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

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 Bundelkhand--Hindoo, Greek, and Roman Faith.

On the 11th[1] we came on twelve miles to the town of Bamhauri,
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. Bamhauri 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 Raja of Orchha, before the death
of his brother called him to the throne. Many people were returning
from the ceremonies of the marriage of 'salagram' with 'Tulasi'; who
told me that the concourse had been immense--at least one hundred and
fifty thousand; and that the Raja 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 Sagar high priest, Janki Sewak. They told me that
they called this festival the 'Dhanuk jag';[5] and that Janakraj, the
father of Sita, had in his possession the 'dhanuk', or immortal bow
of Parasram, 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 Sita, and essayed to bend the bow; but all in vain,
till young Ram, 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. Sita became the wife of Ram; and the popular
poem of the Ramayana describes the abduction of the heroine by the
monster king of Ceylon, Ravana, and her recovery by means of the
monkey general Hanuman. 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 _naivete_ 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 Sagar, and the idea of its great utility for purposes of
irrigation made it appear to me far more beautiful; but my little
friend the Sarimant, 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 _aram_ (comfort) every day.'

This lake is called Kewlas after Kewal Varmma, the Chandel 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 Nandanvara 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
Bundelkhand in appearance, manners, and intelligence. There is a bold
bearing about the Bundelas, which at first one is apt to take for
rudeness or impudence, but which in time he finds not to be so.

The employes of the Raja were everywhere attentive, frank, and
polite; and the peasantry seemed no longer inferior to those of our
Sagar 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 Raja and his ministers.
The person who reigns over the seven villages of the lake is about
thirty years of age, of the Rajput caste, and, I think, one of the
finest young men I have ever seen. His ancestors have served the
Orchha 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 'chobdar', or silver-stick bearer, who came with us from the
Raja, gets fifteen rupees a month, and his ancestors have served the
Raja for several generations. The Diwan, who has charge of the
treasury, receives only one thousand rupees a year, and the Bakshi,
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 Raja or his successors
to treat them as their predecessors in office were treated for some
time past.[24] The Jagirdars, or feudal chiefs, as I have before
stated, are almost all of the same family or class as the Raja, 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 Jagirdars 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 Raja's visit to
me at Tehri. Lieutenant Thomas was sitting next to the little
Sarimant, and during the interview he asked him to allow him to look
at his beautiful little gold-hilted sword. The Sarimant 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 Raja, 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
Raja'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 Sarimant'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
Sarimant 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 Bundelkhand at least, the hot season was
much better. He told me that 'the late Raja, though a harsh, was
thought to be a just man;[26] and that his good sense, and, above
all, his _good fortune_ (ikbal) 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 Bundelkhand, 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
Bundelkhand, arises from the circumstance that the mass of the
landholders are of the same class as the chief Bundelas; and that the
public establishments of the state are recruited almost exclusively
from that mass. The states of Jhansi[28] and Jalaun[29] are the only
exceptions. There the rulers are Brahmans and not Rajputs, and they
recruit their public establishments from all classes and all
countries. The landed aristocracy, however, there, as elsewhere, are
Rajputs-either Pawars, Chandels, or Bundelas.

The Rajput landholders of Bundelkhand 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 Bundelkhand, for the reasons above stated; nor
are there any in the Gwalior 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.
They are all too proud for manual labour, even at the plough. No
Bundelkhand Rajput will, I believe, condescend to put his hand to
one.

Among the Maratha states, Sikhs, and Muhammadans, there is no bond of
union of this kind. The establishments, military as well as civil,
are everywhere among them composed for the most part of foreigners;
and the landed interests under such Governments would dread nothing
from the prospect of a transfer to our rule; on the contrary, they
and the mass of the people would almost everywhere hail it as a
blessing.

There are two reasons why we should leave these small native states
under their own chiefs, even when the claim to the succession is
feeble or defective; first, because it tends to relieve the minds of
other native chiefs from the apprehension, already too prevalent
among them, that we desire by degrees to absorb them all, because we
think our government would do better for the people; and secondly,
because, by leaving them as a contrast, we afford to the people of
India the opportunity of observing the superior advantages of our
rule.