Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official Part 54

(Sir Lepel Griffin, _Ranjit Singh_, pp. 25-34.) For various reasons, which I have not s.p.a.ce to explain, the statistics of Sikhism are untrustworthy. The returns for 1911 show an increase of 37 per cent.

in the Panjab. We may, at least, be a.s.sured that the numbers are not diminis.h.i.+ng.

e. The Sikhs do not now detest us. They willingly furnish soldiers and military police of the best cla.s.s, equal to the Gorkhas, and fit to fight in line with English soldiers. The Panjab chieftains have been among the foremost in offers of loyal a.s.sistance to the Government of India in times of danger, and in organizing the Imperial Service troops. The Sikh states are now sufficiently well governed.

CHAPTER 66

Collegiate Endowment of Muhammadan Tombs and Mosques.

On the 20th[1] we came to Badarpur, twelve miles over a plain, with the range of hills on our left approaching nearer and nearer the road, and separating us from the old city of Delhi. We pa.s.sed through Faridpur, once a large town, and called after its founder, Shaikh Farid, whose mosque is still in good order, though there is no person to read or hear prayers in it.[2] We pa.s.sed also two fine bridges, one of three, and one of four arches, both over what were once streams, but are now dry beds of sand.[3] The whole road shows signs of having been once thickly peopled, and highly adorned with useful and ornamental works when Delhi was in its glory.

Every handsome mausoleum among Muhammadans was provided with its mosque, and endowed by the founder with the means of maintaining men of learning to read their Koran over the grave of the deceased and in his chapel; and, as long as the endowment lasted, the tomb continued to be at the same time a college. They read the Koran morning and evening over the grave, and prayers in the chapel at the stated periods; and the rest of their time is commonly devoted to the instruction of the youths of their neighbourhood, either gratis or for a small consideration. Apartments in the tomb were usually set aside for the purpose, and these tombs did ten times more for education in Hindustan than all the colleges formed especially for the purpose.[4] We might suppose that rulers who formed and endowed such works all over the land must have had more of the respect and the affections of the great ma.s.s of the people than we, who, as my friend upon the Jumna has it, 'build nothing but private dwelling- houses, factories, courts of justice, and jails', can ever have; but this conclusion would not be altogether just.[5] Though every mosque and mausoleum was a seat of learning, that learning, instead of being a source of attraction and conciliation between the Muhammadans and Hindoos, was, on the contrary, a source of perpetual repulsion and enmity between them--it tended to keep alive in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the Musalmans a strong feeling of religions indignation against the wors.h.i.+ppers of idols; and of dread and hatred in those of the Hindoos.

The Koran was the Book of books, spoken by G.o.d to the angel Gabriel in parts as occasion required, and repeated by him to Muhammad; who, unable to write himself, dictated them to any one who happened to be present when he received the divine communications;[6] it contained all that it was worth man's while to study or know--it was from the Deity, but at the same time coeternal with Him--it was His divine eternal spirit, inseparable from Him from the beginning, and therefore, like Him, uncreated. This book, to read which was of itself declared to be the highest of all species of wors.h.i.+p, taught war against the wors.h.i.+ppers of idols to be of all merits the greatest in the eye of G.o.d; and no man could well rise from the perusal without the wish to serve G.o.d by some act of outrage against them.

These buildings were, therefore, looked upon by the Hindoos, who composed the great ma.s.s of the people, as a kind of religions volcanoes, always ready to explode and pour out their lava of intolerance and outrage upon the innocent people of the surrounding country.

