Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman

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Notes:

1. December, 1835.

2. Raja Parichhit died in 1839.

3. The word gram (_Cicer arietinum_) is misprinted 'grain' in the
author's text, in this place and in many others.

4. Bundelkhand exports to the Ganges a great quantity of cotton,
which enables it to pay for the wheat, gram, and other land produce
which it draws from distant districts, [W. H. S.] Other considerable
exports from Bundelkhand used to be the root of the _Morinda
citrifolia_, yielding a dark red dye, and the coarse _kharwa_ cloth,
a kind of canvas, dyed with this dye, which is known by the name of
'_ al_'. But modern chemistry has nearly killed the trade in
vegetable dyes. The construction of railways and roads has
revolutionized the System of trade, and equalized prices.

5. Governor-General from October 4, 1813, till January 1, 1823. He
was Earl of Moira when he assumed office.

6. Sir John Malcolm was Agent to the Governor-General in Central
India from 1817 to 1822, and was appointed Governor of Bombay in
1827.

7. The construction of railways and the development of trade with
Europe have completely altered the conditions. The Nerbudda valley
can now yield a considerable revenue.

8. The iron ore no doubt is good, but the difficulties in the way of
working it profitably are so great that the author's sanguine
expectations seem unlikely to be fully realized. V. Ball, in his day
the best authority on the subject, observes, 'As will be abundantly
shown in the course of the following pages, the manufacture of iron
has, in many parts of India, been wholly crushed out of existence by
competition with English iron, while in others it is steadily
decreasing, and it seems destined to become extinct' (_Economic
Geology_ (1881), being part of the _Manual of the Geology of India_,
p. 338). Ball thought that, if improved methods of reduction should
be employed, the Chanda ore might be worked profitably. As regards
the rest of India, with the doubtful exception of Upper Assam, he had
little hope of success. Full details of the working of the mines in
the Jabalpur, Narsinghpur, and Chanda districts of the Central
Provinces are given in pp. 384 to 392 of the same work. See also _I.
G._ (1908), vol. x, p. 51; and _The Oxford Survey of the British
Empire_ (Oxford, 1914), vol. ii, Asia, pp. 143, 160. A powerful
company formed at Bombay in 1907, operating at a spot on the borders
of the Central Provinces and Orissa, hopes to turn out 7,000 tons of
'steel shapes' per month.

Coal is not found below the very ancient sandstone rocks, classed by
geologists under the name of the Vindhyan Series. The principal beds
of coal are found in the great series of rocks, known collectively as
the Gondwana System, which is supposed to range in age from the
Permian to the Upper Jurassic periods of European geologists
(_Manual_, vol. i, p. 102). This Gondwana System includes sandstones.
A coalfield at Mohpani, ninety-five miles west-south-west from
Jabalpur by rail, was worked from 1862 to 1904 by the Nerbudda Coal
and Iron Company; and is now worked by the G. I. P. Railway Company.
The principal coal-field of the Central Provinces for some years was
that near Warora in the Chanda district, but the amount which can be
extracted profitably is approaching exhaustion; in fact the colliery
was closed in 1906. Thick seams are known to exist to the south of
Chanda near the Wardha river. See _I. G._, 1907, vol. iii, chap. iii,
p. 135; vol. x. p. 51.

9. See note to Chapter 25, _ante_, note 7.

10. 'Pickpockets' is not a suitable term.

11. The Persian word 'doab' means the tract of land between two
rivers, which ultimately meet. The upper doab referred to in the text
lies between the Ganges and the Jumna.

