Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official Part 17

On the 6th[1] we came to Sayyidpur, ten miles, over an undulating country, with a fine soil of decomposed basalt, reposing upon syenite, with veins of feldspar and quartz. Cultivation partial, and very bad; and population extremely scanty. We pa.s.sed close to a village, in which the children were all at play; while upon the bushes over their heads were suspended an immense number of the beautiful nests of the sagacious 'baya' bird, or Indian yellow- hammer,[2] all within reach of a grown-up boy, and one so near the road that a grown-up man might actually look into it as he pa.s.sed along, and could hardly help shaking it. It cannot fail to strike a European as singular to see so many birds' nests, situated close to a village, remain unmolested within reach of so many boisterous children, with their little proprietors and families fluttering and chirping among them with as great a feeling of security and gaiety of heart as the children themselves enjoy.

In any part of Europe not a nest of such a colony could have lived an hour within reach of such a population; for the baya bird has no peculiar respect paid to it by the people here, like the wren and robin-redbreast in England. No boy in India has the slightest wish to molest birds in their nests; it enters not into their pastimes, and they have no feeling of pride or pleasure in it. With us it is different--to discover birds' nests is one of the first modes in which a boy exercises his powers, and displays his love of art. Upon his skill in finding them he is willing to rest his first claim to superior sagacity and enterprise. His trophies are his string of eggs; and the eggs most prized among them are those of the nests that are discovered with most difficulty, and attained with most danger.

The same feeling of desire to display their skill and enterprise in search after birds' nests in early life renders the youth of England the enemy almost of the whole animal creation throughout their after career. The boy prides himself on his dexterity in throwing a stone or a stick; and he practises on almost every animal that comes in his way, till he never sees one without the desire to knock it down, or at least to hit it; and, if it is lawful to do so, he feels it to be a most serious misfortune not to have a stone within his reach at the time. As he grows up, he prides himself upon his dexterity in shooting, and he never sees a member of the feathered tribe within shot, without a desire to shoot it, or without regretting that he has not a gun in his hand to shoot it. That he is not entirely dest.i.tute of sympathy, however, with the animals he maims for his amus.e.m.e.nt is sufficiently manifest from his anxiety to put them out of pain the moment he gets them.

A friend of mine, now no more, Captain Medwin, was once looking with me at a beautiful landscape painting through a gla.s.s. At last he put aside the gla.s.s, saying: 'You may say what you like, S--, but the best landscape I know is a fine black partridge[3] falling before my Joe Manton.'

The following lines of Walter Scott, in his _Rokeby_, have always struck me as very beautiful:-

As yet the conscious pride of art Had steel'd him in his treacherous part; A powerful spring of force unguessed That hath each gentler mood suppressed, And reigned in many a human breast; From his that plans the rude campaign, To his that wastes the woodland reign, &c.[4]

Among the people of India it is very different. Children do not learn to exercise their powers either in discovering and robbing the nests of birds, or in knocking them down with stones and staves; and, as they grow up, they hardly ever think of hunting or shooting for mere amus.e.m.e.nt. It is with them a matter of business; the animal they cannot eat they seldom think of molesting.

Some officers were one day pursuing a jackal, with a pack of dogs, through my grounds. The animal pa.s.sed close to one of my guard, who cut him in two with his sword, and held up the reeking blade in triumph to the indignant cavalcade; who, when they came up, were ready to eat him alive. 'What have I done', said the poor man, 'to offend you?' 'Have you not killed the jackal?' shouted the whipper- in, in a fury.

'Of course I have; but were you not all trying to kill him?' replied the poor man. He thought their only object had been to kill the jackal, as they would have killed a serpent, merely because he was a mischievous and noisy beast.

