Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official

CHAPTER 35

Gwālior Plain once the Bed of a Lake—Tameness of Peacocks.

On the 19th, 20th, and 21st[1] we came on forty miles to the village of Antrī in the Gwālior territory, over a fine plain of rich alluvial soil under spring crops. This plain bears manifest signs of having been at no very remote period, like the kingdom of Bohemia, the bed of a vast lake bounded by the ranges of sandstone hills which now seem to skirt the horizon all round; and studded with innumerable islands of all shapes and sizes, which now rise abruptly in all directions out of the cultivated plain.[2] The plain is still like the unruffled surface of a vast lake; and the rich green of the spring crops, which cover the surface in one wide sheet unintersected by hedges, tends to keep up the illusion, which the rivers have little tendency to dispel; for, though they have cut their way down immense depths to their present beds through this soft alluvial deposit, the traveller no sooner emerges from the hideous ravines, which disfigure their banks, than he loses all trace of them. Their course is unmarked by trees, large shrubs, or any of the signs which mark the course of rivers in other quarters.

The soil over the vast plain is everywhere of good quality, and everywhere cultivated, or rather worked, for we can hardly consider a soil cultivated which is never either irrigated or manured, or voluntarily relieved by fallows or an alternation of crops, till it has descended to the last stage of exhaustion. The prince rack-rents the farmer, the farmer rack-rents the cultivator, and the cultivator rack-rents the soil. Soon after crossing the Sindh river we enter upon the territories of the Gwālior chief, Sindhia.

The villages are everywhere few, and their communities very small. The greater part of the produce goes for sale to the capital of Gwālior, when the money it brings is paid into the treasury in rent, or revenue, to the chief, who distributes it in salaries among his establishments, who again pay it for land produce to the cultivators, farmers, and agricultural capitalists, who again pay it back into the treasury in land revenue. No more people reside in the villages than are absolutely necessary to the cultivation of the land, because the chief takes all the produce beyond what is necessary for their bare subsistence; and, out of what he takes, maintains establishments that reside elsewhere. There is nowhere any jungle to be seen, and very few of the villages that are scattered over the plains have any fruit or ornamental trees left; and, when the spring crops, to which the tillage is chiefly confined, are taken off the ground, the face of the country must have a very naked and dreary appearance.[3] Near one village on the road I saw some men threshing corn in a field, and among them a peacock (which, of course, I took to be domesticated) breakfasting very comfortably upon the grain as it flew around him. A little farther on I saw another quietly working his way into a stack of corn, as if he understood it to have been made for his use alone. It was so close to me as I passed that I put out my stick to push it off in play, and, to my surprise, it flew off in a fright at my white face and strange dress, and was followed by the others. I found that they were all wild, if that term can be applied to birds that live on such excellent terms with mankind. On reaching our tents we found several feeding in the corn-fields close around them, undisturbed by our host of camp- followers; and were told by the villagers, who had assembled to greet us, that they were all wild. 'Why', said they, 'should we think of keeping birds that live among us on such easy terms without being kept?' I asked whether they ever shot them, and was told that they never killed or molested them, but that any one who wished to shoot them might do so, since they had here no religions regard for them.[4] Like the pariah dogs the peacocks seem to disarm the people by confiding in them—their tameness is at once the cause and the effect of their security. The members of the little communities among whom they live on such friendly terms would not have the heart to shoot them; and travellers either take them to be domesticated, or are at once disarmed by their tameness.

At Antrī a sufficient quantity of salt is manufactured for the consumption of the people of the town. The earth that contains most salt is dug up at some distance from the town, and brought to small reservoirs made close outside the walls. Water is here poured over it, as over tea and coffee. Passing through the earth, it flows out below into a small conduit, which takes it to small pits some yards' distance, whence it is removed in buckets to small enclosed platforms, where it is exposed to the Sun's rays, till the water evaporates, and leaves the salt dry.[5] The want of trees over this vast plain of fine soil from the Sindh river is quite lamentable. The people of Antrī pointed out the place close to my tents where a beautiful grove of mango-trees had been lately taken off to Gwālior for gun-carriages and firewood, in spite of all the proprietor could urge of the detriment to his own interest in this world, and to those of his ancestors in that to which they had gone. Wherever the army of this chief moved they invariably swept off the groves of fruit-trees in the same reckless manner. Parts of the country, which they merely passed through, have recovered their trees, because the desire to propitiate the Deity, and to perpetuate their name by such a work, will always operate among Hindoos as a sufficient incentive to secure groves, wherever man has be made to feel that their rights of property in the trees will be respected.[6] The lands around the village, which had a well for irrigation, paid four times as much as those of the same quality which had none, and were made to yield two crops in the year. As everywhere else, so here, those lands into which water flows from the town and can be made to stand for a time, are esteemed the best, as this water brings down with it manures of all kinds.[7] I had a good deal of talk with the cultivators as I walked through the fields in the evenings; and they seemed to dwell much upon the good faith which is observed by the farmers and cultivators in the Honourable Company's territories, and the total absence of it in those of Sindhia's, where no work, requiring an outlay of capital from the land, is, in consequence, ever thought of—both farmers and cultivators engaging from year to year, and no farmer ever feeling secure of his lease for more than one.