12. These 'colonies of thieves and robbers' are still the despair of
the Indian administrator. They are known to Anglo-Indian law as
'criminal tribes', and a special Act has been passed for their
regulation. The principle of that Act is police supervision,
exercised by means of visits of inspection, and the issue of
passports. The Act has been applied from time to time to various
tribes, but has in every case failed. In 1891, Sir Auckland Colvin,
then Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces, adopted the
strong measure of suddenly capturing many hundreds of Sansias, a
troublesome criminal tribe, in the Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, and Aligarh
Districts. Some of the prisoners were sent to a special jail, or
reformatory, called a 'settlement', at Sultanpur in Oudh, and the
others were drafted off to various landlords' estates. These latter
were supposed to devote themselves to agriculture. The editor, as
Magistrate of Muzaffarnagar, effected the capture of more than seven
hundred Sansias in that district, and dispatched them in accordance
with orders. As most people expected, the agricultural pupils
promptly absconded. Multitudes of Sansias in the Panjab and elsewhere
remained unaffected by the raid, which could not have any permanent
effect. The milder expedient of settling and nursing a large colony,
organized in villages, of another criminal tribe, the Bawarias
(Boureahs), was also tried many years ago in the same district of
Muzaffarnagar. The people settled readily enough, and reclaimed a
considerable area of waste land, but were not in the least degree
reformed. At the beginning of the cold season, in October or
November, most of the able-bodied men annually leave the villages,
and remain absent on distant forays till March or April, when they
return with their booty, enjoying almost complete immunity, for the
reasons stated in the text. On one occasion some of these Bawarias of
Muzaffarnagar stole a lakh and a half of rupees (about L12,000 at
that time), in currency notes at Tuticorin, in the south of the
peninsula, 1,400 miles distant from their home. The number of such
criminal tribes, or castes, is very great, and the larger of these
communities, such as the Sansias, each comprise many thousands of
members, diffused over an enormous area in several provinces. It is,
therefore, impossible to put them down, except by the use of drastic
measures such as no civilized European Government could propose or
sanction. The criminal tribes, or castes, are, to a large extent,
races; but, in many of these castes, fresh blood is constantly
introduced by the admission of outsiders, who are willing to eat with
the members of the tribe, and so become for ever incorporated in the
brotherhood. The gipsies of Europe are closely related to certain of
these Indian tribes. The official literature on the subject is of
considerable bulk. Mr. W. Crooke's small book, _An Ethnographic
Glossary_, published in 1891 (Government Press, Allahabad), is a
convenient summary of most of the facts on record concerning the
criminal and other castes of Northern India, and gives abundant
references to other publications. See also his larger work, _Castes
and Tribes of the N. W. P. and Oudh_, 4 vols. Calcutta, 1906. The
author's folio book, _Report on the Budhuk alias Bagree Decoits and
other Gang Robbers by Hereditary Profession, and on the Measures
adopted by the Government of India for their Suppression_ (Calcutta,
1849), _ante_, Bibliography No. 12, probably is the most valuable of
the original authorities on the subject, but it is rare and seldom
consulted.

CHAPTER 32

Sporting at Datiya--Fidelity of Followers to their Chiefs in India--
Law of Primogeniture wanting among Muhammadans.

The morning after we reached Datiya, I went out with Lieutenant
Thomas to shoot and hunt in the Raja's large preserve, and with the
_humane_ and determined resolution of killing no more game than our
camp would be likely to eat; for we were told that the deer and wild
hogs were so very numerous that we might shoot just as many as we
pleased.[l] We were posted upon two terraces, one near the gateway,
and the other in the centre of the preserve; and, after waiting here
an hour, we got each a shot at a hog. Hares we saw, and might have
shot, but we had loaded all our barrels with ball for other game. We
left the 'ramna', which is a quadrangle of about one hundred acres of
thick grass, shrubs, and brushwood, enclosed by a high stone wall.
There is one gate on the west side, and this is kept open during the
night, to let the game out and in. It is shut and guarded during the
day, when the animals are left to repose in the shade, except on such
occasions as the present, when the Raja wants to give his guests a
morning's sport. On the plains and woods outside we saw a good many
large deer, but could not manage to get near them in our own way, and
had not patience to try that of the natives, so that we came back
without killing anything, or having had any occasion to exercise our
_forbearance_. The Raja's people, as soon as we left them, went about
their sport after their own fashion, and brought us a fine buck
antelope after breakfast. They have a bullock trained to go about the
fields with them, led at a quick pace by a halter, with which the
sportsman guides him, as he walks along with him by the side opposite
to that facing the deer he is in pursuit of. He goes round the deer
as he grazes in the field, shortening the distance at every circle
till he comes within shot. At the signal given the bullock stands
still, and the sportsman rests his gun upon his back and fires. They
seldom miss. Others go with a fine buck and doe antelope, tame, and
trained to browse upon the fresh bushes, which are woven for the
occasion into a kind of hand-hurdle, behind which a man creeps along
over the fields towards the herd of wild ones, or sits still with his
matchlock ready, and pointed out through the leaves. The herd seeing
the male and female strangers so very busily and agreeably employed
upon their apparently inviting repast, advance to accost them, and
are shot when they get within a secure distance.[2] The hurdle was
filled with branches from the 'dhau' (_Lythrum fructuosum_) tree, of
which the jungle is for the most part composed, plucked as we went
along; and the tame antelopes, having been kept long fasting for the
purpose, fed eagerly upon them. We had also two pairs of falcons; but
a knowledge of the brutal manner in which these birds are fed and
taught is enough to prevent any but a _brute_ from taking much
delight in the sport they afford.[3]

