One day, in October 1833, the horse of the district surgeon, Doctor
Spry, as he was mounting him, reared, fell back with his head upon a
stone, and died upon the spot. The doctor was not much hurt, and the
little Sarîmant called a few days after, and offered his
congratulations upon his narrow escape. The cause of so quiet a horse
rearing at this time, when he had never been known to do so before,
was discussed; and he said that there could be no doubt that the
horse, or the doctor himself, must have seen some unlucky face before
he mounted that morning--that he had been in many places in his life,
but in none where a man was liable to see so many ugly or unfortunate
faces; and, for his part, he never left his house till an hour after
sunrise, lest he should encounter them.[8]

Many natives were present, and every one seemed to consider the
Sarîmant's explanation of the cause quite satisfactory and
philosophical. Some days after, Spry was going down to sleep in the
bungalow where the accident happened. His native assistant and all
his servants came and prayed that he would not attempt to sleep in
the bungalow, as they were sure the horse must have been frightened
by a ghost, and quoted several instances of ghosts appearing to
people there. He, however, slept in the bungalow, and, to their great
astonishment, saw no ghost and suffered no evil.[9]

Notes:

1.  A fortress, twenty-five miles cast of Sâgar, captured by a
British force under General Watson in October 1818, For Seorî and
Râjâ Arjun Singh see _ante_, Chapter 17, text by notes 1 and 4.

2. Amîr Khân, a leader of predatory horse, has been justly described
as 'one of the most atrocious villains that India ever produced'. He
first came into notice in 1804, as an officer in Holkar's service,
and in the following year opposed Lord Lake at Bharatpur. A treaty
made with him in 1817 put an end to his activity. The Pindhârîs were
organized bands of mounted robbers, who desolated Northern and
Central India during the period of anarchy which followed the
dissolution of the Moghal empire. They were associated with the
Marâthâs in the war which terminated with the capture of Asîrgarh in
April 1819. In the same year the Pindhârî forces ceased to exist as a
distinct and recognized, body.

    My father was an Afghân, and came from Kandahar:
    He rode with Nawâb Amir Khan in the old Marâthâ war:
    From the Dekhan to the Himalay, five hundred of one clan,
    They asked no leave of prince or chief as they swept thro'
Hindusthan.

(Sir A. Lyall, 'The Old Pindaree'; in _Verses written in India_,
London, 1889).

3. Named Govind Râo. The proper name of the Sarîmant was Râmchand Râo
(_C.P. Gazetteer_, 1870).

4. Kurmin is the feminine of Kurmî, the name of a widely spread and
most industrious agricultural caste, closely connected, at least in
Bundêlkhand, with the similar Lodhî caste.

5. Mârwâr, or Jodhpur, is one of the leading states in Râjputâna. It
supplies the rest of India with many of the keenest merchants and
bankers.

6. See _ante_, Chapter 4, note 6, for remarks on the supposed
prophetic gifts of satî women.

7. Such feelings of resignation to the Divine will, or fate, are
common alike to Hindoos and Musalmâns.

8. 'One of a wife's duties should be to keep all bad omens out of her
husband's way, or manage to make him look at something lucky in the
early morning. . . . Different lists of inauspicious objects are
given, which, if looked upon in the early morning, might cause
disaster' (M. Williams, _Religious Thought and Life in India_, p.
397).

9. Dr. Spry died in 1842, and his estate was administered by the
author. The doctor's works are described _ante_, Chapter 14, note 16.

CHAPTER 22

Interview with the Râjâ who marries the Stone to the Shrub--Order of
the Moon and the Fish.

On the 8th,[1] after a march of twelve miles, we readied Tehrî, the
present capital of the Râjâ of Orchhâ.[2] Our road lay over an
undulating surface of soil composed of the detritus of the syenitic
rock, and poor, both from its quality and want of depth. About three
miles from our last territory we entered the boundary of the Orchhâ
Râjâ's territory, at the village of Aslôn, which has a very pretty
little fortified castle, built upon ground slightly elevated in the
midst of an open grass plain.

This, and all the villages we have lately passed, are built upon the
bare back of the syenitic rock, which seems to rise to the surface in
large but gentle swells, like the broad waves of the ocean in a calm
after a storm. A great difference appeared to me to be observable
between the minds and manners of the people among whom we were now
travelling, and those of the people of the Sâgar and Nerbudda
territories. They seemed here to want the urbanity and intelligence
we find among our subjects in the latter quarters.

The apparent stupidity of the people when questioned upon points the
most interesting to them, regarding their history, their agriculture,
their tanks, and temples, was most provoking; and their manners
seemed to me more rude and clownish than those of people in any other
part of India I had travelled over. I asked my little friend the
Sarîmant, who rode with me, what he thought of this.

'I think', said he, 'that it arises from the harsh character of the
government under which they live; it makes every man wish to appear a
fool, in order that he may be thought a beggar and not worth the
plundering.'

'It strikes me, my friend Sarîmant, that their government has made
them in reality the beggars and the fools that they appear to be.'

'God only knows', said Sarîmant; 'certain it is that they are neither
in mind nor in manners what the people of our districts are.'

The Râjâ had no notice of our approach till intimation of it reached
him at Ludhaura, the day before we came in. He was there resting, and
dismissing the people after the ceremonies of the marriage between
the Salagrâm and the Tulasî. Ludhaura is twenty-seven miles north-
west of Tehrî, on the opposite side from that on which I was
approaching. He sent off two men on camels with a 'kharîtâ'
(letter),[3] requesting that I would let him know my movements, and
arrange a meeting in a manner that might prevent his appearing
wanting in respect and hospitality; that is, in plain terms, which he
was too polite to use, that I would consent to remain one stage from
his capital, till he could return and meet me half-way, with all due
pomp and ceremony. These men reached me at Bamhaurî,[4] a distance of
thirty-nine miles, in the evening, and I sent back a kharîtâ, which
reached him by relays of camels before midnight. He set out for his
capital to receive me, and, as I would not wait to be met half-way in
due form, he reached his palace, and we reached our tents at the same
time, under a salute from his two brass field-pieces.

We halted at Tehrî on the 9th, and about eleven o'clock the Râjâ came
to pay his visit of congratulation, with a magnificent _cortège_ of
elephants, camels, and horses, all mounted and splendidly
caparisoned, and the noise of his band was deafening. I had had both
my tents pitched, and one of them handsomely fitted up, as it always
is, for occasions of ceremony like the present. He came to within
twenty paces of the door on his elephant, and from its back, as it
sat down, he entered his splendid litter, without alighting on the
ground.[5] In this vehicle he was brought to my tent door, where I
received him, and, after the usual embraces, conducted him up through
two rows of chairs, placed for his followers of distinction and my
own, who are always anxious to assist in ceremonies like these.

 At the head of this lane we sat upon chairs placed across, and
facing down the middle of the two rows; and we conversed upon all the
subjects usually introduced on such occasions, but more especially
upon the august ceremonies of the marriage of the Salagrâm with the
Tulasî, in which his highness had been so _piously_ engaged at
Ludhaura.[6] After he had sat with me an hour and a half he took his
leave, and I conducted him to the door, whence he was carried to his
elephant in his litter, from which he mounted without touching the
ground.

This litter is called a 'nâlkî'. It is one of the three great
insignia which the Mogul Emperors of Delhi conferred upon independent
princes of the first class, and could never be used by any person
upon whom, or upon whose ancestors, they had not been so conferred.
These were the nâlkî, the order of the Fish, and the fan of the
peacock's feathers. These insignia could be used only by the prince
who inherited the sovereignty of the one on whom they had been
originally conferred. The order of the Fish, or Mahî Marâtib, was
first instituted by Khusrû Parvîz, King of Persia, and grandson of
the celebrated Naushîrvân the Just. Having been deposed by his
general, Bahrâm, Khusrû fled for protection to the Greek emperor,
Maurice, whose daughter, Shîrîn, he married, and he was sent back to
Persia, with an army under the command of Narses, who placed him on
the throne of his ancestors in the year A.D. 591.[7] He ascertained
from his astrologer, Araz Khushasp, that when he ascended the throne
the moon was in the constellation of the Fish, and he gave orders to
have two balls made of polished steel, which were to be called
Kaukabas (planets),[8] and mounted on long poles. These two planets,
with large fish made of gold, upon a third pole in the centre, were
ordered to be carried in all regal processions immediately after the
king, and before the prime minister, whose _cortège_ always followed
immediately after that of the king. The two kaûkabas are now
generally made of copper, and plated, and in the shape of a jar,
instead of quite round as at first; but the fish is still made of
gold. Two planets are always considered necessary to one fish, and
they are still carried in all processions between the prince and his
prime minister.

The court of this prince Khusrû Pârvîz was celebrated throughout the
East for its splendour and magnificence; and the chaste love of the
poet Farhad for his beautiful queen Shîrîn is the theme of almost as
many poems in the East as that of Petrarch's for Laura is in the
West. Nûh Samânî, who ascended the throne of Persia after the
Sassanians,[9] ascertained that the moon was in the sign Leo at the
time of his accession, and ordered that the gold head of a lion
should thenceforward accompany the fishes, and the two balls, in all
royal processions. The Persian order of knighthood is, therefore,
that of the Fish, the Moon, and the Lion, and not the Lion and Sun,
as generally supposed. The emperors of the house of Taimûr in
Hindustan assumed the right of conferring the order upon all whom
they pleased, and they conferred it upon the great territorial
sovereigns of the country without distinction as to religion. He only
who inherits the sovereignty can wear the order, and I believe no
prince would venture to wear or carry the order who was not generally
reputed to have received the investiture from one of the emperors of
Delhi.[10]

As I could not wait another day, it was determined that I should
return his visit in the afternoon; and about four o'clock we set out
upon our elephant--Lieutenant Thomas, Sarîmant, and myself, attended
by all my troopers and those of Sarîmant. We had our silver-stick men
with us; but still all made a sorry figure compared with the splendid
_cortège_ of the Râjâ. We dismounted at the foot of the stairs
leading to the Râjâ's hall of audience, and were there met by his two
chief officers of state, who conducted us to the entrance of the
hall, when we were received by the Râjâ himself, who led us up
through two rows of chairs laid out exactly as mine had been in the
morning. In front were assembled a party of native comedians, who
exhibited a few scenes of the insolence of office in the attendants
of great men, and the obtrusive importunity of place-seekers, in a
manner that pleased us much more than a dance would have done.
Conversation was kept up very well, and the visit passed off without
any feeling of ennui, or anything whatever to recollect with regret.
The ladies looked at us from their apartments through gratings, and
without our being able to see them very distinctly. We were anxious
to see the tombs of the late Râjâ, the elder brother of the present,
who lately died, and that of his son, which are in progress in a very
fine garden outside the city walls, and, in consequence, we did not
sit above half an hour. The Râjâ conducted us to the head of the
stairs, and the same two officers attended us to the bottom, and
mounted their horses, and attended us to the tombs.

After the dust of the town raised by the immense crowd that attended
us, and the ceremonies of the day, a walk in this beautiful garden
was very agreeable, and I prolonged it till dark. The Râjâ had given
orders to have all the cisterns filled during our stay, under the
impression that we should wish to see the garden; and, as soon as we
entered, the _jets d'eau_ poured into the air their little floods
from a hundred mouths. Our old cicerone told us that, if we would
take the old capital of Orchhâ in our way, we might there see the
thing in perfection, and amidst the deluges of the rains of Sâwân and
Bhâdon (July and August) see the lightning and hear the thunder. The
Râjâs of this, the oldest principality in Bundêlkhand, were all
formerly buried or burned at the old capital of Orchhâ, even after
they had changed their residence to Tehrî. These tombs over the ashes
of the Râjâ, his wife, and son, are the first that have been built at
Tehrî, where their posterity are all to repose in future.

Notes:

1. December, 1835.

2. The State of Orchhâ, also known as Tehrî or Tîkamgarh, situated to
the south of the Jhânsî district, is the oldest and the highest in
rank of the Bundela principalities. The town of Tehrî is seventy-two
miles north-west of Sâgar. The town of Orchhâ, founded in A.D. 1531,
is 131 miles north of Sâgar, and about forty miles from Tehrî.
Tîkamgarh is the fort of Tehrî.

3. A _kharîtâ_ is a letter enclosed in a bag of rich brocade,
contained in another of fine muslin. The mouth is tied with a string
of silk, to which hangs suspended the great seal, which is a flat
round mass of sealing-wax, with the seal impressed on each side of
it. This is the kind of letter which passes between natives of great
rank in India, and between them and the public functionaries of
Government. [W. H. S.]

4. _Ante_, Chapter 19, after note [15].

5. The Râjâ's unwillingness to touch the ground is an example of a
very widespread and primitive belief. 'Two of those rules or taboos
by which . . . the life of divine kings or priests is regulated. The
first is . . . that the divine personage may not touch the ground
with his foot.' This prohibition applies to the Mikado of Japan and
many other sacred personages. 'The second rule is that the sun may
not shine upon the sacred person.' This second rule explains the use
of the umbrella as a royal appendage in India and Burma. (Frazer,
_The Golden Bough_, 1st ed., vol. ii, pp. 224, 225.)

6 _Ante_, Chapter 19, note 3.

