Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official Part 24

18. During a residence of six years in Bundelkhand the editor came to the conclusion that most of the ancient artificial lakes were not constructed for purposes of irrigation. The embankments seem generally to have been built as adjuncts to palaces or temples. Many of the lakes command no considerable area of irrigable ground, and there are no traces of ancient irrigation channels. In modern times small ca.n.a.ls have been drawn from some of the lakes.

19. The desolation of the ravines of the rivers of Central India and Bundelkhand offers a very striking spectacle, presenting to the geologist a signal example of the effects of sub-aerial denudation.

20. This pretty custom is also described, in Tod's _Rajasthan_; and is still common in Alwar, and perhaps in other parts of Rajputana (_N.I. Notes and Queries_, vol. ii (Dec. 1892), p. 152), It does not seem to be now known in the Gangetic valley.

21. Princ.i.p.alities, and the estates of the talukdars of Oudh also descend to the eldest son. The author states (_ante_, Chapter 10, see text before note [10].) that the same rule applied in his time to the small agricultural holdings in the Sagar and Nerbudda territories.

22. This statement is inexact; Hindoo daughters, as a rule, inherit nothing from their fathers; a Muhammadan daughter takes half the share of a son.

23. But it is only the smaller local ministerial officers who are secure in their tenure of office under native Governments; those on whose efficiency the well-being of village communities depends. The greatest evil of Governments of the kind is the feeling of insecurity which pervades all the higher officers of Government, and the instability of all engagements made by the Government with them, and by them with the people. [W. H. S.]

24. _Ante_, Chapter 23, text at note [8].

25. In the Gwalior territory, the Maratha 'amils' or governors of districts, do the same, and keep gangs of robbers on purpose to plunder their neighbours; and, if you ask them for their thieves, they will actually tell you that to part with them would be ruin, as they are their only defence against the thieves of their neighbours.

[W. H. S.] These notions and habits are by no means extinct. In October, 1892, a force of about two hundred men, cavalry and infantry, was sent into Bundelkhand to suppress robber gangs. Such gangs are constantly breaking out in that region, in most native states, and in many British districts. See _ante_, chapter 23, text following note [13].

26. My poor guide had as little sympathy with the prime ministers, whom the Tehri Raja put to death, as the peasantry of England had with the great men and women whom Harry the Eighth sacrificed. [W. H.

S.] _Ante_, Chapter 23, beginning to note [9].

27. The cruel practice of impressment for the royal navy is authorized by a series of statutes extending from the reign of Philip and Mary to that of George III. Seamen of the merchant navy, and, with few exceptions, all seafaring men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five, are liable, under the provisions of these harsh statutes, to be forcibly seized by the press-gang, and compelled to serve on board a man-of-war. The acts legalizing impressment were freely made use of during the Napoleonic wars, but since then have been little acted on, and no Government at the present day could venture to use them, though they have never been repealed. The fleet sent against the Russians in 1855 was the first English fleet ever manned without recourse to forcible impressment: see the article 'Impressment' by David Hannay, in _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, 11th ed., 1910. The work by J. B. Hutchinson ent.i.tled _The Press-gang Afloat and Ash.o.r.e_ (London: Nash, 1913) gives copious details of the infamous proceedings.

28. The Brahman chief of Jhansi was originally a governor under the Peshwa. The treaty of November 18, 1817, recognized the then chief Ramchand Rao, his heirs and successors, as hereditary rulers of Jhansi. Ramchand Rao was granted the t.i.tle of Raja by the British Government in 1832, and died without issue on August 20, 1835 (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, 1st ed., vol. i, p. 296). See _post_, Chapter 29.

29. The chiefs of Jalaun also were officers under the Maratha Government of the Peshwa up to 1817. In consequence of gross misgovernment, an English superintendent was appointed in 1838, and the state lapsed to the British Government, owing to failure of heirs, in 1840 (ibid. p. 229).

30. _Ante_ Chapter 23, note 13.

