Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman

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4. The new road passes through the Katra Pass. The pass via Dibhor
and Haliya, which the author calls the Hiliya Pass, is properly
called the Kerahi (Kerai) Pass. Both old and new roads are now little
used. The construction of railways has altogether changed the course
of trade, and Cawnpore has risen on the ruins of Mirzapur. Lalu,
Nayak's 'grandson, died in comparative obscurity some years ago, and
only a few female relatives remain to represent the family--a
striking example, if one were needed, of the instability of Oriental
fortunes.' (_A.S.R._, vol. xxi, p. 124, quoting _Gazetteer_.)

5. Within a few miles of Gosalpur, at the village of Talwa, which
stands upon the old high road leading to Mirzapore, is a still more
magnificent tank with one of the most beautiful temples in India, all
executed two or three generations ago at the expense of two or three
lakhs of rupees for the benefit of the public, by a very worthy man,
who became rich in the service of the former Government. His
descendants, all save one, now follow the plough; and that one has a
small rent-free village held on condition of appropriating the rents
to the repair of the tank. [W. H. S.]

The name Talwa is only the rustic way of pronouncing 'tal', meaning
the tank. Gosalpur is nineteen miles north-east of Jabalpur. Two or
three lakhs of rupees were then (in eighteenth century) worth about
22,000 pounds to 33,000 pounds sterling.

6. India, except on the frontiers, has been at peace since 1858, and
much revenue has been spent on the duties of peace, but the power of
combination for public objects has developed among the people to a
less degree than the author seems to have expected, though some
development undoubtedly has taken place.

7. In the original edition these statistics are given in words.
Figures have been used in this edition as being more readily grasped.
The _Central Provinces Gazetteer_ (1870) gives the following figures:
Area of district, 4,261 square miles; population, 620,201; villages,
2,707; wells in use, 5,515. The _Gazetteer_ figures apparently
include wells of all kinds, and do not reckon hamlets separately.
Wells are, of course, an absolute necessity, and their construction
could not be avoided in a country occupied by a fixed population. The
number of temples and mosques was very small for so large a
population. Many of the tanks, too, are indispensably necessary for
watering the cattle employed in agriculture. The 'baolis' may fairly
be reckoned as the fruit of the public spirit of individuals. This
chapter is a reprint of a paper entitled 'On the Public Spirit of the
Hindoos'. _See_ Bibliography, _ante_, No. 10.

8. The _C.P. Gazetteer_ (1870) states that in 1868-9 the land-revenue
was R5,70,434, as compared with R500,000 in the author's time. It has
since been largely enhanced. The lessees (zamindars) have now become
proprietors, and the land-revenue, according to the rule in force for
many years past, should not exceed half the estimated profit rental.
The early settlements were made in accordance with the theory of
native Governments that the land is the property of the State, and
that the lessees are entitled only to subsistence, with a small
percentage as payment for the trouble of collection from the actual
cultivators. The author's estimate gives the zamindars only 15/80ths,
or 3/16ths of the profit rental.

9. The people of the Jubbulpore district must have been very
different from those of the rest of India if they planted their
groves solely for the public benefit. The editor has never known the
fruit, not to mention the timber and firewood, of a grove to be
available for the use of the general public. Universal custom allows
all comers to use the shade of any established grove, but the fruit
is always jealousy guarded and gathered by the owners. Even one tree
is often the property of many sharing, and disputes about the
division of mangoes and other fruits are extremely frequent. The
framing of a correct record of rights in trees is one of the most
embarrassing tasks of a revenue officer.

10. Under the modern System it often happens that the land belongs to
one party, and the trees to another. Disputes, of course, occur, but,
as a rule, the rights of the owner of the trees are not interfered
with by the owner of the land. In thousands of such cases both
parties exercise their rights without friction.

11. This sentence shows clearly how remote from the author's mind was
the idea of private property in land in India. Government has long
since parted with the power of giving grants such as the author
recommends. The upper Doab districts of Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, and
Saharanpur now have plenty of groves.

12. The cost of establishing a grove varies much according to
circumstances, of which the distance of water from the surface is the
most important. Where water is distant, the cost of constructing and
working a well is very high. Where water is near, these items of
expense are small, because the roots of the trees soon reach a moist
stratum, and can dispense with irrigation.