7. During the time he remained the guest of the emperor he resided at
Hierapolis, and did not visit Constantinople. The Greeks do not admit
that Shîrîn was the daughter of Maurice, though a Roman by birth and
a Christian by religion. The Persians and Turks speak of her as the
emperor's daughter. [W. H. S.] Khusrû Pârvîz (Eberwiz), or Khusrû II,
reigned as King of Persia from A.D. 591 to 628. In the course of his
wars he took Jerusalem, and reduced Egypt, and a large part of
northern Africa, extending for a time the bounds of the Persian
empire to the Aegean and the Nile. Khusrû I, surnamed Naushîrvân, or
(more correctly) Anushîrvân, reigned from A.D. 531 to 579. His
successful wars with the Romans and his vigorous internal
administration captivated the Oriental imagination, and he is
generally spoken of as Âdil, or The Just. His name has become
proverbial, and to describe a superior as rivalling Naushîrvân in
justice is a commonplace of flattery. The prophet Muhammad was born
during his reign, and was proud of the fact. The alleged expedition
of Naushîrvân into India is discredited by the best modern writers.
Gibbon tells the story of the wars between the two Khusrûs and the
Romans in his forty-sixth chapter, and a critical history of the
reigns of both Khusrû (Khosrau) I and Khusrû II will be found in
Professor Rawlinson's _Seventh Great Oriental Monarchy_ (London,
1876). European authors have, until recently, generally written the
name Khusrû in its Greek form as Chosroes. The name of Shîrîn is also
written Sira.

'With the name of Shirin and the rock of Bahistun the Persians have
associated one of those poetic romances so dear to the national
genius. Ferhad, the most famous sculptor of his time, who was very
likely employed by Chosroes II to execute these bas-reliefs, is said
in the legend to have fallen madly in love with Shîrîn, and to have
received a promise of her from the king, if he would cut through the
rock of Behistun, and divert a stream to the Kermanshah plain. The
lover set to work, and had all but completed his gigantic enterprise
(of which the remains, however interpreted, are still to be seen),
when he was falsely informed by an emissary from the king of his
lady's death. In despair he leaped from the rock, and was dashed to
pieces. The legend of the unhappy lover is familiar throughout the
East, and is used to explain many traces of rock-cutting or
excavation as far east as Beluchistan' (_Persia and the Persian
Question_, by the Hon. George N. Curzon, M.P. (London, 1892), vol. i,
p. 562, note. See also Malcolm, _History of Persia_, vol. i, p. 129).

8. _Kaukab_ in Arabic means 'a star'. Steingass (_Persian
Dictionary_) defines _Kaukaba_ as 'a polished steel ball suspended to
a long pole, and carried as an ensign before the king; a star of
gold, silver, or tinsel, worn as ornament or sign of rank; a
concourse of people; a royal train, retinue, cavalcade; splendour'.

9. Yezdegird III (Isdigerd), the last of the Sassanians, was defeated
in A.D. 641 at the battle of Nahavend by the Arab Nomân, general of
the Khalîf Omar, and driven from his throne. The supremacy of the
Khalîfs over Persia lasted till A.D. 1258. The subordinate Samâni
dynasty ruled over Khurâsân, Seistân, Balkh, and the countries of
Trans-Oxiana in the tenth century. Two of the princes of this line
were named Nûh, or Noah. The author probably refers to the better
known of the two, Amir Nûh II (Malcolm, _History of Persia_, ed.
1829, vol. i, pp. 158-66).

10. The poor old blind emperor. Shâh Alam, when delivered from the
Marâthâs in 1803 by Lord Lake, did all he could to show his gratitude
by conferring on his deliverer honours and titles, and among them the
'Mahî Maratîb'. The editor has been unable to discover the source of
the author's story of the origin of the Persian order of knighthood.
Malcolm, an excellent authority, gives the following very different
account: 'Their sovereigns have, for many centuries, preserved as the
peculiar arms of the country,[e] the sign or figure of Sol in the
constellation of Leo; and this device, a lion couchant and the sun
rising at his back, has not only been sculptured upon their
palaces[f] and embroidered upon their banners.[g] but has been
converted into an Order,[h] which in the form of gold and silver
medals, has been given to such as have distinguished themselves
against the enemies of their country.[i]

_Note e_. The causes which led to the sign of Sol in Leo becoming the
arms of Persia cannot be distinctly traced, but there is reason to
believe that the use of this symbol is not of very great antiquity.
We meet with it upon the coins of one of the Seljukian princes of
Iconium; and, when this family had been destroyed by Hulâkû [A.D.
1258], the grandson of Chengiz, that prince, or his successors,
perhaps adopted this emblem as a trophy of their conquest, whence it
has remained ever since among the most remarkable of the royal
insignia. A learned friend, who has a valuable collection of Oriental
coins, and whose information and opinion have enabled me to make this
conjecture, believes that the emblematical representation of Sol in
Leo was first adopted by Ghiâs-ud-din Kai Khusrû bin Kaikobâd, who
began to reign A.H. 634, A.D. 1236, and died A.H. 642, A.D. 1244; and
this emblem, he adds, is supposed to have reference either to his own
horoscope or to that of his queen, who was a princess of Georgia.

_Note f_. Hanway states, vol. i, p. 199, that over the gate which
forms the entrance of the palace built by Shah Abbâs the Great [A.D.
1586 to 1628] at Ashrâf, in Mazenderan, are 'the arms of Persia,
being a lion, and the sun rising behind it'.

_Note g_. The emblem of the Lion and Sun is upon all the banners
given to the regular corps of infantry lately formed. They are
presented to the regiments with great ceremony. A mûllâ, or priest,
attends, and implores the divine blessing on them.

_Note h_. This order, with additional decorations, has been lately
conferred upon several ministers and representatives of European
Governments in alliance with Persia.

_Note i_. The medals which have been struck with this symbol upon
them have been chiefly given to the Persian officers and men of the
regular corps who have distinguished themselves in the war with the
Russians. An English officer, who served with these troops, informs
me that those on whom these medals have been conferred are very proud
of this distinction, and that all are extremely anxious to obtain
them (_History of Persia_, ed. 1829, vol. ii, p. 406).

In Curzon's figure the lion is standing, not 'couchant', as stated by
Malcolm, and grasps a scimitar in his off forepaw.

CHAPTER 23

The Râjâ of Orchhâ--Murder of his many Ministers.

The present Râjâ, Mathurâ  Dâs, succeeded his brother Bikramâjît, who
died in 1834. He had made over the government to his only son, Râjâ
Bahâdur, whom he almost adored; but, the young man dying some years
before him, the father resumed the reins of government, and held them
till his death. He was a man of considerable capacity, but of a harsh
and unscrupulous character. His son resembled him; but the present
Râjâ is a man of mild temper and disposition, though of weak
intellect. The fate of the last three prime ministers will show the
character of the Râjâ and his son, and the nature of their rule.

The minister at the time the old man made over the reins of
government to his son was Khânjû Purôhit.[1] Wishing to get rid of
him a few years after, this son, Râjâ Bahâdur, employed Muhram Singh,
one of his feudal Râjpût barons, to assassinate him. As a reward for
this service he received the seals of office; and the Râjâ
confiscated all the property of the deceased, amounting to four lakhs
of rupees[2] and resumed the whole of the estates held by the family.

The young Râjâ died soon after; and his father, when he resumed the
reins of government, wishing to remove the new minister, got him
assassinated by Gambhîr Singh, another feudal Râjpût baron, who, as
his reward, received in his turn the seals of office. This man was a
most atrocious villain, and employed the public establishments of his
chief to plunder travellers on the high road. In 1833 his followers
robbed four men, who were carrying treasure to the amount of ten
thousand rupees from Sâgar to Jhânsî through Tehrî, and intended to
murder them; but, by the sagacity of one of the party, and a lucky
accident, they escaped, made their way back to Sâgar, and complained
to the magistrate.[3] The[4] minister discovered the nature of their
burdens as they lodged at Tehrî on their way, and sent after them a
party of soldiers, with orders to put them in the bed of a rivulet
that separated the territory of Orchhâ from that of the Jhânsî Râjâ.
One of the treasure party discovered their object; and, on reaching
the bank of the rivulet in a deep grass jungle, he threw down his
bundle, dashed unperceived through the grass, and reached a party of
travellers whom he saw ascending a hill about half a mile in advance.
The myrmidons of the minister, when they found that one had escaped,
were afraid to murder the others, but took their treasure. In spite
of great obstacles, and with much danger to the families of three of
those men, who resided in the capital of Tehrî, the magistrate of
Sâgar brought the crime home to the minister, and the Râjâ, anxious
to avail himself of the occasion to fill his coffers, got him
assassinated. The Râjâ was then about eighty years of age, and his
minister was a strong, athletic, and brave man. One morning while he
was sitting with him in private conversation, the former pretended a
wish to drink some of the water in which his household god had been
washed (the 'chandan mirt'),[5] and begged the minister to go and
fetch it from the place where it stood by the side of the idol in the
court of the palace. As a man cannot take his sword before the idol,
the minister put it down, as the Râjâ knew he would, and going to the
idol, prostrated himself before it preparatory to taking away the
water. In that state he was cut down by Bihârî,[6] another feudal
Râjpût baron, who aspired to the seals, and some of his friends, who
had been placed there on purpose by the Râjâ. He obtained the seals
by his service, and, as he was allowed to place one brother in
command of the forces, and to make another chamberlain, he hoped to
retain them longer than any of his predecessors had done. Gambhîr
Singh's brother, Jhujhâr Singh, and the husband of his sister,
hearing of his murder, made off, but were soon pursued and put to
death. The widows were all three put into prison, and all the
property and estates were confiscated. The movable property amounted
to three lakhs of rupees.[7] The Râjâ boasted to the Governor-
General's representative in Bundêlkhand of this act of retributive
justice, and pretended that it was executed merely as a punishment
for the robbery; but it was with infinite difficulty the merchants
could recover from him any share of the plundered property out of
that confiscated. The Râjâ alleged that, according to our _rules_,
the chief within whose boundary the robbery might have been
committed, was obliged to make good the property. On inspection, it
was found that the robbery was perpetrated upon the very boundary
line, and 'in spite of pride, in erring reason's spite', the Jhânsî
Râjâ was made to pay one-half of the plundered treasure.

The old Râjâ, Bikramâjît, died in June, 1834; and, though his death
had been some time expected, he no sooner breathed his last than
charges of 'dînaî', slow poison, were got up, as usual, in the zenana
(seraglio).

Here the widow of Râjâ Bahâdur, a violent and sanguinary woman, was
supreme; and she persuaded the present Râjâ, a weak old man, to take
advantage of the funeral ceremonies to avenge the death of his
brother. He did so; and Bihârî, and his three brothers, with above
fifty of his relations, were murdered. The widows of the four
brothers were the only members of all the families left alive. One of
them had a son four months old; another one of two years; the four
brothers had no other children. Immediately after the death of their
husbands, the two children were snatched from their mothers' breasts,
and threatened with instant death unless their mothers pointed out
all their ornaments and other property. They did so; and the spoilers
having got from them property to the amount of one hundred and fifty
thousand rupees, and been assured that there was no more, threw the
children over the high wall, by which they were dashed to pieces. The
poor widows were tendered as wives to four sweepers, the lowest of
all low castes; but the tribe of sweepers would not suffer any of its
members to take the widows of men of such high caste and station as
wives, notwithstanding the tempting offer of five hundred rupees as a
present, and a village in rent-free tenure.[8] I secured a promise
while at Tehrî that these poor widows should be provided for, as they
had, up to that time, been preserved by the good feeling of a little
community of the lowest of castes, on whom they had been bestowed as
a punishment worse than death, inasmuch as it would disgrace the
whole class to which they belonged, the Parihâr Râjpûts.[9]

Tehrî is a wretched town, without one respectable dwelling-house
tenanted beyond the palace, or one merchant, or even shopkeeper of
capital and credit. There are some tolerable houses unoccupied and in
ruins; and there are a few neat temples built as tombs, or cenotaphs,
in or around the city, if city it can be called. The stables and
accommodations for all public establishments seem to be all in the
same ruinous state as the dwelling-houses. The revenues of the state
are spent in feeding Brahmans and religious mendicants of all kinds;
and in such idle ceremonies as those at which the Râjâ and all his
court have just been assisting--ceremonies which concentrate for a
few days the most useless of the people of India, the devotee
followers (Bairâgîs) of the god Vishnu, and tend to no purpose,
either useful or ornamental, to the state or to the people.

