Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman

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'And what is now your opinion, after a lapse of twenty years?'

'Why, that she had really been the wife of my brother; for at the
pile she prophesied that my nephew Duli should be, what his
grandfather had been, high in the service of the Government, and, as
you know, he soon after became so.'

'And what did your father think?'

'He was so satisfied that she had been the wife of his eldest son in
a former birth, that he defrayed all the expenses of her funeral
ceremonies, and had them all observed with as much magnificence as
those of any member of the family. Her tomb is still to be seen at
Khitoli, and that of my brother at Sihora.'

I went to look at these tombs with Bholi Sukul himself some short
time after this conversation, and found that all the people of the
town of Sihora and village of Khitoli really believed that the old
Lodhi woman had been his brother's wife in a former birth, and had
now burned herself as his widow for the fourth time. Her tomb is at
Khitoli, and his at Sihora.

Notes:

1. _Sati_, a virtuous woman, especially one who burns herself with
her husband. The word, in common usage, is transferred to the
sacrifice of the woman.

2. The women of Bundelkhand wear the same costume, a full loin-cloth,
as those of the Jubbulpore district. North of the Jumna an ordinary
petticoat is generally worn.

3. Suttee was prohibited during the administration of Lord William
Bentinck by the Bengal Regulation xvii, dated 4th December, 1829,
extended in 1830 to Madras and Bombay. The advocates of the practice
unsuccessfully appealed to the Privy Council. Several European
officers defended the custom. A well-written account of the suttee
legislation is given in Mr. D. Boulger's work on Lord William
Bentinck in the 'Rulers of India' series.

4. Whenever it is practicable, Hindoos are placed on the banks of
sacred rivers to die, especially in Bengal.

5. For explanation of this phrase, see the following story of the
Lodhi woman, following note [14], in this chapter. The name is
abnormal. _Upadhya_ is a Brahman title meaning 'spiritual preceptor'.
Brahmans serving in the army sometimes take the title Singh, which is
more properly assumed by Rajputs or Sikhs.

6. An instance of such a prophecy, of a favourable kind, will be
found at the end of this chapter; and another, disastrously
fulfilled, in Chapter 21, _post_.

7. Riwa (Rewah) is a considerable principality lying south of
Allahabad and Mirzapore and north of Sagar. The chiefs are Baghel
Rajputs. The proper title of the Udaipur, or Mewar, chief is Rana,
not Raja. See 'Annals of Mewar', chapters 1-18, pp. 173-401, in the
Popular Edition of Tod's _Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan_
(Routledge, 1914), an excellent and cheap reprint. The original
quarto edition is almost unobtainable.

8. The masculine form of the word sati (suttee).

9. Well known to tourists as the seat of the Maharaja of Benares.

10. 'of' in text.

11. In the author's time no regular census had been taken. His rough
estimate was excessive. The census figures, including the
cantonments, are: 1872, 175,188; 1901, 209,331; 1911, 203,804.

12. This Benares story, accidentally omitted from the author's text,
was printed as a note at the end of the second volume. It has now
been inserted in the place which seems most suitable. Interesting and
well-told narratives of several suttees will be found in Bernier,
_Travels in the Mogul Empire_, pp. 306-14, ed. Constable. See also
Dubois, _Hindu Manners_, &c., 3rd ed. (1906), chapter 19.

13. Widows are not always so well treated. Their life in Lower
Bengal, especially, is not a pleasant one,

14. Sihora, on the road from Jubbulpore to Mirzapur, twenty-seven
miles from the former, is a town with a population of more than
5,000. A smaller town with the same name exists in the Bhandara
district of the Central Provinces.

15. The monkey-god. His shrines are very numerous in the Central
Provinces and Bundelkhand.

16. Within the last hundred years more than one officer has believed
that infanticide had been suppressed by his efforts, and yet the
practice is by no means extinct. In the Agra Province the severely
inquisitorial measures adopted in 1870, and rigorously enforced, have
no doubt done much to break the custom, but, in the neighbouring
province of Oudh, the practice continued to be common for many years
later. A clear case in the Rai Bareli District came before me in
1889, though no one was punished, for lack of judicial proof against
any individual. The author discusses infanticide as practised in Oudh
in many passages of his _Journey through the Kingdom of Oudh_
(Bentley, 1858), It is possible that female infanticide may be still
prevalent in many Native States. Mr. Willoughby in the years
preceding A.D. 1849 made great progress in stamping it out among the
Jharejas of the Kathiawar States in the Bombay Presidency. There is
reason to hope that the crime will gradually disappear from all parts
of India, but it is difficult to say how far it still prevails,
though the general opinion is that it is now comparatively rare
(_Census Report, India_, 1911, p. 217).

