Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official

On the 28th, we went on to Dhōlpur, the capital of the Jāt chiefs of Gohad,554 on the left bank of the Chambal, over a plain with a variety of crops, but not one that requires two seasons to reach maturity. The soil excellent in quality and deep, but not a tree anywhere to be seen, nor any such thing as a work of ornament or general utility of any kind. We saw the fort of Dhōlpur at a distance of six miles, rising apparently from the surface of the level plain, but in reality situated on the summit of the opposite and high bank of a large river, its foundation at least one hundred feet above the level of the water. The immense pandemonia of ravines that separated us from this fort were not visible till we began to descend into them some two or three miles from the bed of the river. Like all the ravines that border the rivers in these parts, they are naked, gloomy, and ghastly, and the knowledge that no solitary traveller is ever safe in them does not tend to improve the impression they make upon us. The river is a beautiful clear stream, here flowing over a bed of fine sand with a motion so gentle, that one can hardly conceive it is she who has played such fantastic tricks along the borders, and made such 'frightful gashes' in them. As we passed over this noble reach of the river Chambal in a ferry- boat, the boatman told us of the magnificent bridge formed here by the Baiza Bāī for Lord William Bentinck in 1832, from boats brought down from Agra for the purpose. 'Little', said they, 'did it avail her with the Governor-General in her hour of need.555

The town of Dhōlpur lies some short way in from the north bank of the Chambal, at the extremity of a range of sandstone hills which runs diagonally across that of Gwālior. This range was once capped with basalt, and some boulders are still found upon it in a state of rapid decomposition. It was quite refreshing to see the beautiful mango groves on the Dhōlpur side of the river, after passing through a large tract of country in which no tree of any kind was to be seen. On returning from a long ride over the range of sandstone hills the morning after we reached Dhōlpur, I passed through an encampment of camels taking rude iron from some mines in the hills to the south towards Agra. They waited here within the frontier of a native state for a pass from the Agra custom house,556 lest any one should, after they enter our frontier, pretend that they were going to smuggle it, and thus get them into trouble. 'Are you not', said I, 'afraid to remain here so near the ravines of the Chambal, when thieves are said to be so numerous?' 'Not at all,' replied they. 'I suppose thieves do not think it worth while to steal rude iron?' 'Thieves, sir, think it worth while to steal anything they can get, but we do not fear them much here.' 'Where, then, do you fear them much?' 'We fear them when we get into the Company's territories.' 'And how is this, when we have good police establishments, and the Dhōlpur people none?' 'When the Dhōlpur people get hold of a thief, they make him disgorge all that he has got of our property for us, and they confiscate all the rest that he has for themselves, and cut off his nose or his hands, and turn him adrift to deter others. You, on the contrary, when you get hold of a thief, worry us to death in the prosecution of your courts; and, when we have proved the robbery to your satisfaction, you leave all this ill-gotten wealth to his family,557 and provide him with good food and clothing for himself, while he works for you a couple of years on the roads.558 The consequence is, that here fellows are afraid to rob a traveller, if they find him at all on his guard, as we generally are, while in your districts they rob us where and when they like.'

'But, my friends, you are sure to recover what we do get of your property from the thieves.' 'Not quite sure of that neither,' said they, 'or the greater part is generally absorbed on its way back to us through the officers of your court; and we would always rather put up with the first loss than run the risk of a greater by prosecution, if we happen to get robbed within the Company's territories.'

The loss and annoyances to which prosecutors and witnesses are subject in our courts are a source of very great evil to the country. They enable police-officers everywhere to grow rich upon the concealment of crimes. The man who has been robbed will bribe them to conceal the robbery, that he may escape the further loss of the prosecution in our courts, generally very distant; and the witnesses will bribe them to avoid attending to give evidence; the whole village communities bribe them, because every man feels that they have the power of getting him summoned to the court in some capacity or other, if they like; and that they will certainly like to do so, if not bribed.