31. Lapse of years has increased the distance and the enchantment, so that modern agitators and sentimentalists discover marvellous excellences in the native Governments of the now remote past. The methods of government in the existing native states have been so profoundly modified by the influence of the Imperial Government that these states are no longer as instructive in the way of contrast as they were in the author's day.

32. The author consistently held the views above enunciated, and defended the policy of maintaining the native states. He was of opinion that the system of annexation favoured by Lord Dalhousie and his Council 'had a downward tendency, and tended to crush all the higher and middle cla.s.ses connected with the land'. He considered that the Government of India should have undertaken the management of Oudh, but that it had no right to annex the province, and appropriate its revenues (_Journey through the Kingdom of Oude_, p. 22, &c.).

Since 1858 the policy of annexation has been repudiated. See Sir W.

Lee-Warner, _The Protected Princes of India_ (Macmillan, 1894), and _The Native States of India_ (1910).

33. A.D. 1249 to A.D. 1371.

34. The Hindi spoken in different parts of Bundelkhand comprises several distinct dialects: see Kellogg, _A Grammar of the Hindi Language_, 2nd ed., 1893; and Grierson, _Linguistic Survey_, vol. vi (1904), pp. 18-23, where the dialects of Eastern Bundelkhand are discussed. Bundeli, the speech of Bundelkhand proper, will be treated as a dialect of Western Hindi in a volume of the _Survey_ not yet published. Sir G. Grierson has favoured me with perusal of the proofs, and has used materials collected by me in the Hamirpur District nearly forty years ago. Bundeli has a considerable literature.

35. The editor was told of a case in which two chiefs suffered for beating their drums in Mahoba.

36. See _ante_, Chapter 23 note 11, and Chapter 26 note 14, and the authorities there cited. The Chandel history occupies an important place in the mediaeval annals of India. Several important inscriptions of the dynasty have been correctly edited in the _Epigraphia Indica_. Mahoba is not now a 'ruined city'; it is a moderately prosperous country town, with a tolerable bazaar, and about eleven thousand inhabitants. It is the head-quarters of a 'tahsildar', or sub-collector, and a station on the Midland Railway.

The ruined temples and places in and near the town are of much interest. For many miles round the country is full of remarkable remains, some of which are in fairly good preservation. The published descriptions of these works are far from being exhaustive. The author was mistaken in supposing that the power of the Chandels was broken by the Bundelas. The last Chandel king, who ruled over an extensive dominion, was Paramardi Deva, or Parmal. This prince was defeated in a pitched battle, or rather a series of battles, near the Betwa river, by Prithiraj Chauhan, king of Kanauj, in the year 1182. A few years later, the victor was himself vanquished and slain by the advancing Muhammadans. Mahoba and the surrounding territories then pa.s.sed through many vicissitudes, imperfectly recorded in the pages of history, and were ruled from time to time by Musalmans, Bhars, Khangars, and others. The Bundelas, an offshoot of the Gaharwar clan, did not come into notice before the middle of the fourteenth century, and first became a power in India under the leadership of Champat Rai, the contemporary of Jahangir and Shah Jahan, in the first half of the seventeenth century. The line of Chandel kings was continued in the persons of obscure local chiefs, whose very names are, for the most part, forgotten. The story of Durgavati, briefly told in the text, casts a momentary flash of light on their obscurity. The princ.i.p.al n.o.bleman of the Chandel race now occupying a dignified position is the Raja of Gidhaur in the Mungir (Monghyr) district of Bengal, whose ancestor emigrated from Mahoba.

The war between the Chandels and Chauhans is the subject of a long section or canto of the Hindi epic, the _Chand-Raisa_, written by Chand Bardai, the court poet of Prithiraj, of which the original MS.

in 5,000 verses still exists. It was subsequently expanded to 125,000 verses (_E.H.I._, 3rd ed., 1914, p. 387 note). The war is also the theme of the songs of many popular rhapsodists. The story is, of course, encrusted with a thick deposit of miraculous legend, and none of the details can be relied on. But the fact and the date of the war are fully proved by incontestable evidence.