If a Hindoo fancied himself injured or insulted by a Muhammadan he was apt to revenge himself upon the Muhammadans generally, and insult their religion by throwing swine's flesh, or swine's blood, into one of their tombs or churches; and the latter either flew to arms at once to revenge their G.o.d, or retaliated by throwing the flesh or the blood of the cow into the first Hindoo temple at hand, which made the Hindoos fly to arms. The guilty and the wicked commonly escaped, while numbers of the weak, the innocent and the unoffending were slaughtered. The magnificent buildings, therefore, instead of being at the time bonds of union, were commonly sources of the greatest discord among the whole community, and of the most painful humiliation to the Hindoo population. During the bigoted reign of Aurangzeb and his successors a Hindoo's presence was hardly tolerated within sight of these tombs or churches; and had he been discovered entering one of them, he would probably have been hunted down like a mad dog. The recollection of such outrages, and the humiliation to which they gave rise, a.s.sociated as they always are in the minds of the Hindoos with the sight of these buildings, are perhaps the greatest source of our strength in India; because they at the same time feel that it is to us alone they owe the protection which they now enjoy from similar injuries. Many of my countrymen, full of virtuous indignation at the outrages which often occur during the processions of the Muharram, particularly when these happen to take place at the same time with some religious procession of the Hindoos, are very anxious that our Government should interpose its authority to put down both. But these processions and occasional outrages are really sources of great strength to us; they show at once the necessity for the interposition of an impartial tribunal, and a disposition on the part of the rulers to interpose impartially. The Muhammadan festivals are regulated by the lunar, and those of the Hindoos by the solar year, and they cross each other every thirty or forty years, and furnish fair occasions for the local authorities to interpose effectually.[7] People who receive or imagine insults or injuries commonly postpone their revenge till these religious festivals come round, when they hope to be able to settle their accounts with impunity among the excited crowd. The mournful procession of the Muharram, when the Muhammadans are inflamed to madness by the recollection of the really affecting incidents of the ma.s.sacre of the grandchildren of their prophet, and by the images of their tombs, and their sombre music,[8] crosses that of the Holi[9]

(in which the Hindoos are excited to tumultuous and licentious joy by their baccha.n.a.lian songs and dances) every thirty-six years; and they reign together for some four or five days, during which the scene in every large town is really terrific. The processions are liable to meet in the street, and the lees of the wine of the Hindoos, or the red powder which is subst.i.tuted for them, is liable to fall upon the tombs of the others. Hindoos pa.s.s on, forgetting in their saturnalian joy all distinctions of age, s.e.x, or religion, their clothes and persons besmeared with the red powder, which is moistened and thrown from all kinds of machines over friend and foe; while meeting these come the Muhammadans, clothed in their green mourning, with gloomy downcast looks, beating their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, ready to kill themselves, and too anxious for an excuse to kill anybody else. Let but one drop of the lees of joy fall upon the image of the tomb as it pa.s.ses, and a hundred swords fly from their scabbards; many an innocent person falls; and woe be to the town in which the magistrate is not at hand with his police and military force. Proudly conscious of their power, the magistrates refuse to prohibit one cla.s.s from laughing because the other happens to be weeping; and the Hindoos on such occasions laugh the more heartily to let the world see that they are free to do so.

A very learned Hindoo once told me in Central India that the oracle of Mahadeo had been at the same time consulted at three of his greatest temples--one in the Deccan, one in Rajputana, and one, I think, in Bengal--as to the result of the government of India by Europeans, who seemed determined to fill all the high offices of administration with their own countrymen, to the exclusion of the people of the country. A day was appointed for the answer; and when the priest came to receive it they found Mahadeo (Siva) himself with a European complexion, and dressed in European clothes. He told them that their European Government was in reality nothing more than a multiplied incarnation of himself; and that he had come among them in this shape to prevent their cutting each other's throats as they had been doing for some centuries past; that these, his incarnations, appeared to have no religion themselves in order that they might be the more impartial arbitrators between the people of so many different creeds and sects who now inhabited the country; that they must be aware that they never had before been so impartially governed, and that they must continue to obey these their governors, without attempting to pry further into futurity or the will of the G.o.ds. Mahadeo performs a part in the great drama of the Ramayana, or the Rape of Sita, and he is the only figure there that is represented with a _white face_.[10]

I was one day praising the law of primogeniture among ourselves to a Muhammadan gentleman of high rank, and defending it on the ground that it prevented that rivalry and bitterness of feeling among brothers which were always found among the Muhammadans, whose law prescribes an equal division of property, real and personal, among the sons, and the _choice of the wisest_ among them as successor to the government.[11] 'This', said he, 'is no doubt the source of our weakness, but why should you condemn a law which is to you a source of so much strength? I, one day', said he, 'asked Mr. Seaton, the Governor-General's representative at the court of Delhi, which of all things he had seen in India he liked best. "You have", replied he, smiling, "a small species of melon called 'phut' (disunion); this is the thing we like best in your land." There was', continued my Muhammadan friend, 'an infinite deal of sound political wisdom in this one sentence. Mr. Seaton was a very good and a very wise man.