The obstacles which our system opposes to the successful prosecution of robbers of all denominations and descriptions deprive our Government of all popular support in the administration of criminal justice; and this is considered everywhere to be the worst, and, indeed, the only radically bad feature of our government. No magistrate hopes to get a conviction against one in four of the most atrocious gang of robbers and murderers of his district, and his only resource is in the security laws, which enable him to keep them in jail under a requisition of security for short periods. To this an idle or apathetic magistrate will not have recourse, and under him these robbers have a free licence.

In England, a judicial acquittal does not send back the culprit to follow the same trade in the same field, as in India; for the published proceedings of the court bring down upon him the indignation of society—the moral and religions feelings of his fellow men are arrayed against him, and from these salutary checks no flaw in the indictment can save him. Not so in India. There no moral or religions feelings interpose to assist or to supply the deficiencies of the penal law. Provided he eats, drinks, smokes, marries, and makes his offerings to his priest according to the rules of his caste, the robber and the murderer incurs no odium in the circle in which he moves, either religious or moral, and this is the only circle for whose feelings he has any regard.559

The man who passed off his bad coin at Datiyā, passed off more at Dhōlpur while my advanced people were coming in, pretending that he wanted things for me, and was in a great hurry to be ready with them at my tents by the time I came up. The bad rupees were brought to a native officer of my guard, who went with the shopkeepers in search of the knave, but he could nowhere be found. The gates of the town were shut up all night at my suggestion, and in the morning every lodging-house in the town was searched for him in vain—he had gone on. I had left some sharp men behind me, expecting that he would endeavour to pass off his bad money immediately after my departure; but in expectation of this he was now evidently keeping a little in advance of me. I sent on some men with the shopkeepers whom he had cheated to our next stage, in the hope of overtaking him; but he had left the place before they arrived without passing any of his bad coin, and gone on to Agra. The shopkeepers could not be persuaded to go any further after him, for, if they caught him, they should, they said, have infinite trouble in prosecuting him in our courts, without any chance of recovering from him what they had lost.

On the 29th, we remained at Dhōlpur to receive and return the visits of the young Rājā, or, as he is called, the young Rānā, a lad of about fifteen years of age, very plain, and very dull. He came about ten in the forenoon with a very respectable and well-dressed retinue, and a tolerable show of elephants and horses. The uniforms of his guards were made after those of our own soldiers, and did not please me half so much as those of the Datiyā guards, who were permitted to consult their own tastes; and the music of the drums and fifes seemed to me infinitely inferior to that of the mounted minstrels of my old friend Parīchhit.560 The lad had with him about a dozen old public servants entitled to chairs, some of whom had served his father above thirty years; while the ancestors of others had served his grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and I could not help telling the lad in their presence that 'these were the greatest ornament of a prince's throne and the best signs and pledges of a good government'. They were all evidently much pleased at the compliment, and I thought they deserved to be pleased, from the good character they bore among the peasantry of the country. I mentioned that I had understood the boatmen of the Chambal at Dhōlpur never caught or ate fish. The lad seemed embarrassed, and the minister took upon himself to reply that 'there was no market for it, since the Hindoos of Dhōlpur never ate fish, and the Muhammadans had all disappeared'. I asked the lad whether he was fond of hunting. He seemed again confounded, and the minister said that 'his highness never either hunted or fished, as people of his caste were prohibited from destroying life'. 'And yet', said I, 'they have often showed themselves good soldiers in battle.' They were all pleased again, and said that they were not prohibited from killing tigers; but that there was no jungle of any kind near Dhōlpur, and, consequently, no tigers to be found. The Jāts are descendants of the Getae, and were people of very low caste, or rather of no caste at all, among the Hindoos, and they are now trying to raise themselves by abstaining from killing and eating animals.561 Among Hindoos this is everything; a man of low caste is 'sab kuchh khātā', sticks at nothing in the way of eating; and a man of high caste is a man who abstains from eating anything but vegetable or farinaceous food; if, at the same time, he abstains from using in his cook-room all woods but one, and has that one washed before he uses it, he is canonized.562 Having attained to military renown and territorial dominion in the usual way by robbery, the Jāts naturally enough seek the distinction of high caste to enable them the better to enjoy their position in society.

