Part 50 (1/2)

5. Groves are still scarce in the Agra country, but much planting has been done on the roads.

6. Gorakhpur, Azamgarh, and some other districts, forming half of the old province of Oudh, ceded by the ruler of Oudh in 1801, were long known as the Ceded Provinces. The western districts of the North- Western Provinces, known as the Conquered Provinces, were taken from the Marathas in 1803-5. The Province of Benares became British territory in 1775. The hill districts of the k.u.maun Division were annexed in 1816, at the close of the war with Nepal. All the regions named are now included in the Agra Province of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, in which the editor served for twenty-nine years.

7. The author's remarks are not readily intelligible to readers unversed in the technicalities of Indian revenue administration. The author writes on the a.s.sumption that Government was the proprietor of the soil. While he was writing, the settlements under Regulation IX of 1833 were in progress. Those settlements, or revenue contracts, were ordinarily sanctioned for periods of thirty years, and the landholders, whom the author calls 'lessees', have gradually changed into 'proprietors', with full power over their land, subject only to the State lien for the 'land revenue' (Crown rent, or State share of the produce), and to the laws of inheritance and succession. The 'resumption of rent-free lands' simply means the subjection of those lands to the payment of 'land revenue'. It is inaccurate to say that the lands are become 'the property of Government' by reason of their being a.s.sessed. Even when land generally was regarded as the property of the State, and the landholders were considered to be only lessees, no objection would have been made to the planting of groves if payment of the 'land revenue' had been continued for the planted area as for cultivated land. Now that landholders have been recognized as proprietors, there is nothing to prevent them from planting as much land as they like with trees, although the State has not always been willing to exempt the whole planted area from a.s.sessment. No one ever objected to the renewal of trees except on the ground that the area under trees might be excluded from a.s.sessment. For many years past the Government of India has been most anxious to encourage tree- planting, and has sanctioned liberal rules respecting the exemption of grove land from a.s.sessment to 'land revenue', or 'rent', as the author calls it. The Government of the United Provinces certainly is not now liable to reproach for indifference to the value of groves.

Enormous progress in the planting of road avenues has also been made.

The deficiency of trees in the country about Agra is partly due to nature, much of the ground being cut up by ravines, and unfavourable for planting.

8. The Aligarh district lies to the north and east of the Mathura district. The fort of Aligarh is fifty-five miles north of Agra, and eighty-four miles south-east of Delhi.

9. 'pakka' here means 'burned in a kiln', as distinguished from 'sun- dried'.

10. The 'bigha' is the unit of superficial land measure, varying, but often taken as five-eighths of an acre. The 'jarib' is a smaller measure.

11. The rules now in force require a.s.sessing officers to make allowance for permanent improvements, such as the well described in the text, so as to give the fair benefit of the improvement to the maker. In the early settlements this important matter was commonly neglected.

12. Tolerable bullocks, fit for use at the well and in the plough, would now cost much more. This conversation appears to have taken place in the year 1839, The famine alluded to is that of 1837-8.

13. This conversation gives a very vivid and truthful picture of rural life in Northern India. Most revenue officers have held similar conversations with rustics, but the author is almost the only writer on Indian affairs who has perceived that exact notes of casual chats in the fields would be found interesting and valuable.

14. The early settlements were made for short terms.

15. The certificate would not be of much avail in a civil court.

16. The Aligarh district is now irrigated by ca.n.a.ls.

17. This is the lender's view of his business; the borrowers might have a different story.

CHAPTER 62

Public Spirit of the Hindoos--Tree Cultivation and Suggestions for extending it.

I may here be permitted to introduce as something germane to the matter of the foregoing chapter a recollection of Jubbulpore, although we are now far past that locality.

My tents are pitched where they have often been before, on the verge of a very large and beautiful tank in a fine grove of mango-trees, and close to a handsome temple. There are more handsome temples and buildings for accommodation on the other side of the tank, but they are gone sadly out of repair. The bank all round this n.o.ble tank is beautifully ornamented by fine banyan and pipal trees, between which and the water's edge intervene numerous cl.u.s.ters of the graceful bamboo. These works were formed about eighty years ago by a respectable agricultural capitalist who resided at this place, and died about twenty years after they were completed. No relation of his can now be found in the district, and not one in a thousand of those who drink of the water or eat of the fruit knows to whom he is indebted. There are round the place some beautiful 'baolis', or large wells with flights of stone steps from the top to the water's edge, imbedded in cl.u.s.ters of beautiful trees. They were formed about the same time for the use of the public by men whose grandchildren have descended to the grade of cultivators of the soil, or belted attendants upon the present native collectors, without the means of repairing any of the injury which time is inflicting upon these magnificent works. Three or four young pipal-trees have begun to spread their delicate branches and pale green leaves rustling in the breeze from the dome of this fine temple; which these infant Herculeses hold in their deadly grasp and doom to inevitable destruction. Pigeons deposit the seeds of the pipal-tree, on which they chiefly feed, in the crevices of buildings.

No Hindoo dares, and no Christian or Muhammadan will condescend, to lop off the heads of these young trees, and if they did, it would only put off the evil and inevitable day; for such are the vital powers of their roots, when they have once penetrated deeply into a building, that they will send out their branches again, cut them off as often as you may, and carry on their internal attack with undiminished vigour.[1] No wonder that superst.i.tion should have consecrated this tree, delicate and beautiful as it is, to the G.o.ds.

The palace, the castle, the temple, and the tomb, all those works which man is most proud to raise to spread and to perpetuate his name, crumble to dust beneath her withering grasp. She rises triumphant over them all in her lofty beauty, bearing high in air amidst her light green foliage fragments of the wreck she has made, to show the nothingness of man's greatest efforts.

While sitting at my tent-door looking out upon this beautiful sheet of water, and upon all the n.o.ble works around me, I thought of the charge, so often made against the people of this fine land, of the total want of _public spirit_ among them, by those who have spent their Indian days in the busy courts of law, and still more busy commercial establishments of our great metropolis.

If by the term public spirit be meant a disposition on the part of individuals to sacrifice their own enjoyments, or their own means of enjoyment for the common good, there is perhaps no people in the world among whom it abounds so much as among the people of India. To live in the grateful recollections of their countrymen for benefits conferred upon them in great works of ornament and utility is the study of every Hindoo of rank and property.[2] Such works tend, in his opinion, not only to spread and perpetuate his name in this world, but, through the good wishes and prayers of those who are benefited by them, to secure the favour of the Deity in the next.

According to their notions, every drop of rain-water or dew that falls to the ground from the green leaf of a fruit-tree, planted by them for the common good, proves a refres.h.i.+ng draught for their souls in the next [world]. When no descendant remains to pour the funeral libations in their name, the water from the trees they have planted for the public good is destined to supply its place. Everything judiciously laid out to promote the happiness of their fellow creatures will in the next world be repaid to them tenfold by the Deity.

In marching over the country in the hot season, we every morning find our tents pitched on the green sward amid beautiful groves of fruit- trees, with wells of 'pakka' (brick or stone) masonry, built at great expense, and containing the most delicious water; but how few of us ever dream of asking at whose cost the trees that afford us and our followers such agreeable shade were planted, or the wells that afford us such copious streams of fine water in the midst of dry, arid plains were formed! We go on enjoying all the advantages which arise from the _n.o.ble public spirit_ that animates the people of India to benevolent exertions, without once calling in question the truth of the a.s.sertion of our metropolitan friends that 'the people of India have no public spirit'.