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Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman

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9. _Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, from
Calcutta to Bombay, 1834-5, and a Journey to the Southern Provinces
in 1826_ (2nd edition, 3 vols. 8vo, London, 1828.)

10. The bees at the Marble Rocks are the _Apis dorsata_. An
Englishman named Biddington, when trying to escape from them, was
drowned, and they stung to death one of Captain Forsyth's baggage
ponies (Balfour, _Cyclopaedia of India,_ 3rd ed., 1885, s.v. Bee').

11. The vast epic poem, or collection of poems known as the
Mahabharata, consists of over 100,000 Sanskrit verses. The main
subject is the war between the five Pandavas, or sons of Pandu, and
their cousins the Kauravas, sons of Dhritarashtra. Many poems of
various origins and dates are interwoven with the main work. The best
known of the episodes is that of _Nala and Damayanti,_ which was well
translated by Dean Milman, See Macdonell, _A History of Sanskrit
Literature_ (Heinemann, 1900).

12. The five Pandava brothers were Yudhishthira, Bhimia, Arjuna,
Nakula, and Sahadeva, the children of Pandu, by his wives Kunti, or
Pritha, and Madri.

13. 'The Narbada has its special admirers, who exalt it oven above
the Ganges, . . . The sanctity of the Ganges will, they say, cease in
1895, whereas that of the Narbada will continue for ever' (Monier
Williams, _Religious Thought and Life in India,_ London, 1883, p.
348), See _post,_ Chapter 27.

14. Sleeman wrote 'Py-Khan', a corrupt spelling of pakhan, the
Sanskrit pashana or pasana, 'a stone'. The compound pashana-murti is
commonly used in the sense of 'stone image'. The sibilant _sh_ or _s_
usually is pronounced as _kh_ in Northern India (Grierson,
_J.R.A.S.,_ 1903, p. 363).

15. Sarasvati, consort of Brahma; Devi (Parvati, Durga, &c.), consort
of Siva; and Lakshmi, consort of Vishnu. All Hindoo deities have many
names.

16. The author's explanation is partly erroneous. The temple, which
is a very remarkable one, is dedicated to the sixty-four Joginis.
Only five temples in India are known to be dedicated to these demons.
For details see Cunningham, _A.S.R.,_ vol. ix, pp. 61-74, pl. xii-
xvi; vol. ii, p. 416; and vol. xxi, p. 57. The word _vahana_ means
'vehicle'. Each deity has his peculiar vehicle.

17. The heaven of Siva, as distinguished from Vaikuntha, the heaven
of Vishnu. It is supposed to be somewhere in the Himalaya mountains.
The wonderful excavated rock temple at Ellora is believed to be a
model of Kailas.

18. This 'notion' of the author's is not likely to find acceptance at
the present day.




CHAPTER 2


Hindoo System of Religion.

The Hindoo system is this. A great divine spirit or essence,
'Brahma', pervades the whole universe; and the soul of every human
being is a drop from this great ocean, to which, when it becomes
perfectly purified, it is reunited. The reunion is the eternal
beatitude to which all look forward with hope; and the soul of the
Brahman is nearest to it. If he has been a good man, his soul becomes
absorbed in the 'Brahma'; and, if a bad man, it goes to 'Narak',
hell; and after the expiration of its period there of _limited
imprisonment_, it returns to earth, and occupies the body of some
other animal. It again advances by degrees to the body of the
Brahman; and thence, when fitted for it, into the great 'Brahma'.[1]

From this great eternal essence emanate Brahma, the Creator, whose
consort is Sarasvati;[2] Vishnu, the Preserver, whose consort is
Lakshmi; and Siva, _alias_ Mahadeo, the Destroyer, whose consort is
Parvati. According to popular belief Jamraj (Yamaraja) is the
judicial deity who has been appointed by the greater powers to pass
the final judgement on the tenor of men's lives, according to
proceedings drawn up by his secretary Chitragupta. If men's actions
have been good, their souls are, as the next stage, advanced a step
towards the great essence, Brahma; and, if bad, they are thrown back,
and obliged to occupy the bodies of brutes or of people of inferior
caste, as the balance against them may be great or small. There is an
intermediate stage, a 'Narak', or hell, for bad men, and a
'Baikunth', or paradise, for the good, in which they find their
felicity in serving that god of the three to which they have
specially devoted themselves while on earth. But from this stage,
after the period of their sentence is expired, men go back to their
pilgrimage on earth again.

