Part 24 (1/2)

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 leaders.h.i.+p 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'