Eight Lectures on India

|1.
Map of Northern India.| Once more we look at the map of Northern India. We realise the great mountain wall of the Himalayas, four and five miles high, curving through fifteen hundred miles along the northeast frontier of the Indian lowland. Behind the Himalayas is the Tibetan plateau, three miles in average elevation. Northwestward of India there is another plateau, but a lower one than Tibet, and the mountain ranges which divide it from the Indian plain are lower than the Himalayas. Observe the great series of streams which emerge from the Himalayas, and gather on the one hand into the Indus River, flowing southwestward, and on the other hand into the Ganges, flowing southeastward. See the position of the Indian desert and the Aravalli Hills, and note the exact spot where stands the city of Delhi.

|2.
Map of the neighborhood of Delhi.| We turn now to a map on a larger scale of the region round Delhi. We see the Himalaya mountains, the Aravalli hills, and the Indian Desert. We see the streams of the Indus and Ganges systems turning away from one another, and we see Simla, the summer capital of India, high on a spur of the Himalayas, above the divide between the Indus and the Ganges tributaries. Just north of Simla is the valley of the Sutlej, tributary to the Indus, and where the Sutlej issues from the mountains we note the off-take of a great system of irrigation canals. It is true that the lowland northwestward of Delhi is not quite desert. Nevertheless it has but a sparse rainfall, and the result of the construction of the irrigation canals derived from the Himalayan waters is that great colonies have been established in this region, and wheat is grown on thousands of square miles that were formerly waste. India has a great population, but with modern methods of water supply, and more advanced methods of cultivation, there is still ample room for settlement within its boundaries. We see on the map that there are other irrigation canals derived from the Ganges where it emerges from the mountains at Hardwar, and from the Jumna.

Delhi is the Musulman capital of India. What Benares and Patna and Gaya were and are to the Brahman and Buddhist civilisations native to India, what Calcutta and Madras and Bombay and Karachi are to the English from over the seas, that are Delhi and Agra to the Musulmans entering India from the northwest. The Musulmans were not the first to come this way into India. The oldest of the sacred books of the Hindus tell of a people who came from the northwest and apparently founded the Hindu religion, accepting no doubt some of the religious beliefs of the earlier, the Dravidian, population. From these Aryan invaders, speaking Sanskrit, have been derived the languages of the peoples of Northern India. Southeastward, southward, and southwestward from Delhi as far as the centre of India, there spread the Hindi, Bengali, and Marathi languages, as evidence of the effective conquest made by those remote invaders entering through the Delhi passage between the desert and the mountains. So far, however, as their language was concerned, they failed to establish themselves in the Dravidian south. Long afterwards, but still some three hundred years before the Christian era, the Greeks under Alexander the Great traversed Persia and Turkestan and came over the Hindu Kush, the mountain backbone of what is now Afghanistan, down into the plains of the Punjab. Alexander advanced across the rivers of the Punjab, tributary to the Indus, apparently as far as the Sutlej, and then turned southward and followed the Indus to its mouth. Part of his troops returned through the Persian Gulf on board the fleet, and part he led back with great loss along the barren northern shore of the Arabian Sea. Alexander and the Greeks came therefore to the very threshold of India, and then turned aside towards the sea, leaving the desert of Rajputana between them and the great prize of the conqueror.

In the seventh century of the Christian era there arose in Arabia the prophet Muhammad, who in his youth had been influenced both by Christian and Hebrew teaching. He preached to the Arabs that there was but one God, and that Muhammad was his prophet.

Muhammad, “The Praised,” was born in Mecca, about the year 570. He belonged to one of the ruling families of the tribe of Arabs who held Mecca and the surrounding country, but his father died before he was born, and his mother when he was only six months old. From his earliest youth Muhammad was addicted to solitude and musing. In his wanderings he visited Syria, and in a Nestorian convent there learned many of the Hebrew and Christian ideas which he subsequently incorporated into his teaching. In his twenty-fifth year he married Khadija, a widow of noble birth and considerable wealth. This marriage placed him in a position of independence, for he had previously been very poor.

