Part 30 (1/2)

The villages are everywhere few, and their communities very small.

The greater part of the produce goes for sale to the capital of Gwalior, when the money it brings is paid into the treasury in rent, or revenue, to the chief, who distributes it in salaries among his establishments, who again pay it for land produce to the cultivators, farmers, and agricultural capitalists, who again pay it back into the treasury in land revenue. No more people reside in the villages than are absolutely necessary to the cultivation of the land, because the chief takes all the produce beyond what is necessary for their bare subsistence; and, out of what he takes, maintains establishments that reside elsewhere. There is nowhere any jungle to be seen, and very few of the villages that are scattered over the plains have any fruit or ornamental trees left; and, when the spring crops, to which the tillage is chiefly confined, are taken off the ground, the face of the country must have a very naked and dreary appearance.[3] Near one village on the road I saw some men thres.h.i.+ng corn in a field, and among them a peac.o.c.k (which, of course, I took to be domesticated) breakfasting very comfortably upon the grain as it flew around him. A little farther on I saw another quietly working his way into a stack of corn, as if he understood it to have been made for his use alone.

It was so close to me as I pa.s.sed that I put out my stick to push it off in play, and, to my surprise, it flew off in a fright at my white face and strange dress, and was followed by the others. I found that they were all wild, if that term can be applied to birds that live on such excellent terms with mankind. On reaching our tents we found several feeding in the corn-fields close around them, undisturbed by our host of camp-followers; and were told by the villagers, who had a.s.sembled to greet us, that they were all wild. 'Why', said they, 'should we think of _keeping_ birds that live among us on such easy terms without being _kept_?' I asked whether they ever shot them, and was told that they never killed or molested them, but that any one who wished to shoot them might do so, since they had here no religions regard for them.[4] Like the pariah dogs the peac.o.c.ks seem to disarm the people by confiding in them--their tameness is at once the cause and the effect of their security. The members of the little communities among whom they live on such friendly terms would not have the heart to shoot them; and travellers either take them to be domesticated, or are at once disarmed by their tameness.

At Antri a sufficient quant.i.ty of salt is manufactured for the consumption of the people of the town. The earth that contains most salt is dug up at some distance from the town, and brought to small reservoirs made close outside the walls. Water is here poured over it, as over tea and coffee. Pa.s.sing through the earth, it flows out below into a small conduit, which takes it to small pits some yards'

distance, whence it is removed in buckets to small enclosed platforms, where it is exposed to the Sun's rays, till the water evaporates, and leaves the salt dry.[5] The want of trees over this vast plain of fine soil from the Sindh river is quite lamentable. The people of Antri pointed out the place close to my tents where a beautiful grove of mango-trees had been lately taken off to Gwalior for _gun-carriages_ and firewood, in spite of all the proprietor could urge of the detriment to his own interest in this world, and to those of his ancestors in that to which they had gone. Wherever the army of this chief moved they invariably swept off the groves of fruit-trees in the same reckless manner. Parts of the country, which they merely pa.s.sed through, have recovered their trees, because the desire to propitiate the Deity, and to perpetuate their name by such a work, will always operate among Hindoos as a sufficient incentive to secure groves, wherever man has be made to feel that their rights of property in the trees will be respected.[6] The lands around the village, which had a well for irrigation, paid four times as much as those of the same quality which had none, and were made to yield two crops in the year. As everywhere else, so here, those lands into which water flows from the town and can be made to stand for a time, are esteemed the best, as this water brings down with it manures of all kinds.[7] I had a good deal of talk with the cultivators as I walked through the fields in the evenings; and they seemed to dwell much upon the good faith which is observed by the farmers and cultivators in the Honourable Company's territories, and the total absence of it in those of Sindhia's, where no work, requiring an outlay of capital from the land, is, in consequence, ever thought of- -both farmers and cultivators engaging from year to year, and no farmer ever feeling secure of his lease for more than one.

Notes:

1. December, 1835.

2. The anthor's favourite theory. See _ante_, Chapter 14 note 7, Chapter 24 note 6, on the formation of black cotton soil. The Gwalior plain is covered with this soil.

3. It has a very desolate appearance. The Indian Midland Railway now pa.s.ses through Gwalior.

4. In many parts of India, especially in Mathura (Mattra) on the Jumna, and the neighbouring districts, the peac.o.c.k is held strictly sacred, and shooting one would be likely to cause a riot. Tavernier relates a story of a rich Persian merchant being beaten to death by the Hindoos of Gujarat for shooting a peac.o.c.k. (Tavernier, _Travels_, transl. Ball, vol. i, p. 70.) the bird is regarded as the vehicle of the Hindoo G.o.d of war, variously called k.u.mara, Skanda, or Kartikeya.

the editor, like the author, has observed that in Bundelkhand no objection is raised to the shooting of peac.o.c.ks by any one who cares for such poor sport.

5. In British India the manufacture of salt can be practised only by persons duly licensed.

6. The Revenue Settlement Regulations now in force in British India provide liberally for the encouragement of groves, and hundred of miles of road are annually planted with trees.

7. Sanitation did not trouble native states in those days.

CHAPTER 36

Gwalior and its Government.