The European traveller in India is often in doubt whether the peac.o.c.ks, partridges, and ducks, which he finds round populous villages, are tame or wild, till he asks some of the villagers themselves, so a.s.sured of safety do these creatures become, and so willing to take advantage of it for the food they find in the suburbs. They very soon find the difference, however, between the white-faced visitor and the dark-faced inhabitants. There is a fine date-tree overhanging a kind of school at the end of one of the streets in the town of Jubbulpore, quite covered with the nests of the baya birds; and they are seen, every day and all day, fluttering and chirping about there in scores, while the noisy children at their play fill the street below, almost within arm's length of them. I have often thought that such a tree so peopled at the door of a school in England might work a great revolution in the early habits and propensities of the youth educated in it. The European traveller is often amused to see the pariah dog[5] squatted close in front of the traveller during the whole time he is occupied in cooking and eating his dinner, under a tree by the roadside, a.s.sured that he shall have at least a part of the last cake thrown to him by the stranger, instead of a stick or a stone. The stranger regards him with complacency, as one that reposes a quiet confidence in his charitable disposition, and flings towards him the whole or part of his last cake, as if his meal had put him in the best possible humour with him and all the world.

Notes:

1. December, 1835. The name of the village is given in the author's text as Seindpore. It seems to be the place which is called Siedpore in the next chapter.

2. The common weaver bird, _Phoceus baya, Blyth. 'Ploceinae_, the weaver birds. . . . They build nests like a crucible, with the opening downwards, and usually attach them to the tender branches of a tree hanging over a well or tank. _P. baya_ is found throughout India; its nest is made of gra.s.ses and strips of the plantain or date-palm stripped while green. It is easily tamed and taught some tricks, such as to load and fire a toy cannon, to pick up a ring, &c,' (Balfour, _Cyclopaedia_, 3rd ed., 1885, s.v. 'Ploceinae').

3. _Francolinus vulgaris_; a capital game bird.

4. Canto V, stanza 22, line 3.

5. The author spells the word Pareear. The editor has used the form now customary. The word is the Tamil appellation of a large body of the population of Southern India, which stands outside the orthodox Hindoo castes, but has a caste organization of its own. Europeans apply the term to the low-caste mongrel dogs which infest villages and towns throughout India. See Yule and Burnell, _Glossary of Anglo- Indian Words (Hobson-Jobson)_, in either edition, s.v.; and Dubois, _Hindu Manners, &c._, 3rd ed. (1906, index, s.v.).

CHAPTER 19

Feeding Pilgrims--Marriage of a Stone with a Shrub.

At Sayyidpur[1] we encamped in a pretty little mango grove, and here I had a visit from my old friend Janki Sewak, the high priest of the great temple that projects into the Sagar lake, and is called Bindraban.[2] He has two villages rent free, worth a thousand rupees a year; collects something more through his numerous disciples, who wander over the country; and spends the whole in feeding all the members of his fraternity (Bairagis), devotees of Vishnu, as they pa.s.s his temple in their pilgrimages. Every one who comes is considered ent.i.tled to a good meal and a night's lodging; and he has to feed and lodge about a hundred a day. He is a man of very pleasing manners and gentle disposition, and everybody likes him. He was on his return from the town of Ludhaura,[3] where he had been, at the invitation of the Raja of Orchha, to a.s.sist at the celebration of the marriage of Salagram with the Tulasi,[4] which there takes place every year under the auspices and at the expense of the Raja, who must be present. 'Salagrams'[5] are rounded pebbles which contain the impressions of ammonites, and are washed down into the plains of India by the rivers from the limestone rocks in which these sh.e.l.ls are imbedded in the mountains of the Himalaya.[6] The Spiti valley[7]

contains an immense deposit of fossil ammonites and belemnites[8] in limestone rocks, now elevated above sixteen thousand feet above the level of the sea; and from such beds as these are brought down the fragments, which, when rounded in their course, the poor Hindoo takes for representatives of Vishnu, the preserving G.o.d of the Hindoo triad. The Salagram is the only stone idol among the Hindoos that is _essentially sacred_, and ent.i.tled to divine honours without the ceremonies of consecration.[9] It is everywhere held most sacred.

