Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman

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Besides the officers above named, others are specified in
_Ramaseeana_ as having done good service.

_Note._--Mr. Crooke suggests, and, I think, correctly, that the words
_Megpunnia_ and _Megpunnaism_ (_ante_, note 20, and Bibliography No.
7) are corruptions of the Hindi _Mekh-phandiya_, from _mekh_, 'a
peg', and _phanda_, 'a noose', equivalent to the Persian _tasmabaz_,
meaning 'playing tricks with a strap'. Creagh, a private in a British
regiment at Cawnpore about 1803, is said to have initiated three men
into the peg and strap trick, as practised by English rogues. These
men became the leaders of three Tasmabaz Thug gangs, whose
proceedings are described by Mr. R. Montgomery in _Selections of the
Records of Government_, N.W.P., vol. i, p. 312. A strap is doubled
and folded up in different shapes. The art consists in putting in a
stick or peg in such a way that the strap when unfolded shall come
out double. The Tasmabaz Thugs seem to be identical with the
'Megpunnia' (_N.I.N.& Qu._, vol. i, p. 108, note 721, September
1891).

General Hervey records seven modern instances of strangulation by
Megpunnia Thugs in Rajputana (_Some Records of Crime_ (1867), vol. i,
pp. 126-31).

CHAPTER 14

Basaltic Cappings of the Sandstone Hills of Central India--Suspension
Bridge--Prospects of the Nerbudda Valley--Deification of a Mortal.

On the 29th[1] we came on to Patharia, a considerable little town
thirty miles from Sagar, supported almost entirely by a few farmers,
small agricultural capitalists, and the establishment of a native
collector,[2] On leaving Patharia, we ascend gradually along the side
of the basaltic hills on our left to the south for three miles to a
point whence we see before us this plane of basaltic cappings
extending as far as the eye can reach to the west, south, and north,
with frequent breaks, but still preserving one uniform level. On the
top of these tables are here and there little conical elevations of
laterite, or indurated iron clay.[3] The cappings everywhere repose
immediately upon the sandstone of the Vindhya range; but they have
occasional beds of limestone, formed apparently by springs rising
from their sides, and strongly impregnated with carbonic acid gas.
For the most part this is mere travertine, but in some places they
get good lime from the beds for building.

On the 1st of December we came to the pretty village of Sanoda, near
the suspension bridge built over the river Bias by Colonel Presgrave,
while he was assay master of the Sagar mint.[4] I was present at
laying the foundation-stone of this bridge in December 1827. Mr.
Maddock was the Governor-General's representative in these
territories, and the work was undertaken more with a view to show
what could be done out of their own resources, under minds capable of
developing them, than to supply any pressing or urgent want.

The work was completed in June, 1830; and I have several times seen
upon the bridge as many as it could hold of a regiment of infantry
while it moved over; and, at other times, as many of a corps of
cavalry, and often several elephants at once. The bridge is between
the points of suspension two hundred feet, and the clear portion of
the platform measures one hundred and ninety feet by eleven and a
half. The whole cost of the work amounted to about fifty thousand
rupees; and, under a less able and careful person than Colonel
Presgrave, would have cost, perhaps, double the amount. This work has
been declared by a very competent judge to be equal to any structure
of the same kind in Europe, and is eminently calculated to show what
genius and perseverance can produce out of the resources of a country
even in the rudest state of industry and the arts.

The river Nerbudda neither is nor ever can, I fear, be made
navigable, and the produce of its valley would require to find its
way to distant markets over the Vindhya range of hills to the north,
or the Satpura to the south. If the produce of the soil, mines, and
industry of the valley cannot be transported to distant markets, the
Government cannot possibly find in it any available net surplus
revenue in money; for it has no mines of the precious metals, and the
precious metals can flow in only in exchange for the produce of the
land, and the industry of the valley that flows out. If the
Government wishes to draw a net surplus revenue from the valley or
from the districts that border upon it, that is, a revenue beyond its
expenditure in support of the local public establishments, it must
either draw it in produce, or for what can be got for that produce in
distant markets.[5] Hitherto little beyond the rude produce of the
soil has been able to find its way into distant markets from the
valley of the Nerbudda; yet this valley abounds in iron mines,[6] and
its soil, where unexhausted by cropping, is of the richest
quality.[7] It is not then too much to hope that in time the iron of
the mines will be worked with machinery for manufactures; and that
multitudes, aided by this machinery, and subsisted on the rude
agricultural produce, which now flows out, will invest the value of
their labour in manufactured commodities adapted to the demand of
foreign markets and better able from their superior value, compared
with their bulk, to pay the cost of transport by land. Then, and not
till then, can we expect to see these territories pay a considerable
net surplus revenue to Government, and abound in a middle class of
merchants, manufacturers, and agricultural capitalists.[8]

