Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman

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10. Sleeman's dates and details require much correction. The mosque
was completed at some time in the year A.H. 979 (May 26, 1571, to May
13, 1572, o.s.), excepting the Buland Darwaza, which was erected in
A.H. 983 (1575-6). The 'old hermit', Shaikh Salim, died on February
13, 1572 (Ramazan 27, A.H. 979). E. W. Smith (_op. cit._, Part IV, p.
1) gives the correct measurements as follow: 'Exclusive of the
bastions upon the angles it measures 542' from east to west to the
outside of the _liwan_ or sanctuary, or 515' 3" to the outside of the
west main wall (which sets back from the outer wall of the liwan) and
438' from north to south. The general plan adopted by Muhammadans for
their masjids has been followed. In the centre is a vast courtyard
open to the heavens, measuring 359' 10" by 438' 9", surrounded on the
north, south, and east sides by spacious cloisters 38' 3" in depth,
and on the west by the liwan itself, 288' 2" in length by 65' deep.
It is said to be copied from one at Makka [Mecca], and was erected
according to a chronogram over the main arch in A.D. 1571, or at the
same time as Rajah Bir Bal's house.' The 'six years before his death'
of Sleeman's text should be 'six months' (Latif, _Agra_, p. 149).

11. The southern portal, known as the Buland Darwaza, or Lofty
Gateway, does not match the other gateways. It was built in A.D.
1575-6 (A.H. 983), and was adorned in A.D. 1601-2 (A.H. 1010) with an
inscription recording Akbar's triumphant return from his campaign in
the Deccan. The date is fixed by a chronogram, preserved in Beale's
work entitled _Miftah-ul-tawarikh_ (_Ann. Progr. Rep. A. S. Northern
Circle_, for 1905-6, p. 34, correcting E. W. Smith). Correct
measurements are:

From roadway below to pavement . . . 42 feet
From pavement to top of finial . . . 134 "
Breadth across main front . . . . 130 "
Breadth across back facing the mosque . . 123 "
Depth . . . . . . . . 88 1/2 feet.

Full details, with ample illustrations, are given by E. W. Smith, op.
cit., Part IV, chap. ii. In the original edition of Sleeman a
chromolithograph of the gateway is inserted. Photographs are
reproduced in _H.F.A._, Pl. xcvi, and Fergusson, _History of Indian
and E. Archit._ (ed. 1910), fig. 425.

12. Fergusson (ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 297) successfully justifies the
vast size of the gateway. 'The semi-dome is the modulus of the
design, and its scale that by which the imagination measures its
magnificence.'

The cramped staircases criticized by Sleeman are those ascending from
the pavement to the roof, one on the north-west, and the other on the
north-east side of the gate. Each flight has 123 steep steps.

13. See the 105th chapter of the Koran. 'Hast thou not seen how thy
Lord dealt with the masters of the elephant? Did he not make their
treacherous design an occasion of drawing them into error; and send
against them flocks of _swallows_ which cast down upon them stones of
baked clay, and rendered them like the leaves of corn eaten by
cattle?' [W. H. S.] The quotation is from Sale's translation, but
Sale uses the word 'birds', and not '_swallows_'. In his note, where
he tells the whole story, he speaks of 'a large flock of birds like
swallows'. The Arabic, Persian, and Hindustani dictionaries give no
other word than 'ababil' for swallow. The word 'partadil' (purtadeel)
occurs in none of them. According to Oates, _Fauna of British India_
(London, 1890), the 'ababil' is the common swallow, _Hirundo
rustica_; and the 'mosque-swallow' ('masjid-ababil'), otherwise
called 'Sykes's striated swallow', is the _H. erythropygia, H.
Daurica_ of Balfour, _Cyclop. of India_, 3rd ed., s.v. Hirundinidae.
This latter species is the 'little piebald thing' mentioned by the
author.

14. Muh. Latif (Agra, pp. 146, 147) gives the text and English
rendering of the inscription, which is in Persian, except the
_logion_ ascribed to Jesus, which is in Arabic. His translation of
the Jesus saying is as follows:

'So said Jeans, on whom be peace! "The world is a bridge; pass over
it, but build no house on it. He who reflected on the distresses of
the Day of Judgement gained pleasure everlasting.

'"Worldly pleasures are but momentary; spend, then, thy life in
devotion and remember that what remains of it is valueless".'

Like the author, I am unable to trace the source of the quotation.
The inscription probably was recorded after Akbar's breach with
Islam, which may be dated from 1579 or 1580. When he built the
mosque, in 1571-5, he was still a devout Musalman, although
entertaining liberal opinions. He died on October 25, 1605 (N.S.;
October 15, O.S.)

