Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman

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9. Bernier vividly describes an 'infernal tragedy' of this kind which
he witnessed, in or about the year 1659, during Aurangzeb's reign, in
Rajputana. On that occasion five female slaves burnt themselves with
their mistress (_Travels_, ed. Constable and V. A. Smith (1914), p.
309).

10. Hinduism is a social system, not a creed, A Hindoo may believe,
or disbelieve, what speculative doctrine he chooses, but he must not
eat, drink, or marry, save in accordance with the custom of his
caste. Compare Asoka on toleration; 'The sects of other people all
deserve reverence for one reason or another' (Rock Edict xii; V. A.
Smith, _Asoka_, 2nd edition (1909), p. 170).

11. Mir Salamat Ali is a stanch Sunni, the sect of Osman; and they
are always at daggers drawn with the Shias, or the sect of Ali. He
alludes to the Shias when he says that one of the seventy-two sects
is always ready to take in the whole of the other seventy-one.
Muhammad, according to the traditions, was one day heard to say, 'The
time will come when my followers will he divided into seventy-three
sects; all of them will assuredly go to hell save one.' Every one of
the seventy-three sects believes itself to be the one happily
excepted by their prophet, and predestined to paradise. I am
sometimes disposed to think Muhammad was self-deluded, however
difficult it might be to account for so much 'method in his madness'.
It is difficult to conceive a man placed in such circumstances with
more amiable dispositions or with juster views of the rights and
duties of men in all their relations with each other, than are
exhibited by him on almost all occasions, save where the question of
_faith_ in his divine mission was concerned.

A very interesting and useful book might be made out of the history
of those men, more or less mad, by whom multitudes of mankind have
been led and perhaps governed; and a philosophical analysis of the
points on which they were really mad and really sane, would show many
of them to have been fit subjects for a madhouse during the whole
career of their glory. [W. H. S.]

For an account of Muhammadan sects, see section viii of the
Preliminary Dissertation in Sale's Koran, entitled, 'Of the Principal
Sects among the Muhammadans; and of those who have pretended to
Prophecy among the Arabs, in or since the Time of Muhammad'; and T.
P. Hughes, _Dictionary of Islam_ (1885). The chief sects of the
Sunnis, or Traditionists, are four in number. 'The principal sects of
the Shias are five, which are subdivided into an almost innumerable
number.' The court of the kings of Oudh was Shia. In most parts of
India the Sunni faith prevails.

The relation between genius and insanity is well expressed by Dryden
(_Absalom and Achitopfel_):

Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.

The treatise of Professor Cesare Lombroso, entitled _The Man of
Genius_ (London edition, 1891), is devoted to proof and illustration
of the proposition that genius is 'a special morbid condition'. He
deals briefly with the case of Muhammad at pages 31, 39, and 325,
maintaining that the prophet, like Saint Paul, Julius Caesar, and
many other men of genius, was subject to epileptic fits. The
Professor's book seems to be exactly what Sir W. H. Sleeman desired
to see.

12. In the author's time, when municipal conservancy and sanitation
were almost unknown in India, the tyranny of the sweepers' guild was
chiefly felt as a private inconvenience. It is now one of the
principal of the many difficulties, little understood in Europe,
which bar the progress of Indian sanitary reform. The sweepers cannot
be readily coerced because no Hindoo or Musalman would do their work
to save his life, nor will he pollute himself even by beating the
refractory scavenger. A strike of sweepers on the occasion of a great
fair, or of a cholera epidemic, is a most dangerous calamity. The
vested rights described in the text are so fully recognized in
practice that they are frequently the subject of sale or mortgage.

13. The low-caste Hindoos are generally fond of drink, when they can
get it, but seldom commit crime under its influence.

14. An elephant driver, by reason of his position on the animal, has
opportunities for private conversation with his master.

15. Elephant drivers (_mahouts_) are Muhammadans, who should have no
caste, but Indian Musalmans have become Hinduized, and fallen under
the dominion of caste.

16. Darbhanga is in Tirhut, seventy miles NE. of Dinapore. The Kusi
(Kosi or Koosee) river rises in the mountains of Nepal, and falls
into the Ganges after a course of about 325 miles. Nathpur, in the
Puraniya (Purneah) District, is a mart for the trade with Nepal.

