Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official Part 33

CHAPTER 48

The Great Diamond of Kohinur.

The foregoing historical episode occupies too large a s.p.a.ce 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 Shah Jahan, 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 Nadir Shah, the king of Persia, who invaded India under the reign of Muhammad Shah, in the year 1738.[1] Nadir Shah, in one of his mad fits, had put out the eyes of his son, Raza Kuli Mirza, and, when he was a.s.sa.s.sinated, the conspirators gave the throne and the diamond to this son's son, Shahrukh Mirza, who fixed his residence at Meshed.[2] Ahmad Shah, the Abdali, commanded the Afghan cavalry in the service of Nadir Shah, 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 Kandahar, where they met Tariki Khan, on his way to Nadir Shah's camp with the tribute of the five provinces which he had retained of his Indian conquests, Kandahar, Kabul, Tatta, Bakkar, Multan, and Peshawar. 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 Shah took possession of these five provinces, and formed them into the little independent kingdom of Afghanistan, over which he long reigned, and from which he occasionally invaded India and Khurasan.[3]

Shahrukh Mirza had his eyes put out some time after by a faction.

Ahmad Shah marched to his relief, put the rebels to death, and united his eldest son, Taimur Shah, 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 Taimur as his viceroy at Herat, and his youngest son at Kandahar; and fixed his own residence at Kabul, where he died.[4] He was succeeded by Taimur Shah, who was succeeded by his eldest son, Zaman Shah, who, after a reign of a few years, was driven from his throne by his younger brother, Mahmud. He sought an asylum with his friend Ashik, 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 Mahmud received intimation of the arrest from Ashik, he sent for his brother, had his eyes put out, and demanded the jewels, but Zaman Shah pretended that he had thrown them into the river as he pa.s.sed over. Two years after this, the third brother, the Sultan Shuja, deposed Mahmud, 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 Ashik himself, but his wife and all his innocent and unoffending children.

He intended to put out the eyes of his deposed brother, Mahmud, but was dissuaded from it by his mother and Zaman Shah, who now pointed out to him the place where he had concealed the great diamond. Mahmud 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 Ludiana, upon the banks of the Hyphasis,[5] upon a liberal pension a.s.signed for their maintenance by our Government. On their way through the territories of the Sikh chief, Ranjit Singh, Shuja 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.[6] Mahmud was succeeded in the government of the fortress and province of Herat by his son Kamran; but the throne of Kabul 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 Shah Abdali. Ranjit Singh had wrested from him the province of Peshawar in times of difficulty, and, as we would not a.s.sist 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 Shuja 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.[7]

Notes:

1. Nadir Shah was crowned king of Persia in 1736, entered the Panjab, at the close of 1738, and occupied Delhi in March 1739. Having perpetrated an awful ma.s.sacre of the inhabitants, he retired after a stay of fifty-eight days, He was a.s.sa.s.sinated in May 1747.

2. Meshed, properly Mashhad ('the place of martyrdom'), is the chief city of Khurasan. Nadir Shah was killed while encamped there.

3. Ahmad Shah defeated the Marathas in the third great battle of Panipat, A.D. 1761. He had conquered the Panjab in 1748. He invaded India five times.

4. In 1773.

5. Ludiana (misspelt 'Ludhiana' in _I.G._, 1908) is named from the Lodi Afghans, who founded it in 1481. The town is now the headquarters of the district of the same name under the Panjab Government. Part of the district lapsed to the British Government in 1836, other parts lapsed during the years 1846 and 1847, and the rest came from territory already British by rearrangement of jurisdiction.

Hyphasis is the Greek name for the Bias river.

6. The above history of the Kohinur may, I believe, be relied upon. I received a narrative of it from Shah Zaman, the blind old king himself, through General Smith, who commanded the troops at Ludiana; forming a detail of the several revolutions too long and too full of new names for insertion here. [W. H. S.] The above note is, in the original edition, misplaced, and appended to two paragraphs of the text, which have no connexion with the story of the diamond, and really belong to Chapter 47, to which they have been removed in this edition.

