pairs of shoes, till his excellency the Nâzir, the under-sheriff of the court, may be pleased to announce them to his highness the magistrate, which, of course, he will not do without a consideration. To escape all these threatened evils, they pay handsomely and depart in peace. The Thânadâr reports that an attempt to rob a house by persons unknown had been defeated by his exertions, and the good fortune of the magistrate; and sends a liberal share of spoil to those who are to read his report to that functionary.[18] This goes on more or less in every district, but more especially in those where the magistrate happens to be a man of violent temper, who is always surrounded by knaves, because men who have any regard for their character will not approach him--or a weak, good-natured man, easily made to believe anything, and managed by favourites--or one too fond of field-sports, or of music, painting, European languages, literature, and sciences, or lastly, of his own ease.[19] Some magistrates think they can put down crime by dismissing the Thânadâr; but this tends only to prevent crimes being reported to him; for in such cases the feelings of the people are in exact accordance with the interests of the Thânadârs; and crimes augment by the assurance of impunity thereby given to criminals. The only remedy for all this evil is to fill up the great gulf between the magistrate and Thânadâr by officers who shall be to him what I have described the patrol officers to be to the collectors of customs, at once the tapis of Prince Husain, and the telescope of Prince Ali--a medium that will enable him to be everywhere, and see everything.[20] And why is this remedy not applied? Simply and solely because such appointments would be given to the uncovenanted, and might tend indirectly to diminish the appointments open to the covenanted servants of the company. Young gentlemen of the Civil Service are supposed to be doing the duties which would be assigned to such officers, while they are at school as assistants to magistrates and collectors; and were this great gulf filled up by efficient covenanted officers, they would have no school to go to. There is no doubt some truth in this; but the welfare of a whole people should not be sacrificed to keep this school or play-ground open exclusively for them; let them act for a time as they would unwillingly do with the uncovenanted, and they will learn much more than if they occupied the ground exclusively and acted alone--they will be always with people ready and willing to tell them the real state of things; whereas, at present, they are always with those who studiously conceal it from them.[21]
It is a common practice with Thânadârs all over the country to connive at the residence within their jurisdiction of gangs of robbers, on the condition that they shall not rob within those limits, and shall give them a share of what they bring back from their distant expeditions.
They [scil. the gangs] go out ostensibly in search of service, on the termination of the rains of one season in October, and return before the commencement of the next in June; but their vocation is always well known to the police, and to all the people of their neighbourhood, and very often to the magistrates themselves, who could, if they would, secure them on their return with their booty; but this would not secure their conviction unless the proprietors could be discovered, which they scarcely ever could. Were the police officers to seize them, they would be all finally acquitted and released by the judges--the magistrate would get into disrepute with his superiors, by the number of acquittals compared with convictions exhibited in his monthly tables; and he would vent his spleen upon the poor Thânadâr, who would at the same time have incurred the resentment of the robbers; and between both, he would have no possible chance of escape. He therefore consults his own interest and his own case by leaving them to carry on their trade of robbery or murder unmolested; and his master, the magistrate, is well pleased not to be pestered with charges against men whom he has no chance of getting ultimately convicted. It was in this way that so many hundred families of assassins by profession were able for so many generations to reside in the most cultivated and populous parts of our territories, and extend their depredations into the remotest parts of India, before our System of operations was brought to bear upon them in 1830. Their profession was perfectly well known to the people of the districts in which they resided, and to the greater part of the police; they murdered not within their own district, and the police of that district cared nothing about what they might do beyond it.[22]
The most respectable native gentleman in the city and district told me one day an amusing instance of the proceedings of a native officer of that district, which occurred about five years ago. 'In a village which he had purchased and let in farms, a shopkeeper was one day superintending the cutting of some sugar-cane which he had purchased from a cultivator as it stood. His name was Girdhârî, I think, and the boy who was cutting it for him was the son of a poor man called Madârî. Girdhârî wanted to have the cane cut down as near as he could to the ground, while the boy, to save himself the trouble of stooping, would persist in cutting it a good deal too high up. After admonishing him several times, the shopkeeper gave him a smart clout on the head. The boy, to prevent a repetition, called out, "Murder! Girdhârî has killed me--Girdhârî has killed me!" His old father, who was at work carrying away the cane at a little distance out of sight, ran off to the village watchman, and, in his anger, told him that Girdhârî had murdered his son. The watchman went as fast as he could to the Thânadâr, or head police officer of the division, who resided some miles distant. The Thânadâr ordered off his subordinate officer, the Jemadâr, with half a dozen policemen, to arrange everything for an inquest on the body, by the time he should reach the place, with all due pomp. The Jemadâr went to the house of the murderer, and dismounting, ordered all the shopkeepers of the village, who were many and respectable, to be forthwith seized, and bound hand and feet. "So", said the Jemadâr, "you have all been aiding and abetting your friend in the murder of poor Madârî's only son." "May it please your excellency, we have never heard of any murder." "Impudent scoundrels," roared the Jemadâr, "does not the poor boy lie dead in the sugar-cane field, and is not his highness the Thânadâr coming to hold an inquest upon it? and do you take us for fools enough to believe that any scoundrel among you would venture to commit a deliberate murder without being aided and abetted by all the rest?" The