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Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman

W >> William Sleeman >> Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official




Dig as much surpassed, as Bharatpur fell short of, my expectations. I
had seen nothing in India of architectural beauty to be compared with
the buildings in this garden, except at Agra. The useful and the
elegant are here everywhere happily blended; nothing seems
disproportionate, or unsuitable to the purpose for which it was
designed; and all that one regrets is that so beautiful a garden
should be situated in so vile a swamp.[7] There was a general
complaint among the people of the town of a want of 'rozgar'
(employment), and its fruit, subsistence; the taking of Bharatpur
had, they said, produced a sad change among them for the worse. Godby
observed to some of the respectable men about us, who complained of
this, that happily their chief had now no enemy to employ them
against. 'But what', said they, 'is a prince without an army? and why
do you keep up yours now that all your enemies have been subdued?'
'We want them', replied Godby, 'to prevent our friends from cutting
each other's throats, and to defend them all against a foreign
enemy.' 'True,' said they, 'but what are we to do who have nothing
but our swords to depend upon, now that our chief no longer wants us,
and you won't take us?' 'And what,' said some shopkeepers, 'are we to
do who provided these troops with clothes, food, and furniture, which
they can no longer afford to pay for?' _Company ke amal men kuchh
rozgar nahin_ ('Under the Company's dominion there is no
employment'). This is too true; we do the soldiers' work with one-
tenth of the soldiers that had before been employed in it over the
territories we acquire, and turn the other nine-tenths adrift. They
all sink into the lowest class of religions mendicants, or retainers;
or live among their friends as drones upon the land; while the
manufacturing, trading, and commercial industry that provided them
with the comforts, conveniences, and elegancies of life while they
were in a higher grade of service is in its turn thrown out of
employment; and the whole frame of society becomes, for a time,
deranged by the local diminution in the demand _for the services of
men and the produce of their industry_.

I say we do the soldiers' work with one-tenth of the numbers that
were formerly required for it. I will mention an anecdote to
illustrate this. In the year 1816 I was marching with my regiment
from the Nepal frontier, after the war, to Allahabad. We encamped
about four miles from a mud fort in the kingdom of Oudh, and heard
the guns of the Amil, or chief of the district, playing all day upon
this fort, from which his batteries were removed at least two miles.
He had three regiments of infantry, a corps or two of cavalry, and a
good park of artillery; while the garrison consisted of only about
two hundred stout Rajput landholders and cultivators, or yeomen. In
the evening, just as we had sat down to dinner, a messenger came to
the commanding officer, Colonel Gregory, who was a member of the
mess, from the said Amil, and begged permission to deliver his
message in private. I, as the senior staff officer, was requested to
hear what he had to say.

'What do you require from the commanding officer?'

'I require the loan of the regiment.'

'I know the commanding officer will not let you have the regiment.'

'If the Amil cannot get more, he will be glad to get two companies;
and I have brought with me this bag of gold, containing some two or
three hundred gold mohurs.'

I delivered the message to Colonel Gregory, before all the officers,
who desired me to say that he could not spare a single man, as he had
no authority to assist the Amil, and was merely marching through the
country to his destination, I did so. The man urged me to beg the
commanding officer, if he could do no more, merely to halt the next
day where he was, and lend the Amil the use of one of his drummers.

'And what will you do with him?'

'Why, just before daylight, we will take him down near one of the
gates of the fort, and make him beat his drum as hard as he can; and
the people within, thinking the whole regiment is upon them, will
make out as fast as possible at the opposite gate.'

'And the bag of gold--what is to become of that?'

'You and the old gentleman can divide it between you, and I will
double it for you, if you like.'

I delivered the message before all the officers to their great
amusement; and the poor man was obliged to carry back his bag of gold
to the Amil. The Amil is the collector of revenues in Oudh, and he is
armed with all the powers of government, and has generally several
regiments and a train of artillery with him.