17. The customary attitude of a suppliant.

18. A small river which falls into the Nerbudda on the right-hand
side, at Sankal. Its general course is south-west.

19. November, 1835.

20. Described in the _Gazetteer_ (1870) as 'a large but decaying
village in the Jabalpur district, situated at the foot of the Bhanrer
hills, twenty-two miles to the north-west of Jabalpur, on the north
side of the Hiran, and on the road to Sagar'.

21. The convenient restriction of the name Vindhya to the hills
north, and of Satpura to the hills south of the Nerbudda is of modern
origin (_Manual of the Geology of India_, 1st ed., Part I, p. iv).
The Satpura range, thus defined, separates the valley of the Nerbudda
from the valleys of the Tapti flowing west, and the Mahanadi flowing
east. The Vindhyan sandstones certainly are a formation of immense
antiquity, perhaps pre-Silurian. They are azoic, or devoid of
fossils; and it is consequently impossible to determine exactly their
geological age, or 'horizon' (ibid. p. xxiii). The cappings of
basalt, in some cases with laterite superimposed, suggest many
difficult problems, which will be briefly discussed in the notes to
Chapters 14 and 17.

CHAPTER 9

The Great Iconoclast--Troops routed by Hornets--The Rani of Garha--
Hornets' Nests in India.

On the 23rd,[1] we came on nine miles to Sangrampur, and, on the
24th, nine more to the valley of Jabera,[2] situated on the western
extremity of the bed of a large lake, which is now covered by twenty-
four villages. The waters were kept in by a large wall that united
two hills about four miles south of Jabera. This wall was built of
great cut freestone blocks from the two hills of the Vindhiya range,
which it united. It was about half a mile long, one hundred feet
broad at the base, and about one hundred feet high. The stones,
though cut, were never, apparently, cemented; and the wall has long
given way in the centre, through which now falls a small stream that
passes from east to west of what was once the bottom of the lake, and
now is the site of so many industrious and happy little village
communities.[3] The proprietor of the village of Jabera, in whose
mango grove our tents were pitched, conducted me to the ruins of the
wall; and told me that it had been broken down by the order of the
Emperor Aurangzeb.[4] History to these people is all a fairy tale;
and this emperor is the great destroyer of everything that the
Muhammadans in their fanaticism have demolished of the Hindoo
sculpture or architecture; and yet, singular as it may appear, they
never mention his name with any feelings of indignation or hatred.
With every scene of his supposed outrage against their gods or their
temples, there is always associated the recollection of some instance
of his piety, and the Hindoos' glory--of some idol, for instance, or
column, preserved from his fury by a miracle, whose divine origin he
is supposed at once to have recognized with all due reverence.

At Bheragarh,[5] the high priest of the temple told us that
Aurangzeb and his soldiers knocked off the heads, arms, and noses of
all the idols, saying that 'if they had really any of the godhead in
them, they would assuredly now show it, and save themselves'. But
when they came to the door of Gauri Sankar's apartments, they were
attacked by a nest of hornets, that put the whole of the emperor's
army to the rout; and his imperial majesty called out: 'Here we have
really something like a god, and we shall not suffer him to be
molested; if all your gods could give us proof like this of their
divinity, not a nose of them would ever be touched'.

The popular belief, however, is that after Aurangzeb's army had
struck off all the prominent features of the other gods, one of the
soldiers entered the temple, and struck off the ear of one of the
prostrate images underneath their vehicle, the Bull. 'My dear', said
Gauri, 'do you see what these saucy men are about?' Her consort
turned round his head;[6] and, seeing the soldiers around him,
brought all the hornets up from the marble rocks below, where there
are still so many nests of them, and the whole army fled before them
to Teori, five miles.[7] It is very likely that some body of troops
by whom the rest of the images had been mutilated, may have been
driven off by a nest of hornets from within the temple where this
statue stands. I have seen six companies of infantry, with a train of
artillery and a squadron of horse, all put to the rout by a single
nest of hornets, and driven off some miles with all their horses and
bullocks. The officers generally save themselves by keeping within
their tents, and creeping under their bed-clothes, or their carpets;
and servants often escape by covering themselves up in their
blankets, and lying perfectly still. Horses are often stung to a
state of madness, in which they throw themselves over precipices and
break their limbs, or kill themselves. The grooms, in trying to save
their horses, are generally the people who suffer most in a camp
attacked by such an enemy. I have seen some so stung as to recover
with difficulty; and I believe there have been instances of people
not recovering at all. In such a frightful scene I have seen a
bullock sitting and chewing the cud as calmly as if the whole thing
had been got up for his amusement. The hornets seldom touch any
animal that remains perfectly still.