village watchman began to feel some apprehension that he had been too precipitate; and entreated the Jemadâr to go first and see the body of the boy. "What do you take us for," said the Jemadâr, "a thing without a stomach? Do you suppose that government servants can live and labour on air? Are we to go and examine bodies upon empty stomachs? Let his father take care of the body, and let these murdering shopkeepers provide us something to eat." Nine rupees' worth of sweetmeats, and materials for a feast were forthwith collected at the expense of the shopkeepers, who stood bound, and waiting the arrival of his highness the Thânadâr, who was soon after seen approaching majestically upon a richly caparisoned horse. "What," said the Jemadâr, "is there nobody to go and receive his highness in due form?" One of the shopkeepers was untied, and presented with fifteen rupees by his family, and those of the other shopkeepers. These he took up and presented to his highness, who deigned to receive them through one of his train, and then dismounted and partook of the feast that had been provided. "Now", said his highness, "we will go and hold an inquest on the body of the poor boy"; and off moved all the great functionaries of government to the sugar-cane field, with the village watchman leading the way. The father of the boy met them as they entered, and was pointed out by the village watchman. "Where", said the Thânadâr, "is your poor boy?" "There," said Madârî, "cutting the canes." "How, cutting the canes? Was he not murdered by the shopkeepers?" "No," said Madârî, "he was beaten by Girdhârî, and richly deserved it! I find." Girdhârî and the boy were called up, and the little urchin said that he called out murder merely to prevent Girdhârî from giving him another clout on the side of the head. His father was then fined nine rupees for giving a false alarm, and Girdhârî fifteen for so unmercifully beating the boy; and they were made to pay on the instant, under the penalty of all being sent off forty miles to the magistrate. Having thus settled this very important affair, his highness the Thânadâr walked back to the shop, ordered all the shopkeepers to be set at liberty, smoked his pipe, mounted his horse, and rode home, followed by all his police officers, and well pleased with his day's work.'
The farmer of the village soon after made his way to the city, and communicated the circumstances to my old friend, who happened to be on intimate terms with the magistrate.[23] He wrote a polite note to the Thânadâr to say that he should never get any rents from his estate if the occupants were liable to such fines as these, and that he should take the earliest opportunity of mentioning them to his friend the magistrate. The Thânadâr ascertained that he was really in the habit of visiting the magistrate, and communicating with him freely; and hushed up the matter by causing all, save the expenses of the feast, to be paid back. These are things of daily occurrence in all parts of our dominions, and the Thânadârs are not afraid to play such 'fantastic tricks' because all those under and all those above them share more or less in the spoil, and are bound in honour to conceal them from the European magistrate, whom it is the interest of all to keep in the dark. They know that the people will hardly ever complain, from the great dislike they all have to appear in our courts, particularly when it is against any of the officers of those courts, or their friends and creatures in the district police.[24]
When our operations commenced, in 1830, these assassins [scil. the Thugs] revelled over every road in India in gangs of hundreds, without the fear of punishment from divine or human laws; but there is not now, I believe, a road in India infested by them. That our government has still defects, and great ones, must be obvious to every one who has travelled much over India with the requisite qualifications and disposition to observe; but I believe that in spite of all the defects I have noticed above in our police System, the life, property, and character of the innocent are now more secure, and all their advantages more freely enjoyed, than they ever were under any former government with whose history we are acquainted, or than they now are under any native government in India.[25]
Those who think they are not so almost always refer to the reign of Shâh Jahân, when men like Tavernier travelled so securely all over India with their bags of diamonds; but I would ask them whether they think that the life, property, and character of the innocent could be anywhere very secure, or their advantages very freely enjoyed, in a country where a man could do openly with impunity what the traveller describes to have been done by the Persian physician of the Governor of Allahabad? This governor, being sickly, had in attendance upon him eleven physicians, one of whom was a European gentleman of education, Claudius Maille, of Bourges.[26] The chief favourite of the eleven was, however, a Persian, 'who one day threw his wife from the top of a battlement to the ground in a fit of jealousy. He thought the fall would kill her, but she had only a few ribs broken; whereupon the kindred of the woman came and demanded justice at the feet of the governor. The governor, sending for the physician, commanded him to be gone, resolving to retain him no longer in his service. The physician obeyed; and putting his poor maimed wife in a palankeen, he set forward upon the road with all his family. But he had not gone above three or four days' journey from the city, when the governor, finding himself worse than he was wont to be, sent to recall him; which the physician perceiving, stabbed his wife, his four children, and thirteen female slaves, and returned again to the Governor, who said not a word to him, but entertained him again in his service.' This occurred within Tavernier's own knowledge and about the time he visited Allahabad; and is related as by no means a very extraordinary circumstance.[27]
Notes:
1. January, 1836.
2. The tomb of Safdar Jang, or Mansûr Alî Khân, described ante, chapter 68 [4]. The bridges over the Jumna are now, of course, maintained by Government and the railway companies.
3. The main highways approaching Delhi are now excellent metalled roads.
4. By the term 'the largest military station in the empire', the author means Meerut. At present the largest military station in Northern India is, I believe, Râwal Pindi, and the combined cantonments of Secunderâbâd and Bolarum in the Nizam's dominions constitute the largest military station in the empire.
5. Comprising parts of the Meerut and Muzaffarnagar districts of the North-Western Provinces, now the Agra Province in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. The Bêgam's history will be discussed in chapter 75, post.