This marriage of a stone to a shrub, which takes place every year, is
supposed to cost the Râjâ, at the most moderate estimate, three lakhs
of rupees a year, or one-fourth of his annual revenue.[10] The
highest officers of which his government is composed receive small
beggarly salaries, hardly more than sufficient for their subsistence;
and the money they make by indirect means they dare not spend like
gentlemen, lest the Râjâ might be tempted to take their lives in
order to get hold of it. All his feudal barons are of the same tribe
as himself, that is, Râjpûts; but they are divided into three clans--
Bundêlas, Pawârs, and Chandêls. A Bundêla cannot marry a woman of his
own clan, he must take a wife from the Pawârs or Chandêls; and so of
the other two clans--no member of one can take a wife from his own
clan, but must go to one of the other two for her. They are very much
disposed to fight with each other, but not less are they disposed to
unite against any third party, not of the same tribe. Braver men do
not, I believe, exist than the Râjpûts of Bundêlkhand, who all carry
their swords from their infancy.[11]

It may be said of the Râjpûts of Mâlwa and Central India generally,
that the Mogul Emperors of Delhi made the same use of them that the
Emperors of Germany and the Popes made of the military chiefs and
classes of Europe during the Middle Ages. Industry and the peaceful
arts being reduced to agriculture alone under bad government or no
government at all, the land remained the only thing worth
appropriating; and it accordingly became appropriated by those alone
who had the power to do so--by the Hindoo military classes collected
around the heads of their clans, and powerful in their union. These
held it under the paramount power on the feudal tenure of military
service, as militia; or it was appropriated by the paramount power
itself, who let it out on allodial tenure to peaceful peasantry. The
one was the Zamîndârî, and the other the Mâlguzârî tenure of
India.[12]

The military chiefs, essentially either soldiers or robbers, were
continually fighting, either against each other, or against the
peasantry, or public officers of the paramount power, like the barons
of Europe; and that paramount power, or its delegates, often found
that the easiest way to crush one of these refractory vassals was to
put him, as such men had been put in Germany, to _the ban of the
empire_, and offer his lands, his castles, and his wealth to the
victor. This victor brought his own clansmen to occupy the lands and
castles of the vanquished; and, as these were the only things thought
worth living for, the change commonly involved the utter destruction
of the former occupants. The new possessors gave the name of their
leader, their clan, or their former place of abode, to their new
possession, and the tract of country over which they spread. Thus
were founded the Bundêlas, Pawârs, and Chandêls [_sic_] upon the ruin
of the Chandêls of Bundêlkhand, the Baghêlas in Baghêlkhand, or Rîwâ,
the Kachhwâhâs, the Sakarwârs, and others along the Chambal river,
and throughout all parts of India.[13]

These classes have never learnt anything, or considered anything
worth learning, but the use of the sword; and a Râjpût chief, next to
leading a gang of his own on great enterprises, delights in nothing
so much as having a gang or two under his patronage for little ones.

There is hardly a single chief of the Hindoo military class in the
Bundêlkhand or Gwâlior territories, who does not keep a gang of
robbers of some kind or other, and consider it as a very valuable and
legitimate source of revenue; or who would not embrace with
cordiality the leader of a gang of assassins by profession who should
bring him home from every expedition a good horse, a good sword, or a
valuable pair of shawls, taken from their victims. It is much the
same in the kingdom of Oudh, where the lands are for the most part
held by the same Hindoo military classes, who are in a continual
state of war with each other, or with the Government authorities.
Three-fourths of the recruits for native infantry regiments are from
this class of military agriculturists of Oudh, who have been trained
up in this school of contest; and many of the lads, when they enter
our ranks, are found to have marks of the cold steel upon their
persons. A braver set of men is hardly anywhere to be found; or one
trained up with finer feelings of devotion towards the power whose
salt they eat.[14] A good many of the other fourth of the recruits
for our native infantry are drawn from among the Ujainî Râjpûts, or
Râjpûts from Ujain,[15] who were established many generations ago in
the same manner at Bhôjpur on the bank of the Ganges.[16]

Notes:

1. A purôhit is a Brahman family priest.

2. Four hundred thousand rupees, worth at that time more than forty
thousand pounds sterling.

3. The magistrate was the author.

4. 'That' in author's text.

5. The water of the Ganges, with which the image of the god Vishnu
has been washed, is considered a very holy draught, fit for princes.
That with which the image of the god Siva, alias Mahâdêo, is washed
must not be drunk. The popular belief is that in a dispute between
him and his wife, Pârvatî, alias Kâlî, she cursed the person that
should thenceforward dare to drink of the water that flowed over his
images on earth. The river Ganges is supposed to flow from the top-
knot of Siva's head, and no one would drink of it after this curse,
were it not that the sacred stream is supposed to come first from the
_heel_ of Vishnu, the Preserver. All the little images of Siva, that
are made out of stones taken from the bed of the Nerbudda river, are
supposed to be absolved from this curse, and water thrown upon _them_
can be drunk with impunity. [W. H. S.] The natural emblems of Siva,
the Bâna-linga quartz pebbles found in the Nerbudda, have already
been referred to in the note to Chapter 19, _ante_, note 9. In the
Marâthâ country the 'household gods' generally comprise five sacred
symbols, namely, the _sâlagrâma_ stone of Vishnu, the _bâna-linga_ of
Siva, a metallic stone representing the female principle in nature
(Sakti), a crystal representing the sun, and a red stone representing
Ganesh, the remover of obstacles. The details of the tiresome ritual
observed in the worship of these objects occupy pp. 412 to 416 of
Monier Williams's _Religious Thought and Life in India_.

6. 'Beearee' in author's text.

7. Then worth more than thirty thousand pounds sterling.

8. On the customs of the sweeper caste, see _ante_, Chapter 8,
following note [11].

9. The Parihârs were the rulers of Bundêlkhand before the Chandêls.
The chief of Uchhahara belongs to this clan.

10. Wealthy Hindoos, throughout India, spend money in the same
ceremonies of marrying the stone to the shrub. [W. H. S.] Three lakhs
of rupees were then worth thirty thousand pounds sterling or more.

11. The numerous clans, more or less devoted to war, grouped together
under the name of Râjpûts (literally 'king's sons'), are in reality
of multifarious origin, and include representatives of many races.
They are the Kshatriyas of the law-books, and are still often called
Chhattrî (_E.H.I._, 3rd ed., pp. 407-15). In some parts of the
country the word Thâkur is more familiar as their general title.
Thirty-six clans are considered as specially pure-blooded and are
called, at any rate in books, the 'royal races'. All the clans follow
the custom of exogamy. The Chandêls (Chandella) ruled Bundêlkhand
from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries. Their capital was Mahoba,
now a station on the Midland Railway. The Bundêlas became prominent
at a later date, and attained their greatest power under Chhatarsâl
(_circa_ A.D. 1671-1731). Their territory is now known as
Bundêlkhand. The country so designated is not an administrative
division. It is partly in the United Provinces, partly in the Central
Provinces, and partly in Native States. It is bounded on the north by
the Jumna; on the north and west by the Chambal river; on the south
by the Central Provinces, and on the south and east by Rîwâ and the
Kaimûr hills. The traditions of both the Bundêlas and Chandellas show
that there is a strain of the blood of the earlier, so--called
aboriginal, races in both clans. The Pawâr (Pramara) clan ranks high,
but is now of little political importance (See _N.W.P. Gazetteer_,
1st ed., vol. vii, p. 68).

12. The paramount power often assigned a portion of its reserved
lands in 'Jâgîr' to public officers for the establishments they
required for the performance of the duties, military or civil, which
were expected from them. Other portions were assigned in rent-free
tenure for services already performed, or to favourites; but, in both
cases, the rights of the village or land owner, or allodial
proprietors, were supposed to be unaffected, as the Government was
presumed to assign only its own claim to a certain portion as
revenue. [W. H. S.] The term 'ryotwar' (raiyatwâr) is commonly used
to designate the system under which the cultivators hold their lands
direct from the State. The subject of tenures is further discussed by
the author in Chapters 70, 71.

13. For elaborate comparisons between the Râjpût policy and the
feudal system of Europe, Tod's _Rajasthân_ may be consulted. The
parallel is not really so close as it appears to be at first sight.
In some respects the organization of the Highland clans is more
similar to that of the Râjpûts than the feudal system is. The Chambal
river rises in Mâlwâ, and, after a course of some five hundred and
seventy miles, falls into the Jumna forty miles below Etâwa. The
statement in the text concerning the succession of clans is confused.
The ruling family of Rîwâ still belongs to the Baghêl clan. The
Maharâjâ of Jaipur (Jeypore) is a Kachhwâha.

14. The barbarous habit of alliance and connivance with robber gangs
is by no means confined to Râjpût nobles and landholders. Men of all
creeds and castes yield to the temptation and magistrates are
sometimes startled to find that Honorary Magistrates, Members of
District Boards, and others of apparently the highest respectability,
are the abettors and secret organizers of robber bands. A modern
example of this fact was discovered in the Meerut and Muzaffarnagar
Districts of the United Provinces in 1890 and 1891. In this case the
wealthy supporters of the banditti were Jâts and Muhammadans.

The unfortunate condition of Oudh previous to the annexation in 1856
is vividly described in the author's _Journey through the Kingdom of
Oude_, published in 1858. The tour took place in 1849-50. Some
districts of the kingdom, especially Hardoî, are still tainted by the
old lawlessness.

The remarks on the fine feelings of devotion shown by the sepoys must
now be read in the light of the events of the Mutiny. Since that time
the army has been reorganized, and depends on Oudh for its recruits
much less than it did in the author's day.

15. Ujain (Ujjain, Oojeyn) is a very ancient city, on the river
Sipra, in Mâlwa, in the dominions of Sindhia, the chief of Gwâlior.

16. Bhajpore in the author's text. The town referred to is Bhôjpur in
the Shâhâbâd district of South Bihâr.

CHAPTER 24

Corn Dealers--Scarcities--Famines in India.

Near Tehrî we saw the people irrigating a field of wheat from a tank
by means of a canoe, in a mode quite new to me. The surface of the
water was about three feet below that of the field to be watered. The
inner end of the canoe was open, and placed to the mouth of a gutter
leading into the wheat-field. The outer end was closed, and suspended
by a rope to the outer end of a pole, which was again suspended to
cross-bars. On the inner end of this pole was fixed a weight of
stones sufficient to raise the canoe when filled with water; and at
the outer end stood five men, who pulled down and sank the canoe into
the water as often as it was raised by the stones, and emptied into
the gutter. The canoe was more curved at the outer end than ordinary
canoes are, and seemed to have been made for the purpose. The lands
round the town generally were watered by the Persian wheel; but,
where it [_scil._ the water] is near the surface, this [_scil._ the
canoe arrangement] I should think a better method.[1]

On the 10th[2] we came on to the village of Bilgaî, twelve miles over
a bad soil, badly cultivated; the hard syenitic rock rising either
above or near to the surface all the way--in some places abruptly, in
small hills, decomposing into large rounded boulders--in others
slightly and gently, like the backs of whales in the ocean-in others,
the whole surface of the country resembled very much the face of the
sea, not after, but really in, a storm, full of waves of all sizes,
contending with each other 'in most admired disorder'. After the dust
of Tehrî, and the fatiguing ceremonies of its court, the quiet
morning I spent in this secluded spot under the shade of some
beautiful trees, with the surviving canary singing, my boy playing,
and my wife sleeping off the fatigues of her journey, was to me most
delightful. Henry was extremely ill when we left Jubbulpore; but the
change of air, and all the other changes incident to a march, have
restored him to health.

During the scarcity of 1833 two hundred people died of starvation in
this village alone;[3] and were all thrown into one large well, which
has, of course, ever since remained closed. Autumn crops chiefly are
cultivated; and they depend entirely on the sky for water, while the
poor people of the village depend upon the returns of a single season
for subsistence during the whole year. They lingered on in the hope
of aid from above till the greater part had become too weak from want
of food to emigrate. The Râjâ gave half a crown to every family;[4]
but this served merely to kindle their hopes of more, and to prolong
their misery. Till the people have a better government they can never
be secure from frequent returns of similar calamities. Such security
must depend upon a greater variety of crops, and better means of
irrigation; better roads to bring supplies over from distant parts
which have not suffered from the same calamities; and greater means
in reserve of paying for such supplies when brought--things that can
never be hoped for under a government like this, which allows no man
the free enjoyment of property.

Close to the village a large wall has been made to unite two small
hills, and form a small lake; but the wall is formed of the rounded
boulders of the syenitic rock without cement, and does not retain the
water. The land which was to have formed the bed of the lake is all
in tillage; and I had some conversation with the man who cultivated
it. He told me that the wall had been built with the money of _sin_,
and not the money of _piety_ (_pâp kê paisâ sê, na pun kê paisâ sê
banâ_), that the man who built it must have laid out his money with a
_worldly_, and not a _religious_ mind (_nîyat_); that on such
occasions men generally assembled Brahmans and other deserving
people, and fed and clothed them, and thereby _consecrated_ a great
work, and made it acceptable to God, and he had heard from his
ancestors that the man who had built this wall had failed to do this;
that the construction could never, of course, answer the purpose for
which it was intended--and that the builder's name had actually been
forgotten, and the work did him no good either in this world or the
next. This village, which a year or two ago was large and populous,
is now reduced to two wretched huts inhabited by two very miserable
families.

Bundêlkhand suffers more often and more severely from the want of
seasonable showers of rain than any other part of India; while the
province of Mâlwa, which adjoins it on the west and south, hardly
ever suffers at all.[5] There is a couplet, which, like all other
good couplets on rural subjects, is attributed to Sahdêo [Sahadeva],
one of the five demigod brothers of the Mahâbhârata, to this effect:
'If you hear not the thunder on such a night, you, father, go to
Mâlwa, I to Gujarât;'--that is, there will be no rain, and we must
seek subsistence where rains never fail, and the harvests are secure.

