Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official

In India522 there are a great many native chiefs who were enabled, during the disorders which attended the decline and fall of the Muhammadan power and the rise and progress of the Marāthās and English, to raise and maintain armies by the plunder of their neighbours. The paramount power of the British being now securely established throughout the country, they are prevented from indulging any longer in such sporting propensities; and might employ their vast revenues in securing the blessing of good civil government for the territories in the possession of which they are secured by our military establishment. But these chiefs are not much disposed to convert their swords into ploughshares; they continue to spend their revenues on useless military establishments for purposes of parade and show. A native prince would, they say, be as insignificant without an army as a native gentleman upon an elephant without a cavalcade, or upon a horse without a tail. But the said army have learnt from their forefathers that they were to look to aggressions upon their neighbours—to pillage, plunder, and conquest, for wealth and promotion; and they continue to prevent their prince from indulging in any disposition to turn his attention to the duties of civil government. They all live in the hope of some disaster to the paramount power which secures the increasing wealth of the surrounding countries from their grasp; and threatened innovations from the north-west raise their spirits and hopes in proportion as they depress those of the classes engaged in all branches of peaceful industry.

There are, in all parts of India, thousands and tens of thousands who have lived by the sword, or who wish to live by the sword, but cannot find employment suited to their tastes. These would all flock to the standard of the first lawless chief who could offer them a fair prospect of plunder; and to them all wars and rumours of war are delightful. The moment they hear of a threatened invasion from the north-west, they whet their swords, and look fiercely around upon those from whose breasts they are 'to cut their pound of flesh'.523

CHAPTER 48

The Great Diamond of Kohinūr

The foregoing historical episode occupies too large a space in what might otherwise be termed a personal narrative; but still I am tempted to append to it a sketch of the fortunes of that famous diamond, called with Oriental extravagance the Mountain of Light, which, by exciting the cupidity of Shāh Jahān, played so important a part in the drama.

After slumbering for the greater part of a century in the imperial treasury, it was afterwards taken by Nādir Shāh, the king of Persia, who invaded India under the reign of Muhammad Shāh, in the year 1738.524 Nadir Shāh, in one of his mad fits, had put out the eyes of his son, Razā Kulī Mirzā, and, when he was assassinated, the conspirators gave the throne and the diamond to this son's son, Shāhrukh Mirza, who fixed his residence at Meshed.525 Ahmad Shāh, the Abdālī, commanded the Afghān cavalry in the service of Nādir Shāh, and had the charge of the military chest at the time he was put to death. With this chest, he and his cavalry left the camp during the disorders that followed the murder of the king, and returned with all haste to Kandahār, where they met Tarīkī Khān, on his way to Nādir Shāh's camp with the tribute of the five provinces which he had retained of his Indian conquests, Kandahār, Kābul, Tatta, Bakkar, Multān, and Peshāwar. They gave him the first news of the death of the king, seized upon his treasure, and, with the aid of this and the military chest, Ahmad Shāh took possession of these five provinces, and formed them into the little independent kingdom of Afghānistan, over which he long reigned, and from which he occasionally invaded India and Khurāsān.526

Shāhrukh Mirzā had his eyes put out some time after by a faction. Ahmad Shāh marched to his relief, put the rebels to death, and united his eldest son, Taimūr Shāh, in marriage to the daughter of the unfortunate prince, from whom he took the diamond, since it could be of no use to a man who could no longer see its beauties. He established Taimūr as his viceroy at Herāt, and his youngest son at Kandahār; and fixed his own residence at Kābul, where he died.527 He was succeeded by Taimūr Shāh, who was succeeded by his eldest son, Zamān Shāh, who, after a reign of a few years, was driven from his throne by his younger brother, Mahmūd. He sought an asylum with his friend Ashīk, who commanded a distant fortress, and who betrayed him to the usurper, and put him into confinement. He concealed the great diamond in a crevice in the wall of the room in which he was confined; and the rest of his jewels in a hole made in the ground with his dagger. As soon as Mahmūd received intimation of the arrest from Ashīk, he sent for his brother, had his eyes put out, and demanded the jewels, but Zamān Shāh pretended that he had thrown them into the river as he passed over. Two years after this, the third brother, the Sultān Shujā, deposed Mahmūd, ascended the throne by the consent of his elder brother, and, as a fair specimen of his notions of retributive justice, he blew away from the mouths of cannon, not only Ashīk himself, but his wife and all his innocent and unoffending children.