6. The members of the reformed police force, constituted under Act V of 1861, generally on the model of the Royal Irish Constabulary, have no reason to complain of insecurity of tenure. It is now very difficult to obtain sanction to the dismissal of a corrupt or inefficient officer, unless he has been judicially convicted of a statutory offence.
7. Ordinarily there is for each district, or administrative unit, a separate Sessions and District Judge, who tries both civil and criminal cases of the more serious kind. Occasionally two or three districts have only one judge between them, who is then usually in arrear with his work. Sessions for the trial of grave criminal cases are held monthly, bimonthly, or quarterly, according to circumstances. In some districts, and for some classes of cases, the jury system has been introduced, but, as a rule, in Northern India the responsibility rests with the judge alone, who receives some slight aid from assessors. Capital sentences passed by a Sessions Judge must be confirmed by two Judges of a High Court, or equivalent tribunal.
8. The historian Thornton (chapter 27) went so far as to declare that Lord William Bentinck has 'done less for the interest of India, and for his own reputation, than any who had occupied his place since the commencement of the nineteenth century, with the single exception of Sir George Barlow'. The abolition of widow-burning is the only act of the Bentinck administration which this writer could praise. Such a criticism is manifestly unjust, the outcome of contemporary anger and prejudice. The inscription written by Macaulay, the friend and coadjutor of Lord William, and placed on the statue of the reforming Governor-General in Calcutta, does not give undeserved praise to the much abused statesman. Sir William Sleeman so much admired Lord William Bentinck, and formed such a favourable estimate of the merits of his government, that it may be well to support his opinion by that of Macaulay. The text of the inscription is:
TO
WILLIAM CAVENDISH BENTINCK,
who during seven years ruled India with eminent prudence, integrity, and benevolence; who, placed at the head of a great Empire, never laid aside the simplicity and moderation of a private citizen; who infused into Oriental despotism the spirit of British freedom; who never forgot that the end of Government is the happiness of the governed; who abolished cruel rites; who effaced humiliating distinctions; who gave liberty to the expression of public opinion; whose constant study it was to elevate the intellectual and moral character of the nation committed to his charge,
THIS MONUMENT
was erected by men who, differing in race, in manners, in language and in religion, cherish with equal veneration and gratitude the memory of his wise, reforming, and paternal administration.
(Lord William Bentinck, by D. Boulger, p. 203; 'Rulers of India' series.)
9. A European District Superintendent of Police, under the general supervision of the Magistrate of the District, now commands the police of each district, and sometimes has one or two European Assistants. He is also aided by well-paid Inspectors, who are for the most part natives of India. Measures have recently been taken, especially in the United Provinces, to improve the pay, training, and position of the police force, European and Indian.
10. Police officers and men now obtain pensions, like public servants in other departments.
11. In some provinces the highest salaries of magistrates are much lower than the rates stated by the author, which are the highest paid to the most senior officers in certain provinces; and, in all provinces, officiating incumbents, who form a large proportion of the officers employed, draw only a part of the full salary. The fall in exchange has enormously reduced the real value of all Indian salaries.
12. Another popular view of this subject, and, I think, the one more commonly taken, is expressed in the anecdote told ante, chapter 58 following [10]. Well-paid Inspectors of Police, drawing salaries of 150 to 200 rupees a month, are often extremely corrupt, and retire with large fortunes, I knew many cases, but could never obtain judicial proof of one.
13. When 'sons, servants, or favourites of men in authority', in India, no longer oppress their fellows, the millennium will have arrived.
14. It is some slight satisfaction to a zealous magistrate of the present day, when he sees a great and influential criminal escape his just doom, to think that even the best magistrates many years ago had to submit to similar painful experiences. India cannot truly be described as an uncivilized or barbarous country, but, side by side with elements of the highest civilization, it contains many elements of primitive and savage barbarism. The savagery of India cannot be dealt with by barristers or moral text-books.
15. The number of subordinate magistrates, paid and unpaid, has of late years been enormously increased, and courts are, consequently, much more numerous than they used to be. The vast increase in facility of communication has also diminished the inconveniences which the author deplores. In Oudh, and certain other provinces, which used to be called Non-Regulation, the chief Magistrate of the District has power to try and adequately punish all offences, except capital ones. The power is useful, when the district officer has time to exercise it, which is not always the case.
16. There is a Superintendent of Police for the Province of Bengal; but in the North-Western Provinces his duties are divided among the Commissioners of Revenue. [W. H. S.] By 'Superintendent of Police' the author means the high officer now called the Inspector-General of Police, under the present System each Local Government or Administration has one of these officers, who is aided by one or more staff officers as Assistant-Inspectors-General. The Commissioners in the United Provinces have been relieved of police duties. The organization of police stations has been much modified since the author's time. 'Our Bengal territories', as understood by the author, included, in addition to Bengal, the 'North-Western Provinces', now the Province, of Agra, the Saugor and Nerbudda Territories, now in the Central Provinces, and the Delhi Territories. Oudh, of course, was then independent; and the Panjâb was under the rule of Ranjit Singh.
17. All these practices are still carried on; and experienced magistrates are well aware of their existence, though powerless to stop them. People will often give private information of malpractices, but will hardly ever come into court, and speak out openly. A magistrate cannot take action on statements which the makers will not submit to cross-examination.