The province of Mâlwa is well studded with hills and groves of fine
trees, which intercept the clouds as they are wafted by the
prevailing westerly winds, from the Gulf of Cambay to the valley of
the Ganges, and make them drop their contents upon a soil of great
natural powers, formed chiefly from the detritus of the decomposing
basaltic rocks, which cap and intersect these hills.[6]

During the famine of 1833, as on all similar occasions, grain of
every kind, attracted by high prices, flowed up in large streams from
this favoured province towards Bundêlkhand; and the population of
Bundêlkhand, as usual in such times of dearth and scarcity, flowed
off towards Mâlwa against the stream of supply, under the assurance
that the nearer they got to the source, the greater would be their
chance of employment and subsistence. Every village had its numbers
of the dead and the dying; and the roads were all strewed with them;
but they were mostly concentrated upon the great towns and civil and
military stations, where subscriptions were open[ed] for their
support, by both the European and native communities. The funds
arising from these subscriptions lasted till the rains had set fairly
in, when all able-bodied persons could easily find employment in
tillage among the agricultural communities of villages around. After
the rains have fairly set in, the _sick_ and _helpless_ only should
be kept concentrated upon large towns and stations, where little or
no employment is to be found; for the oldest and youngest of those
who are able to work can then easily find employment in weeding the
cotton, rice, sugar-cane, and other fields under autumn crops, and in
preparing the lands for the reception of the wheat, gram,[7] and
other spring seeds; and get advances from the farmers, agricultural
capitalists[8] and other members of the village communities, who are
all glad to share their superfluities with the distressed, and to pay
liberally for the little service they are able to give in return.

It is very unwise to give from such funds what may be considered a
full rate of subsistence to able-bodied persons, as it tends to keep
concentrated upon such points vast numbers who would otherwise be
scattered over the surface of the country among the village
communities, who would be glad to advance them stock and the means of
subsistence upon the pledge of their future services when the season
of tillage commences. The rate of subsistence should always be
something less than what the able-bodied person usually consumes, and
can get for his labour in the field. For the sick and feeble this
rate will be enough, and the healthy and able-bodied, with unimpaired
appetites, will seek a greater rate by the offer of their services
among the farmers and cultivators of the surrounding country. By this
precaution, the mass of suffering will be gradually diffused over the
country, so as best to receive what the country can afford to give
for its relief. As soon as the rains set in, all the able-bodied men,
women, and children should be sent off with each a good blanket, and
a rupee or two, as the funds can afford, to last them till they can
engage themselves with the farmers. Not a farthing after that day
should be given out, except to the feeble and sick, who may be
considered as hospital patients.[9]

At large places, where the greater numbers are concentrated, the
scene becomes exceedingly distressing, for, in spite of the best
dispositions and greatest efforts on the part of Government and its
officers, and the European and native communities, thousands commonly
die of starvation. At Sâgar, mothers, as they lay in the streets
unable to walk, were seen holding up their infants, and imploring the
passing stranger to take them in slavery, that they might at least
live--hundreds were seen creeping into gardens, courtyards, and old
ruins, concealing themselves under shrubs, grass, mats, or straw,
where they might die quietly, without having their bodies torn by
birds and beasts before the breath had left them. Respectable
families, who left home in search of the favoured land of Mâlwa,
while yet a little property remained, finding all exhausted, took
opium rather than beg, and husband, wife, and children died in each
other's arms. Still more of such families lingered on in hope till
all had been expended; then shut their doors, took poison and died
all together, rather than expose their misery, and submit to the
degradation of begging. All these things I have myself known and
seen; and, in the midst of these and a hundred other harrowing scenes
which present themselves on such occasions, the European cannot fail
to remark the patient resignation with which the poor people submit
to their fate; and the absence of almost all those revolting acts
which have characterized the famines of which he has read in other
countries--such as the living feeding on the dead, and mothers
devouring their own children. No such things are witnessed in Indian
famines;[10] here all who suffer attribute the disaster to its real
cause, the want of rain in due season; and indulge in no feelings of
hatred against their rulers, superiors, or more fortunate equals in
society who happen to live beyond the range of such calamities. They
gratefully receive the superfluities which the more favoured are
always found ready to share with the afflicted in India; and, though
their sufferings often subdue the strongest of all pride, the pride
of caste, they rarely ever drive the people to acts of violence. The
stream of emigration, guided as it always is by that of the
agricultural produce flowing in from the more favoured countries,
must necessarily concentrate upon the communities along the line it
takes a greater number of people than they have the means of
relieving, however benevolent their dispositions; and I must say that
I have never either seen or read of a nobler spirit than seems to
animate all classes of these communities in India on such distressing
occasions.

In such seasons of distress, we often, in India, hear of very
injudicious interference with grain dealers on the part of civil and
military authorities, who contrive to persuade themselves that the
interest of these corn-dealers, instead of being in accordance with
the interests of the people, are entirely opposed to them; and
conclude that, whenever grain becomes dear, they have a right to make
them open their granaries, and sell their grain at such price as
they, in their wisdom, may deem reasonable. If they cannot make them
do this by persuasion, fine, or imprisonment, they cause their pits
to be opened by their own soldiers or native officers, and the grain
to be sold at an arbitrary price. If, in a hundred pits thus opened,
they find one in which the corn happens to be damaged by damp, they
come to the sage conclusion that the proprietors must be what they
have all along supposed them to be, and treated as such--_the common
enemies of mankind_--who, blind alike to their own interests and
those of the people, purchase up the superabundance of seasons of
plenty, not to sell it again in seasons of scarcity, but _to destroy
it_; and that the whole of the grain in the other ninety-nine pits,
but for their _timely interference_, must have inevitably shared the
same fate.[11]

During the season here mentioned, grain had become very dear at
Sâgar, from the unusual demand in Bundêlkhand and other districts to
the north. As usual, supplies of land produce flowed up from the
Nerbudda districts along the great roads to the east and west of the
city; but the military authorities in the cantonments would not be
persuaded out of their dread of a famine. There were three regiments
of infantry, a corps of cavalry, and two companies of artillery
cantoned at that time at Sâgar. They were a mile from the city, and
the grain for their supply was exempted from town duties to which
that for the city was liable. The people in cantonments got their
supply, in consequence, a good deal cheaper than the people in the
city got theirs; and none but persons belonging bona fide to the
cantonments were ever allowed to purchase grain within them. When the
dread of famine began, the commissariat officer, Major Gregory,
apprehended that he might not be permitted to have recourse to the
markets of the city in times of scarcity, since the people of the
city had not been suffered to have recourse to those of the
cantonments in times of plenty; but he was told by the magistrate to
purchase as much as he liked, since he considered every man as free
to sell his grain as his cloth, or pots and pans, to whom he
chose.[12] He added that he did not share in the fears of the
military authorities--that he had no apprehension whatever of a
famine, or when prices rose high enough they would be sure to divert
away into the city, from the streams then flowing up from the valley
of the Nerbudda and the districts of Mâlwa towards Bundêlkhand, a
supply of grain sufficient for all.

This new demand upon the city increased rapidly the price of grain,
and augmented the alarm of the people, who began to urge the
magistrate to listen to their prayers, and coerce the sordid corn-
dealers, who had, no doubt, numerous pits yet unopened. The alarm
became still greater in the cantonments, where the commanding officer
attributed all the evil to the inefficiency of the commissariat and
the villany of the corn-dealers; and Major Gregory was in dread of
being torn to pieces by the soldiery. Only one day's supply was left
in the cantonment bazaars--the troops had become clamorous almost to
a state of mutiny--the people of the town began to rush in upon every
supply that was offered for sale; and those who had grain to dispose
of could no longer venture to expose it. The magistrate was hard
pressed on all sides to have recourse to the old salutary method of
searching for and forcibly opening the grain pits, and selling the
contents at such price as might appear reasonable. The kotwâl[13] of
the town declared that the lives of his police would be no longer
safe unless this great and never-failing remedy, which had now
unhappily been too long deferred, were immediately adopted.

The magistrate, who had already taken every other means of declaring
his resolution never to suffer any man's granary to be forcibly
opened, now issued a formal proclamation, pledging himself to see
that such granaries should be as much respected as any other property
in the city--that every man might keep his grain and expose it for
sale, wherever and whenever he pleased; and expressing a hope that,
as the people knew him too well not to feel assured that his word
thus solemnly pledged would never be broken, he trusted they would
sell what stores they had, and apply themselves without apprehension
to the collecting of more.

This proclamation he showed to Major Gregory, assuring him that no
degree of distress or clamour among the people of the city or the
cantonments should ever make him violate the pledge therein given to
the corn-dealers; and that he was prepared to risk his situation and
reputation as a public officer upon the result. After issuing this
proclamation about noon, he had his police establishments augmented,
and so placed and employed as to give to the people entire confidence
in the assurances conveyed in it. The grain-dealers, no longer
apprehensive of danger, opened their pits of grain, and sent off all
their available means to bring in more. In the morning the bazaars
were all supplied, and every man who had money could buy as much as
he pleased. The troops got as much as they required from the city.
Major Gregory was astonished and delighted. The colonel, a fine old
soldier from the banks of the Indus, who had commanded a corps of
horse under the former government, came to the magistrate in
amazement; every shop had become full of grain as if by supernatural
agency.

_'Kâle âdmî kî akl kahân talak chalêgî_?' said he. 'How little could
a black man's wisdom serve him in such an emergency?'

There was little wisdom in all this; but there was a firm reliance
upon the truth of the general principle which should guide all public
officers on such occasions. The magistrate judged that there were a
great many pits of grain in the town known only to their own
proprietors, who were afraid to open them, or get more grain, while
there was a chance of the civil authorities yielding to the clamours
of the people and the anxiety of the officers commanding the troops;
and that he had only to remove these fears, by offering a solemn
pledge, and manifesting the means and the will to abide by it, in
order to induce the proprietors, not only to sell what they had, but
to apply all their means to the collecting of more. But it is a
singular fact that almost all the officers of the cantonments thought
the conduct of the magistrate in refusing to have the grain pits
opened under such pressing circumstances extremely reprehensible.

Had he done so, he might have given the people of the city and the
cantonments the supply at hand; but the injury done to the corn-
dealers by so very unwise a measure would have recoiled upon the
public, since every one would have been discouraged from exerting
himself to renew the supply, and from laying up stores to meet
similar necessities in future. By acting as he did, he not only
secured for the public the best exertions of all the existing corn-
dealers of the place, but actually converted for the time a great
many to that trade from other employments, or from idleness. A great
many families, who had never traded before, employed their means in
bringing a supply of grain, and converted their dwellings into corn
shops, induced by the high profits and assurance of protection.
During the time when he was most pressed the magistrate received a
letter from Captain Robinson, who was in charge of the bazaars at
Elichpur in the Hyderabad territory,[14] where the dearth had become
even more felt than at Sâgar, requesting to know what measures had
been adopted to regulate the price, and secure the supply of grain
for the city and cantonments at Sâgar, since no good seemed to result
from those hitherto pursued at Elichpur. He told him in reply that
these things had hitherto been regulated at Sâgar as he thought 'they
ought to be regulated everywhere else, by being left entirely to the
discretion of the corn-dealers themselves, whose self-interest will
always prompt them to have a sufficient supply, as long as they may
feel secure of being permitted to do what they please with what they
collect. The commanding officer, in his anxiety to secure food for
the people, had hitherto been continually interfering to coerce sales
and regulate prices, and continually aggravating the evils of the
dearth by so doing'. On the receipt of the Sâgar magistrate's letter
a different course was adopted; the same assurances were given to the
corn-dealers, the same ability and inclination to enforce them
manifested, and the same result followed. The people and the troops
were steadily supplied; and all were astonished that so very simple a
remedy had not before been thought of.

The ignorance of the first principles of political economy among
European gentlemen of otherwise first-rate education and abilities in
India is quite lamentable, for there are really few public officers,
even in the army, who are not occasionally liable to be placed in the
situations where they may, by false measures, arising out of such
ignorance, aggravate the evils of dearth among great bodies of their
fellow men. A soldier may, however, find some excuse for such
ignorance, because a knowledge of these principles is not generally
considered to form any indispensable part of a soldier's education;
but no excuse can be admitted for a civil functionary who is so
ignorant, since a thorough acquaintance with the principles of
political economy must be, and, indeed, always is considered as an
essential branch of that knowledge which is to fit him for public
employment in India.[15]

In India unfavourable seasons produce much more disastrous
consequences than in Europe. In England not more than one-fourth of
the population derive their incomes from the cultivation of the lands
around them. Three-fourths of the people have incomes independent of
the annual returns from those lands; and with these incomes they can
purchase agricultural produce from other lands when the crops upon
them fail. The farmers, who form so large a portion of the fourth
class, have stock equal in value to _four times the amount of the
annual rent of their lands_. They have also a great variety of crops;
and it is very rare that more than one or two of them fail, or are
considerably affected, the same season. If they fail in one district
or province, the deficiency is very easily supplied to a people who
have equivalents to give for the produce of another. The sea,
navigable rivers, fine roads, all are open and ready at all times for
the transport of the superabundance of one quarter to supply the
deficiencies of another. In India, the reverse of all this is
unhappily to be found; more than three-fourths of the whole
population are engaged in the cultivation of the land, and depend
upon its annual returns for subsistence.[16] The farmers and
cultivators have none of their stock equal in value to more than
_half the amount of the annual rent of their lands_.[17] They have a
great variety of crops; but all are exposed to the same accidents,
and commonly fail at the same time. The autumn crops are sown in June
and July, and ripen in October and November; and, if seasonable
showers do not fall during July, August, and September, all fail. The
spring crops are sown in October and November, and ripen in March;
and, if seasonable showers do not happen to fall during December or
January, all, save what are artificially irrigated, fail.[18] If they
fail in one district or province, the people have few equivalents to
offer for a supply of land produce from any other. Their roads are
scarcely anywhere passable for wheeled carriages at _any season_, and
nowhere _at all seasons_--they have nowhere a navigable canal, and
only in one line a navigable river.