The large landholders build these mud forts, which they defend by
their Rajput cultivators, who are among the bravest men in the world.
One hundred of them would never hesitate to attack a thousand of the
king's regular troops, because they know the Amil would be ashamed to
have any noise made about it at court; but they know also that, if
they were to beat one hundred of the Company's troops, they would
soon have a thousand upon them; and, if they were to beat one
thousand, they would soon have ten. They provide for the maintenance
of those who are wounded in their fight, and for the widows and
orphans of those who are killed. Their prince provides for neither,
and his soldiers are, consequently, somewhat chary of fighting. It is
from this peasantry, the military cultivators of Oudh, that our
Bengal native infantry draws three out of four of its recruits, and
finer young men for soldiers can hardly anywhere be found.[8]

The advantage which arises to society from doing the soldiers' duty
with a smaller number has never been sufficiently appreciated in
India; but it will become every day more manifest, as our dominion
becomes more and more stable--for men who have lived by the sword do
not in India like to live by anything else, or to see their children
anything but soldiers. Under the former government men brought their
own arms and horses to the service, and took them away with them
again when discharged. The supply always greatly exceeded the demand
for soldiers, both in the cavalry and the infantry, and a very great
portion of the men armed and accoutred as soldiers were always
without service, roaming over the country in search of it. To such
men the profession next in rank after that of the soldier robbing in
the service of the sovereign was that of the robber plundering on his
own account. '_Materia munificentiae per bella et raptus. Nec arare
terram, aut expectare annum, tam facile persuaseris, quam vocare
hostes et vulnera mereri; pigrum quinimmo et iners videtur sudore
acquirere, quod possis sanguine parare._' 'War and rapine supply the
prince with the means of his munificence. You cannot persuade the
German to cultivate the fields and wait patiently for the harvest so
easily as you can to challenge the enemy, and expose himself to
honourable wounds. They hold it to be base and dishonourable to earn
by the sweat of their brow what they might acquire by their
blood.'[9]

The equestrian robber had his horse, and was called 'ghurasi', horse-
robber, a term which he never thought disgraceful. The foot-robber
under the native government stood in the same relation to the horse-
robber as the foot-soldier to the horse-soldier, because the trooper
furnished his own horses, arms, and accoutrements, and considered
himself a man of rank and wealth compared with the foot-soldier;
both, however, had the wherewithal to rob the traveller on the
highway; and, in the intervals between wars, the high roads were
covered with them. There was a time in England, it is said, when the
supply of clergymen was so great compared with the demand for them,
from the undue stimulus given to clerical education, that it was not
thought disgraceful for them to take to robbing on the highway; and
all the high roads were, in consequence, infested by them.[10] How
much more likely is a soldier to consider himself justified in this
pursuit, and to be held so by the feelings of society in general,
when he seeks in vain for regular service under his sovereign and his
viceroys.

The individual soldiers not only armed, accoutred, and mounted
themselves, but they generally ranged themselves under leaders, and
formed well-organized bands for any purpose of war or plunder. They
followed the fortunes of such leaders whether in service or out of
it; and, when dismissed from that of their sovereign, they assisted
them in robbing on the highway, or in pillaging the country till the
sovereign was compelled to take them back, or give them estates in
rent-free tenure for their maintenance and that of their followers.

All this is reversed under our government. We do the soldiers' work
much better than it was ever before done with one-tenth--nay, I may
say, one-fiftieth--part of the numbers that were employed to do it by
our predecessors; and the whole number of the soldiers employed by us
is not equal to that of those who were under them actually in the
transition state, or on their way from the place where they had lost
service to the place where they hoped to find it; extorting the means
of subsistence either by intimidation or by open violence. Those who
are in this transition state under us are neither armed, accoutred,
nor mounted; we do not disband en masse, we only dismiss individuals
for offences, and they have no leaders to range themselves under.
Those who come to seek our service are the sons of yeomen, bred up
from their infancy with all those feelings of deference for superiors
which we require in soldiers. They have neither arms, horses, nor
accoutrements; and, when they leave us permanently or temporarily,
they take none with them--they never rob or steal--they will often
dispute with the shopkeepers on the road about the price of
provisions, or get a man to carry their bundles gratis for a few
miles, but this is the utmost of their transgressions, and for these
things they are often severely handled by our police.

