Eight Lectures on India

|1.
Map of India, distinguishing the United Provinces.| Northwestward from Bengal, over the great plain of the Ganges, we enter the next region of India. The United Provinces of Agra and Oudh have an area almost equal to that of Great Britain, and a population as dense. When we go from Bengal to the United Provinces, it is as though we were crossing from one to another of the great continental States of Europe, say from Germany into France.

|2.
Map of the United Provinces.| The Himalayan mountains lie to the north; the hills of Central India to the south. The plain between them, raised only a little above the sea, is two hundred miles across, measured from the foot hills of the Himalayas to the first rise of the Central Indian hills. Two great rivers, the Ganges and the Jumna, emerge from Himalayan valleys, and traverse the plain southward, and presently southeastward, leaving between them a tongue of land, known in Hindustani as the Doab, or two waters. Mesopotamia, between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris in the Nearer East, signifies the same in the Greek language. The Jumna joins the Ganges near the southern limit of the plain, and in the angle of the confluence is the large city of Allahabad, the capital and seat of the Lieutenant-Governor of the United Provinces. Other great tributaries flow to the Ganges from more eastern parts of the Himalayas, and bending southeastward join the main river one after another.

Five considerable cities focus the great population of the United Provinces—Allahabad, already mentioned, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Agra, and Benares. A hundred miles above Allahabad, on the right or south bank of the Ganges, is the city of Cawnpore, and on the opposite or northern bank extends the old Kingdom of Oudh, with Lucknow for its capital, situated some forty miles northeast of Cawnpore. Agra, which gives its name to all that part of the United Provinces which did not formerly belong to Oudh, is situated on the right or south bank of the Jumna, a hundred and fifty miles west of Lucknow. Eighty miles below Allahabad, on the north bank of the Ganges, is Benares, the most sacred city of the Hindus. All these distances between the cities of Agra, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Allahabad, and Benares, lie over the dead level of the plain, dusty, and like a desert in the dry season, but green and fertile after the rains. Scattered over the plain are innumerable villages, in which dwell nineteen out of twenty of the inhabitants of the joint Provinces. Lucknow is the largest of the cities, yet it has only a quarter of a million inhabitants.

The United Provinces are the heart of India, the typical Indian land, safe from invasion from the north by reason of the Himalayan barrier and the desert plateau of Tibet; relatively inaccessible from the ocean, and not conquered by Britain until long after Bengal had become a Province of the East India Company; relatively safe also from northwestern invasion. Its people remain dominantly Hindu in their religion and customs, whereas the great province of the Punjab further northwestward has a majority of Musulmans. Southward is the plateau of Central India, comparatively thinly peopled.

The language of the United Provinces, and of considerable districts to west, south, and east of them, is Hindi, the most direct derivative of the ancient Sanskrit tongue, whose use was contemporary with that of Latin and Greek. All three of these ancient tongues, as well as Old Persian, belong to the family of the Indo-European languages. Sanskrit was brought into India by a conquering people from the northwest. Hindi is now spoken by a hundred million people in all the northern centre of India. It is the language not only of the United Provinces but also of the western part of Bengal which is known as Behar, of that part of the Punjab which surrounds Delhi, and of a wide district in Central India ruled by the great Maratha chiefs, Sindhia and Holkar. Other tongues of similar origin are spoken in the regions around—Bengali in Bengal, Marathi and Gujrati in the lands which lie east and north of Bombay, and Punjabi in the Punjab. We must think of these various Indian languages as differing from one another much as French and Spanish and Italian differ, which are all derived from a common Latin source. The Hindi language was picked up by the Musulman conquerors of India, and by adding to it words of their own Persian speech they formed Urdu, the language of the camp. This is the language of educated Musulmans all over India to this day. Under the name of Hindustani it has become a sort of lingua franca throughout India, and is used by Europeans when talking to their servants.