Their land produce is conveyed upon the backs of bullocks, that move
at the rate of six or eight miles a day, and add one hundred per
cent. to the cost of every hundred miles they carry it in the best
seasons, and more than two hundred in the worst.[19] What in Europe
is felt merely as a _dearth_, becomes in India, under all these
disadvantages, a scarcity, and what is there a _scarcity_ becomes
here a _famine_. Tens of thousands die here of starvation, under
calamities of season, which in Europe would involve little of
suffering to any class. Here man does everything, and he must have
his daily food or starve. In England machinery does more than three-
fourths of the collective work of society in the production,
preparation, and distribution of man's physical enjoyments, and it
stands in no need of this daily food to sustain its powers; they are
independent of the seasons; the water, fire, air, and other elemental
powers which they require to render them subservient to our use are
always available in abundance.

This machinery is the great assistant of the present generation,
provided for us by the wisdom and industry of the past; wanting no
food itself, it can always provide its proprietors with the means of
purchasing what they require from other countries, when the harvests
of their own fail. When calamities of season deprive men of
employment for a time in tillage, they can, in England, commonly find
it in other branches of industry, because agricultural industry forms
so small a portion of the collective industry of the nation; and
because every man can, without prejudice to his status in society,
take to what branch of industry he pleases. But, when these
calamities of season throw men out of employment in tillage for a
time in India, they cannot find it in any other branch, because
agricultural industry forms so very large a portion of the collective
industry of every part of the country; and because men are often
prevented by the prejudices of caste from taking to that which they
can find.[20]

In societies constituted like that of India the trade of the corn-
dealer is more essentially necessary for the welfare of the community
than in any other, for it is among them that the superabundance of
seasons of plenty requires most to be stored up for seasons of
scarcity; and if public functionaries will take upon themselves to
seize such stores, and sell them at their own arbitrary prices,
whenever prices happen to rise beyond the rate which they in their
short-sighted wisdom think just, no corn-dealer will ever collect
such stores. Hitherto, whenever grain has become dear at any military
or civil station, we have seen the civil functionaries urged to
prohibit its egress--to search for the hidden stores, and to coerce
the proprietors to the sale in all manner of ways; and, if they do
not yield to the ignorant clamour, they are set down as indifferent
to the sufferings of their fellow creatures around them, and as
blindly supporting the worst enemies of mankind in the worst species
of iniquity.

If those who urge them to such measures are asked whether
silversmiths or linendrapers, who should be treated in the same
manner as they wish the corn-dealers to be treated, would ever
collect and keep stores of plate and cloth for their use, they
readily answer--No; they see at once the evil effects of interfering
with the free disposal of the property of the one, but are totally
blind to that which must as surely follow any interference with that
of the other, whose entire freedom is of so much more vital
importance to the public. There was a time, and that not very remote,
when grave historians, like Smollett, could, even in England, fan the
flame of this vulgar prejudice against one of the most useful classes
of society. That day is, thank God, past; and no man can now venture
to write such trash in his history, or even utter it in any well-
informed circle of English society; and, if any man were to broach
such a subject in an English House of Commons, he would be considered
as a fit subject for a madhouse.

 But some, who retain their prejudices against corn-dealers, and are
yet ashamed to acknowledge their ignorance of the first principles of
political economy, try to persuade themselves and their friends that,
however applicable these may be to the state of society in European
or Christian countries, they are not so to countries occupied by
Hindoos and Muhammadans. This is a sad delusion, and may be a very
mischievous one, when indulged by public officers in India.[21]

Notes:

1. Irrigation by means of a 'dug-out' canoe used as a lever is
commonly practised in many parts of the country. The author gives a
rough sketch, not worth reproduction. The Persian wheel is suitable
for use in wide-mouthed wells. It may be described as a mill-wheel
with buckets on the circumference, which are filled and emptied as
the wheel revolves. It is worked by bullock-power acting on a rude
cog-wheel.

2. December, 1835.

3. A.D. 1833 corresponds to the year 1890 of the _Vikrama Samvat_, or
era, current in Bundêlkhand. About 1880 the editor found this great
famine still remembered as that of the year '90.

4. Half a crown seems to be used in this passage as a synonym for the
rupee, now (1914) worth a shilling and four pence.

5. Bundêlkhand seems to be the meeting-place of the east and west
monsoons, and the moist current is, in consequence, often feeble and
variable. The country suffered again from famine in 1861 and 1877,
although not so severely as in 1833. In northern Bundêlkhand a canal
from the Betwa river has been constructed, but is of only very
limited use. The peculiarities of the soil and climate forbid the
wide extension of irrigation. For the prevention of acute famine in
this region the chief reliance must be on improved communications.
The country has been opened up by the Indian Midland and other
railways. In 1899-1900, notwithstanding improved communications,
Mâlwa suffered severely from famine. Aurangzêb considered Gujarât to
be 'the ornament and jewel of India' (Bilimoria, _Letters of
Aurungzebie_, 1908, no. lxiv).

6. The influence of trees on climate is undoubted, but the author in
this passage probably ascribes too much power to the groves of Mâlwa.
On the formation of the black soil see note 7 to Chapter 14, _ante_.

7. The word in the author's text is 'grain', a misprint for 'gram'
(_Cicer arietinum_), a pulse, also known as chick-pea, and very
largely grown in Bundêlkhand. 'Gram' is a corruption of the
Portuguese word for grain, and, like many other Portuguese words, has
passed into the speech of Anglo-Indians. See Yule and Burnell,
_Glossary of Anglo-Indian Words_, s.v.

8. 'Agricultural capitalist' is a rather large phrase for the humble
village money-lender, whose transactions are usually on a very small
scale.

9. The author's advice on the subject of famine relief is weighty and
perfectly sound. It is in accordance with the policy formulated by
the Government of India in the Famine Relief Code, based on the
Report of the Famine Commission which followed the terrible Madras
famine of 1877.

10. This statement is too general. Examples of the horror alluded to
are recorded in several Indian famines. Cases of cannibalism occurred
during the Madras famine of 1877. But it is true that horrors of the
kind are rare in India, and the author's praise of the patient
resignation of the people is fully justified. An admirable summary of
the history of Indian famines will be found in the articles 'Famines'
and 'Food' in Balfour, _Cyclopaedia_, 3rd ed. (1885). For further and
more recent information see _I.G._ (1907), vol. iii, chap. 10.

11. No European officer, military or civil, could now venture to
adopt such arbitrary measures. In a Native State they might very
probably be enforced.

12. 'The magistrate' was the author himself.

13. The chief police officer of a town. In the modern reorganized
system he always holds the rank of either Inspector or Sub-Inspector.
Under native governments he was a more important official.

14. Elichpur (Îlichpur) is in Berâr, otherwise known as the Assigned
Districts, a territory made over in Lord Dalhousie's time to British
administration in order to defray the cost of the armed force called
the Hyderabad Contingent. Since 1903 Berâr has ceased to be a
separate province. It is now merely a Division attached to the
Central Provinces. From the same date the Hyderabad Contingent lost
its separate existence, being redistributed and merged in the Indian
Army.

15. Political Economy was for many years a compulsory subject for the
selected candidates for the Civil Service of India; but since 1892
its study has been optional.

16. The census of 1911 shows that about 71 per cent. of the
301,000,000 inhabiting India, excluding Burma, are supported by the
cultivation of the soil and the care of cattle. The proportion varies
widely in different provinces.

17. This proposition does not apply fully to Northern India at the
present day. The amount of capital invested is small, although not
quite so small as is stated in the text.

18. The times of harvest vary slightly with the latitude, being later
towards the north. The cold-weather rains of December and January are
variable and uncertain, and rarely last more than a few days. The
spring crops depend largely on the heavy dews which occur daring the
cold season.

19. Daring the years which have elapsed since the famine of 1833,
great changes have taken place in India, and many of the author's
remarks are only partially applicable to the present time. The great
canals, above all, the wonderful Ganges Canal, have protected immense
areas of Northern India from the possibility of absolute famine, and
Southern India has also been to a considerable, though less, extent,
protected by similar works. A few new staples, of which potatoes are
the most important, have been introduced. The whole system of
distribution has been revolutionized by the development of railways,
metalled roads, wheeled vehicles, motors, telegraphs, and navigable
canals. Carriage on the backs of animals, whether bullocks, camels,
or donkeys, now plays a very subordinate part in the distribution of
agricultural produce. Prices are, in great measure, dependent on the
rates prevailing in Liverpool, Odessa, and Chicago. Food grains now
stand ordinarily at prices which, in the author's time, would have
been reckoned famine rates. The changes which have taken place in
England are too familiar to need comment.

20. Since the author's time certain industries, the most important
being cotton-pressing, cotton-spinning, and jute-spinning, have
sprung up and assumed in Bombay, Calcutta, Cawnpore, and a few other
places, proportions which, absolutely, are large. But India is so
vast that these local developments of manufactures, large though they
are, seem to be as nothing when regarded in comparison with the
country as a whole. India is still, and, to all appearance, always
must be, essentially an agricultural country.

21. The author's teaching concerning freedom of trade in times of
famine and the function of dealers in corn is as sound as his
doctrine of famine relief. The 'vulgar prejudice', which he
denounces, still flourishes, and the 'sad delusion', which he
deplores, still obscures the truth. As each period of scarcity or
famine comes round, the old cries are again heard, and the executive
authorities are implored and adjured to forbid export, to fix fair
prices, and to clip the profits of the corn merchant. During the
Bengal famine of 1873-4, the demand for the prohibition of the export
of rice was urged by men who should have known better, and Lord
Northbrook is entitled to no small credit for having firmly withstood
the clamour. The more recent experiences of the Russian Government
should be remembered when the clamour is again raised, as it will be.
The principles on which the author acted in the crisis at Sâgar in
1833 should guide every magistrate who finds himself in a similar
position, and should be applied with unhesitating firmness and
decision.

CHAPTER 25

Epidemic Diseases--Scape-goat.

In the evening, after my conversation with the cultivator upon the
wall that united the two hills,[1] I received a visit from my little
friend the Sarîmant. His fine rose-coloured turban is always put on
very gracefully; every hair of his jet-black eyebrows and mustachios
seems to be kept always most religiously in the same place; and he
has always the same charming smile upon his little face, which was
never, I believe, distorted into an absolute laugh or frown. No man
was ever more perfectly master of what the natives call 'the art of
rising or sitting' (_nishisht wa barkhâst_), namely, good manners. I
should as soon expect to see him set the Nerbudda on fire as commit
any infringement of the _convenances_ on this head established in
good Indian society, or be guilty of anything vulgar in speech,
sentiment, or manners. I asked him by what means it was that the old
queen of Sâgar[2] drove out the influenza that afflicted the people
so much in 1832, while he was there on a visit to me. He told me that
he took no part in the ceremonies, nor was he aware of them till
awoke one night by 'the noise, when his attendants informed him that
the queen and the greater part of the city were making offerings to
the new god, Hardaul Lâla. He found next morning that a goat had been
offered up with as much noise as possible, and with good effect, for
the disease was found to give way from that moment. About six years
before, when great numbers were dying in his own little capital of
Pithoria[3] from a similar epidemic, he had, he said, tried the same
thing with still greater effect; but, on that occasion, he had the
aid of a man very learned in such matters. This man caused a small
carriage to be made up after a plan of his own, for _a pair of scape-
goats_, which were harnessed to it, and driven during the ceremonies
to a wood some distance from the town, where they were let loose.
From that hour the disease entirely ceased in the town. The goats
never returned. 'Had they come back,' said Sarîmant, 'the disease
must have come back with them; so he took them a long way into the
wood--indeed (he believed), the man, to make sure of them, had
afterwards caused them to be offered up as a sacrifice to the shrine
of Hardaul Lâla, in that very wood. He had himself never seen a
_pûjâ_ (religious ceremony) so entirely and immediately efficacious
as this, and much of its success was, no doubt, attributable to the
_science_ of the man who planned the carriage, and himself drove the
pair of goats to the wood. No one had ever before heard of the plan
of a pair of _scape-goats_ being driven in a carriage; but it was
likely (he thought) to be extensively adopted in future.'[4]

Sarîmant's man of affairs mentioned that when Lord Hastings took the
field against the Pindhârîs, in 1817,[5] and the division of the
grand army under his command was encamped near the grove in
Bundêlkhand, where repose the ashes of Hardaul Lâla, under a small
shrine, a cow was taken into this grove to be converted into beef for
the use of the Europeans. The priest in attendance remonstrated, but
in vain--the cow was killed and eaten. The priest complained, and
from that day the cholera morbus broke out in the camp; and from this
central point it was, he said, generally understood to have spread
all over India.[6] The story of the cow travelled at the same time,
and the spirit of Hardaul Lâla was everywhere supposed to be riding
in the whirlwind, and _directing the storm_. Temples were everywhere
erected, and offerings made to appease him; and in six years after,
he had himself seen them as far as Lahore, and in almost every
village throughout the whole course of his journey to that distant
capital and back. He is one of the most sensible and freely spoken
men that I have met with. 'Up to within the last few years', added
he, 'the spirit of Hardaul Lâla had been propitiated only in cases of
cholera morbus; but now he is supposed to preside over all kinds of
epidemic diseases, and offerings have everywhere been made to his
shrine during late influenzas.'[7]

'This of course arises', I observed, 'from the industry of his
priests, who are now spread all over the country; and you know that
there is hardly a village or hamlet in which there are not some of
them to be found subsisting upon the fears of the people.'