It is extremely gratifying to an Englishman to hear the general
testimony borne by all classes of people to the merits of our rule in
this respect; they all say that no former government ever devoted so
much attention to the formation of good roads and to the protection
of those who travel on them; and much of the security arises from the
change I have here remarked in the character and number of our
military establishments. It is equally gratifying to reflect that the
advantages must go on increasing, as those who have been thrown out
of employment in the army find other occupations for themselves and
their children; for find them they must or turn mendicants, if India
should be blessed with a long interval of peace. All soldiers under
us who have served the government faithfully for a certain number of
years, are, when no longer fit for the active duties of their
profession, sent back with the means of subsistence in honourable
retirement for the rest of their lives among their families and
friends, where they form, as it were, fountains of good feeling
towards the government they have served. Under former governments, a
trooper was discharged as soon as his horse got disabled, and a foot-
soldier as soon as he got disabled himself--no matter how--whether in
the service of the prince, or otherwise; no matter how long they had
served, whether they were still fit for any other service or not.
Like the old soldier in _Gil Blas_, they tumed robbers on the
highway, where they could still present a spear or a matchlock at a
traveller, though no longer deemed worthy to serve in the ranks of
the army. Nothing tended so much to the civilization of Europe as the
substitution of standing armies for militia; and nothing has tended
so much to the improvement of India under our rule.

The troops to which our standing armies in India succeeded were much
the same in character as those licentious bodies to which the
standing armies of the different nations of Europe succeeded; and the
result has been, and will, I hope, continue to be the same, highly
beneficial to the great mass of the people.

By a statute of Elizabeth it was made a capital offence, felony
without benefit of clergy, for soldiers or sailors to beg on the high
roads without a pass; and I suppose this statute arose from their
frequently robbing on the highways in the character of beggars.[11]
There must at that time have been an immense number of soldiers in
the transition state in England; men who disdained the labours of
peaceful life, or had by long habit become unfitted for them.
Religions mendicity has hitherto been the great safety valve through
which the unquiet transition spirit has found vent under our strong
and settled government. A Hindoo of any caste may become a religious
mendicant of the two great monastic orders--of Gosains, who are
disciples of Siva, and Bairagis, who are disciples of Vishnu; and any
Muhammadan may become a Fakir; and Gosains, Bairagis, and Fakirs, can
always secure, or extort, food from the communities they visit.[12]

Still, however, there is enough of this unquiet transition spirit
left to give anxiety to a settled government; for the moment
insurrection breaks out at any point, from whatever cause, to that
point thousands are found flocking from north, east, west, and south,
with their arms and their horses, if they happen to have any, in the
hope of finding service either under the local authorities or the
insurgents themselves; as the troubled winds of heaven rush to the
point where the pressure of the atmosphere has been diminished.[13]


Notes:

1. On the sieges of Bharatpur see _ante_, chapter 17, note 9.

2. In the original edition the year is misprinted 1804, though the
correct date is indicated by the phrase 'thirty-one years before'.
The operations on January 9, 1805, are described in considerable
detail in Thornton's history, and Pearse, _The Life and Military
Services of Viscount Lake_ (Blackwood, 1908). Dig was taken on
December 24, 1804, and Lord Lake's army moved from Mathura towards
Bharatpur on January 1, 1805.

3. The Bombay column joined Lord Lake on February 11, and took part
in the third and fourth assaults on the fortress.

4. As in the previous passage, this date is printed 1804 in the
original edition.

5. They have been repaired to some extent, and the town has improved
much since the author's time.

6. That is to say, the well-cylinder is gradually sunk by its own
weight, aided, if necessary, by heavy additional weights piled upon
it. The sinking often takes many months, and is continued till a
suitable resting-place is found. The cylinder is built on a strong
ring of timber. Indian bridge-piers commonly rest on wells of this
kind. The ring is sometimes made of iron. Such a method of sinking is
possible only in deep alluvium, free from rock, and consequently had
not been seen in the Sagar and Nerbudda territories.

7. In the original edition Dig is illustrated by four coloured
plates. The buildings are all the work of Suraj Mal, the virtual
founder of the Bharatpur dynasty, between A.D. 1725 and 1763. The
palace wants, say Fergusson, 'the massive character of the fortified
palaces of other Rajput states, but for grandeur of conception and
beauty of detail it surpasses them all. . . . The greatest defect of
the palace is that the style, when it was erected, was losing its
true form of lithic propriety. The forms of its pillars and their
ornaments are better suited for wood or metal than for stone
architecture.' It is a 'fairy creation'. (_History of Indian and
Eastern Architecture_, ed. 1910, vol. ii, pp. 178-81.)

8. On these topics see the 'Journey through the Kingdom of Oude',
_passim_. The composition of the Bengal army has been much changed.