37. The marriage of Durgavati is no proof that her father, the Chandel Raja, was powerful in Mahoba in the time of Akbar. It is rather an indication that he was poor and weak. If he had been rich and strong, he would probably have refused his daughter to a Gond, even though complaisant bards might invent a Rajput genealogy for the bridegroom. The story about the army of fifty thousand men cannot be readily accepted as sober fact. It looks like a courtly invention to explain a mesalliance. The inducement really offered to the proud but poor Chandel was, in all likelihood, a large sum of money, according to the usual practice in such cases. Several indications exist of close relations between the Gonds and Chandels in earlier times.

Early in Akbar's reign, in the year 1564, asaf Khan, the imperial viceroy of Karra Manikpur, obtained permission to invade the Gond territory. The young Raja of Garha Mandla, Bir Narayan, was then a minor, and the defence of the kingdom devolved on Durgavati, the dowager queen. She first took up her position at the great fortress of Singaurgarh, north-west of Jabalpur, and, being there defeated, retired through Garha, to the south-east, towards Mandla. After an obstinately contested fight the invaders were again successful, and broke the queen's stout resistance. 'Mounted on an elephant, she refused to retire, though she was severely wounded, until her troops had time to recover the shock of the first discharge of artillery, and, notwithstanding that she had received an arrow-wound in her eye, bravely defended the pa.s.s in person. But, by an extraordinary coincidence, the river in the rear of her position, which had been nearly dry a few hours before the action commenced, began suddenly to rise, and soon became unfordable. Finding her plan of retreat thus frustrated, and seeing her troops give way, she s.n.a.t.c.hed a dagger from her elephant-driver, and plunged it into her bosom. . . . Of all the sovereigns of this dynasty she lives most in the recollection of the people; she carried out many highly useful works in different parts of her kingdom, and one of the large reservoirs near Jabalpur is still called the Rani Talao in memory of her. During the fifteen years of her regency she did much for the country, and won the hearts of the people, while her end was as n.o.ble and devoted as her life had been useful' (_C.P. Gazetteer_ (1870), p. 283; with references to Sleeman's article on the Rajas of Garha Mandla, and 'Briggs'

Farishta', ed. 1829, vol. ii, pp. 217, 218). A memoir of asaf Khan Abdul Majid, the general who overcame Durgavati, will be found in Blochmann's translation of the _Ain-i-Akbari_, vol. i, p. 366.

38. Samthar is a small state, lying between the Betwa and Pahuj rivers, to the south-west of the Jalaun district. It was separated from the Datiya State only one generation previous to the British occupation of Bundelkhand. A treaty was concluded with the Raja in 1812 (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_ (1st ed.), vol. i, p. 578).

39. Gujars occupy more than a hundred villages in the Jalaun district, chiefly among the ravines of the Pahuj river. The Gujar caste is most numerous in the Panjab and the upper districts of the United Provinces. It is not very highly esteemed, being of about equal rank with the ahir caste and rather below the Jat. Gujar colonies are settled in the Hoshangabad and Nimar districts of the Central Provinces. The Gujars are inveterate cattle-lifters, and always ready to take advantage of any relaxation of the bonds of order to prey upon their neighbours. Many sections of the caste have adopted the Muhammadan faith.

40. The small state of Chhatarpur lies to the south of the Hamirpur district, between the Dasan and Ken rivers. The town of Chhatarpur, on the military road from Banda to Sagar, is remarkable for the mausoleum and ruined palace of Raja Chhatarsal, after whom the town is named. Khajuraho, the ancient religious capital of the Chandel monarchy, with its magnificent group of mediaeval Hindoo and Jain temples, is within the limits of the state, about eighteen miles south-east of Chhatarpur, and thirty-four miles south of Mahoba. The Pawar adventurer, who succeeded in separating Chhatarpur from the Panna state, was originally a common soldier.