The officer who conducted us was evidently much disappointed, for he
was really very anxious, as he knew his master the Raja was, that we
should have a good day's sport. On our way back I made him ride by my
side, and talk to me about Datiya, since he had been unable to show
me any sport. I got his thoughts into a train that I knew would
animate him, if he had any soul at all for poetry or poetical
recollections, as I thought he had. 'The noble works in palaces and
temples,' said he, 'which you see around you, Sir, mouldering in
ruins, were built by princes who had beaten emperors in battle, and
whose spirits still hover over and protect the place. Several times,
under the late disorders which preceded your paramount rule in
Hindustan, when hostile forces assembled around us, and threatened
our capital with destruction, lights and elephants innumerable were
seen from the tops of those battlements, passing and repassing under
the walls, ready to defend them had the enemy attempted an assault.
Whenever our soldiers endeavoured to approach near them, they
disappeared; and everybody knew that they were spirits of men like
Birsingh Deo and Hardaul Lala that had come to our aid, and we never
lost confidence.' It is easy to understand the devotion of men to
their chiefs when they believe their progenitors to have been
demigods, and to have been faithfully served by their ancestors for
several generations. We neither have, nor ever can have, servants so
personally devoted to us as these men are to their chiefs, though we
have soldiers who will fight under our banners with as much courage
and fidelity. They know that their grandfathers served the
grandfathers of these chiefs, and they hope their grandchildren will
serve their grandsons. The one feels as much pride and pleasure in so
serving, as the other in being so served; and both hope that the link
which binds them may never be severed. Our servants, on the contrary,
private and public, are always in dread that some accident, some
trivial fault, or some slight offence, not to be avoided, will sever
for ever the link that binds them to their master.

The fidelity of the military classes of the people of India to their
immediate chief, or leader, whose _salt they eat_, has been always
very remarkable, and commonly bears little relation to his _moral
virtues_, or conduct to _his_ superiors. They feel that it is their
duty to serve him who feeds and protects them and their families in
all situations, and under all circumstances; and the chief feels
that, while he has a right to their services, it is his imperative
duty so to feed and protect them and their families. He may change
sides as often as he pleases, but the relations between him and his
followers remain unchanged. About the side he chooses to take in a
contest for dominion, they ask no questions, and feel no
responsibility. God has placed their destinies in dependence upon
his; and to him they cling to the last. In Malwa, Bhopal, and other
parts of Central India, the Muhammadan rule could be established over
that of the Rajput chief only by the annihilation of the entire race
of their followers.[4] In no part of the world has the devotion of
soldiers to their immediate chief been more remarkable than in India
among the Rajputs; and in no part of the world bas the fidelity of
these chiefs to the paramount power been more unsteady, or their
devotion less to be relied upon. The laws of Muhammad, which
prescribe that the property in land be divided equally among the
sons,[5] leaves no rule for succession to territorial or political
dominion. It has been justly observed by Hume: 'The right of
primogeniture was introduced with the feudal law; an institution
which is hurtful by producing and maintaining an unequal division of
property; but it is advantageous in another respect by accustoming
the people to a preference for the eldest son, and thereby preventing
a partition or disputed succession in the monarchy.'