15. For a full account of the exquisite sepulchre of Shaikh Salim,
see E. W. Smith, op. cit.. Part III, chap. ii. An inscription over
the doorway is dated A.H. 979 = 1571-2, the year of the saint's
death. The building, constructed regardless of expense, must be
somewhat later. 'As originally built by Akbar, the tomb was of red
sandstone, and the marble trellis-work, the chief ornament of the
tomb, was erected subsequently by the Emperor Jahangir' (Latif,
_Agra_, p. 144).

16. The first plundering of Akbar's tomb at Sikandra by the Jats
occurred in 1691 according to Manucci (_ante_, chapter 51, note 29.).
The outrages at Fathpur-Sikri seem to have been later in date, and to
have happened after the capture of Agra in 1761 by Suraj Mall, the
famous Raja of Bhurtpore (Bharatpur). The Jats retained possession of
Agra until 1774 (_I.G._, 1908, vol. viii, p. 76). That is the period
while they reigned, to use the author's words. Tradition affirms that
daring that time they shot away the tops of the minarets at the
entrance to the Sikandra park; took the armour and books of Akbar
from his tomb, and sent them to Bharatpur, and also melted down two
silver doors at the Taj, which had cost Shah Jahan more than 125,000
rupees (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, 1st ed., vol. vii, p. 619)

17. We besieged and took Bharatpur in order to rescue the young
prince, our ally, from his uncle, who had forcibly assumed the office
of prime minister to his nephew. As soon as we got possession, all
the property we found, belonging either to the nephew or the uncle,
was declared to be prize-money, and taken for the troops. The young
prince was obliged to borrow an elephant from the prize agents to
ride upon. He has ever since enjoyed the whole of the revenue of his
large territory. [W. H. S.] The final siege and capture of Bharatpur
by Lord Combermere took place in January, 1826. The plundering, as
Metcalfe observed, 'has been very disgraceful, and has tarnished our
well-earned honours'. All the state treasures and jewels, amounting
to forty-eight lakhs of rupees, or say half a million of pounds
sterling, which should have been made over to the rightful Raja, were
treated as lawful prize, and at once distributed among the officers
and men. Lord Combermere himself took six lakhs (Marshman, _History
of India_, ed., 1869, vol. ii, p. 409).

18. The 'little dingy mosque' was built over the cave in which the
saint dwelt, and was presented to him by the local quarry-men. It is
therefore called The Stone-cutters' Mosque. It is fully described by
E. W. Smith, op. cit., Part IV. chap. iii. It is earlier in date than
any of Akbar's buildings, having been built in A. H. 945 (A.D. 1538-
9), a year after the saint had settled in the 'dangerous jungle'
(_Progr. Rep. A. S. N. Circle_, 1905-6, p. 35).

19. The people of India no doubt owed much of the good they enjoyed
under the long reign of Akbar to this most excellent woman, who
inspired not only her husband but the most able Muhammadan minister
that India has ever had, with feelings of universal benevolence. It
was from her that this great minister, Abul Fazl, derived the spirit
that dictated the following passages in his admirable work, the Ain-
i-Akbari; 'Every sect becomes infatuated with its particular
doctrines; animosity and dissension prevail, and each man deeming the
tenets of his sect to be the dictates of truth itself, aims at the
destruction of all others, vilifies reputation, stains the earth with
blood, and has the vanity to imagine that he is performing
meritorious actions. Were the voice of reason attended to, mankind
would be sensible of their error, and lament the weaknesses which led
them to interfere in the religious concerns of each other.
Persecution, after all, defeats its own end; it obliges men to
conceal their opinions, but produces no change in them.

'Summarily, the Hindoos are religious, affable, courteous to
strangers, prone to inflict austerities on themselves, lovers of
justice, given to retirement, able in business, grateful, admirers of
truth, and of unbounded fidelity in all their dealings.

'This character shines brightest in adversity. Their soldiers know
not what it is to fly from the field of battle; when the success of
the combat becomes doubtful, they dismount from their horses, and
throw away their lives in payment of the debt of valour. They have
great respect for their tutors; and make no account of their lives
when they can devote them to the service of their God.

'They consider the Supreme Being to be above all labour, and believe
Brahma to be the creator of the world, Vishnu its preserver, and Siva
its destroyer. But one sect believes that God, who hath no equal,
appeared on earth under the three above-mentioned forms, without
having been thereby polluted in the smallest degree, in the same
manner as the Christians speak of the Messiah; others hold that all
these were only human beings, who, on account of their sanctity and
righteousness, were raised to these high dignities.' [W. H. S.] The
passage quoted is from Gladwin's translation, vol. ii, p. 318 (4th
ed., London, 1800). The wording varies in different editions of
Gladwin's work. A better version will be found in Jarrett, transl.
_Ain_ (Calcutta, 1894), vol. iii, p. 8.