41. Concerning Chhatarsal (A.D. 1671 to 1731), see notes _ante_, Chapter 14 note 9, and chapter 23 note 11. He was one of the sons of Champat Rai. The correct date of the death of Chhatarsal is Pus Badi 3, Sanwat, 1788 = A.D. 1731. Hardi (Hirdai) Sa succeeded to the Raj, or kingdom, of Panna, and Jagatraj to that of Jaitpur. These kingdoms quickly broke up, and the fragments are now in part native states and in part British territory. The Orchha State was formed about the beginning of the sixteenth century, and the Chanderi and Datiya States are offshoots from it, which separated during the seventeenth century.

42. As already observed (_ante_, Chapter 26, note 29), the Jalaun State became British territory in 1840, four years after the tour described in the text, and four years before the, publication of the book. The Jhansi State similarly lapsed on the death of Raja Gangadhar Rao in November, 1853. The Rani Lachhmi Bai joined the mutineers, and was killed in battle in June, 1858.

CHAPTER 27

Blights.

I had a visit from my little friend the Sarimant, and the conversation turned upon the causes and effects of the dreadful blight to which the wheat crops in the Nerbudda districts had of late years been subject. He said that 'the people at first attributed this great calamity to an increase in the crime of adultery which had followed the introduction of our rule, and which', he said, 'was understood to follow it everywhere; that afterwards it was by most people attributed to our frequent measurement of the land, and inspection of fields, with a view to estimate their capabilities to pay; which the people considered a kind of _incest_, and which he himself, the Deity, can never tolerate. The land is', said he, 'considered as the _mother_ of the prince or chief who holds it--the great parent from whom he derives all that maintains him--his family and his establishments. If well treated, she yields this in abundance to her son; but, if he presumes to look upon her with the eye of desire, she ceases to be fruitful; or the Deity sends down hail or blight to destroy all that she yields. The measuring the surface of the fields, and the frequent inspecting the crops by the chief himself, or by his immediate agents were considered by the people in this light; and, in consequence, he never ventured upon these things.

They were', he thought, 'fully satisfied that we did it more with a view to distribute the burthen of taxation equally upon the people than to increase it collectively; still', he thought that, 'either we should not do it at all, or delegate the duty to inferior agents, whose close inspection of the great _parent_ could not be so displeasing to the Deity.'[1]

Ram Chand Pundit said that 'there was no doubt much truth in what Sarimant Sahib had stated; that the crops of late had unquestionably suffered from the constant measuring going on upon the lands; but that the people (as he knew) had now become unanimous in attributing the calamities of season, under which these districts had been suffering so much, to the _eating of beef_-this was', he thought, 'the great source of all their sufferings.'

Sarimant declared that he thought 'his Pundit was right, and that it would, no doubt, be of great advantage to them and to their rulers if Government could be prevailed upon to prohibit the eating of beef; that so great and general were the sufferings of the people from these calamities of seasons, and so firm, and now so general, the opinion that they arose chiefly from the practice of killing and eating cows that, in spite of all the other superior blessings of our rule, the people were almost beginning to wish their old Maratha rulers in power again.'

I reminded him of the still greater calamities the people of Bundelkhand had been suffering under.

'True,' said he, 'but among them there are crimes enough of everyday occurrence to account for these things; but, under your rule, the Deity has only one or other of these three things to be offended with; and, of these three, it must be admitted that the eating of beef so near the sacred stream of the Nerbudda is the worst.'