He intended to put out the eyes of his deposed brother, Mahmūd, but was dissuaded from it by his mother and Zamān Shāh, who now pointed out to him the place where he had concealed the great diamond. Mahmūd made his escape from prison, raised a party, drove out his brothers, and once more ascended the throne. The two brothers sought an asylum in the Honourable Company's territories; and have from that time resided at an out frontier station of Lūdiāna, upon the banks of the Hyphasis,528 upon a liberal pension assigned for their maintenance by our Government. On their way through the territories of the Sikh chief, Ranjit Singh, Shujā was discovered to have this great diamond, the Mountain of Light, about his person; and he was, by a little torture skilfully applied to the mind and body, made to surrender it to his generous host.529 Mahmūd was succeeded in the government of the fortress and province of Herāt by his son Kāmrān; but the throne of Kābul was seized by the mayor of the palace, who bequeathed it to his son Dost Muhammad, a man, in all the qualities requisite in a sovereign, immeasurably superior to any member of the house of Ahmad Shāh Abdālī. Ranjit Singh had wrested from him the province of Peshāwar in times of difficulty, and, as we would not assist him in recovering it from our old ally, he thought himself justified in seeking the aid of those who would, the Russians and Persians, who were eager to avail themselves of so fair an occasion to establish a footing in India. Such a footing would have been manifestly incompatible with the peace and security of our dominions in India, and we were obliged, in self-defence, to give to Shujā the aid which he had so often before in vain solicited, to enable him to recover the throne of his very limited number of legal ancestors.530

CHAPTER 49

Pindhārī System—Character of the Marāthā Administration—Cause of their Dislike to the Paramount Power

The attempt of the Marquis of Hastings to rescue India from that dreadful scourge, the Pindhārī system, involved him in a war with all the great Marāthā states, except Gwālior; that is, with the Peshwā at Pūnā, Holkār at Indore, and the Bhonslā at Nāgpur; and Gwālior was prevented from joining the other states in their unholy league against us only by the presence of the grand division of the army, under the personal command of the Marquis, in the immediate vicinity of his capital. It was not that these chiefs liked the Pindhārīs, or felt any interest in their welfare, but because they were always anxious to crush that rising paramount authority which had the power, and had always manifested the will, to interpose and prevent the free indulgence of their predatory habits—the free exercise of that weapon, a standing army, which the disorders incident upon the decline and fall of the Muhammadan army had put into their hands, and which a continued series of successful aggressions upon their neighbours could alone enable them to pay or keep under control. They seized with avidity any occasion of quarrel with the paramount power which seemed likely to unite them all in one great effort to shake it off; and they are still prepared to do the same, because they feel that they could easily extend their depredations if that power were withdrawn; and they know no other road to wealth and glory but such successful depredations. Their ancestors rose by them, their states were formed by them, and their armies have been maintained by them. They look back upon them for all that seems to them honourable in the history of their families. Their bards sing of them in all their marriage and funeral processions; and, as their imaginations kindle at the recollection, they detest the arm that is extended to defend the wealth and the industry of the surrounding territories from their grasp. As the industrious classes acquire and display their wealth in the countries around during a long peace, under a strong and settled government, these native chiefs, with their little disorderly armies, feel precisely as an English country gentleman would feel with a pack of foxhounds, in a country swarming with foxes, and without the privilege of hunting them.531