18. This is still a favourite trick. Every year Inspectors-General of Police and Secretaries to Government make the same sarcastic remarks about the wonderful number of 'attempts at burglary', and the apparent contentment of the criminal classes with the small results of their labours. But the Thânadâr is too much for even Inspectors- General and Secretaries to Government. No amount of reorganization changes him.
19. Mr. R., when appointed magistrate of the district of Fathpur on the Ganges, had a wish to translate the 'Henriade', and, in order to secure leisure, he issued a proclamation to all the Thânadârs of his district to put down crime, declaring that he would hold them responsible for what might be committed, and dismiss from his situation every one who should suffer any to be committed within his charge. This district, lying on the borders of Oudh, had been noted for the number and atrocious character of its crimes. From that day all the periodical returns went up to the superior court blank--not a crime was reported. Astonished at this sudden result of the change of magistrates, the superior court of Calcutta (the Sadr Nizâmat Adâlat) requested one of the judges, who was about to pass through the district on his way down, to inquire into the nature of the System which seemed to work so well, with a view to its adoption in other districts. He found crimes were more abundant than ever; and the Thânadârs showed him the proclamation, which had been understood, as all such proclamations are, not as enjoining vigilance in the prosecution of crime, but as prohibiting all report of them, so as to save the magistrate trouble, and get him a good name with his superiors. [W. H. S.]
Great caution should always be used by local officers in making comments on statistics. The subordinate cares nothing for the facts. When a superior objects that the birth-rate is too low and the death- rate too high in any police circle, the practical conclusion drawn by the police is that the figures of the next return must be made more palatable, and they are cooked accordingly. So, if burglaries are too numerous, they cease to be reported, and so forth.
The old Superior Court was known as the Sadr Nizâmat Adâlat, on the criminal, and as the Sadr Dîwânî Adâlat, on the civil side. These courts have now been replaced by the High Courts, and equivalent tribunals. In the author's time the High Court for the Agra Province had not yet been established. Its seat is now at Allahabad, but was formerly at Agra.
20. The gap has been filled up by numbers of Deputy Magistrates, Tahsîldâr, &c., invested with magisterial powers, Honorary Magistrates, District Superintendents, and Inspectors, and yet all the old games still go on merrily. The reason is that the character of the people has not changed. The police must have the power to arrest, and that power, when wielded by unscrupulous hands, must always be formidable.
21. A magistrate who can find in his district even one man, official or unofficial, who will tell him 'the real state of things', and not merely repeat scandal and malignant gossip, is unusually fortunate.
22. The Thugs were suppressed because a special organization was devised and directed for the purpose, the English rules as to the admissibility of evidence being judiciously relaxed. The ordinary law and methods of procedure are of little effect against the secret societies known as 'criminal tribes'. These criminal tribes number hundreds of thousands of persona, and present a problem almost unknown to European experience. The gipsies, who are largely of Indian origin, are, perhaps, the only European example of an hereditary criminal tribe. But they are not sheltered and abetted by the landowners as their brethren in India are.
23. The magistrate, of course, was the author.
24. These motives all retain their full force, and are unaffected by Police Commissions and reorganization schemes. Some people think that the character of the police will be raised by the employment as officers of young Indians of good family. I am sorry to say that I found these young men to be the worst offenders. They are more daring in their misdeeds than the ordinary policeman, and no better in their morals.
25. This is quite true; and it is also true that our police administration is the weakest part of our System. But the fault is not entirely that of the police. In some provinces, especially in Bengal, the action of the High Courts has almost paralysed the arm of the Executive.
26. 'M. Claude Maille, of Bourges. As we shall see in Book I, chapter 18, a man of this name, who had escaped from the Dutch service, was, in the year 1652, a not very successful amateur gun-founder for Mîr Jumla; he had, after his escape, set up as a surgeon to the Nawâb, with an equipment consisting of a case of instruments and a box of ointments which he had stolen from M. Cheteur, the Dutch Ambassador to Golconda. Tavernier throws no light upon his identity with this physician.' (Tavernier, Travels, ed. Ball, vol. i, p. 116, note). M. Maille befriended Manucci, who mentions him several times (Irvine, Storia do Mogor, i, 92, &c.)
27. Ball's version of this horrible story (vol. i, p. 117) does not differ materially from that quoted in the text. Tavernier does not mention the name of the governor, though he observes that he was 'one of the greatest nobles in India'. Tavernier visited Allahabad in December, 1665, and then heard the story, the governor concerned being at the time in the fort. I have no doubt that in the reign of Shâh Jahân ordinary offences committed by ordinary criminals were ruthlessly punished, and to some extent suppressed. But, under the best Asiatic Governments, great men and their dependants have usually been able to do pretty much what they pleased. The English Government has the merit of refusing to give formal recognition to difference of rank in criminals, and of often trying to punish influential offenders, though seldom succeeding in the attempt. From time to time a conspicuous example, like that of the Nawâb Shams-ud-dîn, is made, and a few such examples, combined with the greater vigilance and more complete organization of the English executive, prevent the occurrence of atrocities so great as that described, without a word of comment, by the French traveller. I have not the slightest doubt, nor has any magistrate of long experience any doubt, that women are frequently made away with quietly in the recesses of the 'zanâna'. I have known several such cases, which were notorious, though incapable of judicial proof. The amount of serious secret crime which occurs in India, and never comes to light, is very considerable.
