Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman

W >> William Sleeman >> Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68

From the year 1817, when we first took possession of the Sagar and
Nerbudda Territories, almost all the detachments of troops we
required to keep at a distance from the headquarters of their
regiments were posted in these old deserted fortifications. Our
collections of revenue were deposited in them; and, in some cases,
they were converted into jails for the accommodation of our
prisoners. Of the soldiers so lodged, I do not believe that one in
four ever came out well; and, of those who came out ill, I do not
believe that one in four survived five years. They were all abandoned
one after the other; but it is painful to think how many hundreds, I
may say thousands, of our brave soldiers were sacrificed before this
resolution was taken. I have known the whole of the survivors of
strong detachments that went in, in robust health, three months
before, brought away mere skeletons, and in a hopeless and dying
state. All were sent to their homes on medical certificate, but they
almost all died there, or in the course of their journey.

Notes:

1. December, 1835. The name of the village is spelled Behrole by the
author.

2. The Dasan river rises in the Bhopal State, flows through the Sagar
district of the Central Provinces, and along the southern boundary of
the Lalitpur subdivision of the Jhansi District, United Provinces of
Agra and Oudh. It also forms the boundary between the Jhansi and
Hamirpur Districts, and falls into the Betwa after a course of about
220 miles. The name is often, but erroneously, written Dhasan. It is
the Sanskrit Dasarna.

3. This emblem is a lotus, not a rose flower. The latter is never
used in Hindoo symbolism. The lotus is a solar emblem, and intimately
associated with the worship of Vishnu.

4. It rather indicates that the husband was on horseback when killed.
The sculptures on sati pillars often commemorate the mode of death of
the husband. Sometimes these pillars are inscribed. They usually face
the east. An open hand is often carved in the upper compartment as
well as the sun and moon. A drawing of such a pillar will be found in
_J.A.S.B._, vol. xlvi. Part I, 1877, pl. xiv. _A.S.R._, vol. iii, p.
10; vol. vii, p. 137; vol. x, p. 75; and vol. xxi, p. 101, may be
consulted.

5. The 'newly-acquired territories' referred to are the Sagar and
Nerbudda Territories, comprising the seven districts, Sagar,
Jubbulpore, Hoshangabad, Seoni, Damoh, Narsinghpur, and Baitul, ceded
in 1818, and now included in the Central Provinces. The tenor of the
replies given to Lord Amherst's queries shows how far the process of
Hindooizing had advanced among the European officials of the Company.
Lord Amherst left India in March, 1828. See _ante._ Chapter 4 and
Chapter 8, for cases of sati (suttees). For a good account of the
suttee discussions and legislation, see D. Boulger, _Lord William
Bentinck_ (1897), chap. v, in 'Rulers of India' Series. No other
biography of Lord William Bentinck exists.

6. Dhamoni is in the Sagar district of the Central Provinces, about
twenty-nine miles north of Sagar. The fort was taken by General
Marshall in 1818. It had been rebuilt by Raja Birsingh Deo of Orchha
on an enormous scale about the end of the sixteenth century. In the
original edition, the author's march is said to have taken place 'on
the 24th'. This must be a mistake for 'on the 4th'; as the last date,
that of the march to Bahrol, was the 3rd December. The author reached
Agra on January 1, 1836,

7. The number fifty-two is one of the Hindoo favourite numbers, like
seven, twelve, and eighty-four, held sacred for astronomical or
astrological reasons. Birsingh Deo was the younger brother of
Ramchand, head of the Bundela clan. To oblige Prince Salim,
afterwards the Emperor Jahangir, he murdered Abul Fazl, the
celebrated minister and historian of Akbar, on August 12, 1602,
Jahangir, after his accession, rewarded the murderer by allowing him
to supersede his brother in the headship of his clan, and by
appointing him to the rank of 'commander of three thousand'. The
capital of Birsingh was Orchha. His successors are often spoken of as
Rajas of Tehri. The murder is fully described in _The Emperor Akbar_
by Count von Noer, translated by A. S. Beveridge, Calcutta, 1890,
vol. ii, pp. 384-404. Orchha is described _post_, Chapters 22,23.

CHAPTER 17

Basaltic Cappings--Interview with a Native Chief--A Singular
Character.

On the 5th[1] we came to the village of Seori. Soon after leaving
Dhamoni, we descended the northern face of the Vindhya range into the
plains of Bundelkhand. The face of this range overlooking the valley
of the Nerbudda to the south is, as I have before stated, a series of
mural precipices, like so many rounded bastions, the slight dip of
the strata being to the north. The northern face towards Bundelkhand,
on the contrary, here descends gradually, as the strata dip slightly
towards the north, and we pass down gently over their back. The
strata have, however, been a good deal broken, and the road was so
rugged that two of our carts broke down in descending. From the
descent over the northern face of the tableland into Bundelkhand to
the descent over the southern face into the valley of the Nerbudda
must be a distance of one hundred miles directly north and south.