When Muhammad was forty years old there came to him a Divine Call, bidding him teach his people to abandon their idols, to worship God, and to accept him as God’s Prophet. At first Muhammad met with the most bitter opposition, and in the year 622 A.D. he had to flee from Mecca to a city called Yathreb, which received him and made him its chief magistrate. Ever since that event this city has been called Medinat-un-Nabi, the City of the Prophet; or, shortly, Medina. The flight of Muhammad from Mecca is called the Hegira, and it is from this event that the Muhammadan calendar dates. In the year 630 A.D. Mecca was conquered, and shortly after this all Arabia submitted to the claims of the prophet.

After Muhammad’s death the Arabs set forth to conquer the world and to convert it to Islam. They subdued Egypt and Syria and the plain of the Euphrates. They marched to the gates of Constantinople, and through Northern Africa to the Strait of Gibraltar, and beyond Gibraltar through Spain into France, there to suffer a great defeat at the hands of the Christian Franks, which saved the remainder of Christendom. All this was accomplished in little more than a hundred years from the Hegira.

But the Musulmans did not wage war only against Christendom. Their armies advanced from the Euphrates up on to the Persian plateau and down into the lowlands of Turkestan in the heart of Asia, and over the Hindu Kush into Afghanistan, and then down into the plain of the River Indus. Already in the seventh century there had been Musulman incursions into India overseas, by way of Sind. In the eleventh century after Christ the Musulmans entered Gangetic India, and took Delhi. They founded there a Muhammadan realm, which presently extended through most of Northern India.

|3.
The Mogul Empire at its greatest extent.| Five hundred years later a second Musulman invasion, more effective than the first, came into India by way of Delhi. The Moguls or Mongols of Central Asia had been converted to Islam, and in the time of our King Henry the Eighth they refounded the Musulman power at Delhi. For a hundred and fifty years, from the time of our Queen Elizabeth to that of our Queen Anne, the series of Mogul Emperors, from Humayun to Aurangzeb, ruled in splendid state practically the whole of India. This map shows the greatest spread of the Mogul Empire. Agra, a hundred miles down the Jumna from Delhi, became a subsidiary capital to Delhi, and in these two cities we have to-day the supreme examples of Muhammadan architectural art.

The Musulman, it must be remembered, came as an alien to India. He is no polytheist or pantheist, but a believer in the one God, and that a spiritual God, so that he holds it wrong to make any graven image, whether of man or of animal. Islam is the name which the followers of the prophet gave to their religion: it means primarily submission, and so peace, greeting, safety, and salvation, and in its ethical sense it signifies striving after righteousness. Islam is in its essence pure Theism coupled with some definite rules of conduct. Belief in a future life and accountability for human action in another existence are two of the principal doctrines of the Islamic creed. Every Musulman is his own priest, and, in theory at any rate, no divisions of race or colour are recognised among the followers of the Prophet. Musulmans are forbidden to take alcohol. The gospel of Islam is the Koran—The Book—in which are embodied the teachings and precepts of the Arabian Prophet. The Koran incorporates, as we have already seen, much that was drawn both from Hebrew and Christian teaching.

More than sixty millions of the Indian population hold the faith of Islam. They are scattered all over the land, usually in a minority, although that minority, as we have already learned, is frequently powerful, for it gives ruling chiefs to many districts which are dominantly Hindu. In two parts only of India are the Musulmans in a majority, namely, in the far east, beyond the mouths of the Ganges in the newly formed Province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, and in the Indus Basin from the neighbourhood of Delhi through the Punjab into Sind. For this reason, and also because of its physical character—lying low beneath the uplands of Afghanistan, and separated from the greater part of India by the breadth of the desert—we may think of the Indus Valley as being an ante-chamber to India proper. In this ante-chamber, and in the Delhi passage, between the desert and the mountains, for more than nine hundred years the Musulmans have predominated.

