Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman

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3. The author invariably ignores the fact that daughters and other
female relatives inherit under Muhammadan law.

4. Hindoo law does not ordinarily recognize any right of succession
for daughters, and so differs essentially from the law of Islam. The
exceptions to this general rule are unimportant.

5. The experience of most officials does not confirm this statement.

6. The statement now requires modification. After the Central
Provinces were constituted in 1861, the principle of succession by
primogeniture was maintained only in the Hoshangabad, Chhindwara,
Chanda, and Chhattisgarh Districts. But even there the legal effect
of the restrictions on alienation and partition is 'not quite free
from doubt' (_I.G._ 1908, x. 73). The tendency of the law courts is
to apply everywhere uniform rules taken from the Hindoo law books.

7. 'See _ante_, Chapter 10, notes 10, 16. The gradual conversion of
tenure by leases from Government into proprietary right in land has
brought the land under the operation of the ordinary Hindoo law, and
each member of a joint family can now enforce partition of the land
as well as of the stock upon it. The evils resulting from incessant
partition are obvious, but no remedy can be devised. The people
insist on partition, and will effect it privately, if the law imposes
obstacles to a formal public division.

8. These remarks attribute too much System to the disorderly working
of an Asiatic despotism. No institution resembling the formal 'ban of
the empire' ever really existed in India.

9. The Rajas at Simla might now be considered by some people as an
encumbrance.

10. The author could not foresee the gallant service to be rendered
by the Chiefs of the Panjab and other territories in the Mutiny, nor
the institution of the Imperial Service Troops. Those troops, first
organized in 1888, in response to the voluntary offers made by many
princes as a reply to the Russian aggression on Panjdeh, are select
bodies, picked from the soldiery of certain native states, and
equipped and drilled in the European manner. Cashmere (Kashmir) and
many States in the Panjab and elsewhere furnish troops of this kind,
officered by local gentlemen, under the guidance of English
inspecting officers. The Kashmir Imperial Service Troops did
excellent service during the campaign of 1892 in Hunza and Nagar. the
System so happily introduced is likely to be much further developed.
In 1907 the authorized strength was a little over 18,000 (_I.G._, iv
(1907), pp. 87, 373).

11. 'In Rome, as in Egypt and India, many of the great works which,
in modern nations, form the basis of gradations of rank in society,
were executed by Government out of public revenue, or by individuals
gratuitously for the benefit of the public; for instance, roads,
canals, aqueducts, bridges, &c., from which no one derived an income,
though all derived benefit. There was no capital invested, with a
view to profit, in machinery, railroads, canals, steam-engines, and
other great works which, in the preparation and distribution of man's
enjoyments, save the labour of so many millions to the nations of
modern Europe and America, and supply the incomes of many of the most
useful and most enlightened members of their middle and higher
classes of society. During the republic, and under the first
emperors, the laws were simple, and few derived any considerable
income from explaining them. Still fewer derived their incomes from
expounding the religion of the people till the establishment of
Christianity.

Man was the principal machine in which property was invested with a
view to profit, and the concentration of capital in hordes of slaves,
and the farm of the public revenues of conquered provinces and
tributary states, were, with the land, the great basis of the
aristocracies of Rome, and the Roman world generally. The senatorial
and equestrian orders were supported chiefly by lending out their
slaves as gladiators and artificers, and by farming the revenues, and
lending money to the oppressed subjects of the provinces, and to
vanquished princes, at an exorbitant interest, to enable them to pay
what the state or its public officers demanded. The slaves throughout
the Roman empire were about equal in number to the free population,
and they were for the most part concentrated in the hands of the
members of the upper and middle classes, who derived their incomes
from lending and employing them. They were to those classes in the
old world what canals, railroads, steam-engines, &c., are to those of
modern days. Some Roman citizens had as many as five thousand slaves
educated to the one occupation of gladiators for the public shows of
Rome. Julius Caesar had this number in Italy waiting his return from
Gaul; and Gordianus used commonly to give five hundred pair for a
public festival, and never less than one hundred and fifty.