The descent over the northern face is not everywhere so gradual; on
the contrary, there are but few places where it is at all feasible;
and some of the rivers of the tableland between Jubbulpore and
Mirzapore have a perpendicular fall of more than four hundred feet
over these mural precipices of the northern face of the Vindhya
range.[2] A man, if he have good nerve, may hang over the summits,
and suspend in his hand a plummet that shall reach the bottom.

I should mention that this tableland is not only intersected by
ranges, but everywhere studded with isolated hills rising suddenly
out of basins or valleys. These ranges and isolated hills are all of
the same sandstone formation, and capped with basalt, more or less
amygdaloidal. The valleys and cappings have often a substratum of
very compact basalt, which must evidently have flowed into them after
these islands were formed. The question is, how were these valleys
and basins scooped out? 'Time, time, time!' says Mr. Scrope; 'grant
me only time, and I can account for everything.' I think, however,
that I am right in considering the basaltic cappings of these ranges
and isolated hills to have once formed part of continued flat beds of
great lakes. The flat parallel planes of these cappings,
corresponding with each other, however distantly separated the hills
they cover may be, would seem to indicate that they could not all
have been subject to the convulsions of nature by which the whole
substrata were upheaved above the ocean. I am disposed to think that
such islands and ranges of the sandstone were formed before the
deposit of the basalt, and that the form of the surface is now
returning to what it then was, by the gradual decomposition and
wearing away of the latter rock. Much, however, may be said on both
sides of this, as of every other question. After descending from the
sandstone of the Vindhya[3] range into Bundelkhand, we pass over
basalt and basaltic soil, reposing immediately on syenitic granite,
with here and there beds and veins of pure feldspar, hornblende, and
quartz.

Takht Singh, the younger brother of Arjun Singh, the Raja of
Shahgarh,[4] came out several miles to meet me on his elephant.
Finding me on horseback, he got off from his elephant, and mounted
his horse, and we rode on till we met the Raja himself, about a mile
from our tents. He was on horseback, with a large and splendidly
dressed train of followers, all mounted on fine sleek horses, bred in
the Raja's own stables. He was mounted on a snow-white steed of his
own breeding (and I have rarely seen a finer animal), and dressed in
a light suit of silver brocade made to represent the scales of steel
armour, surmounted by a gold turban. Takht Singh was more plainly
dressed, but is a much finer and more intelligent-looking man. Having
escorted us to our tents, they took their leave, and returned to
their own, which were pitched on a rising ground on the other side of
a small stream, half a mile distant. Takht Singh resides here in a
very pretty fortified castle on an eminence. It is a square building,
with a round bastion at each corner, and one on each face, rising
into towers above the walls.

A little after midday the Raja and his brother came to pay us a
visit; and about four o'clock I went to return it, accompanied by
Lieutenant Thomas. As usual, he had a nautch (dance) upon carpets,
spread upon the sward under awnings in front of the pavilion in which
we were received. While the women were dancing and singing, a very
fine panther was brought in to be shown to us. He had been caught,
full-grown, two years before, and, in the hands of a skilful man, was
fit for the chase in six months. It was a very beautiful animal, but,
for the sake of the sport, kept wretchedly thin.[5] He seemed
especially indifferent to the crowd and the music, but could not bear
to see the woman whirling about in the dance with her red mantle
floating in the breeze; and, whenever his head was turned towards
her, he cropped his ears. She at last, in play, swept close by him,
and with open mouth he attempted to spring upon her, but was pulled
back by the keeper. She gave a shriek, and nearly fell upon her back
in fright.

The Raja is a man of no parts or character, and, his expenditure
being beyond his income, he is killing his goose for the sake of her
eggs--that is, he is ruining all the farmers and cultivators of his
large estate by exactions, and thereby throwing immense tracts of
fine land out of tillage. He was the heir to the fortress and
territory of Garha Kota, near Sagar, which was taken by Sindhia's
army, under the command of Jean Baptiste Filose,[6] just before our
conquest in 1817. I was then with my regiment, which was commanded by
Colonel, afterwards Major-General, G------,[7] a very singular
character. When our surgeon. Dr. E------, received the newspaper
announcing the capture of Garha Kota in Central India by _Jean-
Baptiste_, an officer of the corps was with him, who called on the
colonel on his way home, and mentioned this as a bit of news. As soon
as this officer had left him, the colonel wrote off a note to the
doctor: 'My dear Doctor,--I understand that that fellow, _John the
Baptist_, has got into Sindhia's service, and now commands an army--
do send me the newspapers.' These were certainly the words of his
note, and, at the only time I heard him speak on the subject of
religion he discomfited his adversary in an argument at the mess by
'Why, sir, you do not suppose that I believe in those fellows,
Luther, Calvin, and John the Baptist, do you?'