'I have no doubt', replied he, 'that the cures which the people
attribute to the spirit of Hardaul Lâla often arise merely from the
firmness of their faith (_itikâd_) in the efficacy of their
offerings; and that any other ceremonies, that should give to their
minds the same assurance of recovery, would be of great advantage in
cases of epidemic diseases. I remember a singular instance of this,'
said he. 'When Jeswant Râo Holkar was flying before Lord Lake to the
banks of the Hyphasis,[8] a poor trooper of one of his lordship's
irregular corps, when he tied the grain-bag to his horse's mouth,
said 'Take this in the name of Jeswant Râo Holkar, for to him you and
I owe all that we have.' The poor man had been suffering from an
attack of ague and fever; but from that moment he felt himself
relieved, and the fever never returned. At that time this fever
prevailed more generally among the people of Hindustan than any I
have ever known, though I am now an old man. The speech of the
trooper and the supposed result soon spread; and others tried the
experiment with similar success, and it acted everywhere like a
charm. I had the fever myself, and, though by no means a
superstitious man, and certainly no lover of Jeswant Râo Holkar, I
tried the experiment, and the fever left me from that day. From that
time, till the epidemic disappeared, no man, from the Nerbudda to the
Indus, fed his horse without invoking the spirit of Jeswant Râo,
though the chief was then alive and well. Some one had said he found
great relief from plunging into the stream during the paroxysms of
the fever; others followed the example, and some remained for half an
hour at a time, and the sufferers generally found relief. The streams
and tanks throughout the districts between the Ganges and Jumna
became crowded, till the propitiatory offering to the spirit of the
living Jeswant Râo Holkar were [sic] found equally good, and far less
troublesome to those who had horses that must have got their grain,
whether in Holkar's name or not.'

There is no doubt that the great mass of those who had nothing but
their horses and their _good blades_ to depend upon for their
subsistence did most fervently pray throughout India for the safety
of this Marâthâ chief, when he fled before Lord Lake's army; for they
considered that, with his fall, the Company's dominion would become
everywhere securely established, and that good soldiers would be at a
discount. '_Company kê amal men kuchh rozgâr nahin hai_,'--'There is
no employment in the Company's dominion,' is a common maxim, not only
among the men of the sword and the spear, but among those merchants
who lived by supporting native civil and military establishments with
the luxuries and elegancies which, under the new order of things,
they have no longer the means to enjoy.

The noisy _pûjâ_ (worship), about which our conversation began, took
place at Sâgar in April, 1832, while I was at that station. More than
four-fifths of the people of the city and cantonments had been
affected by a violent influenza, which commenced with a distressing
cough, was followed by fever, and, in some cases, terminated in
death. I had an application from the old Queen Dowager of Sâgar, who
received a pension of ten thousand pounds a year from the British
Government,[9] and resided in the city, to allow of a _noisy_
religious procession to implore deliverance from this great calamity.
Men, women, and children in this procession were to do their utmost
to add to the noise by 'raising their voices in _psalmody_', beating
upon their brass pots and pans with all their might, and discharging
fire-arms where they could get them; and before the noisy crowd was
to be driven a buffalo, which had been purchased by a general
subscription, in order that every family might participate in the
merit. They were to follow it out for eight miles, where it was to be
turned loose for any man who would take it. If the animal returned,
the disease, it was said, must return with it, and the ceremony be
performed over again. I was requested to intimate the circumstance to
the officer commanding the troops in cantonments, in order that the
hideous noise they intended to make might not excite any alarm, and
bring down upon them the visit of the soldiery. It was, however,
subsequently determined that the animal should be a goat, and he was
driven before the crowd accordingly. I have on several occasions been
requested to allow of such noisy _pûjâs_ in cases of epidemics; and
the confidence they feel in their efficiency has, no doubt, a good
effect.

While in civil charge of the district of Narsinghpur, in the valley
of the Nerbudda, in April 1823, the cholera morbus raged in almost
every house of Narsinghpur and Kandelî, situated near each other,[l0]
and one of them close to my dwelling-house and court. The European
physicians lost all confidence in their prescriptions, and the people
declared that the hand of God was upon them, and by appeasing Him
could they alone hope to be saved.[11] A religious procession was
determined upon; but the population of both towns was divided upon
the point whether a silent or a noisy one would be most acceptable to
God. Hundreds were dying around me when I was applied to to settle
this knotty point between the parties. I found that both in point of
numbers and respectability the majority was in favour of the silent
procession, and I recommended that this should be adopted. The
procession took place about nine the same night, with all due
ceremony; but the advocates for noise would none of them assist in
it. Strange as it may appear, the disease abated from that moment;
and the great majority of the population of both towns believed that
their prayers had been heard; and I went to bed with a mind somewhat
relieved by the hope that this feeling of confidence might be useful.
About one o'clock I was awoke from a sound sleep by the most hideous
noise that I had ever heard; and, not at that moment recollecting the
proposal for the noisy procession, ran out of my house, in
expectation of seeing both towns in flames. I found that the
advocates for noise, resolving to have their procession, had
assembled together about midnight; and, apprehensive that they might
be borne down by the advocates for silence and my police
establishment, had determined to make the most of their time, and put
in requisition all the pots, pans, shells, trumpets, pistols, and
muskets that they could muster. All opened at once about one o'clock;
and, had there been any virtue in discord, the cholera must soon have
deserted the place, for such another hideous compound of noises I
never heard. The disease, which seemed to have subsided with the
silent procession before I went to bed, now returned with double
violence, as I was assured by numbers who flocked to my house in
terror; and the whole population became exasperated with the leaders
of the noisy faction, who had, they believed, been the means of
bringing back among them all the horrors of this dreadful scourge.

I asked the Hindoo Sadar Amîn, or head native judicial officer at
Sâgar, a very profound Sanskrit scholar, what he thought of the
efficacy of these processions in checking epidemic diseases. He said
that 'there could be nothing more clear than the total inefficiency
of medicine in such cases; and, when medicine failed, a man's only
resource was in prayers; that the diseases of mankind were to be
classed under three general heads: first, those suffered for sins
committed in some former births; second, those suffered for sins
committed in the present birth; third, those merely accidental. Now,'
said the old gentleman, 'it must be clear to every unprejudiced mind
that the third only can be cured or checked by the physician.'
Epidemics, he thought, must all be classed under the second head, and
as inflicted by the Deity for some very general sin; consequently, to
be removed only by prayers; and, whether silent or noisy, was, he
thought, matter of little importance, provided they were offered in
the same spirit. I believe that, among the great mass of the people
of India, three-fourths of the diseases of individuals are attributed
to evil spirits and evil eyes; and for every physician among them
there are certainly ten _exorcisers_. The faith in them is very great
and very general; and, as the gift is supposed to be supernatural, it
is commonly exercised without fee or reward. The gifted person
subsists upon some other employment, and _exorcises_ gratis.

A child of one of our servants was one day in convulsions from its
sufferings in cutting its teeth. The Civil Surgeon happened to call
that morning, and he offered to lance the child's gums. The poor
mother thanked him, but stated that there could be no possible doubt
as to the source of her child's sufferings--that the devil had got
into it during the night, and would certainly not be frightened out
by his little lancet; but she expected every moment my old tent-
pitcher, whose exorcisms no devil of this description had ever yet
been able to withstand.

The small-pox had been raging in the town of Jubbulpore for some time
during one hot season that I was there, and a great many children had
died from it. The severity of the disease was considered to have been
a good deal augmented by a very untoward circumstance that had taken
place in the family of the principal banker of the town, Khushhâl
Chand. Sêwâ Râm Sêth, the old man, had lately died, leaving two sons.
Ram Kishan, the eldest, and Khushhâl Chand, the second. The eldest
gave up all the management of the sublunary concerns of the family,
and devoted his mind entirely to religious duties. They had a very
fine family temple of their own, in which they placed an image of
their god Vishnu, cut out of the choicest stone of the Nerbudda, and
consecrated after the most approved form, and with very expensive
ceremonies. This idol Râm Kishan used every day to wash with his own
hands with rosewater, and anoint with precious ointments. One day,
while he had the image in his arms, and was busily employed in
anointing it, it fell to the ground upon the stone pavement, and one
of the arms was broken. To live after such an untoward accident was
quite out of the question, and poor Râm Kishan proceeded at once
quietly to hang himself. He got a rope from the stable, and having
tied it over the beam in the room where he had let the god fall upon
the stone pavement, he was putting his head calmly into the noose,
when his brother came in, laid hold of him, called for assistance,
and put him under restraint. A conclave of the priests of that sect
was immediately held in the town, and Râm Kishan was told that
hanging himself was not absolutely necessary; that it might do if he
would take the stone image, broken arm and all, upon his own back,
and carry it two hundred and sixty miles to Benares, where resided
the high priest of the sect, who would, no doubt, be able to suggest
the proper measures for pacifying the god.

At this time, the only son of his brother, Khushhâl Chand, an
interesting little boy of about four years of age, was extremely ill
of the small-pox; and it is a rule with Hindoos never to undertake
any journey, even one of pilgrimage to a holy shrine, while any
member of the family is afflicted with this disease; they must all
sit at home clothed in sackcloth and ashes. He was told that he had
better defer his journey to Benares till the child should recover;
but he could neither sleep nor eat, so great was his terror, lest
some dreadful calamity should befall the whole family before he could
expiate his crime, or take the advice of his high priest as to the
best means of doing it: and he resolved to leave the decision of the
question to God Himself. He took two pieces of paper, and having
caused Benares to be written upon one, and Jubbulpore upon the other,
he put them both into a brass vessel. After shaking the vessel well,
he drew forth that on which Benares had been written. 'It is the will
of God,' said Râm Kishan. All the family, who were interested in the
preservation of the poor boy, implored him not to set out, lest Dêvî,
who presides over small-pox, should become angry. It was all in vain.
He would set out with his household god; and, unable to carry it
himself, he put it into a small litter upon a pole, and hired a
bearer to carry it at one end, while he supported it at the other.
His brother, Khushhâl Chand, sent his second wife at the same time
with offerings for Dêvî, to ward off the effects of his brother's
rashness from his child. By the time the brother had got with his god
to Adhartâl, three miles from Jubbulpore, on the road to Benares, he
heard of the death of his nephew; but he seemed not to feel this
slight blow in his terror of the dreadful but undefined calamity
which he felt to be impending over him and the whole family, and he
trotted on his road. Soon after, an infant son of their uncle died of
the same disease; and the whole town became at once divided into two
parties--those who held that the children had been killed by Dêvî as
a punishment for Râm Kishan's presuming to leave Jubbulpore before
they recovered; and those who held that they were killed by the god
Vishnu himself, for having been so rudely deprived of one of his
arms. Khushhâl Chand's wife sickened on the road, and died on
reaching Mirzapore, of fever; and, as Dêvî was supposed to have
nothing to do with fevers, this event greatly augmented the advocates
of Vishnu. It is a rule with the Hindoos to bury, and not to burn,
the bodies of those who die of the small-pox; 'for', say they, 'the
small-pox is not only caused by the goddess Dêvî, but is, in fact,
_Dêvî herself_', and to burn the body of the person affected with
this disease is, in reality, neither more nor less than _to burn the
goddess_'.

Khushhâl Chand was strongly urged to bury, and not burn, his child,
particularly as it was usual with Hindoos to bury infants and
children of that age, of whatever disease they might die; but he
insisted upon having his boy burned with all due pomp and ceremony,
and burned he was accordingly. From that moment, it is said, the
disease began to rage with increased violence throughout the town of
Jubbulpore. At least one-half of the children affected had before
survived; but, from that hour, at least three out of four died; and,
instead of the condolence which he expected from his fellow citizens,
poor Khushhâl Chand, a very amiable and worthy man, received nothing
but their execrations for bringing down so many calamities upon their
heads; first, by maltreating his own god, and then by setting fire to
theirs.

I had, a few days after, a visit from Gangâdhar Râo, the Sadar Amîn,
or head native judicial officer of this district, whose father had
been for a short time the ruler of the district, under the former
government; and I asked him whether the small-pox had diminished in
the town since the rains had now set in. He told me that he thought
it had, but that a great many children had been taken off by the
disease.[12]

'I understand, Râo Sahib, that Khushhâl Chand, the banker, is
supposed to have augmented the virulence of the disease by burning
his boy; was it so?'

'Certainly,' said my friend, with a grave, long face; 'the disease
was much increased by this man's folly.' I looked very grave in my
turn, and he continued:- 'Not a child escaped after he had burned his
boy. Such incredible folly! To set fire to the _goddess_ in the midst
of a population of twenty thousand souls; it might have brought
destruction on us all!'