There is no substantial foundation for the author's statement that
Abul Fazl learned his charity and toleration from the Hindoo mother
of Jahangir. The influences which really moulded the opinions of both
Abul Fazl and his royal master are well known. When Akbar and Abul
Fazl are compared with Elizabeth and Burleigh, Philip II and Alva, or
the other sovereigns and ministers of the age in Europe, it seems to
be little less than a miracle that the Indian statesmen should have
held and practised the noble philosophy expounded in the above
quotation from the 'Institutes of Akbar'. No man has deserved better
than Akbar the stately eulogy pronounced by Wordsworth on a hero now
obscure:

A meteor wert thou in a darksome night;
Yet shall thy name, conspicuous and sublime,
Stand in the spacious firmament of time,
Fixed as a star: such glory is thy right.
(_Sonnets dedicated to Liberty_, Part Second, No. XVII.)

20. The story is absurd, the saint having died early in 1572, when
the Fathpur-Sikri buildings were in progress.

'The city . . . is enclosed on three sides by high embattlemented
stone walls pierced by. . . gateways protected by heavy and grim
semi-circular bastions of rubble masonry. The fourth side was
protected by a large lake.' There were nine gateways (E. W. Smith,
op. cit., pp. 1, 59; pl. xci, xciii). The Sangin Burj, or Stone
Tower, is a fine unfinished fortification (ibid., p. 34). The dam of
the lake burst in the 27th year of the reign, A.D. 1582 (Latif,
_Agra_, p. 159). The circumference of the town is variously stated as
either six or seven miles.

21. Akbar began the works at the fort of Agra in A.H. 972,
corresponding to A.D. 1564-65, several years before he began those at
Fathpur in A.D. 1569-70 (E. & D., vol. v, pp. 295, 332); and the
buildings at Agra and Fathpur were carried on concurrently. He
continued building at Fathpur nearly to the close of his reign. Agra
was never 'an unpeopled waste' during Akbar's reign. Sikandar Lodi
had made it his capital in A.D. 1501.

22. That is to say, the grantees have now to pay land revenue, or
rent, to the state.

23. No good general description of the buildings at Agra, Sikandra,
and Fathpur-Sikri exists. The following list indicates the beat
treatises available.

(1) Syad Muhammad Latif--_Agra, Historical and Descriptive., &c._;
8vo, Calcutta, 1896, Useful, but crude and badly illustrated.

(2) E. W. Smith--_The Moghul Architecture of Fathpur-Sikri_; 4 Parts,
4to, Government Press, Allahabad, 1894-8.

(3) Same author--_Moghul Colour Decoration of Agra_; 4to, Government
Press, Allahabad, 1901.

(4) Same author--_Akbar's Tomb, Sikandarah_; posthumous; 4to,
Allahabad Government Press, 1909.

The three works by Mr. E. W. Smith are magnificently illustrated and
worthy of the subject.

(5) Nur Baksh--'The Agra Fort and its Buildings', in _A.S. Annual
Report_ for 1903-4, pp. 164-93.

(6) Moin-ud-din--_The History of the Taj, &c._; thin 8vo, 116 pp.;
Moon Press, Agra, 1905. Useful, as being the only book devoted to the
Taj and connected buildings, but crude and inadequate.

The Archaeological Survey of India, since its reorganization, has not
had time to study the Taj buildings, except for conservation
purposes. The report by Mr. Carlleyle on the minor remains at and
near Agra in _A.S.R._, vol. iv, 1874, is almost worthless.

In 1873 Major Cole prepared a handsome volume entitled _Illustrations
of Buildings near Muttra and Agra, &c._

Some information, to be used with caution, is to be found in
gazetteers of different dates.

The brief observations in Fergusson's _History of Indian and Eastern
Architecture_ (ed. 1910) are of permanent value. The plan of the
editor's work, _A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon_ (H. F.
A.), Oxford, 1911, does not permit of detailed descriptions. The
well-known little Handbook by Mr. H. G. Keene contains many errors
and is unworthy of the author's reputation as an historian.

A good guide-book, prepared with knowledge and accuracy, is badly
wanted. It would be difficult to find an author possessed of the
needful local knowledge and sufficiently well read to compile a
satisfactory book. An adequate illustrated history of the Taj
buildings on the lines of Mr. E. W. Smith's work on Fathpur-Sikri is
much to be desired, but would be a formidable undertaking, and is not
likely to be written for a long time to come. Perhaps some wealthy
admirer of Akbar and his achievements may appear and provide the
considerable funds required for the preparation of the desired
treatise. The Christian antiquities of Agra also deserve systematic
treatment. At present the information on record is in a chaotic
state.