It had been stipulated that I should walk to the bottom of the steps to receive the Rānā, as is the usage on such occasions, and carpets were accordingly spread thus far. Here he got out of his chair, and I led him into the large room of the bungalow, which we occupied during our stay, followed by all his and my attendants. The bungalow had been built by the former Resident at Gwālior, the Honourable R. Cavendish, for his residence during the latter part of the rains, when Gwālior is considered to be unhealthy. At his departure the Rānā purchased this bungalow for the use of European gentlemen and ladies passing through his capital.

In the afternoon, about four o'clock, I went to return his visit in a small palace not yet finished, a pretty piece of miniature fortification, surrounded by what they call their 'chhāonī', or cantonments. The streets are good, and the buildings neat and substantial; but there is nothing to strike or particularly interest the stranger. The interview passed off without anything remarkable; and I was more than ever pleased with the people by whom this young chief is surrounded. Indeed, I had much reason to be pleased with the manners of all the people on this side of the Chambal. They are those of a people well pleased to see English gentlemen among them, and anxious to make themselves useful and agreeable to us. They know that their chief is indebted to the British Government for all the country he has, and that he would be swallowed up by Sindhia's greedy army, were not the sevenfold shield of the Honourable Company spread over him. His establishments, civil and military, like those of the Bundēlkhand chiefs, are raised from the peasantry and yeomanry or the country; who all, in consequence, feel an interest in the prosperity and independent respectability of their chief. On the Gwālior side, the members of all the public establishments know and feel that it is we who interpose and prevent their master from swallowing up all his neighbours, and thereby having increased means of promoting their interest and that of their friends; and they detest us all most cordially in consequence. The peasantry of the Gwālior territory seem to consider their own government as a kind of minotaur, which they would be glad to see destroyed, no matter how or by whom; since it gives no lucrative or honourable employment to any of their members, so as to interest either their pride or their affections; nor throws back among them for purposes of local advantage any of the produce of their land and labour which it exacts. It is worthy of remark that, though the Dhōlpur chief is peculiarly the creature of the British Government, and indebted to it for all he has or ever will have, and though he has never had anything, and never can have, or can hope to have, anything from the poor pageant of the house of Tīmūr, who now sits upon the throne of Delhi;563 yet, on his seal of office he declares himself to be the slave and creature of that imperial 'warrior for the faith of Islam'. As he abstains from eating the good fish of the river Chambal to enhance his claim to caste among Hindoos, so he abstains from acknowledging his deep debt of gratitude to the Honourable Company, or the British Government, with a view to give the rust of age to his rank and title. To acknowledge himself a creature of the British Government were to acknowledge that he was a man of yesterday; to acknowledge himself the slave of the Emperor is to claim for his poor veins 'the blood of a line of kings'. The petty chiefs of Bundēlkhand, who are in the same manner especially dependent on the British Government, do the same thing.

At Dhōlpur, there are some noble old mosques and mausoleums built three hundred years ago, in the reign of the Emperor Humāyūn, by some great officers of his government, whose remains still rest undisturbed among them, though the names of their families have been for many ages forgotten, and no men of their creed now live near to demand for them the respect of the living. These tombs are all elaborately built and worked out of the fine freestone of the country and the trellis-work upon some of their stone screens is still as beautiful as when first made. There are Persian and Arabic inscriptions upon all of them, and I found from them that one of the mosques had been built by the Emperor Shāh Jahān in A.D. 1634,564 when he little dreamed that his three sons would here meet to fight the great fight for the throne while he yet sat upon it.565