Notes:

1. December, 1835.

2. The anthor's favourite theory. See ante, Chapter 14 note 7, Chapter 24 note 6, on the formation of black cotton soil. The Gwālior plain is covered with this soil.

3. It has a very desolate appearance. The Indian Midland Railway now passes through Gwālior.

4. In many parts of India, especially in Mathurā (Mattra) on the Jumna, and the neighbouring districts, the peacock is held strictly sacred, and shooting one would be likely to cause a riot. Tavernier relates a story of a rich Persian merchant being beaten to death by the Hindoos of Gujarāt for shooting a peacock. (Tavernier, Travels, transl. Ball, vol. i, p. 70.) the bird is regarded as the vehicle of the Hindoo god of war, variously called Kumāra, Skanda, or Kārtikeya. the editor, like the author, has observed that in Bundēlkhand no objection is raised to the shooting of peacocks by any one who cares for such poor sport.

5. In British India the manufacture of salt can be practised only by persons duly licensed.

6. The Revenue Settlement Regulations now in force in British India provide liberally for the encouragement of groves, and hundred of miles of road are annually planted with trees.

7. Sanitation did not trouble native states in those days.

CHAPTER 36

Gwālior and its Government.

On the 22nd,[1] we came on fourteen miles to Gwālior, over some ranges of sandstone hills, which are seemingly continuations of the Vindhyan range. Hills of indurated brown and red iron clay repose upon and intervene between these ranges, with strata generally horizontal, but occasionally bearing signs of having been shaken by internal convulsions. These convulsions are also indicated by some dykes of compact basalt which cross the road.[2]

Nothing can be more unprepossessing than the approach to Gwālior; the hills being naked, black, and ugly, with rounded tops devoid of grass or shrubs, and the soil of the valleys a poor red dust without any appearance of verdure or vegetation, since the few autumn crops that lately stood upon them have been removed.[3] From Antrī to Gwālior there is no sign of any human habitation, save that of a miserable police guard of four or five, who occupy a wretched hut on the side of the road midway, and seem by their presence to render the scene around more dreary.[4] the road is a mere footpath unimproved and unadorned by any single work of art; and, except in this footpath, and the small police guard, there is absolutely no single sign in all this long march to indicate the dominion, or even the presence, of man; and yet it is between two contiguous [sic] capitals, one occupied by one of the most ancient, and the other by one of the greatest native sovereigns of Hindustan.[5] One cannot but feel that he approaches the capital of a dynasty of barbarian princes, who, like Attila, would choose their places of residence, as devils choose their pandemonia, for their ugliness, and rather reside in the dreary wastes of Tartary than on the shores of the Bosphorus. There are within the dominions of Sindhia seats for a capital that would not yield to any in India in convenience, beauty, and salubrity; but, in all these dominions, there is not, perhaps, another place so hideously ugly as Gwālior, or so hot and unhealthy. It has not one redeeming quality that should recommend it to the choice of a rational prince, particularly to one who still considers his capital as his camp, and makes every officer of his army feel that he has as little of permanent interest in his house as he would have in his tent.[6]

Phūl Bāgh, or the flower-garden, was suggested to me as the best place for my tents, where Sindhia had built a splendid summer-house. As I came over this most gloomy and uninteresting march, in which the heart of a rational man sickens, as he recollects that all the revenues of such an enormous extent of dominion over the richest soil and the most peaceable people in the world should have been so long concentrated upon this point, and squandered without leaving one sign of human art or industry, I looked forward with pleasure to a quiet residence in the flower- garden, with good foliage above, and a fine sward below, and an atmosphere free from dust, such as we find in and around all the residences of Muhammadan princes. On reaching my tents I found them pitched close outside the flower-garden, in a small dusty plain, without a blade of grass or a shrub to hide its deformity—just such a place as the pig-keepers occupy in the suburbs of other towns. On one side of this little plain, and looking into it, was the summer-house of the prince, without one inch of green sward or one small shrub before it.