There are numerous Deos (Devas), or good spirits, of whom Indra is
the chief; [3] and Daityas, or bad spirits; and there have also been
a great number of incarnations from the three great gods, and their
consorts, who have made their appearance upon the earth when required
for particular purposes. All these incarnations are called 'Avatars',
or descents. Vishnu has been eleven times on the globe in different
shapes, and Siva seven times.[4] The avatars of Vishnu are celebrated
in many popular poems, such as the Ramayana, or history of the Rape
of Sita, the wife of Rama, the seventh incarnation;[5] the
Mahabharata, and the Bhagavata [Purana], which describe the wars and
amours of this god in his last human shape.[6] All these books are
believed to have been written either by the hand or by the
inspiration of the god himself thousands of years before the events
they describe actually took place. 'It was', they say, 'as easy for
the deity to write or dictate a battle, an amour, or any other
important event ten thousand years before as the day after it took
place'; and I believe nine-tenths, perhaps ninety-nine in a hundred,
of the Hindoo population believe implicitly that these accounts were
also written. It is now pretty clear that all these works are of
comparatively recent date, that the great poem of the Mahabharata
could not have been written before the year 786 of the Christian era,
and was probably written so late as A.D. 1157; that Krishna, _if born
at all_, must have been born on the 7th of August, A.D. 600, but was
most likely a mere creation of the imagination to serve the purpose
of the Brahmans of Ujain, in whom the fiction originated; that the
other incarnations were invented about the same time, and for the
same object, though the other persons described as incarnations were
real princes, Parasu Rama, before Christ 1176, and Rama, born before
Christ 961. In the Mahabharata Krishna is described as fighting in
the same army with Yudhishthira and his four brothers. Yudhishthira
was a real person, who ascended the throne at Delhi 575 B.C., or 1175
years before the birth of Krishna.[7] Bentley supposes that the
incarnations, particularly that of Krishna, were invented by the
Brahmans of Ujain with a view to check the progress of Christianity
in that part of the world (see his historical view of the Hindoo
astronomy). That we find in no history any account of the alarming
progress of Christianity about the time these fables were written is
no proof that Bentley was wrong.[8]

When Monsieur Thevenot was at Agra [in] 1666, the Christian
population was roughly estimated at twenty-five thousand families.
They had all passed away before it became one of our civil and
military stations in the beginning of the present century, and we
might search history in vain for any mention of them (see his
_Travels in India_, Part III). One single prince, well disposed to
give Christians encouragement and employment, might, in a few years,
get the same number around his capital; and it is probable that the
early Christians in India occasionally found such princes, and gave
just cause of alarm to the Brahman priests, who were then in the
infancy of their despotic power.[9]

During the war with Nepal, in 1814 and 1815,[10] the division with
which I served came upon an extremely interesting colony of about two
thousand Christian families at Betiya in the Tirhut District, on the
borders of the Tarai forest. This colony had been created by one man,
the Bishop, a Venetian by birth, under the protection of a small
Hindoo prince, the Raja, of Betiya.[11] This holy man had been some
fifty years among these people, with little or no support from Europe
or from any other quarter. The only aid he got from the Raja was a
pledge that no member of his Church should be subject to the
_Purveyance system_, under which the people everywhere suffered so
much,[12] and this pledge the Raja, though a Hindoo, had never
suffered to be violated. There were men of all trades among them, and
they formed one very large street remarkable for the superior style
of its buildings and the sober industry of its inhabitants. The
masons, carpenters, and blacksmiths of this little colony were
working in our camp every day, while we remained in the vicinity, and
better workmen I have never seen in India; but they would all insist
upon going to divine service at the prescribed hours. They had built
a splendid _pucka_[13] dwelling-house for their bishop, and a still
more splendid church, and formed for him the finest garden I have
seen in India, surrounded with a good wall, and provided with
admirable pucka wells. The native Christian servants who attended at
the old bishop's table, taught by himself, spoke Latin to him; but he
was become very feeble, and spoke himself a mixture of Latin,
Italian, his native tongue, and Hindustani. We used to have him at
our messes, and take as much care of him as of an infant, for he was
become almost as frail as one. The joy and the excitement of being
once more among Europeans, and treated by them with so much reverence
in the midst of his flock, were perhaps too much for him, for he
sickened and died soon after.