9. The quotation is from the end of chapter 14 of the _Germania_ of
Tacitus.

10. This picture of English roads infested by clergymen turned
highwaymen is not to be found in the ordinary histories.

11. The Act alluded to probably is 14 Elizabeth, c. 5. Other Acts of
the same reign dealing with vagrancy and the first poor-law are 39
Elizabeth, c. 3, and 43 Elizabeth, c. 2 (A.D. 1601). In 1595 vagrancy
had assumed such alarming proportions in London that a provost-
marshal was appointed to give the wanderers the short shrift of
martial law. The course of legislation on the subject is summarized
in the article 'Poor Laws' in Chambers's _Encyclopaedia_ (1904), and
the articles 'Poor-Law and Vagrancy' in the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_, 11th ed., 1910. See also the chapter entitled 'The
England of Elizabeth' in Green's History of the English People.

12. As already observed, chapter 29, note 12, the term Gosain is by
no means restricted to the special devotees of Siva; many Gosains--
for example, those in Bengal and those at Gokul in the Mathura
district--are followers of Vishnu. The term 'fakir' is vaguely used,
and often applied to Hindoos.

13. Even still, something of this unquiet spirit hovers about India,
and the incompatibility between the ideas of twentieth-century
Englishmen and those of Indian peoples whose mental attitude
approaches that of Europeans of the twelfth century is a perennial
source of unrest.




CHAPTER 56


Govardhan, the Scene of Krishna's Dalliance with the Milkmaids.

On the 10th[1] we came on ten miles over a plain to Govardhan, a
place celebrated in ancient history as the birthplace of Krishna, the
seventh incarnation of the Hindoo god of preservation, Vishnu, and
the scene of his dalliance with the milkmaids (_gopis_); and, in
modern days, as the burial--or burning-place of the Jat chiefs of
Bharatpur and Dig, by whose tombs, with their endowments, this once
favourite abode of the god is prevented from being entirely
deserted.[2] The town stands upon a narrow ridge of sandstone hills,
about ten miles long, rising suddenly out of an alluvial plain and
running north-east and south-west. The population is now very small,
and composed chiefly of Brahmans, who are supported by the endowments
of these tombs, and the contributions of a few pilgrims. All our
Hindoo followers were much gratified as we happened to arrive on a
day of peculiar sanctity; and they were enabled to bathe and perform
their devotions to the different shrines with the prospect of great
advantage. This range of hills is believed by Hindoos to be part of a
fragment of the Himalaya mountains which Hanuman, the monkey general
of Rama, the sixth incarnation of Vishnu, was taking down to aid his
master in the formation of his bridge from the continent to the
island of Ceylon, when engaged in the war with the demon king of that
island for the recovery of his wife Sita. He made a false step by
some accident in passing Govardhan, and this small bit of his load
fell off. The rocks begged either to be taken on to the god Rama, or
back to their old place; but Hanuman was hard pressed for time, and
told them not to be uneasy, as they would have a comfortable resting-
place, and be worshipped by millions in future ages--thus, according
to popular belief, foretelling that it would become the residence of
a future incarnation, and the scene of Krishna's miracles. The range
was then about twenty miles long, ten having since disappeared under
the ground. It was of full length during Krishna's days; and, on one
occasion, he took up the whole upon his little finger to defend his
favourite town and its milkmaids from the wrath of Indra, who got
angry with the people, and poured down upon them a shower of burning
ashes.

As I rode along this range, which rises gently from the plains at
both ends and abruptly from the sides, with my groom by my side, I
asked him what made Hanuman drop all his burthen here.

'_All_ his burthen!' exclaimed he with a smile; 'had it been all,
would it not have been an immense mountain, with all its towns and
villages? while this is but an insignificant belt of rock. A mountain
upon the back of men of former days, sir, was no more than a bundle
of grass upon the back of one of your grass-cutters in the present
day.'

Nathu, whose mind had been full of the wonders of this place from
his infancy, happened to be with us, and he now chimed in.

'It was night when Hanuman passed this place, and the lamps were seen
burning in a hundred towns upon the mountain he had upon his back--
the people were all at their usual occupations, quite undisturbed;
this is a mere fragment of his great burthen.'

'And how was it that the men of those towns should have been so much
smaller than the men who carried them?' 'God only knew; but the fact
of the men of the plains having been so large was undisputed--their
beards were as many miles long as those of the present day are
inches. Did not Bhim throw the forty-cubit stone pillar, that now
stands at Eran,[3] a distance of thirty miles, after the man who was
running away with his cattle?'