At Sanoda there is a very beautiful little fortress or castle now
unoccupied, though still entire. It was built by an officer of the
Raja Chhatar Sal of Bundelkhand, about one hundred and twenty years
ago.[9] He had a grant, on the tenure of military service, of twelve
villages situated round this place; and a man who could build such a
castle to defend the surrounding country from the inroads of
freebooters, and to secure himself and his troops from any sudden
impulse of the people's resentment, was as likely to acquire an
increase of territorial possession in these parts as he would have
been in Europe during the Middle Ages. The son of this chief, by name
Rai Singh, was, soon after the castle had been completed, killed in
an attack upon a town near Chitrakot;[10] and having, in the
estimation of the people, _become a god_, he had a temple and a tomb
raised to him close to our encampment. I asked the people how he had
become a _god_; and was told that some one who had been long
suffering from a quartan ague went to the tomb one night, and
promised Rai Singh, whose ashes lay under it, that if he could
contrive to cure his ague for him, he would, during the rest of his
life, make offerings to his shrine. After that he had never another
attack, and was very punctual in his offerings. Others followed his
example, and with like success, till Rai Singh was recognized among
them universally as a god, and a temple raised to his name. This is
the way that gods were made all over the world at one time, and are
still made all over India. Happy had it been for mankind if those
only who were supposed to do good had been deified.[11]

On the 2nd we came on to the village of Khojanpur (leaving the town
and cantonments of Sagar to our left), a distance of some fourteen
miles. The road for a great part of the way was over the bare back of
the sandstone strata, the covering of basalt having been washed off.
The hills, however, are, at this distance from the city and
cantonments of Sagar, nicely wooded; and, being constantly
intersected by pretty little valleys, the country we came over was
picturesque and beautiful. The soil of all these valleys is rich from
the detritus of the basalt that forms or caps the hills; but it is
now in a bad state of cultivation, partly from several successive
seasons of great calamity, under which the people have been
suffering, and partly from over-assessment; and this posture of
affairs is continued by that loss of energy, industry, and character,
among the farmers and cultivators, which must everywhere result from
these two evils. In India, where the people have learnt so well to
govern themselves, from the want of settled government, good or bad
government really depends almost altogether upon _good or bad
settlements of the land revenue_. Where the Government demand is
imposed with moderation, and enforced with justice, there will the
people be generally found happy and contented, and disposed to
perform their duties to each other and to the state; except when they
have the misfortune to suffer from drought, blight, and other
calamities of season.[l2]

I have mentioned that the basalt in the Sagar district reposes for
the most part immediately upon the sandstone of the Vindhya range;
and it must have been deposited on the sand, while the latter was yet
at the bottom of the ocean, though this range is now, I believe,
nowhere less than from fifteen hundred to two thousand feet above the
level of the sea. The marks of the ripple of the sea may be observed
in some places where the basalt has been recently washed off,
beautifully defined, as if formed only yesterday, and there is no
other substance to be seen between the two rocks.

The texture of the sandstone at the surface, where it comes in
contact with the basalt, has in some places been altered by it, but
in others it seems to have been as little changed as the habitations
of the people who were suffocated by the ashes of Vesuvius in the
city of Pompeii. I am satisfied, from long and careful examination,
that the greater part of this basalt, which covers the tableland of
Central and Southern India, must have been held for some time in
suspension in the ocean or lake into which it was first thrown in the
shape of ashes, and then gradually deposited. This alone can account
for its frequent appearance of stratification, for the gentle
blending of its particles with those of the sand near the surface of
the latter; and, above all, for those level steps, or tables, lying
one above another horizontally in parallel bars on one range,
corresponding exactly with the same parallel lines one above another
on a range twenty or thirty miles across the valley. Mr. Scrope's
theory is, I believe, that these are all mere flowing _coulees_ of
lava, which, in their liquid state, filled hollows, but afterwards
became of a harder texture, as they dried and crystallized, than the
higher rocks around them; the consequence of which is that the latter
has been decomposed and washed away, while the basalt has been left
to form the highest elevations. My opinion is that these steps, or
stairs, at one time formed the beds of the ocean, or of great lakes,
and that the substance of which they are composed was, for the most
part, projected into the water, and there held in suspension till
gradually deposited. There are, however, amidst these steps, and
beneath them, masses of more compact and crystalline basalt, that
bear evident signs of having been flows of lava.[l3]