In India slavery is happily but little known;[a] the church had no
hierarchy either among the Hindoos or Muhammadans; nor had the law
any high interpreters. In all its civil branches of marriage,
inheritance, succession, and contract, it was to the people of the
two religions as simple as the laws of the twelve tables; and
contributed just as little to the support of the aristocracy as they
did. In all these respects, China is much the same; the land belongs
to the sovereign, and is minutely subdivided among those who farm and
cultivate it--the great works in canals, aqueducts, bridges, roads,
&c., are made by Government, and yield no private income. Capital is
nowhere concentrated in expensive machinery; their church is without
a hierarchy, their law without barristers-their higher classes are
therefore composed almost exclusively of the public servants of the
Government. The rule which prescribes that princes of the blood shall
not be employed in the government of provinces and the command of
armies, and that the reigning sovereign shall have the nomination of
his successor, has saved China from a frequent return of the scenes
which I have described. None of the princes are put to death, because
it is known that all will acquiesce in the nomination when made
known, supported as it always is by the popular sentiment throughout
the empire. [W. H. S.]

a. the anthor's statement that in the year 1836 slavery was 'but
little known in India' is a truly astonishing one. Slavery of various
kinds--racial, predial, domestic--the slavery of captives, and of
debtors, had existed in India from time immemorial, and still
flourished in 1836. Slavery, so far as the law can abolish it, was
abolished by the Indian Act v of 1843, but the final blow was not
dealt until January l, 1862, when sections 370, &c., of the Indian
Penal Code came into force. In practice, domestic servitude exists to
this day in great Muhammadan households, and multitudes of
agricultural labourers have a very dim consciousness of personal
freedom. The Criminal Law Commissioners, who reported previous to the
passage of Act v of 1843, estimated that in British India, as then
constituted, the proportion of the slave to the free population
varied from one-sixth to two-fifths. Sir Bartle Frere estimated the
slave population of the territories included in British India in the
year 1841 as being between eight and nine millions. Slaves were
heritable and transferable property, and could be mortgaged or let
out on hire. The article 'Slave' in Balfour, _Cyclopaedia_ (3rd ed.),
from which most of the above particulars are taken, is copious, and
gives references to various authorities. The following works may also
be consulted: _The Law and Custom of Slavery in British India_, by
William Adam, 8vo, 1840; _An Account of Slave Population in the
Western Peninsula of India_, 1822, with an Appendix on Slavery in
Malabar; _India's Cries to British Humanity_, by J. Peggs, 8vo, 1830;
and _E.H.I._, 3rd ed. (1914), pp. 100, 178, 180, 441.

12. In Akbar's time there were thirty-three grades of official rank,
and the officers were known as 'commanders of ten thousand',
'commanders of five thousand', and so on. Only princes of the blood
royal were granted the commands of seven thousand and of ten
thousand. The number of troopers actually provided by each officer
did not correspond with the number indicated by his title. The graded
officials were called _mansabdars_, no clear distinction between
civil and military duties being drawn (_The Emperor Akbar_, by Count
Von Noer; translated by Annette S. Beveridge, Calcutta, 1890, vol. i,
p. 267).

13. Diodorus Siculus has the same observation. 'No enemy ever does
any prejudice to the husbandmen; but, out of a due regard to the
common good, forbear to injure them in the least degree; and,
therefore, the land being never spoiled or wasted, yields its fruit
in great abundance, and furnishes the inhabitants with plenty of
victual and all other provisions.' Book II, chap. 3. [W. H. S.] These
allegations certainly cannot be accepted as accurate statements of
fact, however they may be explained. See _E.H.I._, 3rd ed. (1914), p.
442.

14. The rapid recovery of Indian villages and villagers from the
effects of war does not need for its explanation the evocation of 'a
spirit of moral and political vitality'. The real explanation is to
be found in the simplicity of the village life and needs, as
expounded by the author in the preceding passage. Human societies
with a low standard of comfort and a simple scheme of life are, like
individual organisms of lowly structure and few functions, hard to
kill. Human labour, and a few cattle, with a little grain and some
sticks, are the only essential requisites for the foundation or
reconstruction of a village.

15. Golconda was taken by Aurangzeb, after a protracted siege, in
1677. Bijapur surrendered to him on the 15th October, 1686. The vast
ruins of this splendid city, which was deserted after the conquest,
occupy a space thirty miles in circumference. The town has partially
recovered, and is now the head-quarters of a Bombay District, with
about 24,000 inhabitants. Sivaji, the founder of the Maratha power,
died in 1680.