Chapter 70
Rent-free Tenures--Right of Government to Resume such Grants.
ON the 27th[1] we went on fifteen miles to Bêgamâbâd, over a sandy and level country. All the peasantry along the roads were busy watering their fields; and the singing of the man who stood at the well to tell the other who guides the bullocks when to pull, after the leather bucket had been filled at the bottom, and when to stop as it reached the top, was extremely pleasing.[2] It is said that Tânsên of Delhi, the most celebrated singer they have ever had in India, used to spend a great part of his time in these fields, listening to the simple melodies of these water-drawers, which he learned to imitate and apply to his more finished vocal music. Popular belief ascribes to Tânsên the power of stopping the river Jumna in its course. His contemporary and rival, Birjû Baulâ, who, according to popular belief, could split a rock with a single note, is said to have learned his bass from the noise of the stone mills which the women use in grinding the corn for their families.[3] Tânsên was a Brahman from Patna, who entered the service of the Emperor Akbar, became a Musalmân, and after the service of twenty-seven years, during which he was much beloved by the Emperor and all his court, he died at Gwâlior in the thirty-fourth year of the Emperor's reign. His tomb is still to be seen at Gwâlior. All his descendants are said to have a talent for music, and they have all Sên added to their names.[4]
While Mâdhojî Sindhia, the Gwâlior chief, was prime minister, he made the emperor assign to his daughter the Bâlâ Bâî in jâgîr, or rent- free tenure, ninety-five villages, rated in the imperial 'sanads' [deeds of grant] at three lâkhs of rupees a year. When the Emperor had been released from the 'durance vile' in which he was kept by Daulat Râo Sindhia, the adopted son of this chief,[5] by Lord Lake in 1803, and the countries, in which these villages were situated, taken possession of, she was permitted to retain them on condition that they were to escheat to us on her death. She died in 1834, and we took possession of the villages, which now yield, it is said, four lâkhs of rupees a year. Bêgamâbâd was one of them. It paid to the Bâlâ Bâi only six hundred rupees a year, but it pays now to us six hundred and twenty rupees; but the farmers and cultivators do not pay a farthing more--the difference was taken by the favourite to whom she assigned the duties of collection, and who always took as much as he could get from them, and paid as little as he could to her.[6] The tomb of the old collector stood near my tents, and his son, who came to visit it, told me that he had heard from Gwâlior that a new Governor-General was about to arrive,[7] who would probably order the villages to be given back, when he should be made collector of the village, as his father had been.
Had our Government acted by all the rent-free lands in our territories on the same principle, they would have saved themselves a vast deal of expense, trouble, and odium. The justice of declaring all lands liable to resumption on the death of the present incumbents when not given by competent authority for, and actually applied to, the maintenance of religious, charitable, educational, or other establishments of manifest public utility, would never have been for a moment questioned by the people of India, because they would have all known that it was in accordance with the customs of the country. If, at the same time that we declared all land liable to resumption, when not assigned by such authority for such purposes and actually applied to them, we had declared that all grants by competent authority registered in due form before the death of the present incumbents should be liable on their death to the payment to Government of only a quarter or half the rent arising from them, it would have been universally hailed as an act of great liberality, highly calculated to make our reign popular. As it is, we have admitted the right of former rulers of all descriptions to alienate in perpetuity the land, the principal source of the revenue of the state, in favour of their relatives, friends, and favourites, leaving upon the holders the burthen of proving, at a ruinous cost in fees and bribes, through court after court, that these alienations had been made by the authorities we declare competent, before the time prescribed; and we have thus given rise to an infinite deal of fraud, perjury, and forgery, and to the opinion, I fear, very generally prevalent, that we are anxious to take advantage of unavoidable flaws in the proof required, to trick them out of their lands by tedious judicial proceedings, while we profess to be desirous that they should retain them. In this we have done ourselves great injustice.[8]
Though these lands were often held for many generations under former Governments, and for the exclusive benefit of the holders, it was almost always, when they were of any value, in collusion with the local authorities, who concealed the circumstances from their sovereign for a certain stipulated sum or share of the rents while they held office. This of course the holders were always willing to pay, knowing that no sovereign would hesitate much to resume their lands, should the circumstance of their holding them for their private use alone be ever brought to his notice. The local authorities were, no doubt, always willing to take a moderate share of the rent, knowing that they would get nothing should the lands be resumed by the sovereign. Sometimes the lands granted were either at the time the grant was made, or became soon after, waste and depopulated, in consequence of invasion or internal disorders; and remaining in this state for many generations, the intervening sovereigns either knew nothing or cared nothing about the grants. Under our rule they became by degrees again cultivated and peopled, and in consequence valuable, not by the exertions of the rent-free holders, for they were seldom known to do anything but collect the rents, but by those of the farmers and cultivators who pay them.
When Saâdat Alî Khan, the sovereign of Oudh, ceded Rohilkhand and other districts to the Honourable Company in lieu of tribute in 1801, he resumed every inch of land held in rent-free tenure within the territories that remained with him, without condescending to assign any other reason than state necessity. The measure created a good deal of distress, particularly among the educated classes; but not so much as a similar measure would have created within our territories, because all his revenues are expended in the maintenance of establishments formed exclusively out of the members of Oudh families, and retained within the country, while ours are sent to pay establishments formed and maintained at a distance; and those whose lands are resumed always find it exceedingly difficult to get employment suitable to their condition.