Reasoning from analogy at Jubbulpore, where some of the basaltic
cappings of the hills had evidently been thrown out of craters long
after this surface had been raised above the waters, and become the
habitation both of vegetable and animal life, I made the first
discovery of fossil remains in the Nerbudda valley. I went first to a
hill within sight of my house in 1828,[14] and searched exactly
between the plateau of basalt that covered it and the stratum
immediately below, and there I found several small trees with roots,
trunks, and branches, all entire, and beautifully petrified. They had
been only recently uncovered by the washing away of a part of the
basaltic plateau. I soon after found some fossil bones of
animals.[15] Going over to Sagar, in the end of 1830, and reasoning
there upon the same analogy, I searched for fossil remains along the
line of contact between the basalt and the surface upon which it had
been deposited, and I found a grove of silicified palm-trees within a
mile of the cantonments. These palm-trees had grown upon a calcareous
deposit formed from springs rising out of the basaltic range of hills
to the south. The commissariat officer had cut a road through this
grove, and all the European officers of a large military station had
been every day riding through it without observing the geological
treasure; and it was some time before I could convince them that the
stones which they had every day seen were really petrified palm-
trees. The roots and trunks were beautifully perfect.[l6]

Notes:

1. November, 1835.

2. In the Damoh District, twenty-four miles west of Damoh. The name
appears to be derived from the 'great quantity of hewn stone (Hind.
_patthar_ or _pathar_) lying about in all directions'. The _C. P.
Gazetteer_ (1870) calls the place 'a considerable village'.

3. A peculiar formation, of 'widespread occurrence in the tropical
and subtropical regions of the world'. It is ordinarily of a reddish
ferruginous or brick-dust colour, sometimes deepened into dark red.
Apparently the special character which distinguishes laterite from
other forms of red-coloured weathering is the presence of hydrous
oxide of alumina in varying proportions. . . . 'Though there is still
a great deal of uncertainty about the way in which laterite was
formed, the facts which are known of its distribution seem to show
that it is a distinct form of weathering, which is confined to low
latitudes and humid climates; its formation seems to have been a slow
process, only possible on flat or nearly flat surfaces, where surface
rain-wash could not act' (Oldham, in _The Oxford Survey of the
British Empire_, vol. ii, Asia, p. 10: Oxford, 1914). It hardens and
darkens by exposure to air, and is occasionally used as a building
stone.

4. The Sagar mint was erected in 1820 by Captain Presgrave, the assay
master, and used to employ four hundred men, but, after about ten or
twelve years, the business was transferred to Calcutta, and the
buildings converted to other uses (_C. P. Gazetteer_, 1870). Mints
are now kept up at Calcutta and Bombay only. The Bias is a small
stream flowing into the Sunar river, and belonging to the Jumna river
system. The name is printed Beeose in the original edition.

5. Since the author's time the conditions have been completely
changed by the introduction of railways. The East Indian, Great
Indian Peninsular, and other railways now enter the Nerbudda Valley,
so that the produce of most districts can be readily transported to
distant markets. A large enhancement of the land revenue has been
obtained by revisions of the settlement.

6. Details will be found in the _Central Provinces Gazetteer_ (1870).
The references are collected under the head 'Iron' in the index to
that work. Chapter VIII of _Ball's Economic Geology of India_ gives
full information concerning the iron mines of the Central Provinces
and all parts of India. That work forms Part III of the _Manual of
the Geology of India_.

7. The soil of the valley of the Nerbudda, and that of the Nerbudda
and Sagar territories generally, is formed for the most part of the
detritus of trap-rocks that everywhere covered the sandstone of the
Vindhya and Satpura ranges which run through these territories. This
basaltic detritus forms what is called the black cotton soil by the
English, for what reason I know not. [W. H. S.] The reason is that
cotton is very largely grown in the Nerbudda Valley, both on the
black soil and other soils. In Bundelkhand the black, friable soil,
often with a high proportion of organic matter, is called 'mar', and
is chiefly devoted to raising crops of wheat, gram, or chick-pea
(_Cicer arietinum_), linseed, and joar (_Holcus sorghum_). Cotton is
also sown in it, but not very generally. This black soil requires
little rain, and is fertile without manure. It absorbs water too
freely to be suitable for irrigation, and in most seasons does not
need it. The 'black cotton soil' is often known as _regur_, a
corruption of a Tamil word. 'The origin of _regur_ is a doubtful
question. . . . The dark coloration was attributed by earlier writers
to vegetable matter, and taken to indicate a large amount of humus in
the soil; more recent investigations make this doubtful, and in all
probability the colour is due to mineral constitution rather than to
the very scanty organic constituents of the soil,' It may possibly be
formed of 'wind-borne dust', like the loess plains of China (Oldham,
in _The Oxford Survey of the British Empire_, vol. ii, Asia, p. 9:
Oxford, 1914).