Around the wretched little flower-garden was a low, naked, and shattered mud wall, such as we generally see in the suburbs thrown up to keep out and in the pigs that usually swarm in such places—'and the swine they crawled out, and the swine they crawled in'.[7] When I cantered up to my tent-door, a sipāhī of my guard came up, and reported that as the day began to dawn a gang of thieves had stolen one of my best carpets, all the brass brackets of my tent-poles, and the brass bell with which the sentries on duty sounded the hour; all Lieutenant Thomas's cooking utensils, and many other things, several of which they had found lying between the tents and the prince's pleasure- house, particularly the contents of a large heavy box of geological specimens. They had, in consequence, concluded the gang to be lodged in the prince's pleasure-house. The guard on duty at this place would make no answer to their inquiries, and I really believe that they were themselves the thieves. The tents of the Rājā of Raghugarh, who had come to pay his respects to the Sindhia, his liege lord, were pitched near mine. He had the day before had five horses stolen from him, with all the plate, jewels, and valuable clothes he possessed; and I was told that I must move forthwith from the flower-garden, or cut off the tail of every horse in my camp. Without tails they might not be stolen, with them they certainly would. Having had sufficient proof of their dexterity, we moved our tents to a grove near the residency, four miles from the flower-garden and the court.[8]

As a citizen of the world I could not help thinking that it would be an immense blessing upon a large portion of our species if an earthquake were to swallow up this court of Gwālior, and the army that surrounds it. Nothing worse could possibly succeed, and something better might. It is lamentable to think how much of evil this court and camp inflict upon the people who are subject to them. In January, 1828, I was passing with a party of gentlemen through the town of Bhīlsā, which belongs to this chief, and lies between Sāgar and Bhopal,[9] when we found, lying and bleeding in one of the streets, twelve men belonging to a merchant at Mirzapore, who had the day before been wounded and plundered by a gang of robbers close outside the walls of the town. Those who were able ran in to the Āmil, or chief of the district, who resides in the town; and begged him to send some horsemen after the banditti, and intercept them as they passed over the great plains. 'Send your own people', said he, 'or hire men to send. Am I here to look after the private affairs of merchants and travellers, or to collect the revenues of the prince?' Neither he, nor the prince himself, nor any other officer of the public establishments ever dreamed that it was their duty to protect the life, property, or character of travellers, or indeed of any other human beings, save the members of their own families. In this pithy question the Āmil of Bhīlsā described the nature and character of the government. All the revenues of his immense dominions are spent entirely in the maintenance of the court and camps of the prince; and every officer employed beyond the boundary of the court and camp considers his duties to be limited to the collection of the revenue. Protected from all external enemies by our military forces, which surround him on every side, his whole army is left to him for purposes of parade and display; and having, according to his notions, no use for them elsewhere, he concentrates them around his capital, where he lives among them in the perpetual dread of mutiny and assassination. He has nowhere any police, nor any establishment whatever, for the protection of the life and property of his subjects; nor has he, any more than his predecessors, ever, I believe, for one moment thought that those from whose industry and frugality he draws his revenues have any right whatever to expect from him the use of such establishments in return. They have never formed any legitimate part of the Marāthā government, and, I fear, never will.[10]

The misrule of such states, situated in the midst of our dominions, is not without its use. There is, as Gibbon justly observes, 'a strong propensity in human nature to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times'; and, if the people had not before their eyes such specimens of native rule to contrast with ours, they would think more highly than they do of that of their past Muhammadan and Hindoo sovereigns; and be much less disposed than they are to estimate fairly the advantages of being under ours. The native governments of the present day are fair specimens of what they have always been—grinding military despotisms—their whole history is that of 'Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands'; as if rulers were made merely to slay, and the ruled to be slain. In politics, as in landscape, ''Tis distance lends enchantment to the view', and the past might be all couleur de rose in the imaginations of the people were it not represented in these ill-governed states, where the 'lucky accident' of a good governor is not to be expected in a century, and where the secret of the responsibility of ministers to the people is yet undiscovered.[11]

The fortress of Gwālior stands upon a tableland, a mile and a half long by a quarter of a mile wide, at the north-east end of a small insulated sandstone hill, running north-east and south-west, and rising at both ends about three hundred and forty feet above the level of the plain below. At the base is a kind of glacis, which runs up at an angle of forty-five from the plain to within fifty, and, in some places, within twenty feet of the foot of the wall.