Our European governors of the present day are not at all the same kind of thing. I asked Mr. B., a judge, the same question many years afterwards, and he told me that he thought the rupees were the best things he had found in India. I asked Mr. T., the Commissioner, and he told me that he thought the tobacco which he smoked in his hookah was the best thing. And pray, sir, what do you think the best thing?'

'Why, Nawab Sahib, I am always very well pleased when I am free from pain, and can get my nostrils full of cool air, and my mouth full of cold water in this hot land of yours; and I think most of my countrymen are the same. Next to these, the thing we all admire most in India, Nawab Sahib, is the entire exemption which you and I and every other gentleman, native or European, enjoy from the taxes which press so heavily upon them in other countries.[12] In Kashmir, no midwife is allowed to attend a woman in her confinement till a heavy tax has been paid to Ranjit Singh for the infant; and in England, a man cannot let the light of heaven into his house till he has paid a tax for the window.'[13]

'Nor keep a dog, nor shoot a partridge in the jungle, I am told,'

said the Nawab.

'Quite true, Nawab Sahib.'

'Hindustan, sir,' said he, 'is, after all, the best country in the world; the only thing wanted is a little more (_rozgar_) employment for the educated cla.s.ses under Government.'

'True, Nawab Sahib, we might, no doubt, greatly multiply this employment to the advantage of those who got the places, but we should have to multiply at the same time the taxes, to the great disadvantage of those who did not get them.'

'True, very true, sir,' said my old friend.

Notes:

1. January, 1836.

2. Faridpur is a mistake for Faridabad, a small town sixteen miles from Delhi, founded in 1607 by Shaikh Farid, treasurer of Jahangir, to protect the high road between Agra and Delhi.

3. The beds are dry in the cold season, but the streams, which flow from the hills to the south of Delhi, are torrents in the rainy season.

4. But the education in such schools is of very little value, being commonly confined to the committing of the Koran to memory by boys ignorant of Arabic.

5. In modern India the British buildings are far more varied, and many aspire to some architectural merit.

6. Muhammad is said to have received these communications in all situations; sometimes when riding along the road on his camel, he became suddenly red in the face, and greatly agitated; he made his camel sit down immediately, and called for some one to write. His rhapsodies were all written at the time on leaves and thrown into a box. Gabriel is believed to have made him repeat over the whole once every year during the month of Ramazan. In the year he died Muhammad told his followers that the angel had made him repeat them over twice that year, and that he was sure he would not live to receive another visit. [W. H. S.]

7. The Muhammadan year consists of twelve lunar months of 30 and 29 days alternately. The common year, therefore, consists of only 354 days. But, when intercalary days in certain years are allowed for, the mean year consists of 354 11/30 days. Inasmuch as a solar year consists of about 365 1/4 days, the difference amounts to nearly 11 days, and any given month in the Muhammadan year consequently goes the round of the seasons in course of time.

8. The Muharram celebration takes its name from the first month of the Muhammadan year, during which it takes place. Ali, the cousin of Muhammad, was married to the prophet's daughter Fatima, and, according to the s.h.i.+a sect, must be regarded as the lawful successor of Muhammad, who died in June, A.D. 632. But, as a matter of fact, Omar, Abu Bakr, and Othman (Usman) in turn succeeded to the Khalifate, and Ali did not take possession of the office till A.D.

655. After five and a half years' reign he was a.s.sa.s.sinated in January, A.D. 661, and his son Hasan, who for a few months had held the vacant office, was poisoned in A.D. 670. Husain, the younger son of Ali, strove to a.s.sert his rights by force of arms, but was slain on the tenth day of the month Muharram (10th October, A.D. 680) in a great battle fought at Karbala near the Euphrates. These events are commemorated yearly by noisy funeral processions. Properly, the proceedings ought to be altogether mournful, and confined to the s.h.i.+a sect, but in practice, Sunni Muhammadans, and even Hindoos, take part in the ceremonies, which are regarded by many of the populace as no more solemn than a Lord Mayor's show.