Among the Muhammadan princes there was no law that bound the whole
members of a family to obey the eldest son of a deceased prince.
Every son of the Emperor of Hindustan considered that he had a right
to set up his claim to the throne, vacated by the death of his
father; and, in anticipation of that death, to strengthen his claim
by negotiations and intrigues with all the territorial chiefs and
influential nobles of the empire. However _prejudicial to the
interests_ of his elder brother such measures might be, they were
never considered to be an _invasion of his rights_, because such
rights had never been established by the laws of their prophet. As
all the sons considered that they had an equal right to solicit the
support of the chiefs and nobles, so all the chiefs and nobles
considered that they could adopt the cause of whichever _son_ they
chose, without incurring the reproach of either _treason_ or
dishonour. The one who succeeded thought himself justified by the law
of self-preservation to put, not only his brothers, but all their
sons, to death; so that there was, after every new succession, an
entire _clearance_ of all the male members of the imperial family.
Aurangzeb said to his pedantic tutor, who wished to be raised to high
station on his accession to the imperial throne, 'Should not you,
instead of your flattery, have taught me something of that point so
important to a king, which is, what are the reciprocal duties of a
sovereign to his subjects, and those of the subjects to their
sovereign? And ought not you to have considered that one day I should
be obliged, with the sword, to dispute my life and the crown with my
brothers? Is not that the destiny, almost of all the sons of
Hindustan?'[6] Now that they have become pensioners of the British
Government, the members increase like white ants; and, as Malthus has
it, 'press so hard against their means of subsistence' that a great
many of them are absolutely starving, in spite of the enormous
pension the head of the family receives for their maintenance.[7]

The city of Datiya is surrounded by a stone wall about thirty feet
high, with its foundation on a solid rock; but it has no ditch or
glacis, and is capable of little or no defence against cannon. In the
afternoon I went, accompanied by Lieutenant Thomas, and followed by
the best _cortege_ we could muster, to return the Raja's visit. He
resides within the walls of the city in a large square garden,
enclosed with a high wall, and filled with fine orange-trees, at this
time bending under the weight of the most delicious fruit. The old
chief received us at the bottom of a fine flight of steps leading up
to a handsome pavilion, built upon the wall of one of the faces of
this garden. It was enclosed at the back, and in front looked into
the garden through open arcades. The floors were spread with handsome
carpets of the Jhansi manufacture. In front of the pavilion was a
wide terrace of polished stone, extending to the top of the flight of
the steps; and, in the centre of this terrace, and directly opposite
to us as we looked into the garden, was a fine _jet d'eau_ in a large
basin of water in full play, and, with its shower of diamonds,
showing off the rich green and red of the orange-trees to the best
advantage.

The large quadrangle thus occupied is called the 'kila', or fort, and
the wall that surrounds it is thirty feet high, with a round
embattled tower at each corner. On the east face is a fine large
gateway for the entrance, with a curtain as high as the wall itself.
Inside the gate is a piece of ordnance painted red, with the largest
calibre I ever saw.[8] This is fired once a year, at the festival of
the Dasahra.[9]

Our arrival at the wall was announced by a salute from some fine
brass guns upon the bastions near the gateway. As we advanced from
the gateway up through the garden to the pavilion, we were again
serenaded by our friends with their guitars and excellent voices.
They were now on foot, and arranged along both sides of the walk that
we had to pass through. The open garden space within the walls
appeared to me to be about ten acres. It is crossed and recrossed at
right angles by numerous walks, having rows of plantain and other
fruit trees on each side; and orange, pomegranate, and other small
fruit trees to fill the space between; and anything more rich and
luxuriant one can hardly conceive. In the centre of the north and
west sides are pavilions with apartments for the family above,
behind, and on each side of the great reception room, exactly similar
to that in which we were received on the south face. The whole
formed, I think, the most delightful residence that I have seen for a
hot climate. There is, however, no doubt that the most healthy
stations in this, and every other hot climate, are those situated
upon dry, open, sandy plains, with neither shrubberies nor
basins.[10]

We were introduced to the young Raja, the old man's adopted son, a
lad of about ten years of age, who is to be married in February next.
He is plain in person, but has a pleasing expression of countenance;
and, if he be moulded after the old man, and not after his minister,
the country may perhaps have in him the 'lucky accident' of a good
governor.[11] I have rarely seen a finer or more prepossessing man
than the Raja, and all his subjects speak well of him. We had an
elephant, a horse, abundance of shawls, and other fine clothes placed
before us as presents; but I prayed the old gentleman to keep them
all for me till I returned, as I was a mere voyageur without the
means of carrying such valuable things in safety; but he would not be
satisfied till I had taken two plain hilts of swords and spears, the
manufacture of Datiya, and of little value, which Lieutenant Thomas
and I promised to keep for his sake. The rest of the presents were
all taken back to their places. After an hour's talk with the old man
and his ministers, attar of roses and pan were distributed, and we
took our leave to go and visit the old palace, which as yet we had
seen only from a distance. There were only two men besides the Raja,
his son, and ourselves, seated upon chairs. All the other principal
persons of the court sat around cross-legged on the carpet; but they
joined freely in the conversation, I was told by these courtiers how
often the young chief had, during the day, asked when he could have
the happiness of seeing me; and the old chief was told, in my
hearing, how many _good things_ I had said since I came into his
territories, all tending to his honour and my credit. This is a
species of barefaced flattery to which we are all doomed to submit in
our intercourse with these native chiefs; but still, to a man of
sense, it never ceases to be distressing and offensive; for he can
hardly ever help feeling that they must think him a mere child before
they could venture to treat him with it. This is, however, to put too
harsh a construction upon what in reality, the people mean only as
civility; and they, who can so easily consider the grandfathers of
their chiefs as gods, and worship them as such, may be suffered to
treat _us_ as heroes and sayers of good things without offence.[12]