Their armies always took the auspices and set out kingdom taking (mulk gīrī) after the Dasahra,532 in November, as regularly as English gentlemen go partridge-shooting on the 1st of September; and I may here give, as a specimen, the excursion of Jean Baptiste Filose,533 who sallied forth on such an expedition, at the head of a division of Sindhia's army, just before this Pindhārī war commenced. From Gwālior he proceeded to Karaulī,534 and took from that chief the district of Sabalgarh, yielding four lākhs of rupees yearly.535 He then took the territory of the Rājā of Chandērī,536 Mor Pahlād, one of the oldest of the Bundēlkhand chiefs, which then yielded about seven lākhs of rupees,537 but now yields only four. The Rājā got an allowance of forty thousand rupees a year. He then took the territories of the Rājās of Raghugarh and Bajranggarh,538 yielding three lākhs a year; and Bahādurgarh, yielding two lākhs a year;539 and the three princes got fifty thousand rupees a year for subsistence among them. He then took Lopar, yielding two lākhs and a half, and assigned the Rājā twenty-five thousand. He then took Garhā Kota,540 whose chief gets subsistence from our Government. Baptiste had just completed his kingdom taking expedition, when our armies took the field against the Pindhārīs; and, on the termination of that war in 1817, all these acquisitions were confirmed and guaranteed to his master Sindhia by our Government. It cannot be supposed that either he or his army can ever feel any great attachment towards a paramount authority that has the power and the will to interpose, and prevent their indulging in such sporting excursions as these, or any great disinclination to take advantage of any occasion that may seem likely to unite all the native chiefs in a common effort to crush it. The Nepalese have the same feeling as the Marāthās in a still stronger degree, since their kingdom-taking excursions had been still greater and more successful; and, being all soldiers from the same soil, they were easily persuaded, by a long series of successful aggressions, that their courage was superior to that of all other men.541

In the year 1833, the Gwālior territory yielded a net revenue to the treasury of ninety-two lākhs of rupees, after discharging all the local costs of the civil and fiscal administration of the different districts, in officers, establishments, charitable institutions, religions endowments, military fiefs, &c.542 In the remote districts, which are much infested by the predatory tribes of Bhīls,543 and in consequence badly peopled and cultivated, the net revenue is estimated to be about one-third of the gross collections; but, in the districts near the capital, which are tolerably well cultivated, the net revenue brought to the treasury is about five-sixths of the gross collections; and these collections are equal to the whole annual rent of the land; for every man by whom the land is held or cultivated is a mere tenant at will, liable every season to be turned out, to give place to any other man that may offer more for the holding.

There is nowhere to be seen upon the land any useful or ornamental work, calculated to attach the people to the soil or to their villages; and, as hardly any of the recruits for the regiments are drawn from the peasantry of the country, the agricultural classes have nowhere any feeling of interest in the welfare or existence of the government. I am persuaded that there is not a single village in all the Gwālior dominions in which nine-tenths of the people would not be glad to see that government destroyed, under the persuasion that they could not possibly have a worse, and would be very likely to find a better.

The present force at Gwālior consists of three regiments of infantry, under Colonel Alexander; six under the command of Apājī, the adopted son of the late Bālā Bāī;544 eleven under Colonel Jacobs and his son; five under Colonel Jean Baptiste Filose; two under the command of the Māmū Sāhib, the maternal uncle of the Mahārājā; three in what is called Bābū Bāolī's camp; in all thirty regiments, consisting, when complete, of six hundred men each, with four field-pieces. The 'Jinsī', or artillery, consists of two hundred guns of different calibre. There are but few corps of cavalry, and these are not considered very efficient, I believe.545

Robbers and murderers of all descriptions have always been in the habit of taking the field in India immediately after the festival of the Dasahrā,546 at the end of October, from the sovereign of a state at the head of his armies, down to the leader of a little band of pickpockets from the corner of some obscure village. All invoke the Deity, and take the auspices to ascertain his will, nearly in the same way; and all expect that he will guide them successfully through their enterprises, as long as they find the omens favourable. No one among them ever dreams that his undertaking can be less acceptable to the Deity than that of another, provided he gives him the same due share of what he acquires in his thefts, his robberies, or his conquests, in sacrifices and offerings upon his shrines, and in donations to his priests.547 Nor does the robber often dream that he shall be considered a less respectable citizen by the circle in which he moves than the soldier, provided he spends his income as liberally, and discharges all his duties in his relations with them as well; and this he generally does to secure their goodwill, whatever may be the character of his depredations upon distant circles of society and communities. The man who returned to Oudh, or Rohilkhand, after a campaign under a Pindhārī chief, was as well received as one who returned after serving one under Sindhia, Holkār, or Ranjīt Singh. A friend of mine one day asked a leader of a band of 'dacoits', or banditti, whether they did not often commit murder. 'God forbid', said he, 'that we should ever commit murder; but, if people choose to oppose us, we, of course, strike and kill; but you do the same. I hear that there is now a large assemblage of troops in the upper provinces going to take foreign countries; if they are opposed, they will kill people. We only do the same.'548 The history of the rise of every nation in the world unhappily bears out the notion that princes are only robbers upon a large scale, till their ambition is curbed by a balance of power among nations.