16. The Indore and Baroda States still survive, and the reigning
chiefs of both have frequently visited England, and paid their
respects to their Sovereign. Bhonsla was the family name of the
chiefs of Berar, also known as the Rajas of Nagpur. The last Raja,
Raghoji III, died in December 1853, leaving no child begotten or
adopted. Lord Dalhousie annexed the State as lapsed, and his action
was confirmed in 1864 by the Court of Directors and the Crown.

17. The State of Satara, like that of Nagpur, lapsed owing to failure
of heirs, and was annexed in 1854. It is now a district in the Bombay
Presidency.

18. During the early years of the twentieth century a spirit of
Maratha nationalism has been sedulously cultivated, with inconvenient
results.

19. This paragraph, and that next following, are, in the original
edition, printed as part of Chapter 48, 'The Great Diamond of
Kohinur', with which they have nothing to do. They seem to belong
properly to Chapter 47, and are therefore inserted here. The
observations in both paragraphs are merely repetitions of remarks
already recorded.

20. It need hardly be said that these fire-eaters no longer exist.

CHAPTER 48

The Great Diamond of Kohinur.

The foregoing historical episode occupies too large a space in what
might otherwise be termed a personal narrative; but still I am
tempted to append to it a sketch of the fortunes of that famous
diamond, called with Oriental extravagance the Mountain of Light,
which, by exciting the cupidity of Shah Jahan, played so important a
part in the drama.

After slumbering for the greater part of a century in the imperial
treasury, it was afterwards taken by Nadir Shah, the king of Persia,
who invaded India under the reign of Muhammad Shah, in the year
1738.[1] Nadir Shah, in one of his mad fits, had put out the eyes of
his son, Raza Kuli Mirza, and, when he was assassinated, the
conspirators gave the throne and the diamond to this son's son,
Shahrukh Mirza, who fixed his residence at Meshed.[2] Ahmad Shah, the
Abdali, commanded the Afghan cavalry in the service of Nadir Shah,
and had the charge of the military chest at the time he was put to
death. With this chest, he and his cavalry left the camp during the
disorders that followed the murder of the king, and returned with all
haste to Kandahar, where they met Tariki Khan, on his way to Nadir
Shah's camp with the tribute of the five provinces which he had
retained of his Indian conquests, Kandahar, Kabul, Tatta, Bakkar,
Multan, and Peshawar. They gave him the first news of the death of
the king, seized upon his treasure, and, with the aid of this and the
military chest, Ahmad Shah took possession of these five provinces,
and formed them into the little independent kingdom of Afghanistan,
over which he long reigned, and from which he occasionally invaded
India and Khurasan.[3]

Shahrukh Mirza had his eyes put out some time after by a faction.
Ahmad Shah marched to his relief, put the rebels to death, and united
his eldest son, Taimur Shah, in marriage to the daughter of the
unfortunate prince, from whom he took the diamond, since it could be
of no use to a man who could no longer see its beauties. He
established Taimur as his viceroy at Herat, and his youngest son at
Kandahar; and fixed his own residence at Kabul, where he died.[4] He
was succeeded by Taimur Shah, who was succeeded by his eldest son,
Zaman Shah, who, after a reign of a few years, was driven from his
throne by his younger brother, Mahmud. He sought an asylum with his
friend Ashik, who commanded a distant fortress, and who betrayed him
to the usurper, and put him into confinement. He concealed the great
diamond in a crevice in the wall of the room in which he was
confined; and the rest of his jewels in a hole made in the ground
with his dagger. As soon as Mahmud received intimation of the arrest
from Ashik, he sent for his brother, had his eyes put out, and
demanded the jewels, but Zaman Shah pretended that he had thrown them
into the river as he passed over. Two years after this, the third
brother, the Sultan Shuja, deposed Mahmud, ascended the throne by the
consent of his elder brother, and, as a fair specimen of his notions
of retributive justice, he blew away from the mouths of cannon, not
only Ashik himself, but his wife and all his innocent and unoffending
children.

