Roving East and Roving West Part 2

Were we to continue on the Grand Trunk road for a few miles, first crossing a n.o.ble Mogul bridge, we should come to a little walled city, Badapur, where a turning due west leads to another Delhi of the past, Tughlakabad, and on to yet another, the remains of Lal Kot, where the famous Minar soars to the sky.

One of the most pleasing effects of the New Delhi is the series of vistas which the lay-out provides. It has been so arranged that many of the avenues radiating from the central rock on which Government House and the Secretariat are being set are closed at their distant ends by historic buildings. Standing on the temporary tower which marks this centre one is able to see in a few moments all the ruined cities that I have mentioned. The Kutb Minar is the most important landmark in the far south, although the eye rests most lovingly on the red and white comeliness of the tomb of Safdar Jang in the middle distance--which, with Humayun's Tomb, makes a triangle with the new Government House.

Within that triangle are the Lodi tombs, marking yet another period in the history of Delhi, the Lodis being the rulers who early in the fifteenth century were defeated by Babar.

The Kutb Minar enclosure, which is a large garden, where beautiful masonry, flowers, trees and birds equally flourish, commemorates the capture of Delhi by Muhammad bin Sam in 1193, the battle being directed by his lieutenant, Kutb-ud-din. From that time until the Mutiny in 1857 Delhi was under Mohammedan rule. One of the first acts of the conqueror was to destroy the Hindu temple that stood here and erect the mosque that now takes its place, and he then built the great tower known as the Kutb Minar, or Tower of Victory, which ascends in diminishing red and white storeys to a height of 235 feet, involving the inquisitive view-finder in a climb of 379 steps. On the other side of the mosque are the beginnings of a second tower, which, judging by the size of the base, was to have risen to a still greater height, but it was abandoned after 150 feet. Its purpose was to celebrate for ever the glory of the Emperor Ala-ud-din (1296-1316).

In front of the mosque is the Iron Pillar which has been the cause of so much perplexity both to antiquaries and chemists, and meat and drink to Sanscrit scholars. The pillar has an inscription commemorating an early monarch named Chandra who conquered Bengal in the fifth century, and it must have been brought to this spot for re-erection. But its refusal to rust, and the purity of its const.i.tuents, are its special merits. To me the mysteries of iron pillars are without interest, and what I chiefly remember of this remarkable pleasaunce is the exquisite stone carvings of the ruined cloisters and the green parrots that play among the trees.

THE DIVERS

As we were leaving the Kutb after a late afternoon visit, my host and I were hailed excitedly by an elderly man whose speech was incomprehensible, but whose gestures indicated plainly enough that there was something important up the hill. The line of least resistance being the natural one in India, we allowed him to guide us, and came after a few minutes, among the ruins of the citadel of Lal Kot, to one of those deep wells gained by long flights of steps whither the ladies of the palaces used to resort in the hottest weather. Evening was drawing on and the profundities of this cavern were forbiddingly gloomy; nor was the scene rendered more alluring by the presence of three white-bearded old men, almost stark naked and leaner than greyhounds, who shivered and grimaced, and suggested nothing so much as fugitives from the grave. They were, however, not only alive, but athletically so, being professional divers who earned an exceedingly uncomfortable living by dropping, feet first, from the highest point of the building into the water eighty feet below.

One of them indicating his willingness--more than willingness, eagerness--to perform this manoeuvre for two rupees, we agreed, and placing us on a step from which the best view could be had, he fled along the gallery to the top of the shaft, and after certain preliminary movements, to indicate how perilous was the adventure, and how chilly the evening, and how more than worth two rupees it was, he committed his body to the operations of the law of gravity. We saw it through the apertures in the shaft on its downward way and then heard the splash as it reached the distant water, while a crowd of pigeons who had retired to roost among the masonry dashed out and away. The diver emerged from the well and came running up the steps towards us, while his companion scarecrows fled also to the top of the shaft and one after the other dropped down, too; so that in a minute or so we were surrounded by three old, dripping men, each demanding two rupees. Useless to protest that we had desired but one of them to perform: they pursued us into the open, and even clung to our knees, and of course we paid--afterwards to learn that one rupee for the lot was a lavish guerdon.

One meets with these divers continually, wherever there is a pool sacred or otherwise; but some actually leap into the water and do not merely drop. At the shrine of the Saint Nizam-ud-din, near Humayun's Tomb, I found them--but there they were healthy-looking youths--and again at Fatehpur-Sikri. But for this sporadic diving, the wrestling bouts which are common everywhere, the Nautch and the jugglers, India seems to have no pastimes.

THE ROPE TRICK

The returning traveller from India is besieged by questioners who want to know all about the most famous of the jugglers' performances. In this trick the magician flings a rope into the air, retaining one end in his hand, and his boy climbs up it and disappears. I did not see it.