On the 25th549 we came on to Dhamēlā, fourteen miles, over a plain, with the range of sandstone hills on the left, receding from us to the west; and that on the right receding still more to the east. Here and there were some insulated hills of the same formation rising abruptly from the plain to our right. All the villages we saw were built upon masses of this sandstone rock, rising abruptly at intervals from the surface of the plain, in horizontal strata. These hillocks afford the people stone for building, and great facilities for defending themselves against the inroads of freebooters. There is not, I suppose, in the world a finer stone for building than these sandstone hills afford; and we passed a great many carts carrying them off to distant places in slabs or flags from ten to sixteen feet long, two to three feet wide, and six inches thick. They are white, with very minute pink spots, and of a texture so very fine that they would be taken for indurated clay on a slight inspection. The houses of the poorest peasants are here built of this beautiful freestone, which, after two hundred years, looks as if it had been quarried only yesterday.

About three miles from our tents we crossed over the little river Ghorapachhār,550 flowing over a bed of this sandstone. The soil all the way very light, and the cultivation scanty and bad. Except within the enclosures of men's houses, scarcely a tree to be anywhere seen to give shelter and shade to the weary traveller; and we could find no ground for our camp with a shrub to shelter man or beast. All are swept away to form gun-carriages for the Gwālior artillery, with a philosophical disregard to the comforts of the living, the repose of the dead who planted them with a view to a comfortable berth in the next world, and to the will of the gods to whom they are dedicated. There is nothing left upon the land of animal or vegetable life to enrich it; nothing of stock but what is necessary to draw from the soil an annual crop, and which looks to one harvest for its entire return. The sovereign proprietor of the soil lets it out by the year, in farms or villages, to men who depend entirely upon the year's return for the means of payment. He, in his turn, lets the lands in detail to those who till them, and who depend for their subsistence, and for the means of paying their rents, upon the returns of the single harvest. There is no manufacture anywhere to be seen, save of brass pots and rude cooking utensils; no trade or commerce, save in the transport of the rude produce of the land to the great camp at Gwālior, upon the backs of bullocks, for want of roads fit for wheeled carriages. No one resides in the villages, save those whose labour is indispensably necessary to the rudest tillage, and those who collect the dues of government, and are paid upon the lowest possible scale. Such is the state of the Gwālior territories in every part of India where I have seen them.551 The miseries and misrule of the Oudh, Hyderabad, and other Muhammadan governments, are heard of everywhere, because there are, under these governments, a middle and higher class upon the land to suffer and proclaim them; but those of the Gwālior state are never heard of, because no such classes are ever allowed to grow up upon the land. Had Russia governed Poland, and Turkey Greece, in the way that Gwālior has governed her conquered territories, we should never have heard of the wrongs of the one or the other.

In my morning's ride the day before I left Gwālior, I saw a fine leopard standing by the side of the most frequented road, and staring at every one who passed. It was held by two men, who sat by and talked to it as if it had been a human being. I thought it was an animal for show, and I was about to give them something, when they told me that they were servants of the Mahārājā, and were training the leopard to bear the sight and society of man. 'It had', they said, 'been caught about three months ago in the jungles, where it could never bear the sight and society of man, or of any animal that it could not prey upon; and must be kept upon the most frequented road till quite tamed. Leopards taken when very young would', they said, 'do very well as pets, but never answered for hunting; a good leopard for hunting must, before taken, be allowed to be a season or two providing for himself, and living upon the deer he takes in the jungles and plains.'