17. A college of more pretensions now exists at Jabalpur
(Jubbulpore), and is affiliated in Arts and Law to the University of
Allahabad established in 1887. The small college alluded to in the
text was abolished in 1850.

18. For description of the tedious and complicated 'sraddh'
ceremonies see chapter 11 of Monier Williams's _Religious Thought and
Life in India_.

19. This version of the story differs in some minute particulars from
the version given _ante_, [14].

CHAPTER 5

Marriages of Trees--The Tank and the Plantain--Meteors--Rainbows.

Before quitting Jubbulpore, to which place I thought it very unlikely
that I should ever return, I went to visit the groves in the
vicinity, which, at the time I held the civil charge of the district
in 1828, had been planted by different native gentlemen upon lands
assigned to them rent-free for the purpose, on condition that the
holder should bind himself to plant trees at the rate of twenty-five
to the acre, and keep them up at that rate; and that for each grove,
however small, he should build and keep in repair a well, lined with
masonry, for watering the trees, and for the benefit of
travellers.[1]

Some of these groves had already begun to yield fruit, and all had
been _married_. Among the Hindoos, neither the man who plants a
grove, nor his wife, can taste of the fruit till he has _married_ one
of the mango-trees to some other tree (commonly the tamarind-tree)
that grows near it in the same grove. The proprietor of one of these
groves that stands between the cantonment and the town, old Barjor
Singh, had spent so much in planting and watering the grove, and
building walls and wells of _pucka_[2] masonry, that he could not
afford to defray the expense of the marriage ceremonies till one of
the trees, which was older than the rest when planted, began to bear
fruit in 1833, and poor old Barjor Singh and his wife were in great
distress that they dared not taste of the fruit whose flavour was so
much prized by their children. They began to think that they had
neglected a serious duty, and might, in consequence, be taken off
before another season could come round. They therefore sold all their
silver and gold ornaments, and borrowed all they could; and before
the next season the grove was married with all due pomp and ceremony,
to the great delight of the old pair, who tasted of the fruit in June
1834.

The larger the number of the Brahmans that are fed on the occasion of
the marriage, the greater the glory of the proprietor of the grove;
and when I asked old Barjor Singh, during my visit to his grove, how
many he had feasted, he said, with a heavy sigh, that he had been
able to feast only one hundred and fifty. He showed me the mango-tree
which had acted the part of the bridegroom on the occasion, but the
bride had disappeared from his side. 'And where is the bride, the
tamarind?' 'The only tamarind I had in the grove died', said the old
man, 'before we could bring about the wedding; and I was obliged to
get a jasmine for a wife for my mango. I planted it here, so that we
might, as required, cover both bride and bridegroom under one canopy
during the ceremonies; but, after the marriage was over, the gardener
neglected her, and she pined away and died.'

'And what made you prefer the jasmine to all other trees after the
tamarind?'

'Because it is the most celebrated of all trees, save the rose.'

'And why not have chosen the rose for a wife?'

'Because no one ever heard of marriage between the rose and the
mango; while they [_sic_] take place every day between the mango and
the _chambeli_ (jasmine).'[3]

After returning from the groves, I had a visit after breakfast from a
learned Muhammadan, now guardian to the young Raja of Uchahara,[4]
who resides part of his time at Jubbulpore. I mentioned my visit to
the groves and the curious notion of the Hindoos regarding the
necessity of marrying them; and he told me that, among Hindoos, the
man who went to the expense of making a tank dared not drink of its
waters till he had married his tank to some banana-tree, planted on
the bank for the purpose.[5]

'But what', said he with a smile, 'could you expect from men who
believe that Indra is the god who rules the heavens immediately over
the earth, that he sleeps during eight months in the year, and during
the other four his time is divided between his duties of sending down
rain upon the earth, and repelling with his arrows Raja Bali, who by
his austere devotions (_tapasya_) has received from the higher gods a
promise of the reversion of his dominions? The lightning which we
see', said the learned Maulavi, 'they believe to be nothing more than
the glittering of these arrows, as they are shot from the bow of
Indra upon his foe Raja Bali '.[6]

'But, my good friend Maulavi Sahib, there are many good Muhammadans
who believe that the meteors, which we call shooting stars, are in
reality stars which the guardian angels of men snatch from the
spheres, and throw at the devil as they see him passing through the
air, or hiding himself under one or other of the constellations. Is
it not so?'