13. The author, in his appreciation of the value of arboriculture and
forest conservancy, was far in advance of his Anglo-Indian
contemporaries. A modern meteorologist might object to some of his
phraseology, but the substance of his remarks is quite sound. His
statement of the ways in which trees benefit climate is incomplete.
One important function performed by the roots of trees is the raising
of water from the depths below the surface, to be dispersed by the
leaves in the form of vapour. Trees act beneficially in many other
ways also, which it would be tedious to specify.

The Indian Government long remained blind to the importance of the
duty of saving the country from denudation. The first forest
conservancy establishments were organized in 1852 for Madras and
Burma, and, by Act vii of 1865, the Forest Department was established
on a legal basis. Its operations have since been largely extended,
and trained foresters are now sent out each year to India. The
Department at the present time controls many thousand square miles of
forest. The reader may consult the article 'Forests' in Balfour,
_Cyclopaedia_, 3rd ed., and sundry official reports for further
details.

A yearly grant for arboriculture is now made to every district.
Thousands of miles of roads have been lined with trees, and
multitudes of groves have been established by both Government and
private individuals. The author was himself a great tree-planter. In
a letter dated 15th December, 1844, he describes the avenue which he
had planted along the road from Maihar to Jubbulpore in 1829 and
1830, and another, eighty-six miles long, from Jhansi Ghat on the
Nerbudda to Chaka. The trees planted were banyan, pipal, mango,
tamarind, and jaman (_Eugenia jambolana_). He remarks that these
trees will last for centuries.

14. 'In 1899-1900 Malwa suffered from a severe famine, such as had
not visited this favoured spot for more than thirty years. The people
were unused to, and quite unprepared for, this calamity, the distress
being aggravated by the great influx of immigrants from Rajputana,
who had hitherto always been sure of relief in this region, of which
the fertility is proverbial. In 1903 a new calamity appeared in the
shape of plague, which has seriously reduced the agricultural
population in some districts' (_I.G._, 1908, xvii. 105).

CHAPTER 63

Cities and Towns, formed by Public Establishments, disappear as
Sovereigns and Governors change their Abodes.

On the 17th and 18th,[1] we went on twenty miles to Palwal,[2] which
stands upon an immense mound, in some places a hundred feet high,
formed entirely of the debris of old buildings. There are an immense
number of fine brick buildings in ruins, but not one of brick or
stone at present inhabited. The place was once evidently under the
former government the seat of some great public establishments,
which, with their followers and dependants, constituted almost the
entire population. The occasion which keeps such establishments at a
place no sooner passes away than the place is deserted and goes to
ruin as a matter of course. Such is the history of Nineveh,
Babylon,[3] and all cities which have owed their origin and support
entirely to the public establishments of the sovereign--any
revolution that changed the seat of government depopulated a city.

Sir Thomas Roe, the ambassador of James the First of England to the
court of Delhi during the reign of Jahangir, passing through some of
the old capital cities of Western India, then deserted and in ruins,
writes to the Archbishop of Canterbury: 'I know not by what policy
the Emperors seek the ruin of all the ancient cities which were nobly
built, but now be desolate and in rubbish. It must arise from a wish
to destroy all the ancient cities in order that there might appear
nothing great to have existed before their time.'[4] But these
cities, like all which are supported in the same manner, by the
residence of a court and its establishments, become deserted as the
seat of dominion is changed. Nineveh, built by Ninus out of the
spoils he brought back from the wide range of his conquests,
continued to be the residence of the court and the principal seat of
its military establishments for thirteen centuries to the reign of
Sardanapalus. During the whole of this time it was the practice of
the sovereigns to collect from all the provinces of the empire their
respective quotas of troops, and to canton them within the city for
one year, at the expiration of which they were relieved by fresh
troops.' In the last years of Sardanapalus, four provinces of the
empire, Media, Persia, Babylonia, and Arabia, are said to have
furnished a quota of four hundred thousand; and, in the rebellion
which closed his reign, these troops were often beaten by those from
the other provinces of the empire, which could not have been much
less in number. The successful rebel, Arbaces, transferred the court
and his own appendages to its capital, and Nineveh became deserted,
and for more than eighteen centuries lost to the civilized world.[5]

Babylon in the same manner; and Susa, Ecbatana, Persepolis, and
Seleucia, all, one after the other, became deserted as sovereigns
changed their residence, and with it the seats of their public
establishments, which alone supported them. Thus Thebes became
deserted for Memphis, Memphis for Alexandria, and Alexandria for
Cairo, as the sovereigns of Egypt changed theirs; and thus it has
always been in India, where cities have been almost all founded on
the same bases--the residence of princes, and their public
establishments, civil, military, or ecclesiastical.