The blight of which we were speaking had, for several seasons from the year 1829, destroyed the greater part of the wheat crops over extensive districts along the line of the Nerbudda, and through Malwa generally; and old people stated that they recollected two returns of this calamity at intervals from twenty to twenty-four years. The pores, with which the stalks are abundantly supplied to admit of their readily taking up the aqueous particles that float in the air, seem to be more open in an easterly wind than in any other; and, when this wind prevails at the same time that the air is filled with the farina of the small parasitic fungus, whose depredations on the corn const.i.tute what they call the rust, mildew, or blight, the particles penetrate into these pores, speedily sprout and spread their small roots into the cellular texture, where they intercept, and feed on, the sap in its ascent; and the grain in the ear, deprived of its nourishment, becomes shrivelled, and the whole crop is often not worth the reaping.[2] It is at first of a light, beautiful orange- colour, and found chiefly upon the 'alsi' (linseed)[3] which it does not seem much to injure; but, about the end of February, the fungi ripen, and shed their seeds rapidly, and they are taken up by the wind, and carried over the corn-fields. I have sometimes seen the air tinted of an orange colour for many days by the quant.i.ty of these seeds which it has contained; and that without the wheat crops suffering at all, when any but an easterly wind has prevailed; but, when the air is so charged with this farina, let but an easterly wind blow for twenty-four hours, and all the wheat crops under its influence are destroyed--nothing can save them. The stalks and leaves become first of an orange colour from the light colour of the farina which adheres to them, but this changes to deep brown. All that part of the stalk that is exposed seems as if it had been p.r.i.c.ked with needles, and had exuded blood from every puncture; and the grain in the ear withers in proportion to the number of fungi that intercept and feed upon its sap; but the parts of the stalks that are covered by the leaves remain entirely uninjured; and, when the leaves are drawn off from them, they form a beautiful contrast to the others, which have been exposed to the depredations of these parasitic plants.

Every pore, it is said, may contain from twenty to forty of these plants, and each plant may shed a hundred seeds,[4] so that a single shrub, infected with the disease, may disseminate it over the face of a whole district; for, in the warm month of March, when the wheat is attaining maturity, these plants ripen and shed their seeds in a week, and consequently increase with enormous rapidity, when they find plants with their pores open ready to receive and nourish them.

I went over a rich sheet of wheat cultivation in the district of Jubbulpore in January, 1836, which appeared to me devoted to inevitable destruction. It was intersected by slips and fields of 'alsi', which the cultivators often sow along the borders of their wheat-fields, which are exposed to the road, to prevent trespa.s.s.[5]

All this 'alsi' had become of a beautiful light orange colour from these fungi; and the cultivators, who had had every field destroyed the year before by the same plant, surrounded my tent in despair, imploring me to tell them of some remedy. I knew of none; but, as the 'alsi' is not a very valuable plant, I recommended them, as their only chance, to pull it all up by the roots, and fling it into large tanks that were everywhere to be found. They did so, and no 'alsi'

was _intentionally_ left in the district, for, like drowning men catching at a straw, they caught everywhere at the little gleam of hope that my suggestion seemed to offer. Not a field of wheat was that season injured in the district of Jubbulpore; but I was soon satisfied that my suggestion had had nothing whatever to do with their escape, for not a single stalk of the wheat was, I believe, affected; while _some_ stalks of the affected 'alsi' must have been left by accident. Besides, in several of the adjoining districts, where the 'alsi' remained in the ground, the wheat escaped. I found that, about the time when the blight usually attacks the wheat, westerly winds prevailed, and that it never blew from the east for many hours together. The common belief among the natives was that the prevalence of an east wind was necessary to give full effect to the attack of this disease, though they none of them pretended to know anything of its _modus operandi_--indeed they considered the blight to be a demon, which was to be driven off only by prayers and sacrifices.