Nothing could stand this argument. All the party burst into a laugh,
which the old gentleman took for an unequivocal recognition of his
victory, and his adversary was silenced. He was an old man when I
first became acquainted with him. I put into his hands, when in camp,
Miss Edgeworth's novels, in the hope of being able to induce him to
read by degrees; and I have frequently seen the tears stealing down
over his furrowed cheeks, as he sat pondering over her pages in the
corner of his tent. A braver soldier never lived than old G------;
and he distinguished himself greatly in the command of his regiment,
under Lord Lake, at the battle of Laswari[8] and siege of
Bharatpur.[9] It was impossible ever to persuade him that the
characters and incidents of these novels were the mere creations of
fancy--he felt them to be true--he wished them to be true, and he
would have them to be true. We were not very anxious to undeceive
him, as the illusion gave him pleasure and did him good. Bolingbroke
says, after an ancient author, 'History is philosophy teaching by
example.'[10] With equal truth may we say that fiction, like that of
Maria Edgeworth, is philosophy teaching by emotion. It certainly
taught old G------ to be a better man, to leave much of the little
evil he had been in the habit of doing, and to do much of the good he
had been accustomed to leave undone.

Notes:

1. December 5, 1835, The date is misprinted '3rd' in the original
edition. See note 2 to last preceding chapter, p. 110.

2. A good view of the precipices of the Kaimur range, the eastern
continuation of the Vindhyan chain, is given facing page 41 of vol. i
of Hooker's _Himalayan Journals_ (ed. 1855).

3. The author's theory is untenable. He failed, to realize the vast
effects of sub-aerial denudation. All the evidence shows that the
successive lava outflows which make up the Deccan trap series
ultimately converted the surface of the land over which they welled
out into an enormous, nearly uniform, plain of basalt, resting on the
Vindhyan sandstone and other rocks. This great sheet of lava,
extending, east and west, from Nagpur to Bombay, a distance of about
five hundred miles, was then, in succeeding millenniums, subjected to
the denuding forces of air and water, until gradually huge tracts of
it were worn away, forming beds of conglomerate, gravel, and clay.
The flat-topped hills have been carved out of the basaltic surface by
the agencies which wore away the massive sheet of lava. The basaltic
cappings of the hills certainly cannot have 'formed part of continued
flat beds of great lakes'. See the notes to Chapter 14, _ante_. Mr.
Scrope was quite right. Vast periods of time must be allowed for
geological history, and millions of years must have elapsed since the
flow of the Deccan lava.

4. In the Sagar district. The last Raja joined the rebels in 1857,
and so forfeited his rank and territory.

5. The name panther is usually applied only to the large, fulvous
variety of _Felis pardus (Linn.) (F. leopardus, Leopardus varius)_.
The animal described in the text evidently was a specimen of the
hunting leopard, _Felis jubata (F. guttata, F. venatica)_.

6. This officer was one of the many '_condottieri_' of various
nationality who served the native powers during the eighteenth
century, and the early years of the nineteenth. He commanded five
infantry regiments at Gwalior. His 'kingdom-taking' raid in 1815 or
1816 is described _post_ in Chapter 49. The history of the family is
given by Compton in _European Military Adventures of Hindustan from
1784 to 1803_ (Unwin, 1892), App. pp, 352-6. In 1911 Michael Filose
of Gwalior was appointed K.C.I.E.

7.'G------' appears to have been Robert Gregory C.B.

8. The fiercely contested battle of Laswari was fought on November 1,
1803, between the British force under Lord Lake and the flower of
Sindhia's army, known as the 'Deccan Invincibles'. Sindhia's troops
lost about seven thousand killed and two thousand prisoners. The
British loss in killed and wounded amounted to more than eight
hundred. A medal to commemorate the victory was struck in London in
1851, and presented to the survivors. Laswari is a village in the
Alwar State, 128 miles south of Delhi.