The author a.s.sumes the ident.i.ty of the Kohinur with the great diamond found in one of the Golconda mines, and presented by Amir Jumla to Shah Jahan. The much-disputed history of the Kohinur has been exhaustively discussed by Valentine Ball (Tavernier's _Travels in India_: Appendix I (1), 'The Great Mogul's Diamond and the true History of the Koh-i-nur; and (2) 'Summary History of the Koh-i- nur'). He has proved that the Kohinur is almost certainly the diamond given by Amir (Mir) Jumla to Shah Jahan, though now much reduced in weight by mutilation and repeated cutting. a.s.suming the ident.i.ty of the Kohinur with Amir Jumla's gift, the leading incidents in the history of this famous jewel are as follows;--

Event. Approximate Date.

Found at mine of Kollur on the Kistna (Krishna) river . . . . . . . . .Not known Presented to Shah Jahan by Mir Jumla, being uncut, and weighing about 756 English carats 1656 or 1657 Ground by Hortens...o...b..rgio, and greatly reduced in weight . . . . . . . about 1657 Seen and weighed by Tavernier in Aurangzeb's treasury, its weight being 268 19/50 English carats . . . . . . . . . 1665 Taken by Nadir Shah of Persia from Muhammad Shah of Delhi, and named Kohinur . . . 1739 Inherited by Shah Rukh, grandson of Nadir Shah. . 1747 Given up by Shah Rukh to Ahmad Shah Abdali . . 1751 Inherited by Timur, son of Ahmad Shah . . . 1772 Inherited by Shah Zaman, son of Timur . . . 1793 Taken by Shah Shuja, brother of Shah Zaman . . 1795 Taken by Ranjit Singh, of Lah.o.r.e, from Shah Shuja . 1813 Inherited by Dilip (Dhuleep) Singh, reputed son of Ranjit Singh. . . . . 1839 Annexed, with the Panjab, and pa.s.sed, through John Lawrence's waistcoat pocket (see his _Life_), into the possession of H.M. the Queen, its weight then being 186 1/16 English carats . . . . . 1849 Exhibited at Great Exhibition in London . . . 1851 Recut under supervision of Messrs. Garrards, and reduced in weight to 106 1/16 English carats . 1852

The difference in weight between 268 19/50 carats in 1665 and 186 1/16 carats in 1849 seems to be due to mutilation of the stone during its stay in Persia and Afghanistan.

7. The policy of the first Afghan War has been, it is hardly necessary to observe, much disputed, and the author's confident defence of Lord Auckland's action cannot be accepted.

CHAPTER 49

Pindhari System--Character of the Maratha Administration--Cause of their Dislike to the Paramount Power.

The attempt of the Marquis of Hastings to rescue India from that dreadful scourge, the Pindhari system, involved him in a war with all the great Maratha states, except Gwalior; that is, with the Peshwa at Puna, Holkar at Indore, and the Bhonsla at Nagpur; and Gwalior 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 Pindharis, 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 cla.s.ses 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.[1]

Their armies always took the auspices and set out _kingdom taking_ (mulk giri) after the Dasahra,[2] 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,[3] who sallied forth on such an expedition, at the head of a division of Sindhia's army, just before this Pindhari war commenced.

From Gwalior he proceeded to Karauli,[4] and took from that chief the district of Sabalgarh, yielding four lakhs of rupees yearly.[5] He then took the territory of the Raja of Chanderi,[6] Mor Pahlad, one of the oldest of the Bundelkhand chiefs, which then yielded about seven lakhs of rupees,[7] but now yields only four. The Raja got an allowance of forty thousand rupees a year. He then took the territories of the Rajas of Raghugarh and Bajranggarh,[8] yielding three lakhs a year; and Bahadurgarh, yielding two lakhs a year;[9]

and the three princes got fifty thousand rupees a year for subsistence among them. He then took Lopar, yielding two lakhs and a half, and a.s.signed the Raja twenty-five thousand. He then took Garha Kota,[10] whose chief gets subsistence from our Government. Baptiste had just completed his kingdom taking expedition, when our armies took the field against the Pindharis; 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 Marathas 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.[11]