During the war against Nepal,[10] Captain B------, who commanded a reconnoitring party from the division in which I served, one day brought back to camp some four or five Salagrams, which he had found at the hut of some priest within the enemy's frontier. He called for a large stone and hammer, and proceeded to examine them. The Hindoos were all in a dreadful state of consternation, and expected to see the earth open and swallow up the whole camp, while he sat calmly cracking _their G.o.ds_ with his hammer, as he would have cracked so many walnuts. The Tulasi is a small sacred shrub (_Ocymum sanctum_), which is a metamorphosis of Sita, the wife of Rama, the seventh incarnation of Vishnu.

This little _pebble_ is every year married to this little _shrub_; and the high priest told me that on the present occasion the procession consisted of eight elephants, twelve hundred camels, four thousand horses, all mounted and elegantly caparisoned. On the leading elephant of this _cortege_, and the most sumptuously decorated, was carried the _pebble G.o.d_, who was taken to pay his bridal visit (barat) to the little _shrub G.o.ddess_. All the ceremonies of a regular marriage are gone through; and, when completed, the bride and bridegroom are left to repose together in the temple of Ludhaura[11] till the next season. 'Above a hundred thousand people', the priest said, 'were present at the ceremony this year at the Raja's invitation, and feasted upon his bounty.'[12]

The old man and I got into a conversation upon the characters of different governments, and their effects upon the people; and he said that bad governments would sooner or later be always put down by the deity; and quoted this verse, which I took down with my pencil:

Tulasi, gharib na satae, Buri gharib ki hai; Mari khal ke phunk se Loha bhasm ho jae.

'Oh, Raja Tulasi! oppress not the poor; for the groans of the wretched bring retribution from heaven. The contemptible skin (in the smith's bellows) in time melts away the hardest iron.'[13]

On leaving our tents in the morning, we found the ground all round white with h.o.a.r frost, as we had found it for several mornings before;[14] and a little canary bird, one of the two which travelled in my wife's palankeen, having, by the carelessness of the servants been put upon the top without any covering to the cage, was killed by the cold, to her great affliction. All attempts to restore it to life by the warmth of her bosom were fruitless.

On the 7th[15] we came nine miles to Bamhauri over a soil still basaltic, though less rich, reposing upon syenite, which frequently rises and protrudes its head above the surface, which is partially and badly cultivated, and scantily peopled. The silent signs of bad government could not be more manifest. All the extensive plains, covered with fine long gra.s.s, which is rotting in the ground from want of domestic cattle or distant markets. Here, as in every other part of Central India, the people have a great variety of good spontaneous, but few cultivated, gra.s.ses. They understand the character and qualities of these gra.s.ses extremely well. They find some thrive best in dry, and some in wet seasons; and that of inferior quality is often prized most because it thrives best when other kinds cannot thrive at all, from an excess or a deficiency of rain. When cut green they all make good hay, and have the common denomination of 'sahia'. The finest of these gra.s.ses are two which are generally found growing spontaneously together, and are often cultivated together-'kel' and 'musel'; the third 'parwana'; fourth 'bhawar', or 'guniar'; fifth 'saina'.[16]

Notes:

1. Spelled Siedpore in the author's text.

2. More correctly Brindaban (Vrindavana). The name originally belongs to one of the most sacred spots in India, situated near Mathura (Muttra) on the Jumna, and the reputed scene of the dalliance between Krishna and the milkmaids (Gopis); also a.s.sociated with the legend Rama.

3. Twenty-seven miles north-west of Tehri in the Orchha State.

4. The Tulasi plant, or basil, _Ocymum sanctum_, is 'not merely sacred to Vishnu or to his wife Lakshmi; it is pervaded by the essence of these deities, and itself worshipped as a deity and prayed to accordingly. . . . The Tulasi is the object of more adoration than any other plant at present worshipped in India. . . .It is to be found in almost every respectable household throughout India. It is a small shrub, not too big to be cultivated in a good-sized flower-pot, and often placed in rooms. Generally, however, it is planted in the courtyard of a well-to-do man's house, with a s.p.a.ce round it for reverential circ.u.mambulation. In real fact the Tulasi is _par excellence_ a domestic divinity, or rather, perhaps, a woman's divinity' (M. Williams, _Religious Thought and Life in India_, p.