The Raja died soon after him, and in all probability the flock has
disappeared. No Europeans except a few indigo planters of the
neighbourhood had ever before known or heard of this colony; and they
seemed to consider them only as a set of great scoundrels, who had
better carts and bullocks than anybody else in the country, which
they refused to let out at the same rate as the others, and which
they (the indigo lords) were not permitted to seize and employ at
discretion. Roman Catholics have a greater facility in making
converts in India than Protestants, from having so much more in their
form of worship to win the affections through the medium of the
imagination.[14]


Notes:

1. Men are occasionally exempted from the necessity of becoming a
Brahman first. Men of low caste, if they die at particular places,
where it is the interest of the Brahmans to invite rich men to die,
are promised absorption into the great 'Brahma' at once. Immense
numbers of wealthy men go every year from the most distant parts of
India to die at Benares, where they spend large sums of money among
the Brahmans. It is by their means that this, the second city in
India, is supported. [W. H. S.] Bombay is now the second city in
India, so far as population is concerned.

2. Brahma, with the short vowel, is the eternal Essence or Spirit;
Brahma, with the long vowel, is 'the primaeval male god, the first
personal product of the purely spiritual Brahma, when overspread by
Maya, or illusory creative force', according to the Vedanta system
(Monier Williams, _Religious Thought and Life in India_, p. 44).

3. Indra was originally, in the Vedas, the Rain-god. The statement in
the text refers to modern Hinduism.

4. The incarnations of Vishnu are ordinarily reckoned as ten, namely,
(1) Fish, (2) Tortoise, (3) Boar, (4) Man-lion, (5) Dwarf, (6) Rama
with the axe, (7) Rama Chandra, (8) Krishna, (9) Buddha, (10) Kalki,
or Kalkin, who is yet to come. I do not know any authority for eleven
incarnations of Vishnu. The number is stated in some Puranas as
twenty-two, twenty-four, or even twenty-eight. Seven incarnations of
Siva are not generally recognized (see Monier Williams, _Religious
Thought and Life in India_, pp. 78-86, and 107-16). For the theory
and mystical meaning of _avatars_, see Grierson, _J.R.A.S._, 1909,
pp. 621-44. The word avatar means 'descent', _scil_. of the Deity to
earth, and covers more than the term 'incarnation'.

5. Sita was an incarnation of Lakshmi. She became incarnate again,
many centuries afterwards, as the wife of Krishna, another
incarnation of Vishnu [W. H. S.]. Reckoning by centuries is, of
course, inapplicable to pure myth. The author believed in Bentley's
baseless chronology.

6. For the Mahabharata, see _ante_, note 11, Chapter 1. The Bhagavata
Purana is the most popular of the Puranas, The Hindi version of the
tenth book (_skandha_) is known as the 'Prem Sagar'. The date of the
composition of the Puranas is uncertain.

7. The dates given in this passage are purely imaginary. Parts of the
Mahabharata are very ancient. Yudhishthira is no more an historical
personage than Achilles or Romulus. It is improbable that a 'throne
of Delhi' existed in 575 B.C., and hardly anything is known about the
state of India at that date.

8. It is hardly necessary to observe that this grotesque theory is
utterly at variance with the facts, as now known.

9. The existing settlements of native Christians at Agra are mostly
of modern origin. Very ancient Christian communities exist near
Madras, and on the Malabar coast. The travels of Jean de Thevenot
were published in 1684, under the title of _Voyage, contenant la
Relation de l'Indostan_. The English version, by A. Lovell (London,
1687), is entitled _The Travels of Monsieur de Thevenot into the
Levant, in three Parts_. Part III deals with the East Indies, The
passage referred to is: 'Some affirm that there are twenty-five
thousand Christian Families in Agra, but all do not agree in that'
(Part III, p. 35). Thevonot's statement about the Christians of Agra
is further discussed post in Chapter 52.

10. The war with Nepal began in October, 1814, and was not concluded
till 1816. During its progress the British arms suffered several
reverses.

11. The Betiya (Bettiah of _I. G_., 1908) Raj is a great estate with
an area of 1,824 square miles in the northern part of the Champaran
District of Bihar, in the Province of Bihar and Orissa. A great
portion of the estate is held (1908) on permanent leases by European
indigo-planters.

12. For discussion of this system see post, Chapter 7.

13. 'Pucka' (_pakka_) here means 'masonry', as opposed to 'Kutcha'
(_kachcha_), meaning 'earthen'.

14. Native Christians, according to the census of 1872, number 1,214
persons, who are principally found in Bettia thana [police-circle].
There are two Missions, one at Bettia, and the other at the village
of Chuhari, both supported by the Roman Catholic Church. The former
was founded in 1746 by a certain Father Joseph, from Garingano in
Italy, who went to Bettia on the invitation of the Maharaja. The
present number of converts is about 1,000 persons. Being principally
descendants of Brahmans, they hold a fair social position; but some
of them are extremely poor. About one-fourth are carpenters, one-
tenth blacksmiths, one-tenth servants, the remainder carters. The
Chuhari Mission was founded in 1770 by three Catholic priests, who
had been expelled from Nepal [after the Gorkha conquest in 1768].
There are now 283 converts, mostly descendants of Nepalis. They are
all agriculturists, and very poor (Article 'Champaran District' in
_Statistical Account of Bengal_, 1877).