AGRA AND FATEHPUR-SIKRI

All the Indian cities that I saw seemed to cover an immense acreage, partly because every modern house has its garden and compound. In a country where land is cheap and servants are legion there need be no congestion, and, so far, the Anglo-Indian knows little or nothing of the embarra.s.sments of dwellers in New York or London. To every one in India falls naturally a little faithful company of a.s.sistants to oil the wheels of life--groom, gardener, butler and so forth--and a s.p.a.cious dwelling-place to think of England in, and calculate the variable value of the rupee, and wonder why the d.i.c.kens So-and-so got his knighthood.

Agra seemed to me to be the most widespreading city of all; but very likely it is not. In itself it is far from being the most interesting, but it has one building of great beauty--the Pearl Mosque in the Fort--and one building of such consummate beauty as to make it a place of pilgrimage that no traveller would dare to avoid--the Taj Mahal.

Whether or not the Taj Mahal is the most enchanting work of architecture in the world I leave it to more extensive travellers to say. To my eyes it has an unearthly loveliness which I make no effort to pa.s.s on to others.

The Taj Mahal was built by that inspired friend of architecture, Shah Jahan, as the tomb of the best beloved of his wives, Arjmand Banu, called Mumtaz-i-Mahal or Pride of the Palace. There she lies, and there lies her husband. I wonder how many of the travellers who stand entranced before this mausoleum, in sunshine and at dusk or under the moon, and who have not troubled about its history, realise that Giotto's Tower in Florence is three centuries older, and St. Peter's in Rome antedates it by a little, and St. Paul's Cathedral in London is only twenty or thirty years younger. Yet so it is. In India one falls naturally into the way of thinking of everything that is not of our own time as being of immense age, if not prehistoric.

Opinions differ as to the respective beauties of Agra Fort and Delhi Fort, but in so far as the enclosures themselves are considered I give my vote unhesitatingly to Delhi. Yet when one thinks also of what can be seen from the ramparts, then the palm goes instantly to Agra, for its view of the Taj Mahal. It is tragic, walking here, to think of the last days of Shah Jahan, who brought into being both the marble palace and the wonderful Moti-Masjid or marble mosque. For in 1658 his son, Aurungzebe, deposed him and for the rest of his life he was imprisoned in these walls.

His grandfather, Akbar, the other great Agra builder, was made of sterner stuff. All Shah Jahan's creations--the Taj, the marble mosque, the palaces both here and at Delhi, even the great Jama Masjid at Delhi,--have a certain sensuous quality. They are not exactly decadent, but they suggest sweetness rather than strength. The Empire had been won, and Shah Jahan could indulge in luxury and ease. But Akbar had had to fight, and he remained to the end a man of action, and we see his character reflected in his stronghold Fatehpur-Sikri, which one visits from Agra and never forgets. If I were asked to say which place in India most fascinated me and touched the imagination I think I should name this dead city.

Akbar, the son of Babar, is my hero among the Moguls, and this was Akbar's chosen home, until scarcity of water forced him to abandon it for Agra. Akbar, the n.o.blest of the great line of Moguls whose splendour ended in 1707 with the death of Aurungzebe, came to the throne in 1556, only eight years before Shakespeare was born, and died in 1605, and it is interesting to realise how recent were his times, the whole suggestion of Fatehpur-Sikri being one of very remote antiquity. Yet when it was being built so modern a masterpiece as _Hamlet_ was being written and played. Those interested in the Great Moguls ought really to visit Fatehpur-Sikri before Delhi or Agra, because Akbar was the grandfather of Shah Jahan. But there can be no such chronological wanderings in India. Have we not already seen Humayun's Tomb, outside Delhi?--and Humayun was Akbar's father.

They say the leopard and the jackal keep The courts where Akbar gloried....

--this adaptation of FitzGerald's lines ran through my mind as we pa.s.sed from room to room and tower to tower of Fatehpur-Sikri. There is nothing to compare with it, except perhaps Pompeii. And in that comparison one realises how impossible it is at a hazard to date an Indian ruin, for, as I have said, Fatehpur-Sikri is from the days of Elizabeth, while Pompeii was destroyed in the first century, and yet Pompeii in many ways seems less ancient.

The walls of Fatehpur-Sikri are seven miles round and the city rises to the summits of two steep hills. It was on the higher one that Akbar set his palace. Civilisation has run a railway through the lower levels; the old high road still climbs the hill under the incredibly lofty walls of the palace. The royal enclosure is divided into all the usual courtyards and apartments, but they are on a grander scale. Also the architecture is more mixed. Here is the swimming bath; here are the cool, dark rooms for the ladies of the harem in the hottest days, with odd corners where Akbar is said to have played hide-and-seek with them; here is the hall where Akbar, who kept an open mind on religion, listened to, and disputed with, dialecticians of varying creeds--himself seated in the middle, and the doctrinaires in four pulpits around him; here is the Mint; here is the house of the Turkish queen, with its elaborate carvings and decorations; here is the girls' school, with a courtyard laid out for human chess, the pieces being slave-girls; here is a n.o.ble mosque; here is the vast court where the great father of his people administered justice, or what approximated to it, and received homage.