When the decay of the Mogul Empire began in the time of our Queen Anne, the chief local representatives of the Imperial Rule, such as the Nizam of Hyderabad, and the Nawabs of Bengal and Oudh, assumed an independent position. It was with these new dynasties that the East India Company came into conflict in the days of General Clive, and thus we may regard the British Empire in India as having been built up from the fragments into which the Mogul Empire broke. In one region, however, the Western Deccan, the Hindus re-asserted themselves, and there was a rival bid for Empire, as we have already learned, on the part of the Marathas. It was the work of General Wellesley, afterwards Duke of Wellington, to defeat the Marathas. In the north also, in the Punjab, there was a recrudescence of the Hindu race, due to the new sect of the Sikhs, who set up a power with which at a later time the British Raj came into conflict. But this was not until after Delhi, the very seat of the Mogul throne, had been taken.

|Repeat Map No. 2.| |4.
Simla, Viceregal Lodge—distant view.| |5.
Simla, Bazaar and Town Hall.| We are now prepared for the fact shown in this map, that the tract northwestward of Delhi, in the gateway between the desert and the mountains, is sown over with battle fields—ancient battlefields near Delhi, where the incoming Musulmans overthrew the Indian resistance, and modern battlefields near the Sutlej, where advancing British power inflicted defeat upon the Sikhs after severe contests. It is by no accident that Simla, the residence during more than half the year of the British Viceroy, is placed on the Himalayan heights above this natural seat of Empire and of struggle for Empire.

In the Mutiny of 1857 the Sikhs of the Punjab, and of the still continuing Tributary States of Nabha and Patiala, mentioned in the last lecture, remained loyal to the British rule, although they had been conquered in the terrible battles on the Sutlej less than ten years before. In no small measure this was due to the extraordinary influence wielded over them by Sir John Lawrence, afterwards Lord Lawrence, the brother of that Sir Henry Lawrence who defended the Residency of Lucknow. As a result of the Sikh loyalty some of the British forces in the Punjab were free to march to the re-capture of Delhi. Thus the Indian Mutiny was overcome from two bases, on the one hand at Lucknow and Cawnpore by an army from the sea and Calcutta, and on the other hand at Delhi by an army advancing from the Punjab over the track beaten by so many conquerors in previous ages. Let us visit Delhi and see its defences, its mosques, the palaces of its Emperors, and the memorials of the Mutiny. Then we will go to Agra to see other splendid monuments of the Musulman dynasty. After that we will turn to Hardwar, at the point where the sacred Ganges bursts from its Himalayan valley on to the plain. Hardwar is a pilgrimage centre of the Hindus, second in sanctity only to Benares itself.

|6.
The Kashmir Gate, Delhi.| East of Delhi, running almost due southward, is the river Jumna, crossed by the great bridge of the East Indian Railway, which carries the main line from Delhi through the United Provinces and Bengal to Calcutta. West of the city is the last spur of the Aravalli hills, the famous Ridge of Delhi, striking northeastward. The city lies between the Ridge and the Jumna. It may be divided into three parts. To the north is the European quarter. In the centre is Shahjahanabad, or modern Delhi, entered from the north by the Kashmir Gate. Between Shahjahanabad and the river is the Fort. The Jama Masjid (Great Mosque) stands in the centre of Shahjahanabad, and the Kalan Masjid (Black Mosque) is about half a mile further south. Passing out of the modern city southward by the Delhi Gate we enter Firozabad, or ancient Delhi, the capital of the earlier Mogul rulers. Further still to the south are even more ancient ruins.