'Yes, it is; but we have the authority of the holy prophet for this,
as delivered down to us by his companions in the sacred traditions,
and we are bound to believe it. When our holy prophet came upon the
earth, he found it to be infested with a host of magicians, who, by
their abominable rites and incantations, get into their interest
certain devils, or demons, whom they used to send up to heaven to
listen to the orders which the angels received from God regarding men
and the world below. On hearing these orders, they came off and
reported them to the magicians, who were thereby enabled to foretell
the events which the angels were ordered to bring about. In this
manner they often overheard the orders which the angel Gabriel
received from God, and communicated them to the magicians as soon as
he could deliver them to our holy prophet. Exulting in the knowledge
obtained in this diabolical manner, these wretches tried to turn his
prophecies into ridicule; and, seeing the evil effects of such
practices among men, he prayed God to put a stop to them. From that
time guardian angels have been stationed in different parts of the
heavens, to keep off the devils; and as soon as one of them sees a
devil sneaking too near the heaven of heavens, he snatches the
nearest star, and flings it at him.'[7] This, he added, was what all
true Muhammadans believed regarding the shooting of stars. He had
read nothing about them in the works of Plato, Aristotle,
Hippocrates, or Galen, all of which he had carefully studied, and
should be glad to learn from me what modern philosophers in Europe
thought about them.

I explained to him the supposed distance and bulk of the fixed stars
visible to the naked eye; their being radiant with unborrowed light,
and probably every one of them, like our own sun, the great centre of
a solar system of its own; embracing the vast orbits of numerous
planets, revolving around it with their attendant satellites; the
stars visible to the naked eye being but a very small portion of the
whole which the telescope had now made distinctly visible to us; and
those distinctly visible being one cluster among many thousand with
which the genius of Galileo, Newton, the Herschells, and many other
modern philosophers had discovered the heavens to be studded. I
remarked that the notion that these mighty suns, the centres of
planetary systems, should be made merely to be thrown at devils and
demons, appeared to us just as unaccountable as those of the Hindoos
regarding Indra's arrows.

'But', said he, 'these foolish Hindoos believe still greater
absurdities. They believe that the rainbow is nothing but the fume of
a large snake, concealed under the ground; that he vomits forth this
fume from a hole in the surface of the earth, without being himself
seen; and, when you ask them why, in that case, the rainbow should be
in the west while the sun is in the east, and in the east while the
sun is in the west, they know not what to say.'[8]

'The truth is, my friend Maulavi Sahib, the Hindoos, like a very
great part of every other nation, are very much disposed to attribute
to supernatural influences effects that the wiser portion of our
species know to rise from natural causes.'

The Maulavi was right. In the _Mishkat-ul-Masabih_,[9] the authentic
traditions of their prophet,[10] it is stated that Ayesha, the widow
of Muhammad, said, 'I heard His Majesty say, "The angels come down to
the region next the world, and mention the works that have been pre-
ordained in heaven; and the devils, who descend to the lowest region,
listen to what the angels say, and hear the orders predestined in
heaven, and carry them to fortune-tellers; therefore, they tell a
hundred lies with it from themselves "'[11]

'Ibn Abbas said, "A man of His Majesty's friends informed me, that
whilst His Majesty's friends were sitting with him one night, a very
bright star shot; and His Highness said, "What did you say in the
days of ignorance when a star shot like this?" They said, "God and
His messenger know best; we used to say, a great man was born to-
night, and a great man died."[12] Then His Majesty said, "You
mistook, because the shootings of these stars are neither for the
life nor death of any person; but when our cherisher orders a work,
the bearers of the imperial throne sing hallelujahs; and the
inhabitants of the regions who are near the bearers repeat it, till
it reaches the lowest regions. After the angels which are near the
bearers of the imperial throne say, "What did your cherisher order?"
Then they are informed; and so it is handed from one region to
another, till the information reaches the people of the lowest
region. Then the devils steal it, and carry it to their friends,
(that is) magicians; and these stars are thrown at these devils; not
for the birth or death of any person. Then the things which the
magicians tell, having heard from the devils, are true, but these
magicians tell lies, and exaggerate in what they hear".'

Kutadah said, 'God has created stars for three uses; one of them, as
a cause of ornament of the regions; the second, to stone the devil
with; the third, to direct people going through forests and on the
sea. Therefore, whoever shall explain them otherwise, does wrong, and
loses his time, and speaks from his own invention and
embellishes'.[13]

Ibn Abbas. ['The prophet said,] "Whoever attains to the knowledge of
astrology for any other explanation than the three aforementioned,
then verily he has attained to a branch of magic. An astrologer is a
magician, and a magician is a necromancer, and a necromancer is an
infidel."'[14]

This work contains the precepts and sayings of Muhammad, as declared
by his companions, who themselves heard them, or by those who heard
them immediately from those companions; and they are considered to be
binding upon the faith and conduct of Musalmans, though not all
delivered from inspiration.