Away to the south, beyond the limit of the Sanskrit tongues, in the province of Madras and neighbouring areas, are talked languages wholly alien from Sanskrit, and differing from Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujrati, and Punjabi, much as the Turkish and Hungarian languages differ from the group of allied Indo-European tongues spoken in Western Europe. These southern Indian tongues are known as Dravidian. The most important of them are Telugu, spoken by twenty millions, and Tamil, spoken by some fifteen millions. The Hindu religion, however, is held by the great majority both of the Dravidian south and of the Indo-European north and centre.

If there be one part of India which we may think of as the shrine of shrines in a land where religion rules all life, it is to be found in a triangle of cities just contained within the map before us. There on the Ganges we see Benares and Patna, and some fifty miles south of Patna the smaller town of Gaya. Benares from prehistoric times has been the focus of Hinduism. Patna was the capital of the chief Gangetic kingdom more than two thousand years ago, when the Greek ambassador Megasthenes, first of the Westerns, travelled thus far into the East. Gaya was the spot where Buddha, seeking to reform Hinduism some six hundred years before Christ, obtained enlightenment, and then migrated to teach at Benares, or rather at Sarnath, now in ruin, some three or four miles north of the present Benares. The peoples of all the vast Indian and Chinese world, from Karachi to Pekin and Tokyo, look to this little group of cities as the centre of holiness, whether they be followers of Brahma or of Buddha.

|3.
Buddhist Tope at Sarnath.| |4.
Sculptures at Sarnath.| |5.
Lion-capital at Sarnath.| Old Benares, whose ruins are now known as Sarnath, was a few miles north of the existing city. We have here one of the Buddhist topes of Sarnath, which was the spot to which Buddha removed after he had received enlightenment at Gaya. Here he and his disciples began to teach. We have another view at Sarnath, showing some of the ancient sculptures, and a gigantic lion-capital recently excavated. Its size can be appreciated by noticing the man behind.

|6.
Plan of Benares.| |7.
View across the Ganges to the Southern Shore.| |8.
Panchganga Ghat, Benares.| |9.
The Same—another view.| |10.
Palace of the Raja of Bhinga, Benares.| |11.
The Same—another view.| Benares extends for four miles along the northern bank of the Ganges. This bank is here higher than the southern, and descends to the river edge with a steep brink. Down this brink are many flights of steps, known as “ghats,” which we may translate by the word “approaches.” We have already heard the word “ghat” applied to the steep mountain-high brinks of the southern plateau of India, where the upper ground breaks away to the shore of the Arabian Sea on the one hand, and to the low-lying plain of the Carnatic on the other. The city of Benares is situated on the plateau top above the ghats, and for four miles the river front is crowned with palaces and temples, built of a yellow sandstone. The opposite, the southern, shore lies low and without buildings. Here is a view looking southward across the river from the brink edge; it shows the low and non-sacred southern shore. Here are two views of the brink itself, faced and crowned with buildings of yellow sandstone. There follow two views of the palace of the Raja of Bhinga, and in both we see the ghat steps descending to the water’s edge.

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Dasashwamedh Ghat, Benares.| |13.
Manikarnika Ghat, Benares.| The population of Benares numbers some two hundred thousand, of whom the great majority are of the Hindu faith, and no fewer than thirty thousand are Brahmans, the priestly caste. It is said that more than a million pilgrims visit the city every year. In the early morning they descend the ghats to bathe in the river and to drink the sacred water. Here we have the scene at one of these ghats, with the conical towers of a temple, and the great sun umbrellas. Another scene of a similar character follows at another ghat, the most sacred in Benares.

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Burning Ghat, Benares.| |15.
Another Burning Ghat, Benares.| Some of the ghats are used for the burning of dead bodies. Wrapped in a white shroud, the corpse is dipped into the river, then laid on a pile of faggots, and other faggots are built around, and a light is set to the pile. The ashes are thrown into the river. These rites are performed by the nearest relatives. We have here the body of a woman of the poorer classes nearly consumed, and the few relatives looking on. Here preparations are in progress for another cremation. The corpse may be seen, with its feet in the water, resting aslant at the foot of the ghat. The bodies of the higher castes are burnt at the Raja Ghat on costly fires of sandal-wood. At night, from the water, the city, with its thousands of lights and the tall flames at the Burning Ghats, is deeply impressive.