|7.
Jama Masjid, Delhi.| |8.
View from halfway up a Minaret, Jama Masjid.| |9.
View from top of Minaret, looking south.| |10.
The Same, looking northeast.| |11.
Kalan Masjid, Delhi.| Let us begin our sight-seeing in the centre of the modern city, at the Jama Masjid, a great building of marble and sandstone. Its principal treasures are a hair of Muhammad, and some of his handwriting. Here is a view of the mosque from the balcony of a neighbouring house. Let us go up one of the minarets and look over the city. This is a view taken from a little gallery half way up. To the left is seen part of the large central dome of the mosque, and to the right the top of one of the columns which rise on either side of the main archway. Beyond, far below, can be seen part of the city. Next we have a view, due southward, from the top of the minaret. The Kalan Masjid is just visible in the foreground, but a smoke haze obscures the more distant part of the town. We turn round and look northeastward over the Fort. Notice on the ground the shadow of the other minaret of the mosque. In the distance can be seen the Jumna, and crossing it the great bridge of the East Indian Railway. Here we have a closer view of the Kalan Masjid, or Black Mosque, built in the original style of the mosques of Arabia with many small solid domes, unadorned by carving. It has a sombre appearance. We see in front one of these domes, and behind it the tops of two others.

|12.
The Lahore Gate, Delhi Fort.| |13.
The Delhi Gate, Delhi Fort.| |14.
The Pearl Mosque, Delhi Fort.| |15.
The Hall of Public Audience, Delhi Fort.| |16.
The Orpheus Panel.| The chief glory of Delhi is, however, the Fort, and the group of palace buildings within its precincts. It is approached through the Lahore Gate, of which we have here a view. This gate is in the middle of the west side of the Fort. Along the east side flows the River Jumna. In the southern face there is another great gateway, the Delhi Gate, with a grey stone elephant on either side of the entry. Within the Fort, is the Moti Masjid, or Pearl Mosque, built by Aurangzeb, of white and grey marble. The finest of the buildings of the Fort is, however, the great Hall of Public Audience, the Diwan-i-Am. There is a raised recess, in the wall of this hall, where formerly stood the famous Peacock Throne of Aurangzeb, made of solid gold inlaid with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, and backed by two peacocks set thick with gems. This throne was carried off when the Persians under Nadir Shah sacked the city in 1739, and massacred most of its inhabitants. Above the entry to the recess of the Peacock Throne are a number of panels about nine inches high and six inches broad, made of inlaid stones. Here is a photograph of one of them. Some of these panels were injured, but, thanks to Lord Curzon, an expert artist from Florence has recently restored them and made new ones in the spirit of the earlier to fill the vacant spaces.

|17.
The Hall of Private Audience, Delhi Fort.| We pass next to the innermost court of the Fort-palace, the Hall of Private Audience, the Diwan-i-Khas, ninety feet long and seventy feet broad, built of white marble with many inlaid flowers of jewels. Beneath the cornice runs the famous inscription: “If there is a Paradise upon earth it is this, it is this.” Here we see one of the graceful arches, and beyond in the distance the towers of the Pearl Mosque, already described.

|18.
Mausoleum of Humayun, Delhi.| To see old Delhi we must drive from the modern city either by the Delhi Gate in the south wall of the Fort or by the Ajmer Gate in the southeast corner of the city wall, past great dome-topped temples, most of them in ruins, until a few miles out, not far from the trunk road leading from Delhi to Agra, we come to the Mausoleum of Humayun, of which we have here a view. The design, as will be realised presently, is very similar to that of the Taj Mahal at Agra, but the Mausoleum is the older building. Notice the terraced platform on which it stands. It is built of red sandstone and marble. Beneath the platform, and approached by a long dark passage, is the vault where Humayun is buried. Around the Mausoleum are a number of old ruins, and the debris and cactus remind one of Pagan in Burma, which we saw in the second lecture.