333).

5. The fossil ammonites found in India include at least fifteen species. They occur between Trichinopoly and Pondicherry as well as in the Himalayan rocks. They are particularly abundant in the river Gandak, which rises near Dhaulagiri in Nepal, and falls into the Ganges near Patna. The upper course of this river is consequently called Salagrami. Various forms of the fossils are supposed to represent various _avatars_ of Vishnu (Balfour, _Cyclopaedia_, 3rd ed., s.v. 'Ammonite', 'Gandak', 'Salagrama'; M. Williams, _Religious Thought and Life in India_, pp. 69, 349). A good account of the reverence paid to both _salagrams_ and the _tulasi_ plant will be found in Dubois, _Hindu Manners_, &c., 3rd ed. (1906), pp. 648-51.

6. The author writes 'Himmalah'. The current spelling Himalaya is correct, but the word should be p.r.o.nounced Himalaya. It means 'abode of snow'.

7. The north-eastern corner of the Punjab, an elevated valley along the course of the Spiti or the Li river, a tributary of the Satlaj.

8. Fossils of the genus Belemnites and related genera are common, like the ammonites, near Trichinopoly, as well as in the Himalaya.

9. This statement is not quite correct. The pebbles representing the Linga of Siva, called Bana-linga, or Vana-linga, and apparently of white quartz, which are found in the Nerbudda river, enjoy the same distinction. 'Both are held to be of their own nature pervaded by the special presence of the deity, and need no consecration. Offerings made to these pebbles--such, for instance, as Bilwa leaves laid on the white stone of Vishnu--are believed to confer extraordinary merit' (M. Williams, _Religious Thought and Life in India_, p. 69).

10. In 1814-16.

11. 'Sadora' in author's text, which seems to be a misprint for Ludora or Ludhaura.

12. The Tulasi shrub is sometimes married to an image of Krishna, instead of to the salagrama, in Western India (M. Williams, _Religious Thought and Life in India_, p. 334). Compare the account of the marriage between the mango-tree and the jasmine, _ante_, Chapter 5, Note [3].

13. These Hindi verses are incorrectly printed, and loosely rendered by the author. The translation of the text, after necessary emendation, is: 'Tulasi, oppress not the poor; evil is the lot of the poor. From the blast of the dead hide iron becomes ashes.' Mr. W.

Crooke informs me that the verses are found in the Kabirki Sakhi, and are attributable to Kabir Das, rather than to Tulasi Das. But the authorship of such verses is very uncertain. Mr. Crooke further observes that the lines as given in the text do not scan, and that the better version is:

Durbal ko na sataiye, Jaki mati hai; Mue khal ke sans se Sar bhasm ho jae.

_Sar_ means iron. The author was, of course, mistaken in supposing the poet Tulasi Das to be a Raja. As usual in Hindi verse, the poet addresses himself by name.

14. Such slight frosts are common in Bundelkhand, especially near the rivers, in January, but only last for a few mornings. They often cause great damage to the more delicate crops. The weather becomes hot in February.

15. December, 1835.

16. 'Musel' is a very sweet-scented gra.s.s, highly esteemed as fodder.

It belongs to the genus _Anthistiria_; the species is either _cimicina_ or _prostrata_. 'Bhawar' is probably the 'bhaunr' of Edgeworth's list, _Anthistiria scandens_. I cannot identify the other gra.s.ses named in the text. The hayc.o.c.ks in Bundelkhand are a pleasant sight to English eyes. Edgeworth's list of plants found in the Banda district, as revised by Messrs. Waterfield and Atkinson, is given in _N.W.P. Gazetteer_, 1st ed., vol. i, pp. 78-86.