The interval is the perpendicular face of the horizontal strata of the sandstone rock. The glacis is formed of a bed of basalt in all stages of decomposition, with which this, like the other sandstone hills of Central India, was once covered, and of the debris and chippings of the rocks above. The walls are raised a certain uniform height all round upon the verge of the precipice, and being thus made to correspond with the edge of the rock, the line is extremely irregular. They are rudely built of the fine sandstone of the rock on which they stand, and have some square and some semicircular bastions of different sizes, few of these raised above the level of the wall itself.[12] On the eastern face of the rock, between the glacis and foot of the wall, are cut out, in bold relief, the colossal figures of men sitting bareheaded under canopies, on each side of a throne or temple; and, in another place, the colossal figure of a man standing naked, and facing outward, which I took to be that of Buddha.[l3]

The town of Gwālior extends along the foot of the hill on one side, and consists of a single street above a mile long. There is a very beautiful mosque, with one end built by a Muhammad Khan, A.D. 1665, of the white sandstone of the rock above it. It looks as fresh as if it had not been finished a month; and struck, as I passed it, with so noble a work, apparently new, and under such a government, I alighted from my horse, went in, and read the inscription, which told me the date of the building and the name of the founder. There is no stucco-work over any part of it, nor is any required on such beautiful materials; and the stones are all so nicely cut that cement seems to have been considered useless. It has the usual two minarets or towers, and over the arches and alcoves are carved, as customary, passages from the Korān, in the beautiful Kufic characters.[14] The court and camp of the chief extends out from the southern end of the hill for several miles.

The whole of the hill on which the fort of Gwālior stands had evidently, at no very distant period, been covered by a mass of basalt, surmounted by a crust of indurated brown and red iron clay, with lithomarge, which often assumes the appearance of common laterite. The boulders of basalt, which still cap some part of the hill, and form the greater part of the glacis at the bottom, are for the most part in a state of rapid decomposition; but some of them are still so hard and fresh that the hammer rings upon them as upon a bell, and their fracture is brilliantly crystalline. The basalt is the same as that which caps the sandstone hills of the Vindhya range throughout Mālwā. The sandstone hills around Gwālior all rise in the same abrupt manner from the plain as those through Mālwā generally; and they have almost all of them the same basaltic glacis at their base, with boulders of that rock scattered over the top, all indicating that they were at one time buried, in the same manner under one great mass of volcanic matter, thrown out from their submarine craters in streams of lava, or diffused through the ocean or lakes in ashes, and deposited in strata. The geological character of the country about Gwālior is very similar to that of the country about Sāgar; and I may say the same of the Vindhya range generally, as far as I have seen it, from Mirzapore on the Ganges to Bhopāl in Mālwā—hills of sandstone rising suddenly from alluvial plain, and capped, or bearing signs of having been capped, by basalt reposing immediately upon it, and partly covered in its turn by beds of indurated iron clay.[15]

The fortress of Gwālior was celebrated for its strength under the Hindoo sovereigns of India; but was taken by the Muhammadans after a long siege, A.D. 1197.[16] the Hindoos regained possession, but were again expelled by the Emperor Īltutmish, A. D. 1235.[17] the Hindoos again got possession, and after holding it one hundred years, again surrendered it to the forces of the Emperor Ibrāhīm, A.D. 1519.[18] In 1543 it was surrendered up by the troops of the Emperor Humāyūn[19] to Shēr Khān, his successful competitor for the empire.[20] It afterwards fell into the hands of a Jāt chief, the Rānā of Gohad,[21] from whom it was taken by the Marāthās. While in their possession, it was invested by our troops under the command of Major Popham; and, on the 3rd of August, 1780, taken by escalade.[22] The party that scaled the wall was gallantly led by a very distinguished and most promising officer, Captain Bruce, brother of the celebrated traveller.[23]

It was made over to us by the Rānā of Gohad, who had been our ally in the war. Failing in his engagement to us, he was afterwards abandoned to the resentment of Mādhojī Sindhia, chief of the Marāthās.[24] In 1783, Gwālior was invested by Mādhojī Sindhia's troops, under the command of one of the most extraordinary men that have ever figured in Indian history, the justly celebrated General De Boigne.[25] After many unsuccessful attempts to take it by escalade, he bought over part of the garrison, and made himself master of the place. Gohad itself was taken soon after in 1784; but the Rānā, Chhatarpat, made his escape. He was closely pursued, made prisoner at Karaulī, and confined in the fortress of Gwālior, where he died in the year 1785.[26] He left no son, and his claims upon Gohad devolved upon his nephew, Kīrat Singh, who, at the close of our war with the Marāthās, got from Lord Lake, in lieu of these claims, the estate of Dholpur, situated on the left banks of the river Chambal, which is estimated at the annual value of three hundred thousand, or three lākhs, of rupees. He died this year, 1835, and has been succeeded by his son, Bhagwant Singh, a lad of seventeen years of age.[27]

