Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official Part 10

236 seq., may also be consulted.

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 a.s.suredly go to h.e.l.l 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 circ.u.mstances 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 mult.i.tudes of mankind have been led and perhaps governed; and a philosophical a.n.a.lysis 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, ent.i.tled, 'Of the Princ.i.p.al 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 princ.i.p.al 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 part.i.tions do their bounds divide.

The treatise of Professor Cesare Lombroso, ent.i.tled _The Man of Genius_ (London edition, 1891), is devoted to proof and ill.u.s.tration 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 munic.i.p.al 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 princ.i.p.al 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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.ses 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 G.o.ds or their temples, there is always a.s.sociated 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 G.o.dhead in them, they would a.s.suredly 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 G.o.d, and we shall not suffer him to be molested; if all your G.o.ds 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 G.o.ds, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 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 G.o.d'.

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 sanct.i.ty 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 sh.o.r.e 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 a.s.signed; 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 coa.r.s.e 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 coa.r.s.e 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 G.o.d 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-x.x.x; and vol. xiv, p. 149, pl. x.x.xi; 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. Sh.o.r.e, a very amiable woman, the wife of the Governor-General's representative, the Hon.

Mr. Sh.o.r.e, a very worthy and able member of the Bengal Civil Service.

[W. H. S.] For notice of Mr. Sh.o.r.e, see note at end of Chapter 13.

11. See the author's paper ent.i.tled '_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.