|16.
The Observatory, Benares.| |17.
The Samrat Yantra in the Observatory.| |18.
Eclipse Festival, Benares.| Perhaps the most interesting of all the buildings at Benares is the Observatory, a lofty structure placed on the river brink and commanding a wide view. Within are instruments of stone on a great scale for the observation of the movements of the heavenly bodies. This is the Samrat Yantra, used for observing the declination and right ascension of the stars. Astronomy plays no inconsiderable part in the rites of Benares. The pilgrimages are thronged at the time of eclipse of the sun, and there are certain ghats of special resort during the occurrence of eclipses.

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Roof of Golden Temple, Benares.| |20 Vishnagi Temple, Benares.| |21.
Aurangzeb’s Mosque, Benares.| |22.
The Same—another view.| Set a little back from the river front in a small square is the chief temple of the Hindus. Europeans are not permitted to go within, but only to peep through a hole in the wall, and also from an upper balcony of a neighbouring house to look down upon the gilded roof. Beside this temple there is another, half of which is in ruin, and the remainder has been converted to the purpose of a Musulman mosque. The old part is of yellow-grey sandstone, tawny with age, but the mosque has been white-washed and shines brightly in the sunlight. We have here a view of this temple-mosque, and then there follow two views, showing the tall minarets of Aurangzeb’s Mosque, built on the site of another Hindu temple which he destroyed. For two centuries until the advent of British power the rulers of this Hindu land were of the Musulman faith, conquerors from the northwest. The Musulmans destroyed many of the ancient Hindu temples of Benares, so that most of the buildings of the city are comparatively modern.

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A Fakir, Benares.| |24.
Snake Charmers, Benares.| As in a Christian country, such a resort of pilgrims brings together men from far distant and different lands, and we have at Benares an epitome of all Hindu India. In the narrow deep-shaded streets, and the sordid and tawdry purlieus of the temples may be seen many a typical scene of Eastern life. Here, for instance, close to Aurangzeb’s Mosque, is a Fakir or religious enthusiast, to whom the alms of the faithful are due. He rests on this bed of spikes day and night. Such Fakirs get much alms, which they are supposed by the envious to bury underground. We have another characteristic scene here, two snake charmers on one of the ghats, with a fine assortment of reptiles—cobra, python, and other snakes, as well as scorpions. There is always a ready crowd for them, as for jugglers of curious skill.

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Bullock Cart, Benares.| |26.
A Camel, Benares.| |27.
A Bridegroom, Benares.| The traffic in the streets is of the most various kind. Here is an ox waggon, with cumbrous wooden wheels, laden with rough stone for road making, and here a tall camel bringing in tobacco from some outlying village. This is a bridegroom of the highest, the Brahman caste, mounted on a white horse, and clothed in a golden dress shot with pink. He is probably on his way to pay a ceremonial call.

|28.
Prince of Wales Hospital, Benares.| |29.
Queen’s College, Benares.| |30.
Central Hindu College, Benares.| Further inland, near the railway station, is grouped the European quarter, with a Christian church, the post office, the regimental barracks of the cantonment, missionary colleges, villas of officials, and a few fine public buildings of recent date. Here for instance, with a bullock cart passing it, and another vehicle behind with a sun-hood, is the Prince of Wales Hospital. Here is Queen’s College, where a modern education is given to some five hundred students, and here finally is the Central Hindu College, opened in 1899, “for the education of Hindu youth in their ancestral faith and in true loyalty and patriotism.” This college contains about two hundred and fifty students.

|31.
Army Factory, Cawnpore—Native Cutters at work.| We now leave Benares, noticing the great railway bridge over the Ganges, and travel by rail over the grey monotony of the plains, varied by patches of cultivation, herds of long-eared goats, long-legged pigs, large black vultures, and here and there a string of camels. So we come to Cawnpore, the Manchester of India. Cawnpore is the chief inland manufacturing city of India, a great contrast in all its ways with Benares. Western capital, Western ideas, and Western organisation are at work on a large scale. There are mills and factories for the spinning and weaving of wool, mostly Indian wool, but some Australian brought by way of Calcutta. One of these mills seen by our artist had on hand at the time of his visit an order for eleven thousand coats, and had just finished thirty-three thousand for the police of the great native state of Hyderabad. This is the mill in question. The cutters are shearing coats from a great piece of khaki, on which the patterns to be cut have been chalked. Both the spinning of the yarn and the weaving of khaki cloth have been accomplished by native labour and British machinery at Cawnpore. Khaki signifies the colour of khak, or dust.