Notes:

1. December, 1835.

2. Throughout the northern edge of the trap country in Rājputāna, Gwālior, and Bundēlkhand, dykes are rare or wanting.' (W. T. Blandford, in Manual of the Geology of India, 1st ed., Part 1, p. 328.) The dykes mentioned in the text may not have been visited by the officers of the Geological Surrey.

3. 'Basalt generally disintegrates into a reddish soil, quite different from regar in character. This reddish soil may be seen passing into regar, but, as a rule, the black soil is confined to the flatter ground at the bottom of the valleys, or on flat hill-tops, the brown or red soils occupying the slopes' (ibid. p. 433).

4. Johnson, in his Journey to the Western Islands, observes: 'Now and then we espied a little corn-field, which served to impress more strongly the general barrenness.' [W. H. S.] The remark referred to the shores of Loch Ness (p. 237 of volume viii of Johnson's Works, London, 1820).

5. By this awkward phrase the author seems to mean Lucknow, on the east, the capital of the kingdom of Oudh, and Udaipur, to the west, the capital of the long-descended chieftain of Mēwār. Alternatively, the author may possibly have referred to Agra and Gwālior, rather than Lucknow and Udaipur.

6. 'The new city at Gwālior below the fortress is, like the city of Jhānsī, known as the 'Lashkar', or camp. The old city of Gwālior encircles the north end of the fortress. The new city, or Lashkar, lies to the south, more than a mile distant. In January, 1859, the population of the two cities together amounted to 142,044 persons (A.S.R., vol. ii, p. 331).

7. Only those readers who have lived in India can fully understand the reasons why the pigs should frequent such a place, and how great would be the horrors of encamping in it.

8. In the description of the author's encampment at Gwālior, he fell into a mistake, which he discovered too late for correction in his journal. His tents were not pitched within the Phūl Bāgh, as he supposed, but without; and seeing nothing of this place, he imagined that the dirty and naked ground outside was actually the flower-garden. The Phūl Bāgh, however, is a very pleasing and well-ordered garden, although so completely secluded from observation by lofty walls that many other travellers must have encamped on the same spot without being aware of its existence. (Publishers' note at end of volume ii of original edition. )

9. Bhīlsā is the principal town of the Isāgarh subdivision in the Gwālior State. The famous Buddhist antiquities near it are described at length in Cunningham, The Bhīlsā Topes, or Buddhist Monuments of Central India (1854), and in Maisey, Sānchi and its Remains. A full Description of the Ancient Buildings, Sculptures, and Inscriptions at Sānchi, near Bhīlsā, in Central India. With an Introductory Note by Major-General Sir Alexander Cunningham, K.C.I.E. (1892). It is surprising that so keen an observer as the author appears not to have noticed any of the great Buddhist buildings of Central India.

10. The government of Gwālior has improved since the author wrote. Many reforms have been begun and more or less fully executed. In May, 1887, the vast hoard of rupees buried in pits in the fort, valued at five millions sterling, was exhumed, and lent to the Government of India to be usefully employed. The passive opposition of a court like that of Gwālior to the effectual execution of reforms is continuous and difficult to overcome.

11. The author's description of the ordinary Asiatic government at almost all times and in all places as 'a grinding military despotism' is correct. Sentimental persons in both India and England are apt to forget this weighty truth. The golden age of India, excepting, perhaps, the Gupta period between A.D. 330 and 455, is as mythical as that of Ireland. What Persia now is, that would India be, if she had been left to her own devices.

12. Sir A. Cunningham was stationed at Gwālior for five years, and had thus an exceptionally accurate knowledge of the fortress. His account, which corrects the text in some particulars, is as follows:-'the great fortress of Gwālior is situated on a precipitous, flat-topped, and isolated hill of sandstone, which rises 300 feet above the town at the north end, but only 274 feet at the upper gate of the principal entrance. The hill is long and narrow; its extreme length from north to south being one mile and three- quarters, while its breadth varies from 600 feet opposite the main entrance to 2,800 feet in the middle opposite the great temple. The walls are from 30 to 35 feet in height, and the rock immediately below them is steeply, but irregularly, scarped all round the hill. The long line of battlements which crowns the steep scarp on the east is broken only by the lofty towers and fretted domes of the noble palace of Rājā Mān Singh. On the opposite side, the line of battlements is relieved by the deep recess of the Urwāhi valley, and by the zigzag and serrated parapets and loopholed bastions which flank the numerous gates of the two western entrances. At the northern end, where the rock has been quarried for ages, the jagged masses of the overhanging cliff seem ready to fall upon the city beneath them. To the south the hill is less lofty, but the rock has been steeply scarped, and is generally quite inaccessible. Midway over all towers the giant form of a massive Hindu temple, grey with the moss of ages. Altogether, the fort of Gwālior forms one of the most picturesque views in Northern India' (A.S.R., vol. ii, p. 330).