CHAPTER 51

Influence of Electricity on Vegetation—Agra and its Buildings

On the 30th and 31st,566 we went twenty-four miles over a dry plain, with a sandy soil covered with excellent crops where irrigated, and a very poor one where not. We met several long strings of camels carrying grain from Agra to Gwālior. A single man takes charge of twenty or thirty, holding the bridle of the first, and walking on before its nose. The bridles of all the rest are tied one after the other to the saddles of those immediately preceding them, and all move along after the leader in single file. Water must tend to attract and to impart to vegetables a good deal of electricity and other vivifying powers that would otherwise he dormant in the earth at a distance. The mere circumstance of moistening the earth from within reach of the roots would not be sufficient to account for the vast difference between the crops of fields that are irrigated, and those that are not. One day, in the middle of the season of the rains, I asked my gardener, while walking with him over my grounds, how it was that some of the fine clusters of bamboos had not yet begun to throw out their shoots. 'We have not yet had a thunderstorm, sir,' replied the gardener. 'What in the name of God has the thunderstorm to do with the shooting of the bamboos?' asked I in amazement. 'I don't know, sir,' said he, 'but certain it is that no bamboos begin to throw out their shoots well till we get a good deal of thunder and lightning.' The thunder and lightning came, and the bamboo shoots soon followed in abundance. It might have been a mere coincidence; or the tall bamboo may bring down from the passing clouds, and convey to the roots, the electric fluid they require for nourishment, or for conductors of nourishment.567

In the Isle of France,568 people have a notion that the mushrooms always come up best after a thunderstorm. Electricity has certainly much more to do in the business of the world than we are yet aware of, in the animal, mineral, and vegetable developments.569

At our ground this day, I met a very respectable and intelligent native revenue officer who had been employed to settle some boundary disputes between the yeomen of our territory and those of the adjoining territory of Dhōlpur.

'The Honourable Company's rights and those of its yeomen must', said he, 'be inevitably sacrificed in all such cases; for the Dhōlpur chief, or his minister, says to all their witnesses, "You are, of course, expected to speak the truth regarding the land in dispute; but, by the sacred stream of the Ganges, if you speak so as to lose this estate one inch of it, you lose both your ears"—and most assuredly would they lose them,' continued he, 'if they were not to swear most resolutely that all the land in question belonged to Dhōlpur. Had I the same power to cut off the ears of witnesses on our side, we should meet on equal terms. Were I to threaten to cut them off, they would laugh in my face.' There was much truth in what the poor man said, for the Dhōlpur witnesses always make it appear that the claims of their yeomen are just and moderate, and a salutary dread of losing their ears operates, no doubt, very strongly. The threatened punishment of the prince is quick, while that of the gods, however just, is certainly very slow—

Ut sit magna, tamen certe lenta ira deorum est

On the 1st of January, 1836, we went on sixteen miles to Agra, and, when within about six miles of the city, the dome and minarets of the Tāj opened upon us from behind a small grove of fruit- trees, close by us on the side of the road. The morning was not clear, but it was a good one for a first sight of this building, which appeared larger through the dusty haze than it would have done through a clear sky. For five-and-twenty years of my life had I been looking forward to the sight now before me. Of no building on earth had I heard so much as of this, which contains the remains of the Emperor Shāh Jahān and his wife, the father and mother of the children whose struggles for dominion have been already described. We had ordered our tents to be pitched in the gardens of this splendid mausoleum, that we might have our fill of the enjoyment which everybody seemed to derive from it; and we reached them about eight o'clock. I went over the whole building before I entered my tent, and, from the first sight of the dome and minarets on the distant horizon to the last glance back from my tent-ropes to the magnificent gateway that forms the entrance from our camp to the quadrangle in which they stand, I can truly say that everything surpassed my expectations. I at first thought the dome formed too large a portion of the whole building; that its neck was too long and too much exposed; and that the minarets were too plain in their design; but, after going repeatedly over every part, and examining the tout ensemble from all possible positions, and in all possible lights, from that of the full moon at midnight in a cloudless sky to that of the noonday sun, the mind seemed to repose in the calm persuasion that there was an entire harmony of parts, a faultless congregation of architectural beauties, on which it could dwell for ever without fatigue.