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The Same—the Raw Hide Shed.| |33.
The Same—unloading Bark.| |34.
The Same—the Boot Shop.| |35.
Well in Messrs. Cooper Allen’s Model Village, Cawnpore.| |36.
Native Potters.| |37.
The Same.| Here is a leather factory for making Government boots and army equipment. This view shows the raw hides, mostly buffalo, gathered by rail from all parts of India. The hides on the weighing machine have been dried. This is bark being unloaded from the train for use in the tannery. Then we see the boot shop itself, thronged with workmen. These workmen are mostly Musulmans. As will be seen, the boots are hand-sewn. One large firm, employing daily some three thousand five hundred hands, has built a model village, of which we have here the well, the central feature of every Indian village, whether of the new and garden type, or of the old and traditional. What a contrast must all this be to the inhabitants of the country districts, where village tradesmen still follow their traditional crafts! Here, for example, are two views in a pottery near Benares. The potters turn the wheel with their feet. Most Hindu workmen use their feet a good deal, and of course the typical squatting attitude makes it easier for them to do so.

Consider the revolution in all the social life of India, which is involved in the steady displacement of these village-made wares by the cheaper machine-made products of Cawnpore and other factory centres. There is a change beginning throughout the length and breadth of this vast land, not wholly unlike that which took place in Britain under the name of the Industrial Revolution a century and a half ago. As higher and more skilled industries are introduced, it seems likely ultimately to result in a migration of workers from the villages to the cities, in the growth of the size of the cities, and in the greater monotony of life in the rustic villages. No doubt there will be some inevitable suffering, especially on the part of those workers who cannot adapt themselves to the new conditions. In the main, however, the factory operatives have thus far been peasant proprietors who forsake their villages only for a time.

|38.
The Rumi Gate, Lucknow.| |39.
The Same—from within.| |40.
The Imambara, Lucknow.| |41.
The Same—the Great Hall.| Lucknow is a city of modern temples and palaces, many of them stucco buildings of debased architecture, which appear beautiful only by moonlight and when artificially illuminated. We have here the Rumi Gateway, and here the same gateway from within. Then we have the Imambara, built under Asaf-ud-daulah, who also built the Residency, as a relief work in a great famine in 1784. The most striking feature is the successful construction of an enormous roof of coarse concrete without ribs, beams, pillars, or visible support of any kind, except that from the four surrounding walls. Here is the great hall, beneath this roof. It is about a hundred and sixty feet long, fifty feet wide, and some fifty feet high. On the floor is the tomb of Asaf-ud-daulah, a slab of plain masonry surrounded by silver, and covered with a canopy. The tomb is not in line with the sides of the hall, but is a little askew in order that it be oriented in accordance with the direction of Mecca. Near by can be seen a huge tazia, which is carried through the streets on the Musulman anniversary of the Moharam.