On the 22nd,[1] we came on fourteen miles to Gwalior, over some ranges of sandstone hills, which are seemingly continuations of the Vindhyan range. Hills of indurated brown and red iron clay repose upon and intervene between these ranges, with strata generally horizontal, but occasionally bearing signs of having been shaken by internal convulsions. These convulsions are also indicated by some d.y.k.es of compact basalt which cross the road.[2]

Nothing can be more unprepossessing than the approach to Gwalior; the hills being naked, black, and ugly, with rounded tops devoid of gra.s.s or shrubs, and the soil of the valleys a poor red dust without any appearance of verdure or vegetation, since the few autumn crops that lately stood upon them have been removed.[3] From Antri to Gwalior there is no sign of any human habitation, save that of a miserable police guard of four or five, who occupy a wretched hut on the side of the road midway, and seem by their presence to render the scene around more dreary.[4] the road is a mere footpath unimproved and unadorned by any single work of art; and, except in this footpath, and the small police guard, there is absolutely no single sign in all this long march to indicate the dominion, or even the presence, of man; and yet it is between two contiguous [_sic_] capitals, one occupied by one of the most ancient, and the other by one of the greatest native sovereigns of Hindustan.[5] One cannot but feel that he approaches the capital of a dynasty of barbarian princes, who, like Attila, would choose their places of residence, as devils choose their pandemonia, for their ugliness, and rather reside in the dreary wastes of Tartary than on the sh.o.r.es of the Bosphorus. There are within the dominions of Sindhia seats for a capital that would not yield to any in India in convenience, beauty, and salubrity; but, in all these dominions, there is not, perhaps, another place so hideously ugly as Gwalior, or so hot and unhealthy. It has not one redeeming quality that should recommend it to the choice of a rational prince, particularly to one who still considers his capital as his camp, and makes every officer of his army feel that he has as little of permanent interest in his house as he would have in his tent.[6]

Phul Bagh, or the _flower-garden_, was suggested to me as the best place for my tents, where Sindhia had built a splendid summer-house.

As I came over this most gloomy and uninteresting march, in which the heart of a rational man sickens, as he recollects that all the revenues of such an enormous extent of dominion over the richest soil and the most peaceable people in the world should have been so long concentrated upon this point, and squandered without leaving one sign of human art or industry, I looked forward with pleasure to a quiet residence in the _flower-garden_, with good foliage above, and a fine sward below, and an atmosphere free from dust, such as we find in and around all the residences of Muhammadan princes. On reaching my tents I found them pitched close outside the _flower-garden_, in a small dusty plain, without a blade of gra.s.s or a shrub to hide its deformity--just such a place as the pig-keepers occupy in the suburbs of other towns. On one side of this little plain, and looking into it, was the _summer-house_ of the prince, without one inch of green sward or one small shrub before it.

Around the wretched little _flower-garden_ was a low, naked, and shattered mud wall, such as we generally see in the suburbs thrown up to keep out and in the pigs that usually swarm in such places--'and the swine they crawled out, and the swine they crawled in'.[7] When I cantered up to my tent-door, a sipahi of my guard came up, and reported that as the day began to dawn a gang of thieves had stolen one of my best carpets, all the bra.s.s brackets of my tent-poles, and the bra.s.s bell with which the sentries on duty sounded the hour; all Lieutenant Thomas's cooking utensils, and many other things, several of which they had found lying between the tents and the prince's _pleasure-house_, particularly the contents of a large heavy box of geological specimens. They had, in consequence, concluded the gang to be lodged in the prince's pleasure-house. The guard on duty at this place would make no answer to their inquiries, and I really believe that they were themselves the thieves. The tents of the Raja of Raghugarh, who had come to pay his respects to the Sindhia, his liege lord, were pitched near mine. He had the day before had five horses stolen from him, with all the plate, jewels, and valuable clothes he possessed; and I was told that I must move forthwith from the _flower-garden_, or cut off the tail of every horse in my camp.

Without tails they might not be stolen, with them they certainly would. Having had sufficient proof of their dexterity, we moved our tents to a grove near the residency, four miles from the flower- garden and the court.[8]

As a citizen of the world I could not help thinking that it would be an immense blessing upon a large portion of our species if an earthquake were to swallow up this court of Gwalior, and the army that surrounds it. Nothing worse could possibly succeed, and something better might. It is lamentable to think how much of evil this court and camp inflict upon the people who are subject to them.

In January, 1828, I was pa.s.sing with a party of gentlemen through the town of Bhilsa, which belongs to this chief, and lies between Sagar and Bhopal,[9] when we found, lying and bleeding in one of the streets, twelve men belonging to a merchant at Mirzapore, who had the day before been wounded and plundered by a gang of robbers close outside the walls of the town. Those who were able ran in to the amil, or chief of the district, who resides in the town; and begged him to send some hors.e.m.e.n after the banditti, and intercept them as they pa.s.sed over the great plains. 'Send your own people', said he, 'or hire men to send. Am I here to look after the private affairs of merchants and travellers, or to collect the revenues of the prince?'

