Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman

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37. The marriage of Durgavati is no proof that her father, the
Chandel Raja, was powerful in Mahoba in the time of Akbar. It is
rather an indication that he was poor and weak. If he had been rich
and strong, he would probably have refused his daughter to a Gond,
even though complaisant bards might invent a Rajput genealogy for the
bridegroom. The story about the army of fifty thousand men cannot be
readily accepted as sober fact. It looks like a courtly invention to
explain a mesalliance. The inducement really offered to the proud but
poor Chandel was, in all likelihood, a large sum of money, according
to the usual practice in such cases. Several indications exist of
close relations between the Gonds and Chandels in earlier times.

Early in Akbar's reign, in the year 1564, Asaf Khan, the imperial
viceroy of Karra Manikpur, obtained permission to invade the Gond
territory. The young Raja of Garha Mandla, Bir Narayan, was then a
minor, and the defence of the kingdom devolved on Durgavati, the
dowager queen. She first took up her position at the great fortress
of Singaurgarh, north-west of Jabalpur, and, being there defeated,
retired through Garha, to the south-east, towards Mandla. After an
obstinately contested fight the invaders were again successful, and
broke the queen's stout resistance. 'Mounted on an elephant, she
refused to retire, though she was severely wounded, until her troops
had time to recover the shock of the first discharge of artillery,
and, notwithstanding that she had received an arrow-wound in her eye,
bravely defended the pass in person. But, by an extraordinary
coincidence, the river in the rear of her position, which had been
nearly dry a few hours before the action commenced, began suddenly to
rise, and soon became unfordable. Finding her plan of retreat thus
frustrated, and seeing her troops give way, she snatched a dagger
from her elephant-driver, and plunged it into her bosom. . . . Of all
the sovereigns of this dynasty she lives most in the recollection of
the people; she carried out many highly useful works in different
parts of her kingdom, and one of the large reservoirs near Jabalpur
is still called the Rani Talao in memory of her. During the fifteen
years of her regency she did much for the country, and won the hearts
of the people, while her end was as noble and devoted as her life had
been useful' (_C.P. Gazetteer_ (1870), p. 283; with references to
Sleeman's article on the Rajas of Garha Mandla, and 'Briggs'
Farishta', ed. 1829, vol. ii, pp. 217, 218). A memoir of Asaf Khan
Abdul Majid, the general who overcame Durgavati, will be found in
Blochmann's translation of the _Ain-i-Akbari_, vol. i, p. 366.

38. Samthar is a small state, lying between the Betwa and Pahuj
rivers, to the south-west of the Jalaun district. It was separated
from the Datiya State only one generation previous to the British
occupation of Bundelkhand. A treaty was concluded with the Raja in
1812 (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_ (1st ed.), vol. i, p. 578).

39. Gujars occupy more than a hundred villages in the Jalaun
district, chiefly among the ravines of the Pahuj river. The Gujar
caste is most numerous in the Panjab and the upper districts of the
United Provinces. It is not very highly esteemed, being of about
equal rank with the Ahir caste and rather below the Jat. Gujar
colonies are settled in the Hoshangabad and Nimar districts of the
Central Provinces. The Gujars are inveterate cattle-lifters, and
always ready to take advantage of any relaxation of the bonds of
order to prey upon their neighbours. Many sections of the caste have
adopted the Muhammadan faith.

40. The small state of Chhatarpur lies to the south of the Hamirpur
district, between the Dasan and Ken rivers. The town of Chhatarpur,
on the military road from Banda to Sagar, is remarkable for the
mausoleum and ruined palace of Raja Chhatarsal, after whom the town
is named. Khajuraho, the ancient religious capital of the Chandel
monarchy, with its magnificent group of mediaeval Hindoo and Jain
temples, is within the limits of the state, about eighteen miles
south-east of Chhatarpur, and thirty-four miles south of Mahoba. The
Pawar adventurer, who succeeded in separating Chhatarpur from the
Panna state, was originally a common soldier.