The city of Kanauj, on the Ganges, when conquered by Mahmud of
Ghazni,[6] is stated by the historians of the conqueror to have
contained a standing army of five hundred thousand infantry, with a
due proportion of cavalry and elephants, thirty thousand shops for
the sale of 'pan' alone, and sixty thousand families of opera
girls.[7] The 'pan' dealers and opera girls were part and parcel of
the court and its public establishments, and as much dependent on the
residence of the sovereign as the civil, military, and ecclesiastical
officers who ate their 'pan', and enjoyed their dancing and music;
and this great city no sooner ceased to be the residence of the
sovereign, the great proprietor of all the lands in the country, than
it became deserted.

After the establishment of the Muhammadan dominion in India almost
all the Hindoo cities, within the wide range of their conquest,
became deserted as the necessary consequence, as the military
establishments were all destroyed or disbanded, and the religions
establishments scattered, their lands confiscated, their idols
broken, and their temples either reduced to ruins in the first
ebullition of fanatical zeal, or left deserted and neglected to decay
from want of those revenues by which alone they had been, or could
be, supported.[8] The towns and cities of the Roman empire which owed
their origin to the same cause, the residence of governors and their
legions or other public establishments, resisted similar shocks with
more endurance, because they had most of them ceased to depend upon
the causes in which they originated, and began to rest upon other
bases. When destroyed by wave after wave of barbarian conquest, they
were restored for the most part by the residence of church
dignitaries and their establishments; and the military establishments
of the new order of things, instead of remaining as standing armies
about the courts of princes, dispersed after every campaign like
militia, to enjoy the fruits of the lands assigned for their
maintenance, when alone they could be enjoyed in the rude state to
which society had been reduced--upon the lands themselves.

For some time after the Muhammadan conquest of India, that part of it
which was brought effectually under the new dominion can hardly be
considered to have had more than one city with its dependent towns
and villages;[9] because the emperor chose to concentrate the greater
part of his military establishments around the seat of his residence,
and this great city became deserted whenever he thought it necessary
or convenient to change that seat.

But when the emperor began to govern his distant provinces by
viceroys, he was obliged to confide to them a share of his military
establishments, the only public establishments which a conqueror
thought it worth while to maintain; and while they moved about in
their respective provinces, the imperial camp became fixed. The great
officers of state, enriched by the plunder of conquered provinces,
began to spend their wealth in the construction of magnificent works
for private pleasure or public convenience. In time, the viceroys
began to govern their provinces by means of deputies, who moved about
their respective districts, and enabled their masters, the viceroys
of provinces, to convert their camps into cities, which in
magnificence often rivalled that of the emperor their master. The
deputies themselves in time found that they could govern their
respective districts from a central point; and as their camps became
fixed in the chosen spots, towns of considerable magnitude rose, and
sometimes rivalled the capitals of the viceroys. The Muhammadans had
always a greater taste for architectural magnificence, as well in
their private as in their public edifices, than the Hindoos,[10] who
sought the respect and good wishes of mankind through the medium of
groves and reservoirs diffused over the country for their benefit.
Whenever a Muhammadan camp was converted into a town or city almost
all the means of individuals were spent in the gratification of this
taste. Their wealth in money and movables would be, on their death,
at the mercy of their prince--their offices would be conferred on
strangers; tombs and temples, canals, bridges, and caravanserais,
gratuitously for the public good, would tend to propitiate the Deity,
and conciliate the goodwill of mankind, and might also tend to the
advancement of their children in the service of their sovereign. The
towns and cities which rose upon the sites of the standing camps of
the governors of provinces and districts in India were many of them
as much adorned by private and public edifices as those which rose
upon the standing camps of the Muhammadan conquerors of Spain.[11]
Standing camps converted into towns and cities, it became in time
necessary to fortify with walls against any surprise under any sudden
ebullition among the conquered people; and fortifications and strong
garrisons often suggested to the bold and ambitions governors of
distant provinces attempts to shake off the imperial yoke.[12] That
portion of the annual revenue, which had hitherto flowed in copious
streams of tribute to the imperial capital, was now arrested, and
made to augment the local establishments, adorn the cities, and
enrich the towns of the viceroys, now become the sovereigns of
independent kingdoms. The lieutenant-governors of these new
sovereigns, possessed of fortified towns, in their turn often shook
off the yoke of their masters in the same manner, and became in their
turn the independent sovereigns of their respective districts. The
whole resources of the countries subject to their rule being employed
to strengthen and improve their condition, they soon became rich and
powerful kingdoms, adorned with splendid cities and populous towns,
since the public establishments of the sovereigns, among whom all the
revenues were expended, spent all they received in the purchase of
the produce of the land and labour of the surrounding country, which
required no other market.