13. The nakedness of the image in itself proves that Buddha could not be the person represented. His statues are never nude. The Gwālior figures are images of some of the twenty-four great saints (Tīrthankaras or Jinas) of the Digambara sect of the Jain religion. Jain statues are frequently of colossal size. The largest of those at Gwālior is fifty-seven feet high. The Gwālior sculptures are of late date—the middle of the fifteenth century. The antiquities of Gwālior, including these sculptures, are well described in A.S.R., vol. ii, pp. 330-95, plates lxxxvi to xci.

14. This mosque is the Jāmi', or cathedral, mosque 'situated at the eastern foot of the fortress, near the Ālamgīrī Darwāza (gate). It is a neat and favourable specimen of the later Moghal architecture. Its beauty, however, is partly due to the fine light-coloured sandstone of which it is built. This at once attracted the notice of Sir Wm. Sleeman, who, &c.' (A.S.R., vol. ii, p. 370). This mosque is in the old city, described as 'a crowded mass of small flat-roofed stone houses' (ibid. p. 330).

15. The Geological Survey recognizes a special group of 'transition' rocks between the metamorphic and the Vindhyan series under the name of the Gwālior area. 'The Gwālior area is . . . only fifty miles long from east to west, and about fifteen miles wide. It takes its name from the city of Gwālior, which stands upon it, surrounding the famous fort built upon a scarped outlier of Vindhyan sandstone, which rests upon a base of massive bedded trap belonging to the transition period' (Manual of Geology of India, 1st ed., Part l, p. 56). The writers of the manual do not notice the basaltic cap of the fort hill described by the author, and at p. 300 use language which implies that the hill is outside the limits of the Deccan trap. But the author's observations seem sufficiently precise to warrant the conclusion that he was right in believing the basaltic cap of the Gwālior hill to be an outlying fragment of the vast Deccan trap sheet. The relation between laterite and lithomarge is discussed in p. 353 of the Manual, and the occurrence of laterite caps on the highest ground of the country, at two places-near Gwālior, 'outside of the trap area', is noticed (ibid. p. 356). These two places are at Rāipur hill, and on the Kaimūr sandstone, about two miles to the north-west. No doubt these two hills are outliers of the Central India spread of laterite, which has been traced as far as Siprī, about sixty miles south of the Rāipur hill (Hacket, Geology of Gwālior and Vicinity, in Records of Geol. Survey of India, vol. iii, p. 41). The geology of Gwālior is also discussed in Mallet's paper entitled 'Sketch of the Geology of Scindia's Territories' (Records, vol. viii, p. 55). Neither writer refers to the basaltic cap of Gwālior fort hill. For the refutation of the author's theory of the subaqueous origin of the Deccan trap see notes Chapters 14, note 13, and Chapter 17, note 3 ante.

16. In the reign of Muizz-ud-dīn, Muhammad bin Sām, also known by the names of Shibāb-ud-din, and Muhammad Ghorī. He struck billon coins at the Gwālior mint. the correct date is A.D. 1196. The Hījrī year 592 began on the 6th Dec., A.D. 1195.

17. Shams-ud-dīn Īltutmish, 'the greatest of the Slave Kings', reigned from A.D. 1210 to 1235 (A.H. 607-633). He besieged Gwālior in A.H. 629 and after eleven months' resistance captured the place in the month Safar, A.H. 630, equivalent to Nov.-Dec. A.D. 1232. The date given in the text is wrong. The correct name of this king is Īltutmish (Z.D.M.G., vol. lxi (1907), pp. 192, 193). It is written Altumash by the author, and Altamsh by Thomas and Cunningham. A summary of the events of his reign, based on coins and other original documents, is given on page 45 of Thomas, Chronicles of the Pathān Kings of Delhi. Īltutmish recorded an inscription dated A.H. 630 at Gwālior (ibid. p. 80). This inscription was seen by Bābur, but has since disappeared.