He intended to put out the eyes of his deposed brother, Mahmud, but
was dissuaded from it by his mother and Zaman Shah, who now pointed
out to him the place where he had concealed the great diamond. Mahmud
made his escape from prison, raised a party, drove out his brothers,
and once more ascended the throne. The two brothers sought an asylum
in the Honourable Company's territories; and have from that time
resided at an out frontier station of Ludiana, upon the banks of the
Hyphasis,[5] upon a liberal pension assigned for their maintenance by
our Government. On their way through the territories of the Sikh
chief, Ranjit Singh, Shuja was discovered to have this great diamond,
the Mountain of Light, about his person; and he was, by a little
torture skilfully applied to the mind and body, made to surrender it
to his generous host.[6] Mahmud was succeeded in the government of
the fortress and province of Herat by his son Kamran; but the throne
of Kabul was seized by the mayor of the palace, who bequeathed it to
his son Dost Muhammad, a man, in all the qualities requisite in a
sovereign, immeasurably superior to any member of the house of Ahmad
Shah Abdali. Ranjit Singh had wrested from him the province of
Peshawar in times of difficulty, and, as we would not assist him in
recovering it from our old ally, he thought himself justified in
seeking the aid of those who would, the Russians and Persians, who
were eager to avail themselves of so fair an occasion to establish a
footing in India. Such a footing would have been manifestly
incompatible with the peace and security of our dominions in India,
and we were obliged, in self-defence, to give to Shuja the aid which
he had so often before in vain solicited, to enable him to recover
the throne of his very limited number of legal ancestors.[7]

Notes:

1. Nadir Shah was crowned king of Persia in 1736, entered the Panjab,
at the close of 1738, and occupied Delhi in March 1739. Having
perpetrated an awful massacre of the inhabitants, he retired after a
stay of fifty-eight days, He was assassinated in May 1747.

2. Meshed, properly Mashhad ('the place of martyrdom'), is the chief
city of Khurasan. Nadir Shah was killed while encamped there.

3. Ahmad Shah defeated the Marathas in the third great battle of
Panipat, A.D. 1761. He had conquered the Panjab in 1748. He invaded
India five times.

4. In 1773.

5. Ludiana (misspelt 'Ludhiana' in _I.G._, 1908) is named from the
Lodi Afghans, who founded it in 1481. The town is now the
headquarters of the district of the same name under the Panjab
Government. Part of the district lapsed to the British Government in
1836, other parts lapsed during the years 1846 and 1847, and the rest
came from territory already British by rearrangement of jurisdiction.
Hyphasis is the Greek name for the Bias river.

6. The above history of the Kohinur may, I believe, be relied upon. I
received a narrative of it from Shah Zaman, the blind old king
himself, through General Smith, who commanded the troops at Ludiana;
forming a detail of the several revolutions too long and too full of
new names for insertion here. [W. H. S.] The above note is, in the
original edition, misplaced, and appended to two paragraphs of the
text, which have no connexion with the story of the diamond, and
really belong to Chapter 47, to which they have been removed in this
edition.

The author assumes the identity of the Kohinur with the great diamond
found in one of the Golconda mines, and presented by Amir Jumla to
Shah Jahan. The much-disputed history of the Kohinur has been
exhaustively discussed by Valentine Ball (Tavernier's _Travels in
India_: Appendix I (1), 'The Great Mogul's Diamond and the true
History of the Koh-i-nur; and (2) 'Summary History of the Koh-i-
nur'). He has proved that the Kohinur is almost certainly the diamond
given by Amir (Mir) Jumla to Shah Jahan, though now much reduced in
weight by mutilation and repeated cutting. Assuming the identity of
the Kohinur with Amir Jumla's gift, the leading incidents in the
history of this famous jewel are as follows;--

Event. Approximate
Date.
Found at mine of Kollur on the Kistna (Krishna)
river . . . . . . . . .Not known
Presented to Shah Jahan by Mir Jumla, being
uncut, and weighing about 756 English carats 1656 or 1657
Ground by Hortensio Borgio, and greatly reduced
in weight . . . . . . . about 1657
Seen and weighed by Tavernier in Aurangzeb's
treasury, its weight being 268 19/50 English
carats . . . . . . . . . 1665
Taken by Nadir Shah of Persia from Muhammad
Shah of Delhi, and named Kohinur . . . 1739
Inherited by Shah Rukh, grandson of Nadir Shah. . 1747
Given up by Shah Rukh to Ahmad Shah Abdali . . 1751
Inherited by Timur, son of Ahmad Shah . . . 1772
Inherited by Shah Zaman, son of Timur . . . 1793
Taken by Shah Shuja, brother of Shah Zaman . . 1795
Taken by Ranjit Singh, of Lahore, from Shah Shuja . 1813
Inherited by Dilip (Dhuleep) Singh,
reputed son of Ranjit Singh. . . . . 1839
Annexed, with the Panjab, and passed, through
John Lawrence's waistcoat pocket
(see his _Life_), into the possession
of H.M. the Queen, its weight then being
186 1/16 English carats . . . . . 1849
Exhibited at Great Exhibition in London . . . 1851
Recut under supervision of Messrs. Garrards, and
reduced in weight to 106 1/16 English carats . 1852

The difference in weight between 268 19/50 carats in 1665 and 186
1/16 carats in 1849 seems to be due to mutilation of the stone during
its stay in Persia and Afghanistan.