Everything that is written in the Koran itself is supposed to have
been brought direct from God by the angel Gabriel.[15]

Notes:

1. In planting mango groves, it is a rule that they shall be as far
from each other as not to admit of their branches ever meeting.
'Plant trees, but let them not touch' ('_Am lagao, nis lagen nahin_')
is the maxim. [W. H. S.]

2. _Pakka_; the word here means 'cemented with lime mortar', and not
only with mud (_kachcha_).

3. The _chambeli_ is known in science as the _Jasminum grandiflorum_,
and the mango-tree as _Mangifera Indica_.

4. A small principality west of Riwa, and 110 miles north-west of
Jubbulpore. It is also known as Nagaudh, or Nagod.

5. Compare the account of the marriage of the _tulasi_ shrub (_Ocymum
sanctum_) with the salagram stone, or fossil ammonite, in Chapter 19,
_post_.

6. There is a sublime passage in the Psalms of David, where the
lightning is said to be the arrows of God. Psalm lxxvii:
17, 'The clouds poured out water: the skies sent out a sound: thine
arrows also went abroad.
18. The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven; the lightnings
lightened the world: the earth trembled and shook.' [W. H. S.]
The passage is quoted from the Authorized Bible version; the Prayer
Book version is finer.

7. 'We guard them from every devil driven away with stones; except
him who listeneth by stealth, at whom a visible flame is darted.'
Koran, chapter 15, Sale's translation. See _post_, end of this
chapter.

8. Nine Hindoos out of ten, or perhaps ninety-nine in a hundred,
throughout India, believe the rainbow to arise from the breath of the
snake, thrown up from the surface of the earth, as water is thrown up
by whales from the surface of the ocean. [W. H. S,]

9. '_Mishkat_ is a hole in a wall in which a lamp is placed, and
_Masabih_ the plural of "a lamp", because traditions are compared to
lamps, and this book is like that which containeth a lamp. Another
reason is, that _Masabih_ is the name of a book, and this book
comprehends its contents' (Matthews's translation, vol. i, p. v,
note).

10. The full title is _Mishkat-ul-Masabih, or a Collection of the
most Authentic Traditions regarding the Actions and Sayings of
Muhammed; exhibiting the Origin of the Manners and Customs; the
Civil, Religious, and Military Policy of the Muslemans_. Translated
from the original Arabic by Captain A. N. Matthews, Bengal Artillery.
Two vols. 4to; Calcutta, 1809-10, This valuable work, published by
subscription, is now very scarce. A fine copy is in the India Office
Library.

11. Book xxi, chapter 3, part i; vol. ii, p. 384. The quotations as
given by the author are inexact. The editor has substituted correct
extracts from Matthews's text. Matthews spells the name of the
prophet's widow as Aayeshah.

12. In Sparta, the Ephoroi, once every nine years, watched the sky
during a whole cloudless, moonless night, in profound silence; and,
if they saw a shooting star, it was understood to indicate that the
kings of Sparta had disobeyed the gods, and their authority was, in
consequence, suspended till they had been purified by an oracle from
Delphi or Olympia. [W. H. S.] This statement rests on the authority
of Plutarch, _Agis_, 11.

13. _Mishkat_. Part iii of same chapter; vol. ii, p. 386.

14. Ibid. p. 386.

15. But the prying character of these devils is described in the
Koran itself. According to Muhammadans, they had access to all the
seven heavens till the time of Moses, who got them excluded from
three. Christ got them excluded from three more; and Muhammad managed
to get them excluded from the seventh and last. 'We have placed the
twelve signs in the heavens, and have set them out in various figures
for the observation of spectators, and we guard them from every devil
driven away with stones; except him who listeneth by stealth, at whom
a visible flame is darted' (Chapter 15).

'We have adorned the lower heaven with the ornament of stars, and we
have placed therein a guard against every rebellious devil, that they
may not listen to the discourse of exalted princes, for they are
darted at from every side, to repel them, and a lasting torment is
prepared for them; except him who catcheth a word by stealth, and is
pursued by a shining flame' (Chapter 37). [W. H. 8.] Passages of this
kind should he remembered by persons who expect orthodox Muhammadans
to accept the results of modern science.

CHAPTER 6

Hindoo Marriages.