18. Ibrāhīm Lodī, A.D. 1517-26. He was defeated and killed by Bābur at the first battle of Pānīpat, A.D. 1526. the correct date of his capture of Gwālior, according to Cunningham (A.S.R., vol. ii, p. 340), is 1518.

19. Humāyūn was son of Bābur, and father of Akbar the Great. His first reign lasted from A.D. 1530 to 1540; his second brief reign of less than six months was terminated by an accident in January A.D. 1556. The correct date of the surrender of Gwālior to Shēr Shāh was A.D. 1542, corresponding to A.H. 949 (A. S .R., vol. ii, p. 393), which year began 17th April, 1542.

20. Shēr Khan is generally known as Shēr (or Shīr) Shāh. A good summary of his career from A.D. 1528 to his death in A.D. 1545 (A.H. 934 to 952) is given by Thomas (op. cit. p. 393). He struck coins at Gwālior in A.H. 950, 951, 952 (ibid. p. 403).

21. Gohad lies between Etawah (Itāwā) and Gwālior, twenty-eight miles north-east of the latter. The chief, originally an obscure Jāt landholder, rose to power during the confusion of the eighteenth century, and allied himself with the British in 1789 (Thornton, Gazetteer, s.v. 'Gohad').

22. This memorable exploit was performed during Warren Hastings's war with the Marāthās, Sir Eyre Coote being Commander- in-Chief. Captain Popham first stormed the fort of Lahar, a stronghold west of Kālpī (Calpee), and then, by a cleverly arranged escalade, captured 'with little trouble and small loss' the Gwālior fortress, which was garrisoned by a thousand men, and commonly supposed to be impregnable. 'Captain Popham was rewarded for his gallant services by being promoted to the rank of Major' (Thornton, The History of the British Empire in India, 2nd ed., 1859, p. 149). 'It is said that the spot (for escalade) was pointed out to Popham by a cowherd, and that the whole of the attacking party were supplied with grass shoes to prevent them from slipping on the ledges of rock. There is a story also that the cost of these grass shoes was deducted from Popham's pay when he was about to leave India as a Major-General, nearly a quarter of a century afterwards' (A.S.R., vol. ii, p. 340).

23. James Bruce, 'the celebrated traveller', was Consul at Algiers. He explored Tripoli, Tunis, Syria, and Egypt, and travelled in Abyssinia from November 1769 to December 1771. He returned to Egypt by the Nile, arriving at Cairo in January 1773. His travels were published in 1790. He died in 1794.

24. The Sindhia family of Gwālior was founded by Rānojī Sindhia, a man of humble origin, in the service of the Peshwā. Rānojī died about A.D. 1750, and was succeeded by one of his natural sons, Māhādajī (corruptly Mahdaju, &c.) Sindhia, whose turbulent and chequered career lasted till 1794, when he was succeeded by his grand-nephew, Daulat Rāo. The Marāthā power under Daulat Rāo was broken in 1803, by Sir Arthur Wellesley at Assaye and Argaum, and by Lord Lake at Laswārī. Māhādajī's career is treated fully by Grant Duff, A History of the Mahrattas (1826 and reprint). Mr. H. G. Keene in his little book (Rulers of India, Oxford, 1892) erroneously gives the chiefs name as 'Mādhava Rao'. The anthor's 'Mādhojī' also is wrong.

25. It is impossible within the limits of a note to give an account of the extraordinary career of General De Boigne. His Indian adventures began in 1778, and terminated in September 1796, when he retired from Sindhia's service, and sold his private regiment of Persian cavalry, six hundred strong, to Lord Cornwallis, on behalf of the East India Company, for three lakhs of rupees (about £30,000). He settled in his native town, Chambéri in Savoy, and lived, in the enjoyment of his great wealth, and of high honours conferred by the sovereigns of France and Italy, until 21st June, 1830. He was created a Count, and was succeeded in the title by his son. See G. M. Raymond, Mémoire sur la Carrière Militaire et Politique de M. le Général Comte de Boigne, 2^ième ed., Chambéry, 1830. Nine chapters of Mr. Herbert Compton's book, A Particular Account of European Military Adventurers of Hindustan (London, 1892), are devoted to De Boigne.