9. Bharatpur (Bhurtpore), in the Jat State of the same name, is
thirty-four miles west of Agra. In January and February, 1805, Lord
Lake four times attempted to take it by assault, and each time was
repulsed with heavy loss. On January 18, 1826, Lord Combermere
stormed the fortress. The fortifications were then dismantled. A
large portion of the walls is now standing, and presents an imposing
appearance. They seem to have been repaired. See _post_, Chapter 62.

10. 'I will answer you by quoting what I have read somewhere or
other--in _Dionysius Halicarn_., I think--that history is philosophy
teaching by example' (Bolingbroke, _Letters on the Study and Use of
History_, Letter II, p. 14 of vol. viii of edition printed by T.
Cadell, London, 1770). The Greek words are. . . . . . . .

CHAPTER 18

Birds' Nests--Sports of Boyhood.

On the 6th[1] we came to Sayyidpur, ten miles, over an undulating
country, with a fine soil of decomposed basalt, reposing upon
syenite, with veins of feldspar and quartz. Cultivation partial, and
very bad; and population extremely scanty. We passed close to a
village, in which the children were all at play; while upon the
bushes over their heads were suspended an immense number of the
beautiful nests of the sagacious 'baya' bird, or Indian yellow-
hammer,[2] all within reach of a grown-up boy, and one so near the
road that a grown-up man might actually look into it as he passed
along, and could hardly help shaking it. It cannot fail to strike a
European as singular to see so many birds' nests, situated close to a
village, remain unmolested within reach of so many boisterous
children, with their little proprietors and families fluttering and
chirping among them with as great a feeling of security and gaiety of
heart as the children themselves enjoy.

In any part of Europe not a nest of such a colony could have lived an
hour within reach of such a population; for the baya bird has no
peculiar respect paid to it by the people here, like the wren and
robin-redbreast in England. No boy in India has the slightest wish to
molest birds in their nests; it enters not into their pastimes, and
they have no feeling of pride or pleasure in it. With us it is
different--to discover birds' nests is one of the first modes in
which a boy exercises his powers, and displays his love of art. Upon
his skill in finding them he is willing to rest his first claim to
superior sagacity and enterprise. His trophies are his string of
eggs; and the eggs most prized among them are those of the nests that
are discovered with most difficulty, and attained with most danger.
The same feeling of desire to display their skill and enterprise in
search after birds' nests in early life renders the youth of England
the enemy almost of the whole animal creation throughout their after
career. The boy prides himself on his dexterity in throwing a stone
or a stick; and he practises on almost every animal that comes in his
way, till he never sees one without the desire to knock it down, or
at least to hit it; and, if it is lawful to do so, he feels it to be
a most serious misfortune not to have a stone within his reach at the
time. As he grows up, he prides himself upon his dexterity in
shooting, and he never sees a member of the feathered tribe within
shot, without a desire to shoot it, or without regretting that he has
not a gun in his hand to shoot it. That he is not entirely destitute
of sympathy, however, with the animals he maims for his amusement is
sufficiently manifest from his anxiety to put them out of pain the
moment he gets them.

A friend of mine, now no more, Captain Medwin, was once looking with
me at a beautiful landscape painting through a glass. At last he put
aside the glass, saying: 'You may say what you like, S--, but the
best landscape I know is a fine black partridge[3] falling before my
Joe Manton.'

The following lines of Walter Scott, in his _Rokeby_, have always
struck me as very beautiful:-

As yet the conscious pride of art
Had steel'd him in his treacherous part;
A powerful spring of force unguessed
That hath each gentler mood suppressed,
And reigned in many a human breast;
From his that plans the rude campaign,
To his that wastes the woodland reign, &c.[4]

Among the people of India it is very different. Children do not learn
to exercise their powers either in discovering and robbing the nests
of birds, or in knocking them down with stones and staves; and, as
they grow up, they hardly ever think of hunting or shooting for mere
amusement. It is with them a matter of business; the animal they
cannot eat they seldom think of molesting.

Some officers were one day pursuing a jackal, with a pack of dogs,
through my grounds. The animal passed close to one of my guard, who
cut him in two with his sword, and held up the reeking blade in
triumph to the indignant cavalcade; who, when they came up, were
ready to eat him alive. 'What have I done', said the poor man, 'to
offend you?' 'Have you not killed the jackal?' shouted the whipper-
in, in a fury.

'Of course I have; but were you not all trying to kill him?' replied
the poor man. He thought their only object had been to kill the
jackal, as they would have killed a serpent, merely because he was a
mischievous and noisy beast.