The face of the country between Delhi and Meerut is sadly denuded of its groves; not a grove or an avenue is to be seen anywhere, and but few fine solitary trees.[9] I asked the people of the cause, and was told by the old men of the village that they remembered well when the Sikh chiefs who now bask under the sunshine of our protection used to come over at the head of 'dalas' (bodies) of ten or twelve horse each, and plunder and lay waste with fire and sword, at every returning harvest, the fine country which I now saw covered with rich sheets of cultivation, and which they had rendered a desolate waste, 'without a man to make, or a man to grant, a petition', when Lord Lake came among them.[10] They were, they say, looking on at a distance when he fought the battle of Delhi, and drove the Marâthâs, who were almost as bad as the Sikhs, into the Jumna river, where ten thousand of them were drowned. The people of all classes in Upper India feel the same reverence as our native soldiery for the name of this admirable soldier and most worthy man, who did so much to promote our interests and sustain our reputation in this country.[11]
The most beautiful trees in India are the 'bar' (banyan), the 'pîpal', and the tamarind.[12] The two first are of the fig tribe, and their greatest enemies are the elephants and camels of our public establishments and public servants, who prey upon them wherever they can find them when under the protection of their masters or keepers, who, when appealed to, generally evince a very philosophical disregard to the feeling of either property or piety involved in the trespass. It is consequently in the driest and hottest parts of the country, where the shade of these trees is most wanted, that it is least to be found; because it is there that camels thrive best, and are most kept, and it is most difficult to save such trees from their depredations.
In the evening a trooper passed our tents on his way in great haste from Meerut to Delhi, to announce the death of the poor old Bêgam Samrû, which had taken place the day before at her little capital of Sardhana. For five-and-twenty years had I been looking forward to the opportunity of seeing this very extraordinary woman, whose history had interested me more than that of any other character in India during my time; and I was sadly disappointed to hear of her death when within two or three stages of her capital.[13]
Notes:
1. January, 1836.
2. Mr. Fox Strangways gives specimens of songs sung at wells in his learned and original book, The Music of Hindostan (Oxford, 1914, pp. 20, 21).
3. Brij Bowla in the original edition. The name is correctly written Birjû Baulâ or Baurâ. A legend of the rivalry between him and Tânsên is given in Linguistic Survey of India, vi, 47. His name is not included in Abûl Fazl's list of eminent musicians, or in Blochmann's notes to it (Âîn trans. i, 612), and I have not succeeded in obtaining any trustworthy information about him. Marvellous legends of the rival singers will be found in N.I.N. & Qu. vol. v, para. 207.
4. Abûl Fazl describes Tânsên as being of Gwâlior, adding that 'a singer like him has not been in India for the last thousand years'. Nos. 2-5 and several others in Abûl Fazl's list of eminent musicians in Akbar's reign are all noted as belonging to Gwâlior, which evidently was the most musical of cities (Blochmann, transl. Âîn, i, 612). Sleeman appears to have been mistaken in connecting Tânsên with Patna. But the musician must really have become a Musalmân, because his tomb stands close to the south-western corner of the sepulchre at Gwâlior of Muhammad Ghaus, an eminent Muslim saint. No Hindu could have been buried in such a spot (A.S.R., vol. ii, p. 370). According to one account Tânsên died in Lahore, his body being removed to Gwâlior by order of Akbar (Forbes, Oriental Memoirs, London, 1813, vol. iii, p. 32). The leaves of the tamarind-tree overshadowing the tomb are believed to improve the voice marvellously when chewed.
Mr. Fox Strangways notes that Hindu critics hold Tânsên 'principally responsible for the deterioration of Hindu music. He is said to have falsified the râgs, and two, Hindol and Megh, of the original six have disappeared since his time' (op. cit., p. 84).
Akbar, in the seventh year of his reign (1562-3), compelled the Râjâ of Rîwâ (Bhath) to give up Tânsên, who was in the Râjâ's service. The emperor gave the musician Rs. 200,000. 'Most of his compositions are written in Akbar's name, and his melodies are even nowadays everywhere repeated by the people of Hindustân' (Blochmann, op. cit., p. 406). Tânsên died in A.D. 1588 (Beale).
5. Shâh Alam is the sovereign alluded to. Mâhâdajî (Mâdhojî or Mâdhava Râo) Sindhia died in February, 1794. His successor, Daulat Râo, was then a boy of fourteen or fifteen (Grant Duff, History of the Mahrattas, ed. 1826, vol. iii, p. 86). The formal adoption of Daulat Râo had not been completed (ibid., p. 91).
6. This observation is a good illustration of the tendency of administrators in a country so poor as India to take note of the infinitely little. In Europe no one would take the trouble to notice the difference between £60 and £62 rental.
7. Lord Auckland, in March, 1836, relieved Sir Charles Metcalfe, who, as temporary Governor-General, had succeeded Lord William Bentinck.
8. The resumption, that is to say, assessment, of revenue-free lands was a burning question in the anthor's day. It has long since got settled. The author was quite right in his opinion. All native Governments freely exercised the right of resumption, and did not care in the least what phrases were used in the deed of grant. The old Hindoo deeds commonly directed that the grant should last 'as long as the sun and moon shall endure', and invoked awful curses on the head of the resumer. But this was only formal legal phraseology, meaning nothing. No ruler was bound by his predecessor's acts.