Neither he, nor the prince himself, nor any other officer of the public establishments ever dreamed that it was their duty to protect the life, property, or character of travellers, or indeed of any other human beings, save the members of their own families. In this pithy question the amil of Bhilsa described the nature and character of the government. All the revenues of his immense dominions are spent entirely in the maintenance of the court and camps of the prince; and every officer employed beyond the boundary of the court and camp considers his duties to be limited to the collection of the revenue. Protected from all external enemies by our military forces, which surround him on every side, his whole army is left to him for purposes of parade and display; and having, according to his notions, no use for them elsewhere, he concentrates them around his capital, where he lives among them in the perpetual dread of mutiny and a.s.sa.s.sination. He has nowhere any police, nor any establishment whatever, for the protection of the life and property of his subjects; nor has he, any more than his predecessors, ever, I believe, for one moment thought that those from whose industry and frugality he draws his revenues have any right whatever to expect from him the use of such establishments in return. They have never formed any legitimate part of the Maratha government, and, I fear, never will.[10]

The misrule of such states, situated in the midst of our dominions, is not without its use. There is, as Gibbon justly observes, 'a strong propensity in human nature to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times'; and, if the people had not before their eyes such specimens of native rule to contrast with ours, they would think more highly than they do of that of their past Muhammadan and Hindoo sovereigns; and be much less disposed than they are to estimate fairly the advantages of being under ours. The native governments of the present day are fair specimens of what they have always been--grinding military despotisms--their whole history is that of 'Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands'; as if rulers were made merely to slay, and the ruled to be slain. In politics, as in landscape, ''Tis distance lends enchantment to the view', and the past might be all _couleur de rose_ in the imaginations of the people were it not represented in these ill-governed states, where the 'lucky accident' of a good governor is not to be expected in a century, and where the secret of the responsibility of ministers to the people is yet undiscovered.[11]

The fortress of Gwalior stands upon a tableland, a mile and a half long by a quarter of a mile wide, at the north-east end of a small insulated sandstone hill, running north-east and south-west, and rising at both ends about three hundred and forty feet above the level of the plain below. At the base is a kind of glacis, which runs up at an angle of forty-five from the plain to within fifty, and, in some places, within twenty feet of the foot of the wall.

The interval is the perpendicular face of the horizontal strata of the sandstone rock. The glacis is formed of a bed of basalt in all stages of decomposition, with which this, like the other sandstone hills of Central India, was once covered, and of the debris and chippings of the rocks above. The walls are raised a certain uniform height all round upon the verge of the precipice, and being thus made to correspond with the edge of the rock, the line is extremely irregular. They are rudely built of the fine sandstone of the rock on which they stand, and have some square and some semicircular bastions of different sizes, few of these raised above the level of the wall itself.[12] On the eastern face of the rock, between the glacis and foot of the wall, are cut out, in bold relief, the colossal figures of men sitting bareheaded under canopies, on each side of a throne or temple; and, in another place, the colossal figure of a man standing naked, and facing outward, which I took to be that of Buddha.[l3]

The town of Gwalior extends along the foot of the hill on one side, and consists of a single street above a mile long. There is a very beautiful mosque, with one end built by a Muhammad Khan, A.D. 1665, of the white sandstone of the rock above it. It looks as fresh as if it had not been finished a month; and struck, as I pa.s.sed it, with so n.o.ble a work, apparently new, and under such a government, I alighted from my horse, went in, and read the inscription, which told me the date of the building and the name of the founder. There is no stucco- work over any part of it, nor is any required on such beautiful materials; and the stones are all so nicely cut that cement seems to have been considered useless. It has the usual two minarets or towers, and over the arches and alcoves are carved, as customary, pa.s.sages from the Koran, in the beautiful Kufic characters.[14] The court and camp of the chief extends out from the southern end of the hill for several miles.

The whole of the hill on which the fort of Gwalior stands had evidently, at no very distant period, been covered by a ma.s.s of basalt, surmounted by a crust of indurated brown and red iron clay, with lithomarge, which often a.s.sumes the appearance of common laterite. The boulders of basalt, which still cap some part of the hill, and form the greater part of the glacis at the bottom, are for the most part in a state of rapid decomposition; but some of them are still so hard and fresh that the hammer rings upon them as upon a bell, and their fracture is brilliantly crystalline. The basalt is the same as that which caps the sandstone hills of the Vindhya range throughout Malwa. The sandstone hills around Gwalior all rise in the same abrupt manner from the plain as those through Malwa generally; and they have almost all of them the same basaltic glacis at their base, with boulders of that rock scattered over the top, all indicating that they were at one time buried, in the same manner under one great ma.s.s of volcanic matter, thrown out from their submarine craters in streams of lava, or diffused through the ocean or lakes in ashes, and deposited in strata. The geological character of the country about Gwalior is very similar to that of the country about Sagar; and I may say the same of the Vindhya range generally, as far as I have seen it, from Mirzapore on the Ganges to Bhopal in Malwa--hills of sandstone rising suddenly from alluvial plain, and capped, or bearing signs of having been capped, by basalt reposing immediately upon it, and partly covered in its turn by beds of indurated iron clay.[15]