Here are the spreading stables and riding school; here is even the tomb of a favourite elephant.

And here is the marble tomb of the Saint, the Shaikh Salim, whose holiness brought it about that the Emperor became at last the father of a son--none other than Jahangir. The shrine is visited even to this day by childless wives, who tie shreds of their clothing to the lattice-work of a marble window as an earnest of their maternal worthiness. It is visited also by the devout for various purposes, among others by those whose horses are sick and who nail votive horseshoes to the great gate.

According to tradition the mother of Jahangir was a Christian named Miriam, and her house and garden may be seen, the house having the traces of a fresco which by those who greatly wish it can be believed to represent the Annunciation. Tradition, however, is probably wrong, and the princess was from Jaipur and a true Mussulwoman.

From every height--and particularly from the Panch Mahal's roof--one sees immense prospects and realises what a landmark the stronghold of Fatehpur-Sikri must have been to the dwellers in the plains; but no view is the equal of that which bursts on the astonished eyes at the great north gateway, where all Rajputana is at one's feet. I do not pretend to any exhaustive knowledge of the gates of the world, but I cannot believe that there can be others set as this Gate of Victory is in the walls of a palace, at the head of myriad steps, on the very top of a commanding rock and opening on to thousands of square miles of country. Having seen the amazing landscape one descends the steps to the road, and looking up is astonished and exalted by seeing the gate from below. Nothing so grand has ever come into my ken. The Taj Mahal is unforgettingly beautiful; but this glorious gate in the sky has more at once to exercise and stimulate the imagination and reward the vision.

On the gate are the words: "Isa (Jesus), on whom be peace, said: 'The world is a bridge; pa.s.s over it, but build no house on it. The world endures but an hour; spend it in devotion.'"

Having seen Fatehpur-Sikri, where Akbar lived and did more than build a house, it is a natural course to return to Agra by way of Sikandra, where he was buried. Sikandra is like the Taj Mahal and Humayun's Tomb in general disposition--the mausoleum itself being in the centre of a garden. But it is informed by a more sombre spirit. The burial-place of the mighty Emperor is in the very heart of the building, gained by a sloping pa.s.sage lit by an attendant with a torch. Here was Akbar laid, while high above, on the topmost stage of the mausoleum, in the full light, is his cenotoph of marble, with the ninety-nine names of Allah inscribed upon it. Near the cenotaph is a marble pillar on which once was set the Koh-i-noor diamond, chief of Akbar's treasures. To-day it is part of the English regalia.

LUCKNOW

The Ridge at Delhi is a sufficiently moving reminder of the Indian Mutiny; but it is at Lucknow that the most poignant phases are re-enacted. At Delhi may be seen, preserved for ever, the famous buildings which the British succeeded in keeping--Hindu Rao's house, and the Observatory, and Flagstaff Tower, the holding of which gave them victory; while in the walls of the Kashmir Gate our cannon b.a.l.l.s are still visibly imbedded. There is also the statue of John Nicholson in the Kudsia Garden, and in the little Museum of the Fort are countless souvenirs.

But Lucknow was the centre of the tragedy, and the Residency is preserved as a sacred spot. Not even the recent Great War left in its track any more poignant souvenirs of fort.i.tude and disaster than the little burial ground here, around the ruins of the church, where those who fell in the Mutiny and those who fought or suffered in the Mutiny are lying. Long ago as it was--1857--there are still a few vacant lots destined to be filled. Chief of the tombstones that bear the honoured names is that of the heroic defender who kept upon the topmost roof the banner of England flying. It has the simple and touching inscription: "Here lies Henry Lawrence, who tried to do his duty. May the Lord have mercy on his soul!"

In the Residency every step of the siege and relief can be followed.

I was there first on a serene evening after rain; and but for some tropical trees it might have been an English scene. All that was lacking was a thrush or blackbird's note; but the gra.s.s was as soft and green as at home and the air as sweet. I shall long retain the memory of the contrast between the incidents which give this enclosure its unique place in history and the perfect calm brooding over all. And whenever any one calls my attention to a Bougainvillaea I shall say, "Ah! But you should see the Bougainvillaea in the Residency garden at Lucknow."

Everywhere that I went in India I found this n.o.ble lavish shrub in full flower, but never wearing such a purple as at Lucknow. The next best was in the Fort at Delhi. It was not till I reached Calcutta that I caught any glimpse of the famous scarlet goldmore tree in leaf; but I saw enough to realise how splendid must be the effect of an avenue of them.