It is worthy of remark that hardly anything suffered from the attacks of these fungi but the wheat. The 'alsi', upon which it always first made its appearance, suffered something certainly, but not much, though the stems and leaves were covered with them. The gram (_Cicer arietinum_) suffered still less--indeed the grain in this plant often remained uninjured, while the stems and leaves were covered with the fungi, in the midst of fields of wheat that were entirely destroyed by ravages of the same kind. None of the other pulses were injured, though situated in the same manner in the midst of the fields of wheat that were destroyed. I have seen rich fields of uninterrupted wheat cultivation for twenty miles by ten, in the valley of the Nerbudda, so entirely destroyed by this disease that the people would not go to the trouble of gathering one field in four, for the stalks and the leaves were so much injured that they were considered as unfit or unsafe for fodder; and during the same season its ravages were equally felt in the districts along the tablelands of the Vindhya range, north of the valley and, I believe, those upon the Satpura range, south. The last time I saw this blight was in March, 1832, in the Sagar district, where its ravages were very great, but partial; and I kept bundles of the blighted wheat hanging up in my house, for the inspection of the curious, till the beginning of 1835.[6]

When I a.s.sumed charge of the district of Sagar in 1831 the opinion among the farmers and landholders generally was that the calamities of season under which we had been suffering were attributable to the increase of _adultery_, arising, as they thought, from our indifference, as we seemed to treat it as a matter of little importance; whereas it had always been considered under former Governments as a case of _life and death_. The husband or his friends waited till they caught the offending parties together in criminal correspondence, and then put them both to death; and the death of one pair generally acted, they thought, as a sedative upon the evil pa.s.sions of a whole district for a year or two. Nothing can be more unsatisfactory than our laws for the punishment of adultery in India, where the Muhammadan criminal code has been followed, though the people subjected to it are not one-tenth Muhammadans. This law was enacted by Muhammad on the occasion of his favourite wife Ayesha being found under very suspicious circ.u.mstances with another man. A special direction from heaven required that four witnesses should swear positively to the _fact_.

Ayesha and her paramour were, of course, acquitted, and the witnesses, being less than four, received the same punishment which would have been inflicted upon the criminals had the fact been proved by the direct testimony of the prescribed number--that is, eighty stripes of the 'kora', almost equal to a sentence of death. (See Koran, chap. 24, and chap. 4.)[7] This became the law among all Muhammadans. Ayesha's father succeeded Muhammad, and Omar succeeded Abu Bakr.[8] Soon after his accession to the throne, Omar had to sit in judgement upon Mughira, a companion of the prophet, the governor of Basrah,[9] who had been accidentally seen in an awkward position with a lady of rank by four men while they sat in an adjoining apartment. The door or window which concealed the criminal parties was flung open by the wind, at the time when they wished it most to remain closed. Three of the four men swore directly to the point.

Mughira was Omar's favourite, and had been appointed to the government by him, Zaid, the brother of one of the three who had sworn to the fact, hesitated to swear to the entire fact.

'I think', said Omar, 'that I see before me a man whom G.o.d would not make the means of disgracing one of the companions of the holy prophet.'

Zaid then described circ.u.mstantially the most unequivocal position that was, perhaps, ever described in a public court of justice; but, still hesitating to swear to the entire completion of the crime, the criminals were acquitted, and his brother and the two others received the punishment described. This decision of the _Brutus of his age_ and country settled the law of evidence in these matters; and no Muhammadan judge would now give a verdict against any person charged with adultery, without the four witnesses to the _entire fact_. No man hopes for a conviction for this crime in our courts; and, as he would have to drag his wife or paramour through no less than three-- that of the police officer, the magistrate, and the judge--to seek it, he has recourse to poison, either secretly or with his wife's consent. She will commonly rather die than be turned out into the streets a degraded outcast. The seducer escapes with impunity, while his victim suffers all that human nature is capable of enduring.

Where husbands are in the habit of poisoning their guilty wives from the want of _legal_ means of redress, they will sometimes poison those who are suspected upon insufficient grounds. No magistrate ever hopes to get a conviction in the judge's court, if he commits a criminal for trial on this charge (under Regulation 17 of 1817), and, therefore, he never does commit. Regulation 7 of 1819 authorizes a magistrate to punish any person convicted of enticing away a wife or unmarried daughter for another's use; and an indignant functionary may sometimes feel disposed to stretch a point that the guilty man may not altogether escape.[10]