On the bank of the Bina river at Eran, in the Sagar district, is a
beautiful pillar of a single freestone, more than fifty feet high,
surmounted by a figure of Krishna, with the glory round his head.[8]
Some few of the rays of this glory have been struck off by lightning;
but the people declare that this was done by a shot fired at it from
a cannon by order of Aurangzeb, as his army was marching by on its
way to the Deccan. Before the scattered fragments, however, could
reach the ground, the air was filled, they say, by a swarm of
hornets, that put
the whole army to flight; and the emperor ordered his gunners to
desist, declaring that he was 'satisfied of the presence of the god'.
There is hardly any part of India in which, according to popular
belief, similar miracles were not worked to convince the emperor of
the peculiar merits or sanctity of particular idols or temples,
according to the traditions of the people, derived, of course, from
the inventions of priests. I should mention that these hornets
suspend their nests to the branches of the highest trees, under
rocks, or in old deserted temples. Native travellers, soldiers, and
camp followers, cook and eat their food under such trees; but they
always avoid one in which there is a nest of hornets, particularly on
a still day. Sometimes they do not discover the nest till it is too
late. The unlucky wight goes on feeding his fire, and delighting in
the prospect of the feast before him, as the smoke ascends in curling
eddies to the nest of the hornets. The moment it touches them they
sally forth and descend, and sting like mad creatures every living
thing they find in motion. Three companies of my regiment were
escorting treasure in boats from Allahabad to Cawnpore for the army
under the Marquis of Hastings, in 1817.[9] The soldiers all took
their dinners on shore every day; and one still afternoon a sipahi
(sepoy), by cooking his dinner under one of those nests without
seeing it, sent the infuriated swarm among the whole of his comrades,
who were cooking in the same grove, and undressed, as they always are
on such occasions. Treasure, food, and all were immediately deserted,
and the whole of the party, save the European officers, were up to
their noses in the river Ganges. The hornets hovered over them; and
it was amusing to see them bobbing their heads under as the insects
tried to pounce upon them. The officers covered themselves up in the
carpets of their boats; and, as the day was a hot one, their
situation was still more uncomfortable than that of the men. Darkness
alone put an end to the conflict.

I should mention that the poor old Rani, or Queen of Garha, Lachhmi
Kuar, came out as far as Katangi with us to take leave of my wife, to
whom she has always been attached. She had been in the habit of
spending a day with her at my house once a week; and being the only
European lady from whom she had ever received any attention, or
indeed ever been on terms of any intimacy with, she feels the more
sensible of the little offices of kindness and courtesy she has
received from her.[10] Her husband, Narhar Sa, was the last of the
long line of sixty-two sovereigns who reigned over these territories
from the year A.D. 358 to the Sagar conquest, A.D. 1781.[11] He died
a prisoner in the fortress of Kurai, in the Sagar district, in A. D.
1789, leaving two widows.[12] One burnt herself upon the funeral
pile, and the other was prevented from doing so, merely because she
was thought too young, as she was not then fifteen years of age. She
received a small pension from the Sagar Government, which was still
further reduced under the Nagpur Government which succeeded it in the
Jubbulpore district in which the pension had been assigned; and it
was not thought necessary to increase the amount of this pension when
the territory came under our dominion,[13] so that she has had barely
enough to subsist upon, about one hundred rupees a month. She is now
about sixty years of age, and still a very good-looking woman. In her
youth she must have been beautiful. She does not object to appear
unveiled before gentlemen on any particular occasion; and, when Lord
W. Bentinck was at Jubbulpore in 1833, I introduced, the old queen to
him. He seemed much interested, and ordered the old lady a pair of
shawls. None but very coarse ones were found in the store-rooms of
the Governor-General's representative, and his lordship said these
were not such as a Governor-General could present, or a queen,
however poor, receive; and as his own 'toshakhana' (wardrobe) had
gone on,[l4] he desired that a pair of the finest kind should be
purchased and presented to her in his name. The orders were given in
her presence and mine. I was obliged to return to Sagar before they
could be carried into effect; and, when I returned in 1835,[15] I
found that the _rejected_ shawls had been presented to her, and were
such coarse things that she was ashamed to wear them, as much, I
really believe, on account of the exalted person who had given them,
as her own. She never mentioned the subject till I asked her to let
me see the shawls, which she did reluctantly, and she was too proud
to complain. How the good intentions of the Governor-General had been
frustrated in this case I have never learned. The native officer in
charge of the store was dead, and the Governor-General's
representative had left the place. Better could not, I suppose, be
got at this time, and he did not like to defer giving them.