|42.
In the Chauk Bazaar, Lucknow.| |43.
The Same.| |44.
A Musulman Woman in a Burka.| |45.
The Jama Masjid, Lucknow.| |46.
The Husainabad Imambara, Lucknow.| |47.
Karbala of Diana-ud-daula, Lucknow.| |48.
The Kasmain, Lucknow.| Next we have two views in the Bazaar of Lucknow, which forms one of the six wards of the city. In the bazaar are to be found jewellers and silversmiths, together with brassworkers and woodcarvers. Then we come to a very characteristic Indian scene, a Musulman woman wearing a burka, that is to say, a veil with eye-slits. All Musulman women of a higher class are veiled when they leave the privacy of their houses, in accordance with the general feeling of Islam, alike in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Here we see the Jama Masjid, a three-domed mosque, with decorations painted in blue and purple upon its walls. Within it is a curious ledge used by the Shiahs, one of the two great sects of the Musulmans, for resting their foreheads at prayer time. From the platform of this mosque, we have a view of one of the largest Muhammadan buildings of the city, the Husainabad Imambara, built in 1837, by Muhammad Ali Shah, as a burial place for himself and his mother. It is almost entirely of painted stucco. Beyond its tallest minaret can be seen in the distance the red brick Clock-Tower of the city. Here we see the Karbala or burying place of Diana-ud-daula, of red sandstone, with a gilded cupola, and close by is the Kasmain, whose architecture is copied from that of a sacred place in Bagdad.

|49.
The Chhattar Manzil, Lucknow.| |50.
Women planting Tobacco Plants, Lucknow.| Next we see the Chhattar Manzil, once the Palace of the Kings of Oudh, now transformed into the United Service Club. Finally, in contrast, is a scene near the Residency, showing women planting out young tobacco plants, with an irrigation well in the background. Notice the oxen pulling at the rope with a skin attached, which draws up the water.

Already the busy hive of industry at Cawnpore plays no mean part in the economy of the Indian Empire, but for British ears Cawnpore and Lucknow have a historical and deeper interest. These two cities were the focus of those events in the tragic year 1857, which we speak of as the Indian Mutiny. At that time British India was still ruled by the East India Company, an Association founded at the close of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. The British East India Company had at first purely mercantile aims, but, as we have already heard in these lectures, was soon involved in native intrigues and wars owing to the rivalry of the competing French Company. Robert Clive went out to India as a writer or clerk in the employ of “John Company,” as it was called, but he exchanged the pen for the sword, and by his defence of Arcot brought about the defeat of the French party in the Carnatic, and the supremacy of the British Company in that state. So he established the Madras Province around Fort Saint George on the southeastern coast. The great Colonel Clive, who recaptured Calcutta and won the Province of Bengal by the decisive victory at Plassey, was the same soldier grown a little older in the service of the same great Company.

By successive stages in the next two or three generations the East India Company was deprived of its trading monopolies. At the time of the Mutiny it was in fact merely the Government of India, and was controlled even in this function by the British Government. The Company maintained a large army of sepoys or native soldiers, officered by Europeans, and also a small force that was wholly British. In the years immediately preceding the Mutiny, great changes had been made in India. In one way or another several native governments had been overthrown, and among these was the Kingdom of Oudh, whose capital was at Lucknow, which was annexed because of its misrule. There was hence much unrest among some of the Indian peoples, and the spirit of discontent spread to the native army of Bengal, mostly recruited from Oudh. Then an unfortunate incident occurred. A new form of cartridge was supplied to the troops, the end of which had to be bitten off before the old fashioned gun of those times could be loaded. Rumour got about that beef grease or pigs’ fat had been employed in the manufacture of these cartridges. Now the Hindus regard oxen as sacred, and the Musulmans look on the pig as unclean. The Hindus use oxen as draught animals for their ploughs and their carts, but to kill them or to eat their flesh is sinful. So it was that the agitators were able to play on the superstitions and prejudices of the ignorant soldiers. The mutinous troops murdered many of their white officers, and gradually gathered into three armies, which attacked the small loyal native forces and the white men and women who had collected at Delhi, Cawnpore, and Lucknow. Of the fall of Delhi and its re-capture by the British we will speak later when we come to describe in the seventh lecture the northern part of India. Assistance came to that place, not from Calcutta and the sea, but from the great newly acquired Province of the Punjab, which remained loyal. Cawnpore and Lucknow lay, however, far to the southeast of Delhi, and were inaccessible from that direction. Sir Henry Lawrence was in command at Lucknow, and General Wheeler at Cawnpore. In each case the native city was abandoned, and the small loyal native force and white refugees were gathered into an area more possible of defence. General Havelock led the first army of relief from Calcutta and Allahabad towards Cawnpore, but before he arrived, the little garrison, trusting to treacherous promises, had surrendered. They marched down to the river to take boat for Allahabad, and there most of them were slain—men, women, and children. A few were imprisoned at Cawnpore and were massacred a fortnight later.