41. Concerning Chhatarsal (A.D. 1671 to 1731), see notes _ante_,
Chapter 14 note 9, and chapter 23 note 11. He was one of the sons of
Champat Rai. The correct date of the death of Chhatarsal is Pus Badi
3, Sanwat, 1788 = A.D. 1731. Hardi (Hirdai) Sa succeeded to the Raj,
or kingdom, of Panna, and Jagatraj to that of Jaitpur. These kingdoms
quickly broke up, and the fragments are now in part native states and
in part British territory. The Orchha State was formed about the
beginning of the sixteenth century, and the Chanderi and Datiya
States are offshoots from it, which separated during the seventeenth
century.

42. As already observed (_ante_, Chapter 26, note 29), the Jalaun
State became British territory in 1840, four years after the tour
described in the text, and four years before the, publication of the
book. The Jhansi State similarly lapsed on the death of Raja
Gangadhar Rao in November, 1853. The Rani Lachhmi Bai joined the
mutineers, and was killed in battle in June, 1858.

CHAPTER 27

Blights.

I had a visit from my little friend the Sarimant, and the
conversation turned upon the causes and effects of the dreadful
blight to which the wheat crops in the Nerbudda districts had of late
years been subject. He said that 'the people at first attributed this
great calamity to an increase in the crime of adultery which had
followed the introduction of our rule, and which', he said, 'was
understood to follow it everywhere; that afterwards it was by most
people attributed to our frequent measurement of the land, and
inspection of fields, with a view to estimate their capabilities to
pay; which the people considered a kind of _incest_, and which he
himself, the Deity, can never tolerate. The land is', said he,
'considered as the _mother_ of the prince or chief who holds it--the
great parent from whom he derives all that maintains him--his family
and his establishments. If well treated, she yields this in abundance
to her son; but, if he presumes to look upon her with the eye of
desire, she ceases to be fruitful; or the Deity sends down hail or
blight to destroy all that she yields. The measuring the surface of
the fields, and the frequent inspecting the crops by the chief
himself, or by his immediate agents were considered by the people in
this light; and, in consequence, he never ventured upon these things.
They were', he thought, 'fully satisfied that we did it more with a
view to distribute the burthen of taxation equally upon the people
than to increase it collectively; still', he thought that, 'either we
should not do it at all, or delegate the duty to inferior agents,
whose close inspection of the great _parent_ could not be so
displeasing to the Deity.'[1]

Ram Chand Pundit said that 'there was no doubt much truth in what
Sarimant Sahib had stated; that the crops of late had unquestionably
suffered from the constant measuring going on upon the lands; but
that the people (as he knew) had now become unanimous in attributing
the calamities of season, under which these districts had been
suffering so much, to the _eating of beef_-this was', he thought,
'the great source of all their sufferings.'

Sarimant declared that he thought 'his Pundit was right, and that it
would, no doubt, be of great advantage to them and to their rulers if
Government could be prevailed upon to prohibit the eating of beef;
that so great and general were the sufferings of the people from
these calamities of seasons, and so firm, and now so general, the
opinion that they arose chiefly from the practice of killing and
eating cows that, in spite of all the other superior blessings of our
rule, the people were almost beginning to wish their old Maratha
rulers in power again.'

I reminded him of the still greater calamities the people of
Bundelkhand had been suffering under.

'True,' said he, 'but among them there are crimes enough of everyday
occurrence to account for these things; but, under your rule, the
Deity has only one or other of these three things to be offended
with; and, of these three, it must be admitted that the eating of
beef so near the sacred stream of the Nerbudda is the worst.'