'What makes you think that the disease is itself the goddess?'

'Because we always say, when any member of a family becomes attacked
by the small-pox, "_Dêvî nikalî_", that is, Dêvî has shown herself in
that family, or in that individual. And the person affected can wear
nothing but plain white clothing, not a silken or coloured garment,
nor an ornament of any kind; nor can he or any of his family
undertake a journey, or participate in any kind of rejoicings, lest
he give offence to her. They broke the arm of their god, and he drove
them all mad.[l3] The elder brother set out on a journey with it, and
his nephew, cousin, and sister-in-law fell victims to his temerity;
and then Khushhâl Chand brings down the goddess upon the whole
community by burning his boy![14] No doubt he was very fond of his
child--so we all are--and wished to do him all honour; but some
regard is surely due to the people around us, and I told him so when
he was making preparations for the funeral; but he would not listen
to reason.'

A complicated religious code, like that of the Hindoos, is to the
priest what a complicated civil code, like that of the English, is to
the lawyers. A Hindoo can do nothing without consulting his priest,
and an Englishman can do nothing without consulting his lawyer.

Notes:

1. _Ante_, Chapter 24, following note [4].

2. Sâgar was ceded by the Peshwa in 1818, and a yearly sum of two and
a half lakhs of rupees was allotted by Government for pensions to
Rukmâ Bâî, Vinâyak Râo, and the other officers of the Marâthâ
Government. A descendant of Rukmâ Bâî continued for many years to
enjoy a pension of R.10,000 per annum (_C.P. Gazetteer_ (1870), p,
442). The lady referred to in the text seems to be Rukmâ Bâî.

3. A village about twenty miles north-west of Sâgar. The estate
consists of twenty-six revenue-free villages.

4. The Jewish ceremonial is described in Leviticus xvi. 20-26. After
completing the atonement for the impurities of the holy place, the
tabernacle, and the altar, Aaron was directed to lay 'his hands upon
the head of the live goat', so putting all the sins of the people
upon the animal, and then to 'send him away by the hand of a fit man
into the wilderness; and the goat shall bear upon him all their
iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in
the wilderness'. The subject of scape-goats is discussed at length
and copiously illustrated by Mr. Frazer in _The Golden Bough_, 1st
ed., vol. ii, section 15, pp. 182-217; 3rd ed. (1913) Part VI. The
author's stories in the text are quoted by Mr. Frazer.

5. During the season of 1816-17 the ravages of the Pindhârîs were
exceptionally daring and extensive. The Governor-General, the Marquis
of Hastings, organized an army in several divisions to crush the
marauders, and himself joined the central division in October 1817.
The operations were ended by the capture of Asîrgarh in March 1819.

6. The people in the Sâgar territories used to show several decayed
mango-trees in groves where European troops had encamped during the
campaigns of 1816 and 1817, and declared that they had been seen to
wither from the day that beef for the use of these troops had been
tied to their branches. The only coincidence was in the decay of the
trees, and the encamping of the troops in the groves; that the
withering trees were those to which the beef had been tied was of
course taken for granted. [W. H. S.] The Hindoo veneration for the
cow amounts to a passion, and its intensity is very inadequately
explained by the current utilitarian explanations. The best analysis
of the motives underlying the passionate Hindoo feeling on the
subject is to be found in Mr. William Crooke's article 'The
Veneration of the Cow in India' (_Folklore_, Sept. 1912, pp. 275-
306). In modern times an active, though absolutely hopeless,
agitation has been kept up, directed against the reasonable liberty
of those communities in India who are not members of the Hindoo
system. This agitation for the prohibition of cow-killing has caused
some riots, and has evoked much ill-feeling. The editor had to deal
with it in the Muzaffarnagar district in 1890, and had much trouble
to keep the peace. The local leaders of the movement went so far as
to send telegrams direct to the Government of India. Many other
magistrates have had similar experiences. The authorities take every
precaution to protect Hindoo susceptibilities from needless wounds,
but they are equally bound to defend the lawful liberty of subjects
who are not Hindoos. The Government of the United Provinces on one
occasion yielded to the Hindoo demands so far as to prohibit cow-
killing in at least one town where the practice was not fully
established, but the legality and expediency of such an order are
both open to criticism. The administrative difficulty is much
enhanced by the fact that the Indian Muhammadans profess to be under
a religious obligation to sacrifice cows at the Îdul Bakr festival.
Cholera has been known to exist in India at least since the
seventeenth century (Balfour, _Cyclopaedia of India_, 3rd ed. (1885),
s.v.).

7. The cultus of Hardaul is further discussed _post_ in Chapter 31.
In 1875, the editor, who was then employed in the Hamîrpur district
of Bundêlkhand, published some popular Hindi songs in praise of the
hero, with the following abstract of the _Legend of Hardaul_:
'Hardaul, a son of the famous Bîr Singh Deo Bundêla of Orchhâ, was
born at Datiyâ. His brother, Jhajhâr Singh, suspected him of undue
intimacy with his wife, and at a feast poisoned him with all his
followers. After this tragedy, it happened that the daughter of
Kunjâvatî, the sister of Jhajhâr and Hardaul, was about to be
married. Kunjâvatî accordingly sent an invitation to Jhajhâr Singh,
requesting him to attend the wedding. He refused, and mockingly
replied that she had better invite her favourite brother Hardaul.
Thereupon she went in despair to his tomb and lamented aloud. Hardaul
from below answered her cries, and said that he would come to the
wedding and make all arrangements. The ghost kept his promise, and
arranged the nuptials as befitted the honour of his house.
Subsequently, he visited at night the bedside of Akbar, and besought
the emperor to command _chabûtras_ to be erected and honour paid to
him in every village throughout the empire, promising that, if he
were duly honoured, a wedding should never be marred by storm or
rain, and that no one who first presented a share of his meal to
Hardaul should ever want for food. Akbar complied with these
requests, and since that time Hardaul's ghost has been worshipped in
every village. He is chiefly honoured at weddings and in Baisâkh
(April-May), during which month the women, especially those of the
lower castes, visit his _chabûtra_ and eat there. His chabûtra is
always built outside the village. On the day but one before the
arrival of a wedding procession, the women of the family worship the
gods and Hardaul, and invite them to the wedding. If any signs of a
storm appears, Hardaul is propitiated with songs '(_J.A.S.B._, vol.
xliv (1875), Part I, p. 389). The belief that Hardaul worship and
cholera had been introduced at the same time prevailed in Hamîrpur,
as elsewhere. The _chabûtra_ referred to in the above extract is a
small platform built of mud or masonry.

8. The Hyphasis is the Greek name for the river Biâs in the Panjâb.
Holkar's flight into the Panjâb occurred in 1805, and in the same
year the long war with him was terminated by a treaty, much too
favourable to the marauding chief. He became insane a few years
later, and died in 1811.

9. See note 2,_ante_.

10. Narsinghpur and Kandelî are practically one town. The Government
offices and houses of the European residents are in Kandelî, which is
a mile east of Narsinghpur. The original name of Narsinghpur was
Gadariâ Khêrâ. The modern name is due to the erection of a large
temple to Narsingha, one of the forms of Vishnu. The district of
Narsinghpur lies in the Nerbudda valley, west and south-west of
Jubbulpore.

11. All classes of Indians still frequently refuse to employ any
medicines in cases of either cholera or small-pox, supposing that the
attempt to use ordinary human means is an insult to, and a defiance
of, the Deity.

12. Vaccination was not practised in India in those days. The
practice of it, although still unpopular in most places, has extended
sufficiently to check greatly the ravages of small-pox. In many
municipal towns vaccination is compulsory.

13._Quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat_.

14. The judge cleverly combines the opinions of the adherents of both
sects.

CHAPTER 26

Artificial Lakes in Bundêlkhand--Hindoo, Greek, and Roman Faith.

On the 11th[1] we came on twelve miles to the town of Bamhaurî,
whence extends to the south-west a ridge of high and bare quartz
hills, towering above all others, curling and foaming at the top,
like a wave ready to burst, when suddenly arrested by the hand of
Omnipotence, and turned into white stone. The soil all the way is
wretchedly poor in quality, being formed of the detritus of syenitic
and quartz rocks, and very thin. Bamhaurî is a nice little town,[2]
beautifully situated on the bank of a fine lake, the waters of which
preserved during the late famine the population of this and six other
small towns, which are situated near its borders, and have their
lands irrigated from it. Besides water for their fields, this lake
yielded the people abundance of water-chestnuts[3] and fish. In the
driest season the water has been found sufficient to supply the wants
of all the people of those towns and villages, and those of all the
country around, as far as the people can avail themselves of it.

This large lake is formed by an artificial bank or wall at the south-
east end, which rests one arm upon the high range of quartz rocks,
which run along its south-west side for several miles, looking down
into the clear deep water, and forming a beautiful landscape.

From this pretty town, Ludhaura, where the great marriage had lately
taken place, was in sight, and only four miles distant.[4] It was, I
learnt, the residence of the present Râjâ of Orchhâ, before the death
of his brother called him to the throne. Many people were returning
from the ceremonies of the marriage of 'sâlagrâm' with 'Tulasî'; who
told me that the concourse had been immense--at least one hundred and
fifty thousand; and that the Râjâ had feasted them all for four days
during the progress of the ceremonies, but that they were obliged to
defray their expenses going and coming, except when they came by
special invitation to do honour to the occasion, as in the case of my
little friend the Sâgar high priest, Jânkî Sewak. They told me that
they called this festival the 'Dhanuk jag';[5] and that Janakrâj, the
father of Sîtâ, had in his possession the 'dhanuk', or immortal bow
of Parasrâm, the sixth incarnation of Vishnu, with which he
exterminated all the Kshatriyas, or original military class of India,
and which required no less than four thousand men to raise it on one
end.[6] The prince offered his daughter in marriage to any man who
should bend this bow. Hundreds of heroes and demigods aspired to the
hand of the fair Sîtâ, and essayed to bend the bow; but all in vain,
till young Râm, the seventh incarnation of Vishnu,[7] then a lad of
only ten years of age, came; and at the touch of his great toe the
bow flew into a thousand pieces, which are supposed to have been all
taken up into heaven. Sîtâ became the wife of Râm; and the popular
poem of the Râmâyana describes the abduction of the heroine by the
monster king of Ceylon, Râvana, and her recovery by means of the
monkey general Hanumân. Every word of this poem, the people assured
me, was written, if not by the hand of the Deity himself, at least by
his inspiration, which was the same thing, and it must, consequently,
be true.[8] Ninety-nine out of a hundred among the Hindoos implicitly
believe, not only every word of this poem, but every word of every
poem that has ever been written in Sanskrit. If you ask a man whether
he really believes any very egregious absurdity quoted from these
books, he replies with the greatest _naïveté_ in the world, 'Is it
not written in the book; and how should it be there written if not
true?' The Hindoo religion reposes upon an entire prostration of
mind, that continual and habitual surrender of the reasoning
faculties, which we are accustomed to make occasionally. While
engaged at the theatre, or in the perusal of works of fiction, we
allow the scenes, characters, and incidents to pass before 'our
mind's eye', and move our feelings, without asking, or stopping a
moment to ask, whether they are real or true. There is only this
difference that, with people of education among us, even in such
short intervals of illusion or abandon, any extravagance in acting,
or flagrant improbability in the fiction, destroys the charm, breaks
the spell by which we have been so mysteriously bound, stops the
smooth current of sympathetic emotion, and restores us to reason and
to the realities of ordinary life. With the Hindoos, on the contrary,
the greater the improbability, the more monstrous and preposterous
the fiction, the greater is the charm it has over their minds;[9] and
the greater their learning in the Sanskrit the more are they under
the influence of this charm. Believing all to be written by the
Deity, or by his inspiration, and the men and things of former days
to have been very different from the men and things of the present
day, and the heroes of these fables to have been demigods, or people
endowed with powers far superior to those of the ordinary men of
their own day, the analogies of nature are never for a moment
considered; nor do questions of probability, or possibility,
according to those analogies, ever obtrude to dispel the charm with
which they are so pleasingly bound. They go on through life reading
and talking of these monstrous fictions, which shock the taste and
understanding of other nations, without once questioning the truth of
one single incident, or hearing it questioned. There was a time, and
that not very distant, when it was the same in England, and in every
other European nation; and there are, I am afraid, some parts of
Europe where it is so still. But the Hindoo faith, so far as
religious questions are concerned, is not more capacious or absurd
than that of the Greeks and Romans in the days of Socrates and
Cicero--the only difference is, that among the Hindoos a greater
number of the questions which interest mankind are brought under the
head of religion.