Thus the successful rebellion of one viceroy converted Southern India
into an independent kingdom; and the successful rebellion, of his
lieutenant-governors in time divided it into four independent
kingdoms, each with a standing army of a hundred thousand men, and
adorned with towns and cities of great strength and magnificence.[13]
But they continued to depend upon the causes in which they
originated--the public establishments of the sovereign; and when the
Emperor Akbar and his successors, aided by their own [_sic_]
intestine wars, had conquered these sovereigns, and again reduced
their kingdoms to tributary provinces, almost all these cities and
towns became depopulated as the necessary consequence. The public
establishments were again moving about with the courts and camps of
the emperor and his viceroys; and drawing in their train all those
who found employment and subsistence in contributing to their
efficiency and enjoyment. It was not, as our ambassador in the
simplicity of his heart supposed, the disinclination of the emperors
to see any other towns magnificent, save those in which they resided,
which destroyed them, but their ambition to reduce all independent
kingdoms to tributary provinces.

Notes:

1. January, 1836.

2. A small town, thirty-six miles south of Delhi, situated in the
Gurgaon district, now included in the Panjab, but in the author's
time attached to the North-Western Provinces. The town is the chief
place in the 'pargana' of the same name.

3. Nineveh is not a well-chosen example, inasmuch as its decay was
due to deliberate destruction, and not to mere desertion by a
sovereign. It was deliberately burned and ruined by Nabopolassar,
viceroy of Babylon, and his allies, about 606 B.C. The decay of
Babylon was gradual. See note _post_, note 5.

4. Extract from a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, dated from
Ajmer, January 29, 1616. The words immediately following 'rubbish'
are 'His own [i.e. the King's] houses are of stone, handsome and
uniform. His great men build not, for want of inheritance; but, as
far as I have yet seen, live in tents, or in houses worse than our
cottages. Yet, when the King likes, as at Agra, because it is a city
erected by him, the buildings, as is reported, are fair and of carved
stone.' (Pinkerton's _Collection_, vol. viii, p. 45.) The passage is
not reprinted in the Hakluyt Society edition (vol. i, p. 122), where
only extracts from the letter are given.

5. The site of Nineveh was forgotten for a period even longer than
that stated by the author. Mr. Claudius Rich, the Resident at
Baghdad, was the first European to make a tentative identification of
Nineveh with the mounds opposite Mosal, in 1818. Real knowledge of
the site and its history dates from the excavations of Botta begun in
1843, and those of Layard begun two years later. (Bonomi, _Nineveh
and its Palaces_, 2nd ed., 1853; Layard, _Nineveh and its Remains_, 2
vols, 1849.) The author's account of the fall of Nineveh, based on
that of Diodorus Siculus, is not in accordance with the conclusions
of the best modern authorities. The destruction of the city in or
about 606 B.C. was really effected some years after the death of
Sardanapalus (Assur-banipal), in 625 B.C., by Nabopolassar (Nabupal-
uzur), the rebel viceroy of Babylon, in alliance with Necho of Egypt,
Cyaxares of Media, and the King of Armenia. The Assyrian monarch who
perished in the assault was not Sardanapalus (Assur-banipal), but his
son Assur-ebel-ili, or, according to Professor Sayce, a king called
Saracus, After the destruction of Nineveh, Babylon became the capital
of the Mesopotamian empire, and under Nebuchadrezzar
(Nebuchadnezzar), son of Nabopolassar, who came to the throne in 604
B.C., attained the height of glory and renown. It was occupied by
Cyrus in 539 B.C., and decayed gradually, but was still a place of
importance in the time of Alexander the Great. The eponymous hero,
Ninus, is of course purely mythical. The results of modern research
will be found in the _Encycl. Brit._, 11th ed., 1910, in the articles
'Babylon' (Sayce), 'Babylonia and Assyria' (Sayce and Jastrow), and
'Nineveh' (Johns). See also, ibid., 'Cyrus' (Meyer).