CHAPTER 55

Bharatpur--Dig--Want of employment for the Military and the Educated
Classes under the Company's Rule.

Our old friends, Mr. Charles Fraser, the Commissioner of the Agra
Division, then on his circuit, and Major Godby, had come on with us
from Agra and made our party very agreeable. On the 9th, we went
fourteen miles to Bharatpur, over a plain of alluvial, but seemingly
poor, soil, intersected by one low range of sandstone hills running
north-east and south-west. The thick belt of jungle, three miles
wide, with which the chiefs of Bharatpur used to surround their
fortress while they were freebooters, and always liable to be brought
into collision with their neighbours, has been fast diminishing since
the capture of the place by our troops in 1826; and will very soon
disappear altogether, and give place to rich sheets of cultivation,
and happy little village communities. Our tents had been pitched
close outside the Mathura gate, near a small grove of fruit-trees,
which formed the left flank of the last attack on this fortress by
Lord Combermere.[1] Major Godby had been present during the whole
siege; and, as we went round the place in the evening on our
elephants, he pointed out all the points of attack, and told all the
anecdotes of the day that were interesting enough to be remembered
for ten years. We went through the town, out at the opposite gate,
and passed along the line of Lord Lake's attack in 1805.[2] All the
points of his attack were also pointed out to us by our cicerone, an
old officer in the service of the Raja. It happened to be the
anniversary of the first attempt to storm, which was made on the 9th
of January, thirty-one years before. One old officer told us that he
remembered Lord Lake sitting with three other gentlemen on chairs not
more than half a mile from the ramparts of the fort.

The old man thought that the men of those days were quite a different
sort of thing to the men of the present day, as well those who
defended, as those who attacked the fort; and, if the truth must be
told, he thought that the European lords and gentlemen had fallen off
in the same scale as the rest.

'But', said the old man, 'all these things are matter of destiny and
providence. Upon that very bastion (pointing to the right point of
Lord Lake's attack) stood a large twenty-four pounder, which was
loaded and discharged three times by supernatural agency during one
of your attacks--not a living soul was near it.' We all smiled,
incredulous; and the old man offered to bring a score of witnesses to
the fact, men of unquestionable veracity. The left point of Lord
Lake's attack was the Baldeo bastion, so called alter Baldeo Singh,
the second son of the then reigning chief, Ranjit Singh. The feats
which Hector performed in the defence of Troy sink into utter
insignificance before those which Baldeo performed in the defence of
Bharatpur, according to the best testimony of the survivors of that
great day. 'But', said the old man, 'he was, of course, acting under
supernatural influence; he condescended to measure swords only with
Europeans'; and their bodies filled the whole bastion in which he
stood, according to the belief of the people, though no European
entered it, I believe, during the whole siege. They pointed out to us
where the different corps were posted. There was one corps which had
signalized itself a good deal, but of which I had never before heard,
though all around me seemed extremely well acquainted with it--this
was the _Anta Gurgurs_. At last Godby came to my side, and told me
this was the name by which the Bombay troops were always known in
Bengal, though no one seemed to know whence it came. I am disposed to
think that they derive it from the peculiar form of the caps of their
sepoys, which are in form like the common hookah, called a 'gurguri',
with a small ball at the top, like an 'anta', or tennis, or billiard
ball; hence 'Anta Gurgurs'. The Bombay sepoys were, I am told, always
very angry when they heard that they were known by this term--they
have always behaved like good soldiers, and need not be ashamed of
this or any other name.[3]

The water in the lake, about a mile to the west of Bharatpur, stands
higher than the ground about the fortress; and a drain had been
opened, through which the water rushed in and filled the ditch all
round the fort and great part of the plain to the south and east,
before Lord Lake undertook the siege in 1805.[4] This water might, I
believe, have been taken off to the eastward into the Jumna, had the
outlet been discovered by the engineers. An attempt was made to cut
the same drain on the approach of Lord Combermere in 1826; but a
party went on, and stopped the work before much water had passed, and
the ditch was almost dry when the siege began.