Certain it is that no Hindoo will have a marriage in his family
during the four months of the rainy season; for among eighty millions
of souls[1] not one doubts that the Great Preserver of the universe
is, during these four months, down on a visit to Raja Bali, and,
consequently, unable to bless the contract with his presence.[2]

Marriage is a sacred duty among Hindoos, a duty which every parent
must perform for his children, otherwise they owe him no reverence. A
family with a daughter unmarried after the age of puberty is
considered to labour under the displeasure of the gods; and no member
of the other sex considers himself _respectable_ after the age of
puberty till he is married. It is the duty of his parent or elder
brothers to have him suitably married; and, if they do not do so, he
reproaches them with his _degraded condition_. The same feeling, in a
degree, pervades all the Muhammadan community; and nothing appears so
strange to them as the apparent indifference of old bachelors among
us to their _sad condition_.

Marriage, with all its ceremonies, its rights, and its duties, fills
their imagination from infancy to age; and I do not believe there is
a country upon earth in which a larger portion of the wealth of the
community is spent in the ceremonies, or where the rights are better
secured, or the duties better enforced, notwithstanding all the
disadvantages of the laws of polygamy. Not one man in ten can afford
to maintain more than one wife, and not one in ten of those who can
afford it will venture upon 'a sea of troubles' in taking a second,
if he has a child by the first. One of the evils which press most
upon Indian society is the necessity which long usage has established
of squandering large sums in marriage ceremonies. Instead of giving
what they can to their children to establish them, and enable them to
provide for their families and rise in the world, parents everywhere
feel bound to squander all they can borrow in the festivities of
their marriage. Men in India could never feel secure of being
permitted freely to enjoy their property under despotic and unsettled
governments, the only kind of governments they knew or hoped for; and
much of the means that would otherwise have been laid out in forming
substantial works, with a view to a return in income of some sort or
another, for the remainder of their own lives and of those of their
children, were expended in tombs, temples, sarais, tanks, groves, and
other works--useful and ornamental, no doubt, but from which neither
they nor their children could ever hope to derive income of any kind.
The same feeling of insecurity gave birth, no doubt, to this
preposterous usage, which tends so much to keep down the great mass
of the people of India to that grade in which they were born, and in
which they have nothing but their manual labour to depend upon for
their subsistence. Every man feels himself bound to waste all his
stock and capital, and exhaust all his credit, in feeding idlers
during the ceremonies which attend the marriage of his children,
because his ancestors squandered similar sums, and he would sink in
the estimation of society if he were to allow his children to be
married with less.

But it could not have been solely because men could not invest their
means in profitable works, with any chance of being long permitted to
enjoy the profits under such despotic and unsettled governments, that
they squandered them in feeding idle people in marriage ceremonies;
since temples, tanks, and groves secured esteem in this life, and
promised some advantage in the next, and an outlay in such works
might therefore have been preferred. But under such governments a
man's title even to the exclusive possession of his wife might not be
considered as altogether secure under the mere sanction of religion;
and the outlay in feeding the family, tribe, and neighbourhood during
the marriage ceremony seems to have been considered as a kind of
value in exchange given for her to society. There is nothing that she
and her husband recollect through life with so much pride and
pleasure as the cost of their marriage, if it happen to be large for
their condition of life; it is their _amoka_, their title of
nobility;[3] and their parents consider it their duty to make it as
large as they can. A man would hardly feel secure of the sympathy of
his family, tribe, circle of society, or rulers, for the loss of 'his
ox, or his ass, or anything that is his', if it should happen to have
cost him nothing; and, till he could feel secure of their sympathy
for the loss, he would not feel very secure in the possession. He,
therefore, or those who are interested in his welfare, strengthen his
security by an outlay which invests his wife with a tangible value in
cost, well understood by his circle and rulers. His family, tribe,
and circle have received the purchase money, and feel bound to secure
to him the commodity purchased; and, as they are in all such matters
commonly much stronger than the rulers themselves, the money spent
among them is more efficacious in securing the exclusive enjoyment of
the wife than if it had been paid in taxes or fees to them for a
marriage licence.[4] The pride of families and tribes, and the desire
of the multitude to participate in the enjoyment of such ceremonies,
tend to keep up this usage after the cause in which it originated may
have ceased to operate; but it will, it is to be hoped, gradually
decline with the increased feeling of security to person, property,
and character under our rule. Nothing is now more common than to see
an individual in the humblest rank spending all that he has, or can
borrow, in the marriage of one of many daughters, and trusting to
Providence for the means of marrying the others; nor in the higher,
to find a young man, whose estates have, during a long minority,
under the careful management of Government officers, been freed from
very heavy debts, with which an improvident father had left them
encumbered, the moment he attains his majority and enters upon the
management, borrowing three times their annual rent, at an exorbitant
interest, to marry a couple of sisters, at the same rate of outlay in
feasts and fireworks that his grandmother was married with.[5]