6. Kanauj, now in the Farrukhabad district of the United Provinces,
was sacked by Mahmud of Ghazni in January, A.D. 1019. The name of
Mahmud's capital may be spelled Ghaznih, Ghazni, or Ghaznin.
(Raverty, in _J.A.S.B._, Part I, vol. lxi (1892), p. 156, note.)

7. 'Pan', the well-known Indian condiment (_ante_, chapter 29, note
10). 'Opera girls' is a rather whimsical rendering of the more usual
phrase 'nach (nautch) girls', or 'dancing girls'. The traditional
numbers cited must not be accepted as historical facts. See V. A.
Smith, 'The History of the City of Kanauj' (_J.R.A.S._, 1908, pp.
767-93).

8. This statement is too general. Benares, Allahabad (Prayag), and
many other important Hindoo cities, were never deserted, and
continued to be populous through all vicissitudes. It is true that in
most places the principal temples were desecrated or destroyed, and
were frequently converted into mosques.

9. The statement is much exaggerated. The Hindoo Rajas who paid
tribute to the Sultans of Delhi often maintained considerable courts
in populous towns.

10. This proposition, which is not true of Southern India at all,
applies only to secular buildings in Northern India. The temples of
Khajuraho, Mount Abu, and numberless other places, equal in
magnificence the architecture of the Muhammadans, or, indeed, that of
any people in the world.

11. The anthor's remarks seem likely to convey wrong notions. Very
few of the capitals of the Muhammadan viceroys and governors were new
foundations. Nearly all of them were ancient Hindoo towns adopted as
convenient official residences, and enlarged and beautified by the
new rulers, much of the old beauties being at the same time
destroyed. Fyzabad certainly was a new foundation of the Nawab Wazirs
of Oudh, but it lies so close to the extremely ancient city of
Ajodhya that it should rather be regarded as a Muhammadan extension
of that city. Lucknow occupies the site of a Hindoo city of great
antiquity.

12. It would be difficult to point out an example of a _Muhammadan_
standing camp which was first converted into an open, and then into a
fortified town.

13. This abstract of the history of the Deccan, or Southern India, is
not quite accurate. The Emperor, or Sultan, Muhammad bin Tughlak,
after A.D. 1325, reduced the Deccan to a certain extent to
submission, but the country revolted in A.D. 1347, when Hasan Gango
founded the Bahmani dynasty of Gulbarga, afterwards known as that of
Bidar. At the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth
century, the kingdom so founded broke up into five, not four,
separate states, namely, Bijapur, Ahmadnagar, Golconda, Berar, and
Bidar. The Berar state had a separate existence for about eighty-five
years, and then became merged in the kingdom of Ahmadnagar.

CHAPTER 64

Murder of Mr. Fraser, and Execution of the Nawab Shams-ud-din.

At Palwal Mr. Wilmot and Mr. Wright, who had come on business, and
Mr. Gubbins, breakfasted and dined with us. They complained sadly of
the solitude to which they were condemned, but admitted that they
should not be able to get through half so much business were they
placed at a large station, and exposed to all the temptations and
distractions of a gay and extensive circle, nor feel the same
interest in their duties, or sympathy with the people, as they do
when thrown among them in this manner. To give young men good
feelings towards the natives, the only good way is to throw them
among them at those out-stations in the early part of their career,
when all their feelings are fresh about them. This holds good as well
with the military as the civil officer, but more especially with the
latter. A young officer at an outpost with his corps, or part of it,
for the first season or two, commonly lays in a store of good feeling
towards his men that lasts him for life; and a young gentleman of the
Civil Service lays in, in the same manner, a good store of sympathy
and fellow feeling with the natives in general.[1]

Mr. Gubbins is the Magistrate and Collector of one of the three
districts into which the Delhi territories are divided, and he has
charge of Firozpur, the resumed estate of the late Nawab Shams-ud-
din, which yields a net revenue of about two hundred thousand rupees
a year.[2] I have already stated that this Nawab took good care that
his Mewati plunderers should not rob within his own estate; but he
not only gave them free permission to rob over the surrounding
districts of our territory, but encouraged them to do so, that he
might share in their booty.[3] He was a handsome young man, and an
extremely agreeable companion; but a most unprincipled and licentious
character. No man who was reputed to have a handsome wife or daughter
was for a moment safe within his territories. The following account
of Mr. William Fraser's assassination by this Nawab may, I think, be
relied upon.[4]