Part 33 (1/2)
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 As.h.i.+k, 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 As.h.i.+k, 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 As.h.i.+k 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]