The statement in _I.G._ 1908, s.v. Bettiah, differs slightly, as
follows:

'A Roman Catholic Mission was established about 1740 by Father
Joseph Mary, an Italian missionary of the Capuchin Order, who was
passing near Bettiah on his way to Nepal, when he was summoned by
Raja Dhruva Shah to attend his daughter, who was dangerously ill. He
succeeded in curing her, and the grateful Raja invited him to stay at
Bettiah and gave him a house and ninety acres of land.' The Bettiah
Mission still exists and maintains the Catholic Mission Press, where
publications illustrating the history of the Capuchin Missions have
been printed. Father Felix, O.C., is at work on the subject.




CHAPTER 3


Legend of the Nerbudda River.

The legend is that the Nerbudda, which flows west into the Gulf of
Cambay, was wooed and won in the usual way by the Son river, which
rises from the same tableland of Amarkantak, and flows east into the
Ganges and Bay of Bengal.[1] All the previous ceremonies having been
performed, the Son [2] came with 'due pomp and circumstance' to fetch
his bride in the procession called the 'Barat', up to which time the
bride and bridegroom are supposed never to have seen each other,
unless perchance they have met in infancy. Her Majesty the Nerbudda
became exceedingly impatient to know what sort of a personage her
destinies were to be linked to, while his Majesty the Son advanced at
a slow and stately pace. At last the Queen sent Johila, the daughter
of the barber, to take a close view of him, and to return and make a
faithful and particular report of his person. His Majesty was
captivated with the little Johila, the barber's daughter, at first
sight; and she, 'nothing loath', yielded to his caresses. Some say
that she actually pretended to be Queen herself; and that his Majesty
was no further in fault than in mistaking the humble handmaid for her
noble mistress; but, be that as it may, her Majesty no sooner heard
of the good understanding between them, than she rushed forward, and
with one foot sent the Son rolling back to the east whence he came,
and with the other kicked little Johila sprawling after him; for,
said the high priest, who told us the story, 'You see what a towering
passion she was likely to have been in under such indignities from
the furious manner in which she cuts her way through the marble rocks
beneath us, and casts huge masses right and left as she goes along,
as if they were really so many coco-nuts'. 'And was she', asked I,
'to have flown eastward with him, or was he to have flown westward
with her?' 'She was to have accompanied him eastward', said the high
priest, 'but her Majesty, after this indignity, declared that she
would not go a single pace in the same direction with such wretches,
and would flow west, though all the other rivers in India might flow
east; and west she flows accordingly, a virgin queen.' I asked some
of the Hindoos about us why they called her 'Mother Nerbudda', if she
was really never married. 'Her Majesty', said they with great
respect, 'would really never consent to be married after the
indignity she suffered from her affianced bridegroom the Son; and we
call her Mother because she blesses us all, and we are anxious to
accost her by the name which we consider to be at once the most
respectful and endearing.'

Any Englishman can easily conceive a poet in his highest 'calenture
of the brain' addressing the ocean as 'a steed that knows his rider',
and patting the crested billow as his flowing mane; but he must come
to India to understand how every individual of a whole community of
many millions can address a fine river as a living being, a sovereign
princess, who hears and understands all they say, and exercises a
kind of local superintendence over their affairs, without a single
temple in which her image is worshipped, or a single priest to profit
by the delusion. As in the case of the Ganges, it is the river itself
to whom they address themselves, and not to any deity residing in it,
or presiding over it: the stream itself is the deity which fills
their imaginations, and receives their homage.

Among the Romans and ancient Persians rivers were propitiated by
sacrifices. When Vitellius crossed the Euphrates with the Roman
legions to put Tiridates on the throne of Armenia, they propitiated
the river according to the rites of their country by the
_suovetaurilia_, the sacrifice of the hog, the ram, and the bull.
Tiridates did the same by the sacrifice of a horse. Tacitus does not
mention the river _god_, but the river _itself_, as propitiated (see
[_Annals_,] book vi, chap. 37).[3] Plato makes Socrates condemn Homer
for making Achilles behave disrespectfully towards the river Xanthus,
though acknowledged to be a divinity, in offering to fight him,[4]
and towards the river Sperchius, another acknowledged god, in
presenting to the dead body of Patroclus the locks of his hair which
he had promised to that river.[5]