9. The disgusting festival of the Holi, celebrated with drunkenness and obscenity, takes place in March, and is supposed to be the festival of the vernal equinox (see _ante_, chapter 27 note 16). The magistrates in India have no duty which requires more tact, discretion, and firmness than the regulation of conflicting religions processions. The general disarmament of the people has rendered collisions less dangerous and sanguinary than they used to be, but, in spite of all precautions, they still occur occasionally. The total prohibition of processions likely to cause collisions is, of course, impracticable.

10. Ante chapter 15 text at [9].

11. Muslim daughters also succeed, each taking half the share of a son.

12. _Tempora mutantur_. The land revenue, in the author's time, fully preserved its character of rent, and obviously was not a tax. Later legislation has obscured its real nature, and made it look like a tax. When the author wrote, the only taxes levied were indirect ones, as that on salt, which was paid unconsciously. The modern income-tax, local rates, munic.i.p.al taxation, and gun licences were all unknown.

13. The window tax was levied at varying rates from 1697 to 1851.

CHAPTER 67

The Old City of Delhi.

On the 21st we went on eight miles to the Kutb Minar, across the range of sandstone hills, which rise to the height of about two hundred feet, and run north and south. The rocks are for the most part naked, but here and there the soil between them is covered with _famished_ gra.s.s, and a few stunted shrubs; anything more unprepossessing can hardly be conceived than the aspect of these hills, which seem to serve no other purpose than to store up heat for the people of the great city of Delhi. We pa.s.sed through a cut in this range of hills, made apparently by the stream of the river Jumna at some remote period, and about one hundred yards wide at the entrance. This cut is crossed by an enormous stone wall running north and south, and intended to shut in the waters, and form a lake in the opening beyond it. Along the brow of the precipice, overlooking the northern end of the wall, is the stupendous fort of Tughlakabad, built by the Emperor Tughlak the First[1] of the sandstones of the range of hills on which it stands, cut into enormous square blocks.[2]

On the brow of the opposite side of the precipice, overlooking the southern end of the wall, stands the fort of Muhammadabad, built by this Emperor's son and successor, Muhammad, and resembling in all things that built by his father.[3] These fortresses overlooked the lake, with the old city of Delhi spread out on the opposite side of it to the west. There is a third fortress upon an isolated hill, east of the great barrier wall, said to have been built in honour of his master by the Emperor Tughlak's _barber_.[4] The Emperor's tomb stands upon an isolated rock in the middle of the once lake, now plain, about a mile to the west of the barrier wall. The rock is connected with the western extremity of the northern fortress by a causeway of twenty-five arches, and about one hundred and fifty yards long. This is a fine tomb, and contains in a square centre room the remains of the Emperor Tughlak, his wife, and his son. The tomb is built of red sandstone, and surmounted by a dome of white marble. The three graves inside are built of brick covered with stucco work. The outer sides of the tomb slope slightly inwards from the base, in the form of a pyramid; but the inner walls are, of course, perpendicular.[5]

The impression left on the mind after going over these stupendous fortifications is that the arts which contribute to the comforts and elegancies of life must have been in a very rude state when they were raised. Domestic architecture must have been wretched in the extreme.

The buildings are all of stone, and almost all without cement, and seem to have been raised by giants, and for giants, whose arms were against everybody, and everybody's arm against them. This was indeed the state of the Pathan sovereigns in India--they were the creatures of their armies; and their armies were also employed against the people, who feared and detested them all.[6]

The Emperor Tughlak, on his return at the head of the army, which he had led into Bengal to chastise some rebellious subjects, was met at Afghanpur by his eldest son, Juna, whom he had left in the government of the capital. The prince had in three days raised here a palace of wood for a grand entertainment to do honour to his father's return; and when the Emperor signified his wish to retire, all the courtiers rushed out before him to be in attendance, and among the rest, Juna himself. Five attendants only remained when the Emperor rose from his seat, and at that moment the building fell in and crushed them and their master. Juna had been sent at the head of an army into the Deccan, where he collected immense wealth from the plunder of the palaces of princes and the temples of their priests, the only places in which much wealth was to be found in those days. This wealth he tried to conceal from his father, whose death he probably thus contrived, that he might the sooner have the free enjoyment of it with unlimited power.[7]