|19.
The Kutab Minar and Iron Pillar, Delhi.| We resume our drive, past ruined tombs and walls, and at last, about eleven miles south of Delhi, we come to the buildings of the Kutab Minar, where are some of the few remains of the Hindu period now visible in the neighbourhood, though the mass of the work is of Muhammadan date. The Kutab was begun at the end of the 12th century, on the site of an ancient Hindu temple destroyed by the Musulmans. The famous Iron Pillar stands in front of the mosque. It is one of the most remarkable of all the antiquities of India, for it consists of a solid mass of wrought iron, weighing probably more than six tons, and measuring some 24 feet in height, with an average diameter of a little over a foot. At the base is an inscription in Sanskrit, from which it appears that its probable date is the fourth century, A.D. This inscription runs thus: “As long as I stand so long shall the Hindu kingdom endure.” The Kutab mosque is the Moslem reply to this. The wrought iron of the Pillar has an almost bluish colour when seen against the warm sunlit red sandstone of the great Kutab Tower. In this photograph a man has climbed to the top of the Pillar, and stands there as though a statue, giving us the scale of the monument.

|20.
The Lat of Asoka, the Ridge, Delhi.| Now let us visit the district to north of the modern city, of deep interest in connection with the Mutiny. On the Ridge top, between the Flagstaff Tower towards its northeastern end and the Mutiny Memorial further south, is another curious pillar, this one of stone, called the Lat of Asoka. At its base is the following modern inscription:

“This pillar was originally erected at Meerut in the third century B.C. by King Asoka. It was removed thence, and set up in the Koshuk Shikar Palace by the Emperor Firuz Shah in A.D. 1356, but was thrown down and broken into five pieces by the explosion of a powder magazine A.D. 1713-1719. It was restored and set up in this place by the British Government A.D. 1867.”

|21.
The Flagstaff Tower, the Ridge, Delhi.| We will walk past the various memorials of the Mutiny struggle. Here is the Flagstaff Tower, in which were gathered at the outbreak of danger the women and children of the British garrison anxiously looking for relief from Meerut. But the relief did not come, and Delhi was stormed and captured by the mutineers. The refugees in the Flagstaff Tower were compelled to fly for their lives to Karnal, on the road to the Punjab, where gradually British troops and loyal natives were assembled. The British returned to the Ridge, and for two months the siege of the city was pressed, but unsuccessfully. A brigade and a siege train then arrived from the Punjab, commanded by General Nicholson. The struggle continued for yet another month. Our troops were not in sufficient force to surround and starve the city, and it was therefore necessary to bombard and storm the defences. Slowly the British won their way into the town, though with terrible loss. General Nicholson was himself wounded in one of the assaults, and died a week later. At last, on the 20th September, the Fort was taken, and next day the rebel King of Delhi was captured at Humayun’s Tomb, and was exiled to Rangoon. Two of his sons were shot in front of the Delhi Gate. The terrible nature of this siege may be realised from the fact that of the ten thousand British and loyal native troops who took part in it nearly four thousand were killed and wounded. Here is the statue of General Nicholson in the park named after him, just south of the cemetery, outside the Kashmir Gate, where he is buried. On the Ridge itself is the Mutiny Memorial, unfortunately not a very beautiful building.

|22.
General Nicholson’s Statue, Delhi.| |23.
The Mutiny Memorial, the Ridge, Delhi.|

|24.
Horse Fair, Delhi.| |25.
Dariba Street, Delhi.| Finally, we have two scenes of native life at Delhi. The first is a horse fair outside the Kashmir Gate, and the second a street view.

Let us travel to Agra, which stands on the right bank of the Jumna, about a hundred miles southeast of Delhi. The Jumna flows from north to south until beside Agra Fort, and then turns sharply eastward. About a mile and a half further on, on the same right bank, now the south side of the river, there stands the Taj Mahal, the most celebrated of all Muhammadan tombs. The building of Agra Fort was commenced by the Emperor Akbar in the middle of the 16th century, and was completed by Shah Jahan, the father of Aurangzeb, in the 17th century. It was this Shah Jahan who built the Palace within the Fort and also the Taj.