7. The policy of the first Afghan War has been, it is hardly
necessary to observe, much disputed, and the author's confident
defence of Lord Auckland's action cannot be accepted.

CHAPTER 49

Pindhari System--Character of the Maratha Administration--Cause of
their Dislike to the Paramount Power.

The attempt of the Marquis of Hastings to rescue India from that
dreadful scourge, the Pindhari system, involved him in a war with all
the great Maratha states, except Gwalior; that is, with the Peshwa at
Puna, Holkar at Indore, and the Bhonsla at Nagpur; and Gwalior was
prevented from joining the other states in their unholy league
against us only by the presence of the grand division of the army,
under the personal command of the Marquis, in the immediate vicinity
of his capital. It was not that these chiefs liked the Pindharis, or
felt any interest in their welfare, but because they were always
anxious to crush that rising paramount authority which had the power,
and had always manifested the will, to interpose and prevent the free
indulgence of their predatory habits--the free exercise of that
weapon, a standing army, which the disorders incident upon the
decline and fall of the Muhammadan army had put into their hands, and
which a continued series of successful aggressions upon their
neighbours could alone enable them to pay or keep under control. They
seized with avidity any occasion of quarrel with the paramount power
which seemed likely to unite them all in one great effort to shake it
off; and they are still prepared to do the same, because they feel
that they could easily extend their depredations if that power were
withdrawn; and they know no other road to wealth and glory but such
successful depredations. Their ancestors rose by them, their states
were formed by them, and their armies have been maintained by them.
They look back upon them for all that seems to them honourable in the
history of their families. Their bards sing of them in all their
marriage and funeral processions; and, as their imaginations kindle
at the recollection, they detest the arm that is extended to defend
the wealth and the industry of the surrounding territories from their
grasp. As the industrious classes acquire and display their wealth in
the countries around during a long peace, under a strong and settled
government, these native chiefs, with their little disorderly armies,
feel precisely as an English country gentleman would feel with a pack
of foxhounds, in a country swarming with foxes, and without the
privilege of hunting them.[1]

Their armies always took the auspices and set out _kingdom taking_
(mulk giri) after the Dasahra,[2] in November, as regularly as
English gentlemen go partridge-shooting on the 1st of September; and
I may here give, as a specimen, the excursion of Jean Baptiste
Filose,[3] who sallied forth on such an expedition, at the head of a
division of Sindhia's army, just before this Pindhari war commenced.
From Gwalior he proceeded to Karauli,[4] and took from that chief the
district of Sabalgarh, yielding four lakhs of rupees yearly.[5] He
then took the territory of the Raja of Chanderi,[6] Mor Pahlad, one
of the oldest of the Bundelkhand chiefs, which then yielded about
seven lakhs of rupees,[7] but now yields only four. The Raja got an
allowance of forty thousand rupees a year. He then took the
territories of the Rajas of Raghugarh and Bajranggarh,[8] yielding
three lakhs a year; and Bahadurgarh, yielding two lakhs a year;[9]
and the three princes got fifty thousand rupees a year for
subsistence among them. He then took Lopar, yielding two lakhs and a
half, and assigned the Raja twenty-five thousand. He then took Garha
Kota,[10] whose chief gets subsistence from our Government. Baptiste
had just completed his kingdom taking expedition, when our armies
took the field against the Pindharis; and, on the termination of that
war in 1817, all these acquisitions were confirmed and guaranteed to
his master Sindhia by our Government. It cannot be supposed that
either he or his army can ever feel any great attachment towards a
paramount authority that has the power and the will to interpose, and
prevent their indulging in such sporting excursions as these, or any
great disinclination to take advantage of any occasion that may seem
likely to unite all the native chiefs in a common effort to crush it.
The Nepalese have the same feeling as the Marathas in a still
stronger degree, since their kingdom-taking excursions had been still
greater and more successful; and, being all soldiers from the same
soil, they were easily persuaded, by a long series of successful
aggressions, that their courage was superior to that of all other
men.[11]