Only thirty years before, Ala-ud-din, returning in the same manner at the head of an army from the Deccan loaded with wealth, murdered the Emperor Firoz the Second, the father of his wife, and ascended the throne.[8] Juna ascended the throne under the name of Muhammad the Third;[9] and, after the remains of his father had been deposited in the tomb I have described, he pa.s.sed in great pomp and splendour from the fortress of Tughlakabad, which his father had just then completed, to the city in which the Minar stands, with elephants before and behind loaded with gold and silver coins, which were scattered among the crowd, who everywhere hailed him with shouts of joy. The roads were covered with flowers, the houses adorned with the richest stuffs, and the streets resounded with music.

He was a man of great learning, and a great patron of learned men; he was a great founder of churches, had prayers read in them at the prescribed times, and always went to prayers five times a day himself.[10] He was rigidly temperate himself in his habits, and discouraged all intemperance in others. These things secured him panegyrists throughout the empire during the twenty-seven years that he reigned over it, though perhaps he was the most detestable tyrant that ever filled a throne. He would take his armies out over the most populous and peaceful districts, and hunt down the innocent and unoffending people like wild beasts, and bring home their heads by thousands to hang them on the city gates for his mere amus.e.m.e.nt. He twice made the whole people of the city of Delhi emigrate with him to Daulatabad in Southern India, which he wished to make the capital, from some foolish fancy; and during the whole of his reign gave evident signs of being in an unsound state of mind.[11] There was at the time of his father's death a saint at Delhi named Nizamuddin Aulia, or the Saint, who was supposed by supernatural means to have driven from Delhi one night in a panic a large army of Moghals under Tarmasharin, who invaded India from Transoxiana in 1303, and laid close siege to the city of Delhi, in which the Emperor Ala-ud-din was shut up without troops to defend himself, his armies being engaged in Southern India.[12] It is very likely that he did strike this army with a panic by getting some of their leaders a.s.sa.s.sinated in one night. He was supposed to have the 'dast ul ghaib', or supernatural purse' [literally, 'invisible hand'], as his private expenditure is said to have been more lavish even than that of the Emperor himself, while he had no ostensible source of income whatever. The Emperor was either jealous of his influence and display, or suspected him of dark crimes, and threatened to humble him when he returned to Delhi. As he approached the city, the friends of the saint, knowing the resolute spirit of the Emperor, urged him to quit the capital, as he had been often heard to say, 'Let me but reach Delhi, and this proud priest shall be humbled'.

The only reply that the saint would ever deign to give from the time the imperial army left Bengal, till it was within one stage of the capital, was '_Dihli dur ast_'; 'Delhi is still far off'. This is now become a proverb over the East equivalent to our 'There is many a slip between the cup and the lip'. It is probable that the saint had some understanding with the son in his plans for the murder of his father; it is possible that his numerous wandering disciples may in reality have been murderers and robbers, and that he could at any time have procured through them the a.s.sa.s.sination of the Emperor. The Muhammadan Thugs, or a.s.sa.s.sins of India, certainly looked upon him as one of the great founders of their system, and used to make pilgrimages to his tomb as such; and, as he came originally from Persia, and is considered by his greatest admirers to have been in his youth a robber, it is not impossible that he may have been originally one of the 'a.s.sa.s.sins', or disciples of the 'old man of the mountains', and that he may have set up the system of Thuggee in India and derived a great portion of his income from it.[13] Emperors now prostrate themselves, and aspire to have their bones placed near it [_scil._ the tomb]. While wandering about the ruins, I remarked to one of the learned men of the place who attended us that it was singular Tughlak's buildings should be so rude compared with those of Iltutmish, who had reigned more than eighty years before him.[14]

'Not at all singular,' said he, 'was he not under the curse of the holy saint Nizam-ud-din?' 'And what had the Emperor done to merit the holy man's curse?' 'He had taken by force to employ upon his palaces several of the masons whom the holy man was employing upon a church,'

said he.