8. The land revenue has been largely increased, and the resources and
communications of the country have been greatly developed during the
last half-century. The formation of the Central Provinces as a
separate administration in 1861 secured for the Sagar and Nerbudda
territories the attention which they failed to obtain from the
distant Government of the North-Western Provinces. Sir Richard
Temple, the first Chief Commissioner, administered the Central
Provinces with extraordinary energy and success.

9. Raja Chhatarsal Bundela was Raja of Panna. The history of
Chhatarsal is related in _I.G._ (1908), vol. xix, p. 400, s.v. Panna
State. In 1729 he called in the Marathas to help him against Muhammad
Khan Bangash, and when he died in 1731 rewarded them by bequeathing
one-third of his dominions to the Peshwa. The correct date of his
death is Pus Badi 3, Samvat 1788 (_Hamirpur Settlement Report_
(1880), note at end of chapter 2). The date is often given
inaccurately.

10. Chitrakot, in the Banda district of Bundelkhand, under the
government of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, and seventy-one
miles distant from Allahabad, is a famous place of pilgrimage, much
frequented by the votaries of Rama. Large fairs are held there.

11. The performance of miraculous cures at the tomb is not necessary
for the deification of a person who has been specially feared in his
lifetime, or has died a violent death. Either of these conditions is
enough to render his ghost formidable, and worthy of propitiation.
Shrines to such persons are very numerous both in Bundelkhand and
other parts of India, Miracles, of course, occur at nearly every
shrine, and are too common and well attested to attract much
attention.

12. These observations are as true to-day as they were in the
author's time. Disastrous cases of over-assessment were common in the
early years of British rule, and the mischief so wrought has been
sometimes traceable for generations afterwards. Since 1833 the error,
though less common, has not been unknown.

13. Since writing the above, I have seen Colonel Sykes's notes on the
formations of Southern India in the _Indian Review_. The facts there
described seem all to support my conclusion, and his map would answer
just as well for Central as for Southern India; for the banks of the
Nerbudda and Chambal, Son, and Mahanadi, as well as for those of the
Bam and the Bima. Colonel Sykes does not, I believe, attempt to
account for the stratification of the basalt; he merely describes it.
[W. H. S.]

The author's theory of the subaqueous origin of the greater part of
the basalt of Central and Southern India, otherwise known as the
'Deccan Trap Series', had been supported by numerous excellent
geologists, but W. T. Blanford proved the theory to be untenable,
there being 'clear and unmistakable evidence that the traps were in
great part of sub-aerial formation', The intercalation of sedimentary
beds with fresh-water fossils is conclusive proof that the lava-flows
associated with such beds cannot be submarine. The hypothesis that
the lower beds of traps were poured out in a vast, but shallow,
freshwater lake extending throughout the area over which the inter-
trappean limestone formation extends appears to be extremely
improbable. The lava seems to have been poured, during a long
succession of ages, over a land surface, uneven and broken in parts,
'with intervals of rest sufficient for lakes, stocked with fresh-
water mollusca, to form on the cold surfaces of several of the lava-
flows' (Holland, in _I.G._ (1907), i. 88). A great tract of the
volcanic region appears to have remained almost undisturbed to the
present day, affected by sub-aerial erosion alone. The geological
horizon of the Deccan trap cannot be precisely defined, but is now
vaguely stated as 'the close of the cretaceous period'. The 'steps',
or conspicuous terraces, traceable on the hill-sides for great
distances, are explained as being 'due to the outcrop of the harder
basaltic strata, or of those beds which resist best the
disintegrating influences of exposure'.

The general horizontality of the Deccan trap over an area of not less
than 200,000 square miles, and the absence of volcanic hills of the
usual conical form, are difficulties which have caused much
discussion. Some of the 'old volcanic vents' appear to have existed
near Poona and Mahableshwar. The entire area has been subjected to
sub-aerial denudation on a gigantic scale, which explains the
occurrence of the basalt as the caps of isolated hills. Much further
investigation is required to clear up details (_Manual of the Geology
of India_, ed. 1, Part I, chap. 13)

14. The author took charge of the Jubbulpore District in March 1828.

15. The fossiliferous beds near Jubbulpore, described in the text,
seem to belong to the group now classed as the Lameta beds. The bones
of a large dinosaurian reptile (_Titanosaurus indicus_) have been
identified (_I.G._, 1907, vol. i, p. 88).