CHAPTER 50

Dhōlpur, Capital of the Jāt Chiefs of Gohad—Consequence of Obstacles to the Prosecution of Robbers

On the morning of the 26th,552 we sent on one tent, with the intention of following it in the afternoon; but about three o'clock a thunder-storm came on so heavily that I was afraid that which we occupied would come down upon us; and, putting my wife and child in a palankeen, I took them to the dwelling of an old Bairāgī, about two hundred yards from us. He received us very kindly, and paid us many compliments about the honour we had conferred upon him. He was a kind and, I think, a good old man, and had six disciples who seemed to reverence him very much. A large stone image of Hanumān, the monkey-god, painted red, and a good store of buffaloes, very comfortably sheltered from the pitiless storm, were in an inner court. The peacocks in dozens sought shelter under the walls and in the tree that stood in the courtyard; and I believe that they would have come into the old man's apartment had they not seen our white faces there. I had a great deal of talk with him, but did not take any notes of it. These old Bairāgīs, who spend the early and middle parts of life as disciples in pilgrimages to the celebrated temples of their god Vishnu in all parts of India, and the latter part of it as high priests or apostles in listening to the reports of the numerous disciples employed in similar wanderings are, perhaps, the most intelligent men in the country. They are from all the castes and classes of society. The lowest Hindoo may become a Bairāgī, and the very highest are often tempted to become so; the service of the god to which they devote themselves levelling all distinctions. Few of them can write or read, but they are shrewd observers of men and things, and often exceedingly agreeable and instructive companions to those who understand them, and can make them enter into unreserved conversation. Our tent stood out the storm pretty well, but we were obliged to defer our march till the next day. On the afternoon of the 27th we went on twelve miles, over a plain of deep alluvion, through which two rivers have cut their way to the Chambal; and, as usual, the ravines along their banks are deep, long, and dreary.

About half-way we were overtaken by one of the heaviest showers of rain I ever saw; it threatened us from neither side, but began to descend from an apparently small bed of clouds directly over our heads, which seemed to spread out on every side as the rain fell, and fill the whole vault of heaven with one dark and dense mass. The wind changed frequently; and in less than half an hour the whole surface of the country over which we were travelling was under water. This dense mass of clouds passed off in about two hours to the east; but twice, when the sun opened and beamed divinely upon us in a cloudless sky to the west, the wind changed suddenly round, and rushed back angrily from the east, to fill up the space which had been quickly rarefied by the genial heat of its rays, till we were again enveloped in darkness, and began to despair of reaching any human habitation before night. Some hail fell among the rain, but not large enough to hurt any one. The thunder was loud and often startling to the strongest nerves, and the lightning vivid, and almost incessant. We managed to keep the road because it was merely a beaten pathway below the common level of the country, and we could trace it by the greater depth of the water, and the absence of all shrubs and grass. All roads in India soon become watercourses—they are nowhere metalled; and, being left for four or five months every year without rain, their soil is reduced to powder by friction, and carried off by the winds over the surrounding country.553 I was on horseback, but my wife and child were secure in a good palankeen that sheltered them from the rain. The bearers were obliged to move with great caution and slowly, and I sent on every person I could spare that they might keep moving, for the cold blast blowing over their thin and wet clothes seemed intolerable to those who were idle. My child's playmate, Gulāb, a lad of about ten years of age, resolutely kept by the side of the palankeen, trotting through the water with his teeth chattering as if he had been in an ague. The rain at last ceased, and the sky in the west cleared up beautifully about half an hour before sunset. Little Gulāb threw off his stuffed and quilted vest, and got a good dry English blanket to wrap round him from the palankeen. We soon after reached a small village, in which I treated all who had remained with us to as much coarse sugar (gur) as they could eat; and, as people of all castes can eat of sweetmeats from the hands of confectioners without prejudice to their caste, and this sugar is considered to be the best of all good things for guarding against colds in man or beast, they all ate very heartily, and went on in high spirits. As the sun sank below us on the left, a bright moon shone out upon us from the right, and about an hour after dark we reached our tents on the north bank of the Kuārī river, where we found an excellent dinner for ourselves, and good fires, and good shelter for our servants. Little rain had fallen near the tents, and the river Kuārī, over which we had to cross, had not, fortunately, much swelled; nor did much fall on the ground we had left; and, as the tents there had been struck and laden before it came on, they came up the next morning early, and went on to our next ground.