The blight of which we were speaking had, for several seasons from
the year 1829, destroyed the greater part of the wheat crops over
extensive districts along the line of the Nerbudda, and through Malwa
generally; and old people stated that they recollected two returns of
this calamity at intervals from twenty to twenty-four years. The
pores, with which the stalks are abundantly supplied to admit of
their readily taking up the aqueous particles that float in the air,
seem to be more open in an easterly wind than in any other; and, when
this wind prevails at the same time that the air is filled with the
farina of the small parasitic fungus, whose depredations on the corn
constitute what they call the rust, mildew, or blight, the particles
penetrate into these pores, speedily sprout and spread their small
roots into the cellular texture, where they intercept, and feed on,
the sap in its ascent; and the grain in the ear, deprived of its
nourishment, becomes shrivelled, and the whole crop is often not
worth the reaping.[2] It is at first of a light, beautiful orange-
colour, and found chiefly upon the 'alsi' (linseed)[3] which it does
not seem much to injure; but, about the end of February, the fungi
ripen, and shed their seeds rapidly, and they are taken up by the
wind, and carried over the corn-fields. I have sometimes seen the air
tinted of an orange colour for many days by the quantity of these
seeds which it has contained; and that without the wheat crops
suffering at all, when any but an easterly wind has prevailed; but,
when the air is so charged with this farina, let but an easterly wind
blow for twenty-four hours, and all the wheat crops under its
influence are destroyed--nothing can save them. The stalks and leaves
become first of an orange colour from the light colour of the farina
which adheres to them, but this changes to deep brown. All that part
of the stalk that is exposed seems as if it had been pricked with
needles, and had exuded blood from every puncture; and the grain in
the ear withers in proportion to the number of fungi that intercept
and feed upon its sap; but the parts of the stalks that are covered
by the leaves remain entirely uninjured; and, when the leaves are
drawn off from them, they form a beautiful contrast to the others,
which have been exposed to the depredations of these parasitic
plants.

Every pore, it is said, may contain from twenty to forty of these
plants, and each plant may shed a hundred seeds,[4] so that a single
shrub, infected with the disease, may disseminate it over the face of
a whole district; for, in the warm month of March, when the wheat is
attaining maturity, these plants ripen and shed their seeds in a
week, and consequently increase with enormous rapidity, when they
find plants with their pores open ready to receive and nourish them.
I went over a rich sheet of wheat cultivation in the district of
Jubbulpore in January, 1836, which appeared to me devoted to
inevitable destruction. It was intersected by slips and fields of
'alsi', which the cultivators often sow along the borders of their
wheat-fields, which are exposed to the road, to prevent trespass.[5]
All this 'alsi' had become of a beautiful light orange colour from
these fungi; and the cultivators, who had had every field destroyed
the year before by the same plant, surrounded my tent in despair,
imploring me to tell them of some remedy. I knew of none; but, as the
'alsi' is not a very valuable plant, I recommended them, as their
only chance, to pull it all up by the roots, and fling it into large
tanks that were everywhere to be found. They did so, and no 'alsi'
was _intentionally_ left in the district, for, like drowning men
catching at a straw, they caught everywhere at the little gleam of
hope that my suggestion seemed to offer. Not a field of wheat was
that season injured in the district of Jubbulpore; but I was soon
satisfied that my suggestion had had nothing whatever to do with
their escape, for not a single stalk of the wheat was, I believe,
affected; while _some_ stalks of the affected 'alsi' must have been
left by accident. Besides, in several of the adjoining districts,
where the 'alsi' remained in the ground, the wheat escaped. I found
that, about the time when the blight usually attacks the wheat,
westerly winds prevailed, and that it never blew from the east for
many hours together. The common belief among the natives was that the
prevalence of an east wind was necessary to give full effect to the
attack of this disease, though they none of them pretended to know
anything of its _modus operandi_--indeed they considered the blight
to be a demon, which was to be driven off only by prayers and
sacrifices.

It is worthy of remark that hardly anything suffered from the attacks
of these fungi but the wheat. The 'alsi', upon which it always first
made its appearance, suffered something certainly, but not much,
though the stems and leaves were covered with them. The gram (_Cicer
arietinum_) suffered still less--indeed the grain in this plant often
remained uninjured, while the stems and leaves were covered with the
fungi, in the midst of fields of wheat that were entirely destroyed
by ravages of the same kind. None of the other pulses were injured,
though situated in the same manner in the midst of the fields of
wheat that were destroyed. I have seen rich fields of uninterrupted
wheat cultivation for twenty miles by ten, in the valley of the
Nerbudda, so entirely destroyed by this disease that the people would
not go to the trouble of gathering one field in four, for the stalks
and the leaves were so much injured that they were considered as
unfit or unsafe for fodder; and during the same season its ravages
were equally felt in the districts along the tablelands of the
Vindhya range, north of the valley and, I believe, those upon the
Satpura range, south. The last time I saw this blight was in March,
1832, in the Sagar district, where its ravages were very great, but
partial; and I kept bundles of the blighted wheat hanging up in my
house, for the inspection of the curious, till the beginning of
1835.[6]