9. This is not now the case.
10. 'It is difficult to realize that the dignified, sober, and orderly men who now fill our regiments are of the same stock as the savage freebooters whose name, a hundred years ago, was the terror of Northern India. But the change has been wrought by strong and kindly government and by strict military discipline under sympathetic officers whom the troops love and respect.' (Sir Lepel Griffin, Ranjît Singh, p. 37.)
11. Gerard Lake was born on the 27th July, 1744, and entered the army before he was fourteen. He served in the Seven Years' War in Germany, in the American War, in the French campaign of 1793, and against the Irish rebels in 1798. In the year 1801 he became Commander-in-Chief in India, and proceeded to Cawnpore, then our frontier station. Two years later the second Marâthâ War began, and gave General Lake the opportunity of winning a series of brilliant victories. In rapid succession he defeated the enemy at Kôil, Alîgarh, Delhi (the battle alluded to in the text), Agra, and Laswârî. Next year, 1804, the glorious record was marred by the disaster to Colonel Monson's force, but this was quickly avenged by the decisive victories of Dîg and Farrukhâbâd, which shattered Holkâr's power. The year 1805 saw General Lake's one personal failure, the unsuccessful siege of Bharatpur. The Commander-in-Chief then resumed the pursuit of Holkâr, and forced him to surrender. He sailed for England in February, 1807, and on his arrival at home was created a Viscount. On the 21st February, 1808, he died. (Pearse, Memoir of the Life and Military Services of Viscount Lake. London, Blackwood, 1908.) The village of Patparganj, nearly due east from Humâyûn's Tomb, marks the site of the battle. Fanshawe (p. 70) gives a plan.
12. The banyan is the Ficus indica, or Urostigma bengalense; the 'pîpal' is Ficus religiosa, or Urostigma religiosum; and the tamarind is the Tamarindus indica, or occidentalis, or officinalis.
13. The history of the Bêgam is given in Chapter 76, post.
Chapter 71
The Station of Meerut--'Atâlîs' who Dance and Sing gratuitously for the Benefit of the Poor.
On the 30th,[1] we went on twelve miles to Meerut, and encamped close to the Sûraj Kund, so called after Sûraj-mal, the Jât chief of Dîg, whose tomb I have described at Govardhan.[2] He built here a very large tank, at the recommendation of the spirit of a Hindoo saint, Manohar Nâth, whose remains had been burned here more than two hundred years before, and whose spirit appeared to the Jât chief in a dream, as he was encamped here with his army during one of his kingdom-taking expeditions. This is a noble work, with a fine sheet of water, and flights of steps of 'pakkâ' masonry from the top to its edge all round. The whole is kept in repair by our Government.[3] About half a mile to the north-west of the tank stands the tomb of Shâh Pîr, a Muhammadan saint, who is said to have descended from the mountains with the Hindoo, and to have been his bosom friend up to the day of his death. Both are said to have worked many wonderful miracles among the people of the surrounding country, who used to see them, according to popular belief, quietly taking their morning ride together upon the backs of two enormous tigers who came every morning at the appointed hour from the distant jungle. The Hindoo is said to have been very fond of music; and though he has been now dead some three centuries, a crowd of amateurs (atâlîs) assemble every Sunday afternoon at his shrine, on the bank of the tank, and sing gratis, and in a very pleasing style, to an immense concourse of people, who assemble to hear them, and to solicit the spirit of the old saint, softened by their melodies. At the tomb of the Muhammadan saint a number of professional dancers and singers assemble every Thursday afternoon, and dance, sing, and play gratis to a large concourse of people, who make offerings of food to the poor, and implore the intercession of the old man with the Deity in return.
The Muhammadan's tomb is large and handsome, and built of red sandstone, inlaid with marble, but without any cupola, that there may be no curtain between him and heaven when he gets out of his 'last long sleep' at the resurrection.[4] Not far from his tomb is another, over the bones of a pilgrim they call Ganj-i-fann, or the granary of science. Professional singers and dancers attend it every Friday afternoon, and display their talents gratis to a large concourse, who bestow what they can in charity to the poor, who assemble on all these occasions to take what they can get. Another much frequented tomb lies over a Muhammadan saint, who has not been dead more than three years, named Gohar Sâh. He owes his canonization to a few circumstances of recent occurrence, which are, however, universally believed. Mr. Smith, an enterprising merchant of Meerut, who had raised a large windmill for grinding corn in the Sadr Bâzâr, is said to have abused the old man as he was one day passing by, and looked with some contempt on his method of grinding, which was to take the bread from the mouths of so many old widows. 'My child,' said the old saint, 'amuse thyself with this toy of thine, for it has but a few days to run.' In four days from that time the machine stopped. Poor Mr. Smith could not afford to set it going again, and it went to ruin. The whole native population of Meerut considered this a miracle of Gohar Sâh. Just before his death the country round Meerut was under water, and a great many houses fell from incessant rain. The old man took up his residence during this time in a large sarâi in the town, but finding his end approach, he desired those who had taken shelter with him to have him taken to the jungle where he now reposes. They did so, and the instant they left the building it fell to the ground. Many who saw it told me they had no doubt that the virtues of the old man had sustained it while he was there, and prevented its crushing all who were in it. The tomb was built over his remains by a Hindoo officer of the court, who had been long out of employment and in great affliction. He had no sooner completed the tomb, and implored the aid of the old man, than he got into excellent service, and has been ever since a happy man. He makes regular offerings to his shrine, as a grateful return for the saint's kindness to him in his hour of need. Professional singers and dancers display their talents here gratis, as at the other tombs, every Wednesday afternoon.