|26.
The Pearl Mosque, Agra Fort.| The Fort and the buildings which it contains rise by the side of the river and dominate the plain beyond it. Here within the Fort we have a view of the marble interior of the Moti Masjid, or Pearl Mosque, built by Shah Jahan in the middle of the 17th century. The floor is divided by inlaid lines of black and yellow marble into some six hundred separate divisions, called Masalas, used by the Musulmans for prayer. In the centre is a large marble tank. The effect produced on entering this mosque is profound. Outside, the city may be quivering in a haze of heat, but here the cool and soft light, and an entire absence of any discordant features in the architecture, combine to give a sense of rest and peace. Many Europeans have remarked that this mosque is a rendering in stone of the text “My house shall be called the house of prayer.”

|27.
Jehangir’s Throne, Agra Fort.| |28.
The Jessamine Tower, Agra Fort.| |29.
The Seat of the Jester, Agra Fort.| Let us go out on to the open space by the wall, and look over the moat which divides the main buildings of the Fort from the outer rampart by the river. Across the water the Taj Mahal can just be seen beyond the bend of the river. In front of us is Jehangir’s throne, set up in the time of Akbar. It consists of a single great slab of black marble. Close by, is the Jessamine Tower. Here we have another view in which we see the Throne from the back and a corner of the Jessamine Tower. Notice the lower slab opposite, which is called the Seat of the Jester. The effect of its presence is by contrast to enhance the beauty of Jehangir’s Throne itself. Between the wall in the foreground and the outer ramparts by the river there is a drop of some sixty feet, and in this ditch fights between lions and elephants used to be held in the days of the Mogul Emperors.

|30.
Jama Masjid, Agra.| Just outside the Fort, facing the west or Delhi Gate, is the Jama Masjid, of which we have here a view. We see the courtyard and one of the entries. The peculiarity of this mosque lies in the structure of the three great domes. They are without necks. We can just see the tops of two of them. They are built of red sandstone, and the encircling bands are of white marble.

|31.
Taj Mahal, Agra.| |32.
The Taj Gardens.| |33.
The Same, by moonlight.| We will now visit the Taj Mahal. It was built, chiefly of marble inlaid with precious stones, by Shah Jahan as a tomb for his queen. Here we have a view of the Taj taken from without the entrance gateway. Then we pass through the gateway and enter the Taj Gardens. The watercourse in the centre is of marble, and along each side is a row of cypresses. The original cypresses had grown to such a height that the view of the Taj was becoming obstructed. They were therefore removed, and those which we see in the picture were planted by Lord Curzon, when he was Viceroy. The Taj is perhaps most beautiful in the light of the setting sun, or by moonlight. We have here a photograph made from a painting of the Taj by moonlight.

|34.
The Bazaar, Agra.| |35.
Agra College.| |36.
Agra Jail—Wool spinning.| |37.
Agra Jail—Carpet making.| We will drive back through the native city. This is a typical scene in the Bazaar. Notice the Kotwal, or Chief of the Police, in the centre of the crowd. He is an Afghan, standing well over six feet in height and finely proportioned. On the awning over one of the shops an advertisement obtrudes, showing that even the native quarters of the cities of India are being permeated with European methods. Here is Agra College, endowed about a century ago by the then Maharaja of Gwalior. There are about a thousand students. Close by is the Jail. In this picture we see some of the prisoners spinning wool, and in the next they are making carpets.