When I assumed charge of the district of Sagar in 1831 the opinion
among the farmers and landholders generally was that the calamities
of season under which we had been suffering were attributable to the
increase of _adultery_, arising, as they thought, from our
indifference, as we seemed to treat it as a matter of little
importance; whereas it had always been considered under former
Governments as a case of _life and death_. The husband or his friends
waited till they caught the offending parties together in criminal
correspondence, and then put them both to death; and the death of one
pair generally acted, they thought, as a sedative upon the evil
passions of a whole district for a year or two. Nothing can be more
unsatisfactory than our laws for the punishment of adultery in India,
where the Muhammadan criminal code has been followed, though the
people subjected to it are not one-tenth Muhammadans. This law was
enacted by Muhammad on the occasion of his favourite wife Ayesha
being found under very suspicious circumstances with another man. A
special direction from heaven required that four witnesses should
swear positively to the _fact_.

Ayesha and her paramour were, of course, acquitted, and the
witnesses, being less than four, received the same punishment which
would have been inflicted upon the criminals had the fact been proved
by the direct testimony of the prescribed number--that is, eighty
stripes of the 'kora', almost equal to a sentence of death. (See
Koran, chap. 24, and chap. 4.)[7] This became the law among all
Muhammadans. Ayesha's father succeeded Muhammad, and Omar succeeded
Abu Bakr.[8] Soon after his accession to the throne, Omar had to sit
in judgement upon Mughira, a companion of the prophet, the governor
of Basrah,[9] who had been accidentally seen in an awkward position
with a lady of rank by four men while they sat in an adjoining
apartment. The door or window which concealed the criminal parties
was flung open by the wind, at the time when they wished it most to
remain closed. Three of the four men swore directly to the point.
Mughira was Omar's favourite, and had been appointed to the
government by him, Zaid, the brother of one of the three who had
sworn to the fact, hesitated to swear to the entire fact.

'I think', said Omar, 'that I see before me a man whom God would not
make the means of disgracing one of the companions of the holy
prophet.'

Zaid then described circumstantially the most unequivocal position
that was, perhaps, ever described in a public court of justice; but,
still hesitating to swear to the entire completion of the crime, the
criminals were acquitted, and his brother and the two others received
the punishment described. This decision of the _Brutus of his age_
and country settled the law of evidence in these matters; and no
Muhammadan judge would now give a verdict against any person charged
with adultery, without the four witnesses to the _entire fact_. No
man hopes for a conviction for this crime in our courts; and, as he
would have to drag his wife or paramour through no less than three--
that of the police officer, the magistrate, and the judge--to seek
it, he has recourse to poison, either secretly or with his wife's
consent. She will commonly rather die than be turned out into the
streets a degraded outcast. The seducer escapes with impunity, while
his victim suffers all that human nature is capable of enduring.
Where husbands are in the habit of poisoning their guilty wives from
the want of _legal_ means of redress, they will sometimes poison
those who are suspected upon insufficient grounds. No magistrate ever
hopes to get a conviction in the judge's court, if he commits a
criminal for trial on this charge (under Regulation 17 of 1817), and,
therefore, he never does commit. Regulation 7 of 1819 authorizes a
magistrate to punish any person convicted of enticing away a wife or
unmarried daughter for another's use; and an indignant functionary
may sometimes feel disposed to stretch a point that the guilty man
may not altogether escape.[10]

Redress for these wrongs is never sought in our courts, because they
can never hope to get it. But it is a great mistake to suppose that
the people of India want a heavier punishment for the crime than we
are disposed to inflict--all they want is a fair chance of conviction
upon such reasonable proof as cases of this nature admit of, and such
a measure of punishment as shall make it appear that their rulers
think the crime a serious one, and that they are disposed to protect
them from it. Sometimes the poorest man would refuse pecuniary
compensation; but generally husbands of the poorer classes would be
glad to get what the heads of their caste or circle of society might
consider the expenses of a second marriage. They do not dare to live
in adultery, they would be outcasts if they did; they must be married
according to the forms of their caste, and it is reasonable that the
seducer of the wife should be obliged to defray the coats of the
injured husband's second marriage. The rich will, of course, always
refuse such a compensation, but a law declaring the man convicted of
this crime liable to imprisonment in irons at hard labour for two
years, but entitled to his discharge within that time on an
application from the injured husband or father, would be extremely
popular throughout India. The poor man would make the application
when assured of the sum which the elders of his caste consider
sufficient; and they would take into consideration the means of the
offender to pay. The woman is sufficiently punished by her degraded
condition. The _fatwa_ of a Muhammadan law officer should be
dispensed with in such cases.[11]