The Son river, which rises near the source of the Nerbudda on the
tableland of Amarkantak, takes a westerly course for some miles, and
then turns off suddenly to the east, and is joined by the little
stream of the Johila before it descends the great cascade; and hence
the poets have created this fiction, which the mass of the population
receive as divine revelation. The statue of little Johila, the
barber's daughter, in stone, stands in the temple of the goddess
Nerbudda at Amarkantak, bound in chains.[6] It may here be remarked
that the first overtures in India must always be made through the
medium of the barber, whether they be from the prince or the
peasant.[7] If a sovereign prince sends proposals to a sovereign
princess, they must be conveyed through the medium of the barber, or
they will never be considered as done in due form, as likely to prove
propitious. The prince will, of course, send some relation or high
functionary with him; but in all the credentials the barber must be
named as the principal functionary. Hence it was that Her Majesty was
supposed to have sent a barber's daughter to meet her husband.

The 'Mahatam' (greatness or holiness) of the Ganges is said, as I
have already stated, to be on the wane, and not likely to endure
sixty years longer; while that of the Nerbudda is on the increase,
and in sixty years is entirely to supersede the sanctity of her
sister. If the valley of the Nerbudda should continue for sixty years
longer under such a government as it has enjoyed since we took
possession of it in 1817,[8] it may become infinitely more rich, more
populous, and more beautiful than that of the Nile ever was; and, if
the Hindoos there continue, as I hope they will, to acquire wealth
and honour under a rule to which they are so much attached, the
prophecy may be realized in as far as the increase of honour paid to
the Nerbudda is concerned. But I know no ground to expect that the
reverence[9] paid to the Ganges will diminish, unless education and
the concentration of capital in manufactures should work an important
change in the religious feelings and opinions of the people along the
course of that river; although this, it must be admitted, is a
consummation which may be looked for more speedily on the banks of
the Ganges than on those of a stream like the Nerbudda, which is
neither navigable at present nor, in my opinion, capable of being
rendered so. Commerce and manufactures, and the concentration of
capital in the maintenance of the new communities employed in them,
will, I think, be the great media through which this change will be
chiefly effected; and they are always more likely to follow the
course of rivers that are navigable than that of rivers which are
not.[10]


Notes:

1. Amarkantak, formerly in the Sohagpur pargana of the Bilaspur
District of the Central Provinces, is situated on a high tableland,
and is a famous place of pilgrimage. The temples are described by
Beglar in _A.S.R._, vol. vii, pp. 227-34, pl. xx, xxi. The hill has
been transferred to the Riwa State (_Central Provinces Gazetteer_
(1870), and _I.G._ (1908), s.v. Amarkantak).

2. The name is misspelled Sohan in the author's text. The Son rises
at Son Munda, about twenty miles from Amarkantak (_A.S.R._, vol. vii,
236).

3. 'Sacrificantibus, cum hic more Romano suovetaurilia daret, ille
equum placando amni adornasset.'

4. [Greek text]--_Iliad_ xx, 73.

5. _Iliad_ xxiii. 140-153.

6. Mr. Crooke observes that the binding was intended to prevent the
object of worship from deserting her shrine or possibly doing
mischief elsewhere, and refers to his article, 'The Binding of a God,
a Study of the Basis of Idolatry', in _Folklore_, vol. viii (1897),
p.134. The name is spelt Johilla in _I.G._ (1908), s.v. Son River.

7. Monier Williams denies the barber's monopoly of match-making. 'In
some parts of Northern India the match-maker for some castes is the
family barber; but for the higher castes he is more generally a
Brahman, who goes about from one house to another till he discovers a
baby-girl of suitable rank' (_Religious Thought and Life in India_,
p. 377). So far as the editor knows, the barber is ordinarily
employed in Northern India.

8. During the operations against the Pindhari freebooters. Many
treaties were negotiated with the Peshwa and other native powers in
the years 1817 and 1818.

9. The word in the text is 'revenue'.

10. Concerning the prophecy that the sanctity of the Ganges will
cease in 1895, see note to Chapter 1, _ante_, [13]. The prophecy was
much talked of some years ago, but the reverence for the Ganges
continues undiminished, while the development of commerce and
manufactures has not affected, the religious feelings and opinions of
the people. Railways, in fact, facilitate pilgrimages and increase
their popularity. The course of commerce now follows the line of
rail, not the navigable rivers. The author, when writing this book,
evidently never contemplated the possibility of railway construction
in India. Later in life, in 1852, he fully appreciated the value of
the new means of communication (_Journey_, ii, 370, &c.).

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