I thought of poor Father Gregory at Agra, and the heavy sigh he gave
when asked by Godby what progress he was making among the people in
the way of conversion.[4] The faith of these people is certainly
larger than all the mustard-seeds in the world.

I told a very opulent and respectable Hindoo banker one day that it
seemed to us very strange that Vishnu should come upon the earth
merely to sport with milkmaids, and to hold up an umbrella, however
large, to defend them from a shower. 'The earth, sir,' said he, 'was
at that time infested with innumerable demons and giants, who
swallowed up men and women as bears swallow white ants; and his
highness, Krishna, came down to destroy them. His own mother's
brother, Kans, who then reigned at Mathura over Govardhan, was one of
these horrible demons. Hearing that his sister would give birth to a
son that was to destroy him, he put to death several of her progeny
as soon as they were born.[5] When Krishna was seven days old, he
sent a nurse, with poison on her nipple, to destroy him likewise; but
his highness gave such a pull at it, that the nurse dropped down
dead. In falling, she resumed her real shape of a she-demon, and her
body covered no less than six square miles, and it took several
thousand men to cut her up and burn her, to prevent the pestilence
that must have followed. His uncle then sent a crane, which caught up
his highness, who always looked very small for his age, and swallowed
him as he would swallow a frog. But his highness kicked up such a
rumpus in the bird's stomach that he was immediately thrown up again.
When he was seven years old his uncle invited him to a feast, and got
the largest and most ferocious elephant in India to tread him to
death as he alighted at the door. His highness, though then not
higher than my waist, took the enormous beast by one tusk, and, after
whirling him round in the air with one hand half a dozen times, he
dashed him on the ground and killed him.[6] Unable any longer to
stand the wickedness of his uncle, he seized him by the beard,
dragged him from his throne, and dashed him to the ground in the same
manner.'

I thought of poor old Father Gregory and the mustard-seeds again, and
told my rich old friend that it all appeared to us indeed passing
strange.

The orthodox belief among the Muhammadans is that Moses was sixty
yards high; that he carried a mace sixty yards long; and that he
sprang sixty yards from the ground when he aimed the fatal blow at
the giant Uj, the son of Anak, who came from the land of Canaan, with
a mountain on his back, to crush the army of Israelites. Still, the
head of his mace could reach only to the ankle-bone of the giant.
This was broken with the blow. The giant fell, and was crushed under
the weight of his own mountain. Now a person whose ankle-bone was one
hundred and eighty yards high must have been almost as prodigious as
he who carried the fragment of the Himalaya upon his back; and he who
believes in the one cannot fairly find fault with his neighbour for
believing in the other.[7] I was one day talking with a very sensible
and respectable Hindoo gentleman of Bundelkhand about the accident
which made Hanuman drop this fragment of his load at Govardhan. 'All
doubts upon that point,' said the old gentleman, 'have been put at
rest by holy writ. It is related in our scriptures.

'Bharat, the brother of Rama, was left regent of the kingdom of
Ajodhya,[8] during his absence at the conquest of Ceylon. He happened
at night to see Hanuman passing with the mountain upon his back, and
thinking he might be one of the king of Ceylon's demons about
mischief, he let fly one of his blunt arrows at him. It hit him on
the leg, and he fell, mountain and all, to the ground. As he fell, he
called out in his agony, 'Ram, Ram', from which Bharat discovered his
mistake. He went up, raised him in his arms, and with his kind
attentions restored him to his senses. Learning from him the object
of his journey, and fearing that his wounded brother Lachhman would
die before he could get to Ceylon with the requisite remedy, he
offered to send Hanuman on upon the barb of one of his arrows,
mountain and all. To try him Hanuman took up his mountain and seated
himself with it upon the barb of the arrow as desired. Bharat placed
the arrow to the string of his bow, and drawing it till the barb
touched the bow, asked Hanuman whether he was ready. 'Quite ready,'
said Hanuman, 'but I am now satisfied that you really are the brother
of our prince, and regent of his kingdom, which was all I desired.
Pray let me descend; and be sure that I shall be at Ceylon in time to
save your wounded brother.' He got off, knelt down, placed his
forehead on Bharat's feet in submission, resumed his load, and was at
Ceylon by the time the day broke next morning, leaving behind him the
small and insignificant fragment, on which the town and temples of
Govardhan now stand.

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