The ground all round these tombs is becoming crowded with the graves of people, who in their last moments request to be buried (zêr-sâya) under the shadow of these saints, who in their lifetime are all said to have despised the pomps and vanities of this life, and to have taken nothing from their disciples and worshippers but what was indispensably necessary to support existence--food being the only thing offered and accepted, and that taken only when they happened to be very hungry. Happy indeed was the man whose dish was put forward when the saint's appetite happened to be sharp. The death of the poor old Bêgam has, it is said, just canonized another saint, Shâkir Shâh, who lies buried at Sardhana, but is claimed by the people of Meerut, among whom he lived till about five years ago, when he desired to be taken to Sardhana, where he found the old lady very dangerously ill and not expected to live. He was himself very old and ill when he set out from Meerut; and the journey is said to have shaken him so much that he found his end approaching, and sent a messenger to the princess in these words: 'Ayâ torê, chale ham'; that is, 'Death came for thee, but I go in thy place'; and he told those around him that she had precisely five years more to live. She is said to have caused a tomb to be built over him, and is believed by the people to have died that day five years.
All these things I learned as I wandered among the tombs of the old saints the first few evenings after my arrival at Meerut. I was interested in their history from the circumstance that amateur singers and professional dancers and musicians should display their talents at their shrines gratis, for the sake of getting alms for the poor of the place, given in their name--a thing I had never before heard of--though the custom prevails no doubt in other places; and that Musalmâns and Hindoos should join promiscuously in their devotions and charities at all these shrines. Manohar Nâth's shrine, though he was a Hindoo, is attended by as many Musalmân as Hindoo pilgrims. He is said to have 'taken the samâdh', that is, to have buried himself alive in this place as an offering to the Deity. Men who are afflicted with leprosy or any other incurable disease in India often take the samâdh, that is, bury or drown themselves with due ceremonies, by which they are considered as acceptable sacrifices to the Deity. I once knew a Hindoo gentleman of great wealth and respectability, and of high rank under the Government of Nâgpur, who came to the river Nerbudda, two hundred miles, attended by a large retinue, to take the samâdh in due form, from a painful disease which the doctors pronounced incurable. After taking an affectionate leave of all his family and friends, he embarked on board the boat, which took him into the deepest part of the river. He then loaded himself with sand, as a sportsman who is required to carry weights in a race loads himself with shot, and stepping into the water disappeared. The funeral ceremonies were then performed, and his family, friends, and followers returned to Nâgpur, conscious that they had all done what they had been taught to consider their duty. Many poor men do the same every year when afflicted by any painful disease that they consider incurable.[5] The only way to prevent this is to carry out the plan now in progress of giving to India in an accessible shape the medical science of Europe--a plan first adopted under Lord W. Bentinck, prosecuted by Lord Auckland, and superintended by two able and excellent men, Doctors Goodeve and O'Shaughnessy. It will be one of the greatest blessings that India has ever received from England.[6]
Notes:
1. January, 1836. The date is misprinted 20th in the original edition.
2. Ante, chapter 56 [13].
3. 'Amongst the remains of former times in and around Meerut may be noticed the Sûraj kund, commonly called by Europeans 'the monkey tank'. It was constructed by Jawâhir Mal, a wealthy merchant of Lâwâr, in 1714. It was intended to keep it full of water from the Abû Nâla but at present the tank is nearly dry in May and June. There are numerous small temples, 'dharmsâlâs' [i.e. rest-houses], and 'satî' pillars on its banks, but none of any note. The largest of the temples is dedicated to Manohar Nâth, and is said to have been built in the reign of Shâh Jahân. Lâwâr, a large village . . . is distant twelve miles north of the civil station. . . . There is a fine house here called Mahal Sarâi, built about A.D. 1700 by Jawâhir Singh, Mahâjan, who constructed the Sûraj kund near Meerut' (N.W.P. Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. iii, pp. 406,400). This information, supplied by the local officials, is more to be depended on than the author's statement.
4. 'The "dargâh" [i.e. shrine] of Shâh Pîr is a fine structure of red sandstone, erected about A.D. 1620 by Nûr Jahân, the wife of the Emperor Jahângîr, in memory of a pious fakîr named Shâh Pîr. An "urs", or religions assembly, is held here every year in the month of Ramazân. The "dargâh" is supported from the proceeds of the revenue- free village of Bhagwânpur' (ibid., vol. iii, p. 406). The text of the original edition gives the pilgrim's name as 'Gungishun', which has no meaning.
5. An interesting collection of modern cases of a similar kind is given in Balfour, Cyclopaedia, 3rd ed., s.v. 'Samadhi'.
6. See ante, chapter 15, note l4. Dr. W. B. O'Shaughnessy contributed many scientific papers to the J.A.S.B. (vols. viii, ix, x, xii, and xvi).