16. 'Many years ago Dr. Spry (_Note on the Fossil Palms and Shells
lately discovered on the Table-Land of Sagar in Central India_, in
_J.A.S.B._ for 1833, vol. ii, p. 639) and, subsequently to him,
Captain Nicholls (_Journal of Asiatic Soc. of Bombay_, vol. v, p.
614), studied and described certain trunks of palm-trees, whose
silicified remains are found imbedded in the soft intertrappean mud-
beds near Sagar. . . . The trees are imbedded in a layer of
calcareous black earth, which formed the surface soil in which they
grew; this soil rests on, and was made up of the disintegration of, a
layer of basalt. It is covered over by another and similar layer of
the same rock near where the trees occur. . . . The palm-trees, now
found fossilized, grew in the soil, which, in the condition of a
black calcareous earthy bed, we now find lying round their prostrate
stems. They fell (from whatever cause), and lay until their
silicification was complete. A slight depression of the surface, or
some local or accidental check of some drainage-course, or any other
similar and trivial cause, may have laid them under water. The
process of silicification proceeded gradually but steadily, and after
they had there, in lapse of ages, become lapidified, the next
outburst of volcanic matter overwhelmed them, broke them, partially
enveloped, and bruised them, until long subsequent denudation once
more brought them to light' (J. G. Medlicott, in _Memoirs of the
Geological Survey of India_, vol. ii. Part II, pp. 200, 203, 204,
205, 216, as quoted in _C. P. Gazetteer_ (1870), p. 435). The
intertrappean fossils are all those of organisms which would occur in
shallow fresh-water lakes or marshy ground.

Besides the author's friend and relative, Dr. H. H. Spry, Dr.
Spilsbury contributed papers on the Nerbudda fossils to vols. iii,
vi, viii, ix, x, and xiii of the _J.A.S.B._ Other writers also have
treated of the subject, but it appears to be by no means fully worked
out. James Prinsep, to whom no topic came amiss, discussed the
Jubbulpore fossil bones in the volume in which Dr. Spry's paper
appeared. Dr. Spry was the author of a work entitled _Modern India:
with Illustrations of the Resources and Capabilities of Hindustan_ (2
vols. 8vo, 1838). He became F.R.S.

CHAPTER 15

Legend of the Sagar Lake--Paralysis from eating the Grain of the
_Lathyrus sativus_.

The cantonments of Sagar are about two miles from the city and
occupied by three regiments of native infantry, one of local horse,
and a company of European artillery.[1] The city occupies two sides
of one of the most beautiful lakes of India, formed by a wall which
unites two sandstone hills on the north side. The fort and part of
the town stands upon this wall, which, according to tradition, was
built by a wealthy merchant of the Banjara caste.[2] After he had
finished it, the bed of the lake still remained dry; and he was told
in a dream, or by a priest, that it would continue so till he should
consent to sacrifice his own daughter, then a girl, and the young lad
to whom she was affianced, to the tutelary god of the place. He
accordingly built a little shrine in the centre of the valley, which
was to become the bed of the lake, put the two children in, and built
up the doorway. He had no sooner done so than the whole of the valley
became filled with water, and the old merchant, the priest, the
masons, and spectators, made their escape with much difficulty. From
that time the lake has been inexhaustible; but no living soul of the
Banjara caste has ever since been known to drink of its waters.
Certainly all of that caste at present religiously avoid drinking the
water of the lake; and the old people of the city say that they have
always done so since they can remember, and that they used to hear
from their parents that they had always done so. In nothing does the
Founder of the Christian religion appear more amiable than in His
injunction, 'Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them
not'. In nothing do the Hindoo deities appear more horrible than in
the delight they are supposed to take in their sacrifice--it is
everywhere the helpless, the female, and the infant that they seek to
devour--and so it was among the Phoenicians and their Carthaginian
colonies. Human sacrifices were certainly offered in the cities of
Sagar during the whole of the Maratha government up to the year 1800,
when they were put a stop to by the local governor, Asa Sahib, a very
humane man; and I once heard a very learned Brahman priest say that
he thought the decline of his family and government arose from this
_innovation_. 'There is', said he, 'no sin in _not_ offering human
sacrifices to the gods where none have been offered; but, where the
gods have been accustomed to them, they are naturally annoyed when
the rite is abolished, and visit the place and people with all kinds
of calamities.' He did not seem to think that there was anything
singular in this mode of reasoning, and perhaps three Brahman priests
out of four would have reasoned in the same manner.[3]