Bombay, however, was rich in hedges of poinsettia, and they serve as an introduction to the goldmore's glory.

Before leaving the Residency I should like to quote a pa.s.sage from the little brochure on the defence of Lucknow which Sir Harcourt Butler, the Governor of the United Provinces, with characteristic thoughtfulness has prepared for the use of his guests. "The visitor to the Residency,"

he wrote, thinking evidently of a similar evening to that on which we visited it, "who muses on the past and the future, may note that upon the spot where the enemy's a.s.sault was hottest twin hospitals for Europeans and Indians have been erected by Oudh's premier Taluqdar, the Maharaja of Balrampur; and as the sun sets over the great city, lingering awhile on the trim lawns and battered walls which link the present with the past, a strong hope may come to him, like a distant call to prayer, that old wounds may soon be healed, and old causes of disunion may disappear, and that Englishmen and Indians, knit together by loyalty to their beloved Sovereign, may be as brothers before the altar of the Empire, bearing the Empire's burden, and sharing its inestimable privileges, and, it may be, adding something not yet seen or dreamt of to its world-wide and weather-beaten fame."

I left Lucknow with regret, and would advise any European with time to spare, and the desire to be at once civilised and warm, to think seriously of spending a winter there instead of in the illusory sunshine of the Riviera, or the comparative barbarity of Algiers. The journey is longer, but the charm of the place would repay.

A TIGER

To have the opportunity of hunting a tiger--on an elephant too--which by a stroke of luck fell to me, is to experience the un-English character of India at its fullest. Almost everything else could be reproduced elsewhere--the palaces, the bazaars, the caravans, the mosques and temples with their worshippers--but not the jungle, the Himalayas, the vast swamps through which our elephants waded up to the Plimsoll, the almost too painful ecstasies of the pursuit of an eater of man.

The master of the chase, who has many tigers to his name, was Sir Harcourt Butler, whose hospitality is famous, so large and warm is it, and so minute, and it was because he was not satisfied that the ordinary diversions of the "Lucknow Week" were sufficient for his guests, that he impulsively arranged a day's swamp-deer shooting on the borders of Nepaul. The time was short, or of elephants there would have been seventy or more; as it was, we were apologised to (there were only about six of us) for the poverty of the supply, a mere five and twenty being obtainable. But to these eyes, which had never seen more than six elephants at once, and those in the captivity either of a zoo or a circus, a row of five and twenty was astounding. They were waiting for us on the plain, at a spot distant some score of miles by car, through improvised roads, from the station, whither an all-night railway journey had borne us. The name of the station, if I ever knew it, I have forgotten: there was no room in my heated brain for such trifles; but I have forgotten nothing else.

It was after an hour and a half's drive in the cool and spicy early morning air--between the fluttering rags on canes which told the drivers how to steer--that we came suddenly in sight of some distant tents and beside them an immense long dark inexplicable ma.s.s which through the haze seemed now and then to move. As we drew nearer, this ma.s.s was discerned to be a row of elephants a.s.sembled in line ready to salute the Governor. The effect was more impressive and more Eastern than anything I had seen. Grotesque too--for some had painted faces and gilded toes, and not a few surveyed me with an expression in which the comic spirit was too noticeable. Six or seven had howdahs, the rest blankets: those with howdahs being for the party and its leader, Bam Bahadur, a noted shikaree; and the others to carry provisions and bring back the spoil.

On the neck of each sat an impa.s.sive mahout.

To one to whom the pen is mightier than the gun and whose half a century's bag contains only a few rabbits, a hedgehog and a moorhen, it is no inconsiderable ordeal to be handed a repeating rifle and some dozens of cartridges and be told that that is your elephant--the big one there, with the red ochre on its forehead. To be on an elephant in the jungle without the responsibilities of a lethal weapon would be sufficient thrill for one day: but to be expected also to deal out death was too much. In the company of others, however, one can do anything; and I gradually ascended to the top, not, as the accomplished hunters did, by placing a foot on the trunk and being swung heavenwards, but painfully, on a ladder; by my side being a very keen Indian youth, the son of a minor chieftain, who spoke English perfectly and was to instruct me in Nimrod's lore.

And so the procession started, and for a while discomfort set acutely in, for the movement of a howdah is short and jerky, and it takes some time both to adjust oneself to it and to lose the feeling that the elephant sooner or later--and probably sooner--must trip and fall. But the glory of the morning, the urgency of our progress, the novelty and sublimity of the means of transport, the strangeness of the scene, and my companion's speculations on the day's promise, overcame any personal want of ease and I forgot myself in the universal. Our destination was a series of marshes some six miles away, where the gonds--or swamp-deer--were usually found, and we were divided up, some elephants, of which mine was one, taking the left wing, with instructions on reaching a certain spot to wait there for the deer who would move off in that direction; others taking the right wing; and others beating up the middle.