Notes:

1. November, 1835.

2. Sangrampur is in the Jabalpur District, thirty miles north-west of
Jabalpur, or the road to Sagar, The village of Jabera is thirty-nine
miles from Jabalpur.

3. Similar lakes, formed by means of huge dams thrown across valleys,
are numerous in the Central Provinces and Bundelkhand. The
embankments of some of these lakes are maintained by the Indian
Government, and the water is distributed for irrigation. Many of the
lakes are extremely beautiful, and the ruins of grand temples and
palaces are often found on their banks. Several of the embankments
are known to have been built by the Chandel princes between A.D. 800
and 1200, and some are believed to be the work of an earlier Parihar
dynasty.

4. A.D. 1658--1707. Aurangzeb, though possibly credited with more
destruction than he accomplished, did really destroy many hundreds of
Hindoo temples. A historian mentions the demolition of 262 at three
places in Rajputana in a single year (A.D. 1679-80) (E. and D. vii,
188).

5. This name is used as a synonym for Bheraghat, _ante_, Chapter 1,
paragraph 1. It is written Beragur in the author's text. The author,
in _Ramaseeana_, Introduction, p. 77, note, describes the Gauri-
Sankar sculpture as being 'at Beragur on the Nerbudda river'.

6. Gauri is one of the many names of Parvati, or Devi, the consort of
the god Siva, Sankar, or Mahadeo, who rides upon the bull Nandi.

7. This village seems to be the same as Tewar, the ancient Tripura,
'six miles to the west of Jabalpur; and on the south side of the
Bombay road' (_A. S. R_., vol. ix, p. 57). The adjacent ruins are
known by the name of Karanbel.

8. The pillar bears an inscription showing that it was erected during
the reign of Budha Gupta, in the year 165 of the Gupta era,
corresponding to A.D. 484-5. This, and the other important remains of
antiquity at Eran, are fully described in _A. S. R_., vol. vii, p.
88; vol. x, pp. 76-90, pl. xxiii-xxx; and vol. xiv, p. 149, pl. xxxi;
also in Fleet, _Gupta Inscriptions_ (Calcutta, 1888). The material of
the pillar is red sandstone. According to Cunningham the total height
is 43 feet. The peculiar double-faced, two-armed image on the summit
does not seem to be intended for Krishna, but I cannot say what the
meaning is (H. F. A., p. 174, fig. 121).

9. During the wars with the Marathas and Pindharis, which ended in
1819.

10. After we left Jubbulpore, the old Rani used to receive much kind
and considerate attention from the Hon. Mrs. Shore, a very amiable
woman, the wife of the Governor-General's representative, the Hon.
Mr. Shore, a very worthy and able member of the Bengal Civil Service.
[W. H. S.] For notice of Mr. Shore, see note at end of Chapter 13.

11. See the author's paper entitled '_History of the Gurha Mundala
Rajas_', in _J. A. S. B_., vol. vi (1837), p. 621, and the article
'Mandla' in _C. P. Gazetteer_ (1870).

12. Kurai is on the route from Sagar to Nasirabad, thirty-one miles
WNW. of the former.

13. The 'Sagar and Nerbudda Territories', comprising the Sagar,
Jabalpur, Hoshangabad, Seoni, Damoh, Narsinghpur, and Baitul Mandla
Districts, are now under the Local Administration of the Chief
Commissioner of the Central Provinces, established in 1861 by Lord
Canning, who appointed Sir Richard Temple Chief Commissioner. These
territories were at first administered by a semi-political agency,
but were afterwards, in 1852, placed under the Lieutenant-Governor of
the North-Western Provinces (now the Agra Province in the United
Provinces of Agra and Oudh), to whom they remained subject until
1861. They had been ceded by the Marathas to the British in 1818, and
the cession was confirmed by the treaty of 1826.

14. All official presents given by native chiefs to the Governor-
General are credited to the 'toshakhana', from which also are taken
the official gifts bestowed in return.