The next series of pictures relates to the great Muhammadan anniversary of the Moharam, and in order to understand them it is necessary to say a few words regarding the history of Islam and the contending sects which have emerged from that history. Muhammad died in the year 632. He left no son; but one of his daughters, Fatima, was married to a cousin whose name was Ali. Abu Bakr, who had been a great friend and supporter of Muhammad, was elected Caliph or Vice-Regent of the Prophet. Abu Bakr died in 634, and was succeeded by Omar, who conquered Persia and Syria. To him Jerusalem capitulated. Omar was murdered in the same year, and was succeeded by Osman, who was killed in 656. Then Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, was elected to the Caliphate. Ali was murdered in 661, and Hasan, his son, was elected Caliph in his place, but was induced to resign in favour of a Caliph of another family. Husain, the second son of Ali, never acknowledged the title of the Caliph who had superseded his brother Hasan, and when the Musulmans of Mesopotamia invited him to overthrow the usurping Caliph he felt it his duty to respond to their appeal. Accompanied by his family and a few retainers he left for Mesopotamia. On the way, at a place called Karbala, on the west bank of the Euphrates, they were overtaken by the Caliph’s army, and after a heroic struggle lasting several days were all slaughtered, save the women and a sickly child called Ali, who died soon afterwards. Thus ended the Republic of Islam. Up to this time the office of Caliph had been elective and the government essentially democratic. The seat of government was now moved from Medina to Damascus.

In the middle of the eighth century of the Christian era a great revolution took place in Western Asia. The revolt was headed by a descendant of Abbas, an uncle of the Prophet, and the outcome of it was that the Abbassides, or members of the family of Abbas, established themselves as Caliphs, and ruled at Bagdad from the year 756 to the year 1258. When Bagdad was destroyed by the Mongols a member of the Abbassides family escaped to Cairo, where he was recognised as Caliph by the Sultan of Egypt. The eighth Caliph in succession from this man renounced the Caliphate in favour of Sultan Salim, the great Ottoman conqueror, and it is on this renunciation that the title of the Sultan of Turkey to the spiritual headship of Islam is based.

It will be seen from this short statement of the history that a great change took place in Islam when Husain, the descendant of the Caliph Ali and of Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter, was slain at Karbala, on the Euphrates. From that tragedy dates the chief division of Islam. The Shiah sect traces its foundation to the Caliph Ali and the immediate descendants of the Prophet, who are regarded as the rightful exponents of his teaching. Some twenty millions of the Indian Musulmans are Shiahs, and Shiahism is also the State religion of Persia. There are a large number of Shiahs also in other parts of the Muhammadan world, but nowhere, except in Persia, a majority. The Shiahs are advocates of Apostolic descent and lineal succession to the Caliphate.

The other of the two great divisions of the Musulmans are the Sunnis, who advocate the principle of election to the Caliphate. Almost all the Sunnis acknowledge the spiritual headship of the Sultan of Turkey, who is, of course, repudiated by the Shiahs. At the present time nearly 50 millions of the Musulmans of India are Sunnis, and there are Sunni Musulmans in China, Tartary, Afghanistan, Asiatic and European Turkey, Arabia, Egypt, Northern and Central Africa, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Russia, Ceylon, and the Malay Archipelago.

|38.
Moharam Time at Agra.| |39.
The Same.| |40.
The Same.| |41.
The Same.| |42.
The Same.| |43.
Shiahs burying Tazias.| We are now in a position to understand the significance of the anniversary of the Karbala. Annually there is held in the Muhammadan month Moharam a festival in memory of the death of Husain. The scenes of the battle are reproduced, and the tazia or tomb of Husain is carried in procession amidst cries of “Hasan, Husain!” Properly, this is a Shiah festival only, but in India both the Sunnis and Shiahs take part in it. Here are photographs representing the festival. The tazias are pagoda-like structures, made of a variety of materials. They are carried in long procession through the town, and finally the little biers—representative of the biers of Hasan and Husain—contained inside the tazias are buried at the Karbala, outside the city. We have first a street view in Agra showing the crowd at Moharam time. In the distance is Agra Fort. Next we have three views of the procession of the tazias, and then a view of the Karbala beyond the city, where the biers from the tazias are buried. The Shiahs, however, do not bury their tazias in the Karbala, but on the banks of the Jumna. Here we see them in the early morning conducting the ceremony with most solemn ritual.