There is nothing in the Hindoos more absurd than the _piety_ of
Tiberius in offering up sacrifices in the temple, and before the
image of Augustus; while he was solicited by all the great cities of
the empire to suffer temples to be built and sacrifices to be made to
himself while still living; or than Alexander's attempt to make a
goddess of his mother while yet alive, that he might feel the more
secure of being made a god himself after his death.[10] In all
religions there are points at which the professors declare that
reason must stop, and cease to be a guide to faith. The pious man
thinks that all which he cannot comprehend or reconcile to reason in
his own religion must be above it. The superstitions of the people of
India will diminish before the spread of science, art, and
literature; and good works of history and fiction would, I think,
make far greater havoc among these superstitions even than good works
in any of the sciences, save the physical, such as astronomy,
chemistry, &c.[11]

In the evening we went out with the intention of making an excursion
of the lake, in boats that had been prepared for our reception by
tying three or four fishing canoes together;[12] but, on reaching the
ridge of quartz hills which runs along the south-east side, we
preferred moving along its summit to entering the boats. The prospect
on either side of this ridge was truly beautiful. A noble sheet of
clear water, about four miles long by two broad, on our right; and on
our left a no less noble sheet of rich wheat cultivation, irrigated
from the lake by drains passing between small breaks in the ridges of
the hills. The Persian wheel is used to raise the water.[13] This
sheet of rich cultivation is beautifully studded with mango groves
and fields of sugar-cane. The lake is almost double the size of that
of Sâgar, and the idea of its great utility for purposes of
irrigation made it appear to me far more beautiful; but my little
friend the Sarîmant, who accompanied us in our walk, said that 'it
could not be so handsome, since it had not a fine city and castle on
two sides, and a fine Government house on the third'.

'But', said I, 'no man's field is watered from that lake.'

'No', replied he, 'but for every man that drinks of the waters of
this, fifty drink of the waters of that; from that lake thirty
thousand people get _ârâm_ (comfort) every day.'

This lake is called Kêwlas after Kêwal Varmma, the Chandêl prince by
whom it was formed.[14] His palace, now in ruins, stood on the top of
the ridge of rocks in a very beautiful situation. From the summit,
about eight miles to the west, we could see a still larger lake,
called the Nandanvârâ Lake, extending under a similar range of quartz
hills running parallel with that on which we stood.[15] That lake, we
were told, answered upon a much larger scale the same admirable
purpose of supplying water for the fields, and securing the people
from the dreadful effects of droughts. The extensive level plains
through which the rivers of Central India[16] generally cut their way
have, for the most part, been the beds of immense natural lakes;[17]
and there rivers sink so deep into their beds, and leave such ghastly
chasms and ravines on either side, that their waters are hardly ever
available in due season for irrigation. It is this characteristic of
the rivers of Central India that makes such lakes so valuable to the
people, particularly in seasons of drought.[l8] The river Nerbudda
has been known to rise seventy feet in the course of a couple of days
in the rains; and, during the season when its waters are wanted for
irrigation, they can nowhere be found within that [distance] of the
surface; while a level piece of ground fit for irrigation is rarely
to be met with within a mile of the stream.[19]

The people appeared to improve as we advanced farther into
Bundêlkhand in appearance, manners, and intelligence. There is a bold
bearing about the Bundêlas, which at first one is apt to take for
rudeness or impudence, but which in time he finds not to be so.

The employés of the Râjâ were everywhere attentive, frank, and
polite; and the peasantry seemed no longer inferior to those of our
Sâgar and Nerbudda territories. The females of almost all the
villages through which we passed came out with their _Kalas_ in
procession to meet us--one of the most affecting marks of respect
from the peasantry for their superiors that I know. One woman carries
on her head a brass jug, brightly polished, full of water; while all
the other families of the village crowd around her, and sing in
chorus some rural song, that lasts from the time the respected
visitor comes in sight till he disappears. He usually puts into the
Kalas a rupee to purchase 'gur' (coarse sugar), of which all the
females partake, as a sacred offering to the sex. No member of the
other sex presumes to partake of it, and during the chorus all the
men stand aloof in respectful silence. This custom prevails all over
India, or over all parts of it that I have seen; and yet I have
witnessed a Governor-General of India, with all his suite, passing by
this interesting group, without knowing or asking what it was. I
lingered behind, and quietly put my silver into the jug, as if from
the Governor-General.[20]

The man who administers the government over these seven villages in
all its branches, civil, criminal, and fiscal, receives a salary of
only two hundred rupees a year. He collects the revenues on the part
of Government; and, with the assistance of the heads and the elders
of the villages, adjusts all petty matters of dispute among the
people, both civil and criminal. Disputes of a more serious character
are sent to be adjusted at the capital by the Râjâ and his ministers.
The person who reigns over the seven villages of the lake is about
thirty years of age, of the Râjpût caste, and, I think, one of the
finest young men I have ever seen. His ancestors have served the
Orchhâ State in the same station for seven generations; and he tells
me that he hopes his posterity will serve them [_sic_] for as many
more, provided they do not forfeit their claims to do so by their
infidelity or incapacity. This young man seemed to have the respect
and affection of every member of the little communities of the
villages through which we passed, and it was evident that he deserved
their attachment. I have rarely seen any similar signs of attachment
to one of our own native officers. This arises chiefly from the
circumstance of their being less frequently placed in authority among
those upon whose good feelings and opinions their welfare and
comfort, as those of their children, are likely permanently to
depend. In India, under native rule, office became hereditary,
because officers expended the whole of their incomes in religious
ceremonies, or works of ornament and utility, and left their families
in hopeless dependence upon the chief in whose service they had
laboured all their lives, while they had been educating their sons
exclusively with the view of serving that chief in the same capacity
that their fathers had served him before them. It is in this case,
and this alone, that the law of primogeniture is in force in
India.[21] Among Muhammadans, as well as Hindoos, all property, real
and personal, is divided equally among the children;[22] but the
duties of an office will not admit of the same subdivision; and this,
therefore, when hereditary, as it often is, descends to the eldest
son with the obligation of providing for the rest of the family. The
family consists of all the members who remain united to the parent
stock, including the widows and orphans of the sons or brothers who
were so up to the time of their death.[23]

The old 'chobdâr', or silver-stick bearer, who came with us from the
Râjâ, gets fifteen rupees a month, and his ancestors have served the
Râjâ for several generations. The Dîwân, who has charge of the
treasury, receives only one thousand rupees a year, and the Bakshî,
or paymaster of the army, who seems at present to rule the state as
the prime favourite, the same. These latter are at present the only
two great officers of state; and, though they are, no doubt,
realizing handsome incomes by indirect means, they dare not make any
display, lest signs of wealth might induce the Râjâ or his successors
to treat them as their predecessors in office were treated for some
time past.[24] The Jâgîrdârs, or feudal chiefs, as I have before
stated, are almost all of the same family or class as the Râjâ, and
they spend all the revenues of their estates in the maintenance of
military retainers, upon whose courage and fidelity they can
generally rely. These Jâgîrdârs are bound to attend the prince on all
great occasions, and at certain intervals; and are made to contribute
something to his exchequer in tribute. Almost all live beyond their
legitimate means, and make up the deficiency by maintaining upon
their estates gangs of thieves, robbers, and murderers, who extend
their depredations into the country around, and share the prey with
these chiefs, and their officers and under-tenants. They keep them as
_poachers_ keep their _dogs_; and the paramount power, whose subjects
they plunder, might as well ask them for the best horse in the stable
as for the best thief that lives under their protection.[25]

I should mention an incident that occurred during the Râjâ's visit to
me at Tehrî. Lieutenant Thomas was sitting next to the little
Sarîmant, and during the interview he asked him to allow him to look
at his beautiful little gold-hilted sword. The Sarîmant held it fast,
and told him that he should do himself the honour of waiting upon him
in his tent in the course of the day, when he would show him the
sword and tell him its history. After the Râjâ, left me, Thomas
mentioned this, and said he felt very much hurt at the incivility of
my little friend; but I told him that he was in everything he did and
said so perfectly the gentleman, that I felt quite sure he would
explain all to his satisfaction when he called upon him. During his
visit to Thomas he apologized for not having given over his sword to
him, and said, 'You European gentlemen have such perfect confidence
in each other, that you can, at all times, and in all situations,
venture to gratify your curiosity in these matters, and draw your
swords in a crowd just as well as when alone; but, had you drawn mine
from the scabbard in such a situation, with the tent full of the
Râjâ's personal attendants, and surrounded by a devoted and not very
orderly soldiery, it might have been attended by very serious
consequences. Any man outside might have seen the blade gloaming,
and, not observing distinctly why it had been drawn, might have
suspected treachery, and called out "_To the rescue_", when we should
all have been cut down--the lady, child, and all.' Thomas was not
only satisfied with the Sarîmant's apology, but was so much delighted
with him, that he has ever since been longing to get his portrait;
for he says it was really his intention to draw the sword had the
Sarîmant given it to him. As I have said, his face is extremely
beautiful, quite a model for a painter or a statuary, and his figure,
though small, is handsome. He dresses with great elegance, mostly in
azure-coloured satin, surmounted by a rose-coloured turban and a
waistband of the same colour. All his motions are graceful, and his
manners have an exquisite polish. A greater master of all the
_convenances_ I have never seen, though he is of slender capacity,
and, as I have said, in stature less than five feet high.

A poor, half-naked man, reduced to beggary by the late famine, ran
along by my horse to show me the road, and, to the great amusement of
my attendants, exclaimed that he felt exactly as if he were always
falling down a well, meaning as if he were immersed in cold water. He
said that the cold season was suited only to gentlemen who could
afford to be well clothed; but, to a poor man like himself, and the
great mass of people, in Bundêlkhand at least, the hot season was
much better. He told me that 'the late Râjâ, though a harsh, was
thought to be a just man;[26] and that his good sense, and, above
all, his _good fortune_ (ikbâl) had preserved the principality
entire; but that God only, and the forbearance of the Honourable
Company, could now serve it under such an imbecile as the present
chief'. He seemed quite melancholy at the thought of living to see
this principality, the oldest in Bundêlkhand, lose its independence.
Even this poor, unclothed, and starving wretch had a feeling of
patriotism, a pride of country, though that country had been so
wretchedly governed, and was now desolated by a famine.

Just such a feeling had the impressed seamen who fought our battles
in the great struggle. No nation has ever had a more disgraceful
institution than that of the press-gang of England. This institution,
if so it can be called, must be an eternal stain upon her glory--
posterity will never be able to read the history of her naval
victories without a blush--without reproaching her lawgivers who
could allow them to be purchased with the blood of such men as those
who fought for us the battles of the Nile and Trafalgar. '_England
expected every man to do his duty_' on that day, but had England done
her duty to every man who was on that day to fight for her? Was not
every English gentleman of the Lords and Commons a David sending his
Uriah to battle?[27]

The intellectual stock which we require in good seamen for our navy,
and which is acquired in scenes of peril 'upon the high and giddy
mast', is as much their property as that which other men acquire in
schools and colleges; and we had no more right to seize and employ
these seamen in our battles upon the wages of common, uninstructed
labour, than we should have had to seize and employ as many
clergymen, barristers, and physicians. When I have stood on the
quarter-deck of a ship in a storm, and seen the seamen covering the
yards in taking in sail, with the thunder rolling, and the lightning
flashing fearfully around them--the sea covered with foam, and each
succeeding billow, as it rushed by, seeming ready to sweep them all
from their frail footing into the fathomless abyss below--I have
asked myself, 'Are men like these to be seized like common felons,
torn from their wives and children as soon as they reach their native
land, subject every day to the lash, and put in front of those
battles on which the wealth, the honour, and the independence of the
nation depend, merely because British legislators know that when
there, a regard for their own personal character among their
companions in danger will make them fight like Englishmen?'

This feeling of nationality which exists in the little states of
Bundêlkhand, arises from the circumstance that the mass of the
landholders are of the same class as the chief Bundêlas; and that the
public establishments of the state are recruited almost exclusively
from that mass. The states of Jhânsî[28] and Jâlaun[29] are the only
exceptions. There the rulers are Brahmans and not Râjpûts, and they
recruit their public establishments from all classes and all
countries. The landed aristocracy, however, there, as elsewhere, are
Râjpûts-either Pawârs, Chandêls, or Bundêlas.

The Râjpût landholders of Bundêlkhand are linked to the soil in all
their grades, from the prince to the peasant, as the Highlanders of
Scotland were not long ago; and the holder of a hundred acres is as
proud as the holder of a million.[30] He boasts the same descent, and
the same exclusive possession of arms and agriculture, to which
unhappily the industry of their little territories is almost
exclusively confined, for no other branch can grow up among so
turbulent a set, whose quarrels with their chiefs, or among each
other, are constantly involving them in civil wars, which render life
and property exceedingly insecure. Besides, as I have stated, their
propensity to keep bands of thieves, robbers, and murderers in their
baronial castles, as poachers keep their dogs, has scared away the
wealthy and respectable capitalist and peaceful and industrious
manufacturer.

All the landholders are uneducated, and unfit to serve in any of our
civil establishments, or in those of any very civilized Governments;
and they are just as unfitted to serve in our military
establishments, where strict discipline is required. The lands they
occupy are cultivated because they depend almost entirely upon the
rents they get from them for subsistence; and because every petty
chief and his family hold their lands rent-free, or at a trifling
quit-rent, on the tenure of military service, and their residue forms
all the market for land produce which the cultivators require. They
dread the transfer of the rule to our Government, because they now
form almost exclusively all the establishments of their domestic
chief, civil as well as military; and know that, were our rule to be
substituted, they would be almost entirely excluded from these, at
least for a generation or two. In our regiments, horse or foot, there
is hardly a man from Bundêlkhand, for the reasons above stated; nor
are there any in the Gwâlior regiments and contingents which are
stationed in the neighbourhood; though the land among them is become
minutely subdivided, and they are obliged to seek service or starve.