In 1832 the people began to search for other causes [_scilicet_, of
bad seasons]. The frequent measurements of the land, with a view to
equalize the assessments, were thought of; even the operations of the
Trigonometrical Survey,[12] which were then making a great noise in
Central India, where their fires were seen every night burning upon
the peaks of the highest ranges, were supposed to have had some share
in exasperating the Deity; and the services of the most holy Brahmans
were put in requisition to exorcise the peaks from which the
engineers had taken their angles, the moment their instruments were
removed. In many places, to the great annoyance and consternation of
the engineers, the landmarks which they had left to enable them to
correct their work as they advanced, were found to have been removed
during their short intervals of absence, and they were obliged to do
their work over again. The priests encouraged the disposition on the
part of the peasantry to believe that men who required to do their
work by the aid of fires lighted in the dead of the night upon _high
places_, and work which no one but themselves seemed able to
comprehend, must hold communion with supernatural beings, a communion
which they thought might be displeasing to the Deity.

At last, in the year 1833, a very holy Brahman, who lived in his
cloister near the iron suspension bridge over the Bias river, ten
miles from Sagar, sat down with a determination to _wrestle with the
Deity_ till he should be compelled to reveal to him the real cause of
all these calamities of season under which the people were
groaning.[l3] After three days and nights of fasting and prayer, he
saw a vision which stood before him in a white mantle, and told him
that all these calamities arose from the slaughter of cows; and that
under former Governments this practice had been strictly prohibited,
and the returns of the harvest had, in consequence, been always
abundant, and subsistence cheap, in spite of invasion from without,
insurrection within, and a good deal of misrule and oppression on the
part of the local government. The holy man was enjoined by the vision
to make this revelation known to the constituted authorities, and to
persuade the people generally throughout the district to join in the
petition for the prohibition of _beef-eating_ throughout our Nerbudda
territories. He got a good many of the most respectable of the
landholders around him, and explained the wishes of the vision of the
preceding night. A petition was soon drawn up and signed by many
hundreds of the most respectable people in the district, and
presented to the Governor-General's representative in these parts,
Mr. F. C. Smith. Others were presented to the civil authorities of
the district, and all stating in the most respectful terms how
sensible the people were of the inestimable benefits of our rule, and
how grateful they all felt for the protection to life and property,
and to the free employment of all their advantages, which they had
under it; and for the frequent and large reduction in the
assessments, and remission in the demand, on account of calamities of
seasons. These, they stated, were all that Government could do to
relieve a suffering people, but they had all proved unavailing; and
yet, under this truly paternal rule, the people were suffering more
than under any former Government in its worst period of misrule--the
hand of an _incensed God_ was upon them; and, as they had now, at
last after many fruitless attempts, discovered the real cause of this
anger of the Deity, they trusted that we would listen to their
prayers, and restore plenty and all its blessings to the country by
prohibiting the _eating of beef_. All these dreadful evils had, they
said, unquestionably originated in the (Sadr Bazar) great market of
the cantonments, where, for the first time, within one hundred miles
of the sacred stream of the Nerbudda, men had purchased and eaten
cows' flesh.

These people were all much attached to us and to our rule, and were
many of them on the most intimate terms of social intercourse with
us; and, at the time they signed this petition, were entirely
satisfied that they had discovered the real cause of all their
sufferings, and impressed with the idea that we should be convinced,
and grant their prayers.[l4] The day is past. Beef continued to be
eaten with undiminished appetite, the blight, nevertheless,
disappeared, and every other sign of vengeance from above; and the
people are now, I believe, satisfied that they were mistaken. They
still think that the lands do not yield so many returns of the seed
under us as under former rulers; that they have lost some of the
_barkat_ (blessings) which they enjoyed under them--they know not
why. The fact is that under us the lands do not enjoy the salutary
fallows which frequent invasions and civil wars used to cause under
former Governments. Those who survived such civil wars and invasions
got better returns for their seed.