|51.
Massacre Ghat, Cawnpore.| |52.
The Same—another View.| We have here the ghat, now known as Massacre Ghat, by which the English went down to the fatal shore, and here another and wider view of the same scene. The road that leads down to the ghat is shaded by some fine trees, behind which were hidden on the 27th June, 1857, the mutineers who carried out the massacre. In the distance can be seen the red brick piers of the Oudh and Rohilkund Railway bridge, built of course since the Mutiny.

Retribution soon came to the mutineers. General Havelock marched from Allahabad with some two thousand men, and in a fierce battle defeated the rebels under Nana Sahib, and entered Cawnpore. He then tried to carry relief across the forty miles of plain northeastward to Lucknow. Twice he failed, and was forced back, but at last he effected his entry to that city, with a force so weak, however, that it was impossible to keep open his communications, and the reinforced garrison at Lucknow was subjected to a renewal of the siege. At last Sir Colin Campbell, afterwards Lord Clyde, arrived with an army sent out from Britain. We must remember that in those days there was no Suez Canal, and communication with India was round the Cape of Good Hope. Fortunately an expedition was on its way to China when the Mutiny broke out, and this force was diverted to Calcutta, and supplied the first relief, which was led, as we have seen, by General Havelock.

|53.
The Residency, Lucknow.| |54.
The Tower of the Residency.| |55.
The Baillie Gate, Lucknow.| |56.
The Ammunition Mosque in the Residency.| |57.
The Monument outside the Residency.| The defence at Lucknow centered in the Residency, the official home that is to say of the British Resident at the court of the recently dethroned King of Oudh. The Residency is now in ruins, as we see in the three slides which follow. Here is a view taken from the direction of the Baillie Gate, and here is the Tower. Here is the Baillie Gate itself, the scene of the most furious attacks on the British position. The old man whom we note with his hat off and a medal on his breast is the guardian of the place, a veteran of the Mutiny, who as a boy took part in the defence of Lucknow. These Mutiny veterans have now become but a very small band. Here in the Residency is another ruin, the mosque in which the ammunition was kept during the siege, and here is the Monument to the loyal native soldiers. It bears the following inscription:—“To the memory of the native officers and sepoys who died near this spot nobly performing their duty.” This monument was erected in 1875 by Lord Northbrook, Viceroy and Governor-General of India, and serves to remind us that the Indians who fell in defence of our flag outnumbered the British. The Tower of the Residency can be seen in the background.

|58.
All Souls Memorial Church, Cawnpore.| |59.
The Well Memorial, Cawnpore.| At Cawnpore, also, there are sad memorials of massacre and defeat, not of ultimate victory as at Lucknow. We have here All Souls Memorial church, containing monuments to those who fell near by. The low evergreen hedge seen in the picture marks the line of General Wheeler’s unfortunately chosen entrenchments. Here, at the east end of the city, in the beautiful Memorial Gardens, over the well into which the dead bodies were cast after the second massacre, is a figure of the Angel of the Resurrection, sculptured by Marochetti in white marble. In each hand is a palm, the emblem of peace. Around the circle of the well is the following inscription:—

“Sacred to the perpetual memory of the great company of Christian people, chiefly women and children, who near this spot were cruelly murdered by the followers of the rebel Nana Dhundu Pant of Bithur, and cast, the dying with the dead, into the well below, on the 15th day of July, 1857.”

|60.
The Queen’s Statue, Cawnpore.| Finally, we look at the bronze monument of the Queen-Empress Victoria, whose direct government displaced that of the East India Company after the quelling of the Mutiny in 1858. Hindu gardeners are at work in the foreground. No Briton can visit Lucknow and Cawnpore without being moved. We may well be proud of the heroic deeds of those of our race who in 1857 suffered and fought and died to save the British Raj in India.