We ascended to the summit of the old palace, and were well repaid for
the trouble by the view of an extremely rich sheet of wheat, gram,
and other spring crops, extending to the north and east, as far as
the eye could reach, from the dark belt of forest, three miles deep,
with which the Raja has surrounded his capital on every side as
hunting grounds. The lands comprised in this forest are, for the most
part, exceedingly poor, and water for irrigation is unattainable
within them, so that little is lost by this taste of the chief for
the sports of the field, in which, however, he cannot himself now
indulge.

On the 19th[13] we left Datiya, and, after emerging from the
surrounding forest, came over a fine plain covered with rich spring
crops for ten miles, till we entered among the ravines of the river
Sindh, whose banks are, like those of all rivers in this part of
India, bordered to a great distance by these deep and ugly
inequalities. Here they are almost without grass or shrubs to clothe
their hideous nakedness, and have been formed by the torrents, which,
in the season of the rains, rush from the extensive plain, as from a
wide ocean, down to the deep channel of the river in narrow streams.
These streams cut their way easily through the soft alluvial soil,
which must once have formed the bed of a vast lake.[14] On coming
through the forest, before sunrise we discovered our error of the day
before, for we found excellent deer-shooting in the long grass and
brushwood, which grow luxuriantly at some distance from the city. Had
we come out a couple of miles the day before, we might have had noble
sport, and really required the _forbearance and humanity_ to which we
had so magnanimously resolved to sacrifice our 'pride of art' as
sportsmen; for we saw many herds of the nilgai, antelope, and spotted
deer,[15] browsing within a few paces of us, within the long grass
and brushwood on both sides of the road. We could not stay, however,
to indulge in much sport, having a long march before us.

Notes:

1. Some readers may be shocked at the notion of the author shooting
pig, but, in Bundelkhand, where pig-sticking, or hog-hunting, as the
older writers call it, is not practised, hog-shooting is quite
legitimate.

2. The common antelope, or black buck (_Antilope bezoartica_, or
_cervicapra_) feed in herds, sometimes numbering many hundreds, in
the open plains, especially those of black soil. Men armed with
matchlocks can scarcely get a shot except by adopting artifices
similar to those described in the text.

3. Sixteen species of hawks, belonging to several genera, are trained
in India. They are often fed by being allowed to suck the blood from
the breasts of live pigeons, and their eyes are darkened by means of
a silken thread passed through holes in the eyelids. 'Hawking is a
very dull and very cruel sport. A person must become insensible to
the sufferings of the most beautiful and most inoffensive of the
brute creation before he can feel any enjoyment in it. The cruelty
lies chiefly in the mode of feeding the hawks' (_Journey through the
Kingdom of Oude_, vol. i, p, 109). Asoka forbade the practice by the
words: 'The living must not be fed with the living' (Pillar Edict V,
_c._ 243 B.C., in V. A. Smith, _Asoka_, 2nd ed. (1909), p. 188).

4. The wording of this sentence is unfortunate, and it is not easy to
understand why the author mentioned Bhopal. The principality of
Bhopal was formed by Dost Mohammed Khan, an Afghan officer of
Aurangzeb, who became independent a few years after that sovereign's
death in 1707. Since that time the dynasty has always continued to be
Muhammadan. The services of Sikandar Begam in the Mutiny are well
known. Malwa is the country lying between Bundelkhand, on the east,
and Rajputana, on the west, and includes Bhopal. Most of the states
in this region are now ruled by Hindoos, but the local dynasty which
ruled the kingdom of Malwa and Mandu from A.D. 1401 to 1531 was
Musalman. (See Thomas, _Chronicles of the Pathan Kings of Dehli_, pp.
346-53.)