15. By resolution of Government, dated January 10, 1836, the author
was appointed General Superintendent of the Operations against
Thuggee, with his head-quarters at Jubbulpore.

CHAPTER 10

The Peasantry and the Land Settlement.

The officers of the 29th had found game so plentiful, and the weather
so fine, that they came on with us as far as Jabera, where we had the
pleasure of their society on the evening of the 24th, and left them
on the morning of the 25th.[1] A great many of my native friends,
from among the native landholders and merchants of the country,
flocked to our camp at every stage to pay their respects, and bid me
farewell, for they never expected to see me back among them again.
They generally came out a mile or two to meet and escort us to our
tents; and much do I fear that my poor boy will never again, in any
part of the world, have the blessings of Heaven so fervently invoked
upon him by so many worthy and respectable men as met us at every
stage on our way from Jubbulpore. I am much attached to the
agricultural classes of India generally, and I have found among them
some of the best men I have ever known. The peasantry in India have
generally very good manners, and are exceedingly intelligent, from
having so much more leisure and unreserved and easy intercourse with
those above them. The constant habit of meeting and discussing
subjects connected with their own interests, in their own fields, and
'under their own fig-trees', with their landlords and Government
functionaries of all kinds and degrees, prevents their ever feeling
or appearing impudent or obtrusive; though it certainly tends to give
them stentorian voices, that often startle us when they come into our
houses to discuss the same points with us.

Nine-tenths of the immediate cultivators of the soil in India are
little farmers, who hold a lease for one or more years, as the case
may be, of their lands, which they cultivate with their own stock.
One of these cultivators, with a good plough and bullocks, and a good
character, can always get good land on moderate terms from holders of
villages.[2] Those cultivators are, I think, the best, who learn to
depend upon their stock and character for favourable terms, hold
themselves free to change their holdings when their leases expire,
and pretend not to any hereditary right in the soil. The lands are, I
think, best cultivated, and the society best constituted in India,
where the holders of estates of villages have a feeling of permanent
interest in them, an assurance of an hereditary right of property
which is liable only to the payment of a moderate Government demand,
descends undivided by the law of primogeniture, and is unaffected by
the common law, which prescribes the equal subdivision among children
of landed as well as other private property, among the Hindoos and
Muhammadans; and where the immediate cultivators hold the lands they
till by no other law than that of common specific contract.

When I speak of holders of villages, I mean the holders of lands that
belong to villages. The whole face of India is parcelled out into
estates of villages.[3] The village communities are composed of those
who hold and cultivate the land, the established village servants,
priest, blacksmith, carpenter, accountant, washerman, basket-maker
(whose wife is ex officio the midwife of the little village
community), potter, watchman, barber, shoemaker, &c., &c.[4] To these
may be added the little banker, or agricultural capitalist, the
shopkeeper, the brazier, the confectioner, the ironmonger, the
weaver, the dyer, the astronomer or astrologer, who points out to the
people the lucky day for every earthly undertaking, and the
prescribed times for all religious ceremonies and observances. In
some villages the whole of the lands are parcelled out among
cultivating proprietors, and are liable to eternal subdivisions by
the law of inheritance, which gives to each son the same share. In
others, the whole of the lands are parcelled out among cultivators,
who hold them on a specific lease for limited periods from a
proprietor who holds the whole collectively under Government, at a
rate of rent fixed either permanently or for limited periods. These
are the two extremes. There are but few villages in which all the
cultivators are considered as proprietors--at least but few in our
Nerbudda territories; and these will almost invariably be found of a
caste of Brahmans or a caste of Rajputs, descended from a common
ancestor, to whom the estate was originally given in rent-free
tenure, or at a quit-rent, by the existing Government for his prayers
as a priest, or his services as a soldier. Subsequent Governments,
which resumed unceremoniously the estates of others, were deterred
from resuming these by a dread of the curses of the one and the
swords of the other.[5] Such communities of cultivating proprietors
are of two kinds: those among whom the lands are parcelled out, each
member holding his share as a distinct estate, and being individually
responsible for the payment of the share of the Government demand
assessed upon it; and those among whom the lands are not parcelled
out, but the profits divided as among copartners of an estate held
jointly. They, in either case, nominate one of their members to
collect and pay the Government demand; or Government appoints a man
for this duty, either as a salaried servant or a lessee, with
authority to levy from the cultivating proprietors a certain sum over
and above what is demandable from him.