The European traveller in India is often in doubt whether the
peacocks, partridges, and ducks, which he finds round populous
villages, are tame or wild, till he asks some of the villagers
themselves, so assured of safety do these creatures become, and so
willing to take advantage of it for the food they find in the
suburbs. They very soon find the difference, however, between the
white-faced visitor and the dark-faced inhabitants. There is a fine
date-tree overhanging a kind of school at the end of one of the
streets in the town of Jubbulpore, quite covered with the nests of
the baya birds; and they are seen, every day and all day, fluttering
and chirping about there in scores, while the noisy children at their
play fill the street below, almost within arm's length of them. I
have often thought that such a tree so peopled at the door of a
school in England might work a great revolution in the early habits
and propensities of the youth educated in it. The European traveller
is often amused to see the pariah dog[5] squatted close in front of
the traveller during the whole time he is occupied in cooking and
eating his dinner, under a tree by the roadside, assured that he
shall have at least a part of the last cake thrown to him by the
stranger, instead of a stick or a stone. The stranger regards him
with complacency, as one that reposes a quiet confidence in his
charitable disposition, and flings towards him the whole or part of
his last cake, as if his meal had put him in the best possible humour
with him and all the world.

Notes:

1. December, 1835. The name of the village is given in the author's
text as Seindpore. It seems to be the place which is called Siedpore
in the next chapter.

2. The common weaver bird, _Phoceus baya, Blyth. 'Ploceinae_, the
weaver birds. . . . They build nests like a crucible, with the
opening downwards, and usually attach them to the tender branches of
a tree hanging over a well or tank. _P. baya_ is found throughout
India; its nest is made of grasses and strips of the plantain or
date-palm stripped while green. It is easily tamed and taught some
tricks, such as to load and fire a toy cannon, to pick up a ring,
&c,' (Balfour, _Cyclopaedia_, 3rd ed., 1885, s.v. 'Ploceinae').

3. _Francolinus vulgaris_; a capital game bird.

4. Canto V, stanza 22, line 3.

5. The author spells the word Pareear. The editor has used the form
now customary. The word is the Tamil appellation of a large body of
the population of Southern India, which stands outside the orthodox
Hindoo castes, but has a caste organization of its own. Europeans
apply the term to the low-caste mongrel dogs which infest villages
and towns throughout India. See Yule and Burnell, _Glossary of Anglo-
Indian Words (Hobson-Jobson)_, in either edition, s.v.; and Dubois,
_Hindu Manners, &c._, 3rd ed. (1906, index, s.v.).

CHAPTER 19

Feeding Pilgrims--Marriage of a Stone with a Shrub.

At Sayyidpur[1] we encamped in a pretty little mango grove, and here
I had a visit from my old friend Janki Sewak, the high priest of the
great temple that projects into the Sagar lake, and is called
Bindraban.[2] He has two villages rent free, worth a thousand rupees
a year; collects something more through his numerous disciples, who
wander over the country; and spends the whole in feeding all the
members of his fraternity (Bairagis), devotees of Vishnu, as they
pass his temple in their pilgrimages. Every one who comes is
considered entitled to a good meal and a night's lodging; and he has
to feed and lodge about a hundred a day. He is a man of very pleasing
manners and gentle disposition, and everybody likes him. He was on
his return from the town of Ludhaura,[3] where he had been, at the
invitation of the Raja of Orchha, to assist at the celebration of the
marriage of Salagram with the Tulasi,[4] which there takes place
every year under the auspices and at the expense of the Raja, who
must be present. 'Salagrams'[5] are rounded pebbles which contain the
impressions of ammonites, and are washed down into the plains of
India by the rivers from the limestone rocks in which these shells
are imbedded in the mountains of the Himalaya.[6] The Spiti valley[7]
contains an immense deposit of fossil ammonites and belemnites[8] in
limestone rocks, now elevated above sixteen thousand feet above the
level of the sea; and from such beds as these are brought down the
fragments, which, when rounded in their course, the poor Hindoo takes
for representatives of Vishnu, the preserving god of the Hindoo
triad. The Salagram is the only stone idol among the Hindoos that is
_essentially sacred_, and entitled to divine honours without the
ceremonies of consecration.[9] It is everywhere held most sacred.
During the war against Nepal,[10] Captain B------, who commanded a
reconnoitring party from the division in which I served, one day
brought back to camp some four or five Salagrams, which he had found
at the hut of some priest within the enemy's frontier. He called for
a large stone and hammer, and proceeded to examine them. The Hindoos
were all in a dreadful state of consternation, and expected to see
the earth open and swallow up the whole camp, while he sat calmly
cracking _their gods_ with his hammer, as he would have cracked so
many walnuts. The Tulasi is a small sacred shrub (_Ocymum sanctum_),
which is a metamorphosis of Sita, the wife of Rama, the seventh
incarnation of Vishnu.