In the year 1833, the Gwalior territory yielded a net revenue to the treasury of ninety-two lakhs of rupees, after discharging all the local costs of the civil and fiscal administration of the different districts, in officers, establishments, charitable inst.i.tutions, religions endowments, military fiefs, &c.[12] In the remote districts, which are much infested by the predatory tribes of Bhils,[13] 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 cla.s.ses 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 Gwalior 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 Gwalior consists of three regiments of infantry, under Colonel Alexander; six under the command of Apaji, the adopted son of the late Bala Bai;[14] eleven under Colonel Jacobs and his son; five under Colonel Jean Baptiste Filose; two under the command of the Mamu Sahib, the maternal uncle of the Maharaja; three in what is called Babu Baoli's camp; in all thirty regiments, consisting, when complete, of six hundred men each, with four field-pieces. The 'Jinsi', 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.[15]

Robbers and murderers of all descriptions have always been in the habit of taking the field in India immediately after the festival of the Dasahra,[16] 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.[17] 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 Pindhari chief, was as well received as one who returned after serving one under Sindhia, Holkar, or Ranjit Singh. A friend of mine one day asked a leader of a band of 'dacoits', or banditti, whether they did not often commit murder.

'G.o.d 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 a.s.semblage of troops in the upper provinces going to take foreign countries; if they are opposed, they will kill people. We only do the same.'[18] 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 25th[19] we came on to Dhamela, 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 ma.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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 Ghorapachhar,[20] 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 Gwalior 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 G.o.ds 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 bra.s.s 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 Gwalior, 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 Gwalior territories in every part of India where I have seen them.[21] 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 cla.s.s upon the land to suffer and proclaim them; but those of the Gwalior state are never heard of, because no such cla.s.ses are ever allowed to grow up upon the land. Had Russia governed Poland, and Turkey Greece, in the way that Gwalior 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 Gwalior, I saw a fine leopard standing by the side of the most frequented road, and staring at every one who pa.s.sed. 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 Maharaja, 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.'

Notes:

1. For the characteristics of the Marathas and Pindharis, see _ante_, Chapter 21, note 2.

2. _Ante_, Chapter 26, note 8, and Chapter 32, note 9.

3. _Ante_, Chapter 17, note 6.

4. A small princ.i.p.ality, about seventy miles equidistant from Agra, Gwalior, Mathura, Alwar, Jaipur, and Tonk. The attack on Karauli occurred in 1813. Full details are given in the author's _Report on Budhuk alias Bagree Decoits_, pp. 99-104.

5. Four hundred thousand rupees.

6. _Ante_, Chapter 33, note 15.

7. Seven hundred thousand rupees.

8. Raghugarh is now a mediatized chiefship in the Central India Agency, controlled by the Resident at Gwalior. Bajranggarh, a stronghold eleven miles south of Guna (Goonah), and about 140 miles distant from Gwalior, is in the Raghugarh territory.

9. Three hundred thousand and two hundred thousand rupees, respectively. Bahadurgarh is now included in the Isagarh district of the Gwalior State.

10. I cannot find any mention of Lopar, if the name is correctly printed. Garha Kota seems to be a slip of the pen for Garha. Garha Kota is in British territory, in the Sagar District, C. P. But Garha is a petty state, formerly included in the Raghugarh State. The town of Garha is on the eastern slope of the Malwa plateau in 25 2' N.

and 78 3' E. (_I.G._, 1908, s.v.).

11. On the coronation or installation of every new prince of the house of Sindhia, orders are given to plunder a few shops in the town as a part of the ceremony, and this they call or consider 'taking the auspices'. Compensation is _supposed_ to be made to the proprietors, but rarely is made. I believe the same auspices are taken at the installation of a new prince of every other Maratha house. The Moghal invaders of India were, in the same manner, obliged to allow their armies to _take the auspices_ in the sack of a few towns, though they had surrendered without resistance. They were given up to pillage as a _religions duty_. Even the accomplished Babar was obliged to concede this privilege to his army. [W. H. S.]