After my quarter of a century of anticipated pleasure, I went on from part to part in the expectation that I must by and by come to something that would disappoint me; but no, the emotion which one feels at first is never impaired; on the contrary, it goes on improving from the first coup d'œil of the dome in the distance to the minute inspection of the last flower upon the screen round the tomb. One returns and returns to it with undiminished pleasure; and though at every return one's attention to the smaller parts becomes less and less, the pleasure which he derives from the contemplation of the greater, and of the whole collectively, seems to increase; and he leaves with a feeling of regret that he could not have it all his life within his reach, and of assurance that the image of what he has seen can never be obliterated from his mind 'while memory holds her seat'. I felt that it was to me in architecture what Kemble and his sister, Mrs. Siddons, had been to me a quarter of a century before in acting—something that must stand alone—something that I should never cease to see clearly in my mind's eye, and yet never be able clearly to describe to others.570

The Emperor and his Queen he buried side by side in a vault beneath the building, to which we descend by a flight of steps. Their remains are covered by two slabs of marble; and directly over these slabs, upon the floor above, in the great centre room under the dome, stand two other slabs, or cenotaphs, of the same marble exquisitely worked in mosaic. Upon that of the Queen, amid wreaths of flowers, are worked in black letters passages from the Korān, one of which, at the end facing the entrance, terminates with 'And defend us from the tribe of unbelievers'; that very tribe which is now gathered from all quarters of the civilized world to admire the splendour of the tomb which was raised to perpetuate her name.571 On the slab over her husband there are no passages from the Korān—merely mosaic work of flowers with his name and the date of his death.572 I asked some of the learned Muhammadan attendants the cause of this difference, and was told that Shāh Jahān had himself designed the slab over his wife, and saw no harm in inscribing the words of God upon it; but that the slab over himself was designed by his more pious son, Aurangzēb, who did not think it right to place these holy words upon a stone which the foot of man might some day touch, though that stone covered the remains of his own father. Such was this 'man of prayers', this 'Namāzī' (as Dara called him), to the last. He knew mankind well, and, above all, that part of them which he was called upon to govern, and which he governed for forty years with so much ability.573

The slab over the Queen occupies the centre of the apartments above and in the vault below, and that over her husband lies on the left as we enter. At one end of the slab in the vault her name is inwrought, 'Mumtāz-i-mahal Bānū Bēgam', the ornament of the palace, Bānū Bēgam, and the date of her death, 1631. That of her husband and the date of his death, 1666, are inwrought upon the other.574

She died in giving birth to a daughter, who is said to have been heard crying in the womb by herself and her other daughters. She sent for the Emperor, and told him that she believed no mother had ever been known to survive the birth of a child so heard, and that she felt her end was near. She had, she said, only two requests to make; first, that he would not marry again after her death, and get children to contend with hers for his favour and dominions; and, secondly, that he would build for her the tomb with which he had promised to perpetuate her name. She died in giving birth to the child, as might have been expected when the Emperor, in his anxiety, called all the midwives of the city, and all his secretaries of state and privy counsellors to prescribe for her. Both her dying requests were granted. Her tomb was commenced upon immediately. No woman ever pretended to supply her place in the palace; nor had Shāh Jahān, that we know of, children by any other.575 Tavernier saw this building completed and finished; and tells us that it occupied twenty thousand men for twenty-two years.576 The mausoleum itself and all the buildings that appertain to it cost 3,17,48,026—three karōr, seventeen lākhs, forty-eight thousand and twenty-six rupees, or £3,174,802 sterling;—three million one hundred and seventy-four thousand eight hundred and two!577 I asked my wife, when she had gone over it, what she thought of the building. 'I cannot', said she, 'tell you what I think, for I know not how to criticize such a building, but I can tell you what I feel. I would die to-morrow to have such another over me.' This is what many a lady has felt, no doubt.