The walls being all of mud, and now dismantled, had a wretched
appearance;[5] and the town which is contained within them is, though
very populous, a mere collection of wretched hovels; the only
respectable habitation within is the palace, which consists of three
detached buildings--one for the chief, another for the females of his
family, and the third for his court of justice, I could not find a
single trace of the European officers who had been killed there,
either at the first or second siege, though I had been told that a
small tomb had been built in a neighbouring grove over the remains of
Brigadier-General Edwards, who fell in the last storm. It is, I
believe, the only one that has ever been raised. The scenes of
battles fought by the Muhammadan conquerors of India were commonly
crowded with magnificent tombs, built over the slain, and provided
for a time with the means of maintaining holy men who read the Koran
over their graves. Not that this duty was necessary for the repose of
their souls, for every Muhammadan killed in fighting against men who
believed not in his prophet went, as a matter of course, to paradise;
and every unbeliever, killed in the same action, went as surely to
hell. There are only a few hundred men, exclusive of the prophets,
who, according to Muhammad, have the first place in paradise--those
who shared in one or other of his first three battles, and believed
in his holy mission before they had the evidence of a single victory
over the unbelievers to support it. At the head of these are the men
who accompanied him in his flight from Mecca to Medina, when he had
no evidence either from _victories_ or _miracles_. In all such
matters the less the evidence adduced in proof of a mission the
greater the merit of those who believe in it, according to the person
who pretends to it; and unhappily, the less the evidence a man has
for his faith, the greater is his anger against other men for not
joining in it with him. No man gets very angry with another for not
joining with him in his faith in the demonstration of a problem in
mathematics. Man likes to think that he is on the way to heaven upon
such easy terms; but gets angry at the notion that others won't join
him, because they may consider him an imbecile for thinking that he
is so. The Muhammadan generals and historians are sometimes almost as
concise as Caesar himself in describing very conscientiously a battle
of this kind; instead of 'I came, I saw, I conquered', it is 'Ten
thousand Musalmans on that day tasted of the blessed fruit of
paradise, after sending fifty thousand unbelievers to the flames of
hell'.

On the 10th we came on twelve miles to Kumbhir, over a plain of poor
soil, much impregnated with salt, and with some works in which salt
is made, with solar evaporation. The earth is dug up, water is
filtered through it, and drawn off into small square beds, where it
is evaporated by exposure to the solar heat. The gate of this fort
leading out to the road we came is called, modestly enough, after
Kumbhir, a place only ten miles distant; that leading to Mathura,
three or four stages distant, is called the Mathura gate. At Delhi,
the gates of the city walls are called ostentatiously after distant
places--the _Kashmir_, the _Kabul_, the _Constantinople_ gates.
Outside the Kumbhir gate, I saw, for the first time in my life, the
well peculiar to Upper India. It is built up in the form of a round
tower or cylindrical shell of burnt bricks, well cemented with good
mortar, and covered inside and out with good stucco work, and let
down by degrees, as the earth is removed by men at work in digging
under the light earthy or sandy foundation inside and out. This well
is about twenty feet below and twenty feet above the surface, and had
to be built higher as it was let into the ground.[6]

On the 11th we came on twelve miles to Dig (Deeg), over a plain of
poor and badly cultivated soil, which must be almost all under water
in the rains. This was, and still is, the country seat of the Jats of
Bharatpur, who rose, as I have already stated, to wealth and power by
aggressions upon their immediate neighbours, and the plunder of
tribute on its way to the imperial capital, and of the baggage of
passing armies during the contests for dominion that followed the
death of the Emperors, and during the decline and fall of the empire.
The Jats found the morasses with which they were surrounded here a
source of strength. They emigrated from the banks of the Indus about
Multan, and took up their abode by degrees on the banks of the Jumna,
and those of the Chambal, from their confluence upwards, where they
became cultivators and robbers upon a small scale, till they had the
means to build garrisons, when they entered the lists with princes,
who were only robbers upon a large scale. The Jats, like the
Marathas, rose, by a feeling of nationality, among a people who had
none. Single landholders were every day rising to principalities by
means of their gangs of robbers; but they could seldom be cemented
under one common head by a bond of national feeling.

They have a noble quadrangular garden at Dig, surrounded by a high
wall. In the centre of each of the four faces is one of the most
beautiful Hindoo buildings for accommodation that I have ever seen,
formed of a very fine sandstone brought from the quarries of Rupbas,
which he between thirty and forty miles to the south, and eight or
ten miles west of Fathpur-Sikri. These stones are brought in in flags
some sixteen feet long, from two to three feet wide, and one thick,
with sides as flat as glass, the flags being of the natural thickness
of the strata. The garden is four hundred and seventy-five feet long,
by three hundred and fifty feet wide; and in the centre is an
octagonal pond, with openings on the four sides leading up to the
four buildings, each opening having, from the centre of the pond to
the foot of the flight of steps leading into them, an avenue of _jets
d'eau_.