|44.
Fields of Wheat and Barley.| |45.
The Public Audience Hall, Fatehpur Sikri.| |46.
The Great Capital, Fatehpur Sikri.| |47.
Gate of Victory, Fatehpur Sikri.| Let us drive out from Agra southwestward on the road to Fatehpur Sikri, the city erected by the Emperor Akbar, but abandoned by his successors in favour of Agra. On the way, we note fields of wheat and barley, separated by an irrigation channel. We pass villages amid mango trees, and occasional ruins, and arrive at Fatehpur Sikri. There we enter the great quadrangle and the Public Audience Hall of the Palace, built of red sandstone. It was in this hall that Akbar used to sit on certain days to see personally anyone who had grievances to lay before him. Notice in the quadrangle the stone pierced with a hole which is fixed in the ground. Criminals were put to death by being trampled upon by an elephant, and to that ring the elephant was tied. We pass on to the Private Audience Hall of Akbar, the Diwan-i-Khas. Note the huge capital of the column in the centre. Tradition says that Akbar used to sit on the top of this capital. Finally, here is the magnificent Gate of Victory.

|48.
Mausoleum of Akbar, Sikandra.| |49.
The Same—a Marble Inscription.| |50.
The Same—the Cloisters.| We leave Fatehpur Sikri, and drive back, past many other tombs, in the direction of the Cantonment at Agra until we come to the burial place of Akbar at Sikandra. This is the gateway of the great Mausoleum. Notice the cut marble inscriptions down the sides of the arch. They are quotations from the Koran. Here is a clearer photograph of a part of these inscriptions, and here we have the marble court above the tomb of Akbar. Round the Cloisters are verses celebrating his greatness. “Think not that the sky will be so kind as Akbar was,” is the tenor of one of them.

|51.
Hariki Piri, Hardwar.| |52.
Sarwan Nath Temple, Hardwar.| |53.
The Same, from above.| |54.
Camels at Hardwar.|

Finally we will travel away to Hardwar, some two hundred miles due north of Agra. It is on the Ganges, at the point where the river leaves the last foot hills of the Himalayas and enters the plain. Hardwar is a great centre of Hindu pilgrimage for the purpose of ablution in the sacred waters. At the annual fair are gathered hundreds of thousands of worshippers. So great has been the crush of people endeavouring to bathe that on occasion many have been trampled upon and drowned. The great day at Hardwar is towards the end of March, when the Hindu year begins, and when, according to tradition, the Ganges river first appeared from its source in the mountains. There was a town of Hardwar more than a thousand years ago, but its ancient buildings have disappeared. Here we have a view of the famous Bathing Ghat, a comparatively small flight of steps, where the river is considered to be specially sacred. The water is purer than at Benares in the plain. It flows swiftly and is as clear as crystal. Near by we have a temple, the Sarwan Nath, with great stone elephants, and here is a second view of the same temple seen from a neighbouring roof. Notice the Trisul, or bronze trident, the typical weapon of Siva, the Destroyer.

|55.
Sacred Cow at Hardwar.| Here is a string of camels at Hardwar, and then a sacred cow—especially sacred because deformed, for a freak of nature is miraculous.

|56.
The Road to Mussoorie.| |57.
The Same, Coolies carrying Baggage.| |58.
The Same, a Tree across the Road.| |59.
Mussoorie.| |60.
The Himalayas from Mussoorie.| Not far northward of Hardwar, among the foot hills of the Himalayas, is Mussoorie, a hill station supplementary to Simla. Mussoorie is about a mile above sea level. We have two views taken on the steep mountain road up to it; the second shows coolies carrying baggage. In the next view we realise something of the difficulties of travel in these hill districts of much rainfall, for the road is blocked by the fall of a great tree. Here we have a view of Mussoorie itself, and then the landscape from Mussoorie looking towards the Himalayan ranges to the north. Close by, but lower down, is Dehra Dun, the headquarters of the Gurkha Rifles, enlisted from Nepal, and also of the Imperial Cadet Corps, a small training force consisting wholly of the sons of ruling chiefs. We shall hear of the Gurkhas again in connection with the defences of India, which will be the subject of the next and concluding lecture of this Course.