26. The cession of Gohad to Sindhia, sanctioned in the year 1805, during the brief and inglorious second term of office of Lord Cornwallis, was effected by Sir George Barlow. The transaction is severely censured by Thornton (History, p. 343) as a breach of faith. Gwālior was given up to Sindhia along with Gohad. In January 1844, shortly after the battle of Maharājpur, Gwālior was again occupied by the forces of the Company, and the fortress (save for the Mutiny period) continued in British occupation until the 2nd December 1885, when Lord Dufferin restored it to Sindhia in exchange for Jhānsī. In June 1857 the Gwālior soldiery mutinied and massacred the Europeans, but the Maharājā remained throughout loyal to the English Government.

Sir Hugh Rose recaptured the place by assault on the 28th June 1858. In the changed circumstances of the country, and with regard to the modern developments of the art of war, the Gwālior fortress is now of slight military value.

27. The territory of the Dholpur chief is about fifty-four miles long by twenty-three broad. The town of Dholpur is nearly midway between Agra and Gwālior. The revenue is estimated by Thornton (1858) as seven lākhs, not only three lākhs as stated by the author. It was about eight lākhs in 1904 (I.G., 1908).

CHAPTER 37

 Content for Empire between the Sons of Shāh Jahān.

Under the Emperors of Delhi the fortress of Gwālior was always considered as an imperial State prison, in which they confined those rivals and competitors for dominion whom they did not like to put to a violent death. They kept a large menagerie, and other things, for their amusement. Among the best of the princes who ended their days in this great prison was Sulaimān Shikoh, the eldest son of the unhappy Dārā.[1] A narrative of the contest for empire between the four sons of Shāh Jahān may, perhaps, prove both interesting and instructive; and, as I shall have occasion, in the course of my rambles, to refer to the characters who figured in it, I shall venture to give it a place. . . .[2]

Notes:

1. 'The prisons of Gwālior are situated in a small outwork on the western side of the fortress, immediately above the Dhondha gateway. They are called "nau chaukī", or "the nine cells", and are both well lighted and well ventilated. But in spite of their height, from fifteen to twenty-six feet, they must be insufferably close in the hot season. These were the State prisons in which Akbar confined his rebellious cousins, and Aurangzēb the troublesome sons of Dārā and Murād, as well as his own more dangerous son Muhammad. During these times the fort was strictly guarded, and no one was allowed to enter without a pass' (A.S.R., vol. ii, p. 369), Sulaimān Shikoh, whom Manucci credits with 'all the gifts of nature', was poisoned at Gwālior early in the reign of Aurangzēb, by order of that monarch, paternal uncle of the victim (Irvine, Storia do Mogor, i. 380). The author, following Bernier, always calls Shāhjahān's eldest son simply Dārā. His name really was Dārā Shikoh (or Shukoh), meaning 'in splendour like Darius'.

2. The following twelve chapters contain an historical piece, to the personages and events of which the author will have frequent occasion to refer; and it is introduced in this place from its connexion with Gwālior, the State prison in which some of its actors ended their days. [W. H. S.]

The 'historical piece' which occupies chapters 37 to 46, inclusive of the author's text is little more than a paraphrase of The History of the Late Rebellion in the States of the Great Mogol by Bernier, as the disquisition is called in Brock's translation. Mr. A. Constable's revised and annotated translation of Bernier's work (Constable and Co., 1891; reprinted with corrections. Oxford University Press, 1914) renders superfluous the reprinting of Sleeman's paraphrase, which would require much correction and comment before it could be presented to readers of the present day. The main facts of the narrative are, moreover, now easily accessible in the histories of Elphinstone and innumerable other writers. Such explanations as may be required to elucidate allusions to the excised portion in the later chapters of the anthor's work will be found in the notes. The titles of the chapters which have not been reprinted follow here for facility of reference.

CHAPTER 38

Aurangzēb and Murād Defeat their Father's Army near Ujain.

CHAPTER 39

Dārā Marches in Person against his Brothers, and is Defeated.

CHAPTER 40

Dārā Retreats towards Lahore—Is robbed by the Jāts—Their Character.

CHAPTER 41

Shāh Jahān Imprisoned by his Two Sons, Aurangzēb and Murād.

CHAPTER 42

Aurangzēb Throws off the Mask, Imprisons his Brother Murād, and Assumes the Government of the Empire.

CHAPTER 43

Aurangzēb Meets Shujā in Bengal and Defeats him, after Pursuing Dārā to the Hyphasis.

CHAPTER 44

Aurangzēb Imprisons his Eldest Son—Shujā and all his Family are Destroyed.

CHAPTER 45

Second Defeat and Death of Dārā, and Imprisonment of his Two Sons.

CHAPTER 46

Death and Character of Amīr Jumla,

CHAPTER 47

Reflections on the Preceding History.

The contest for the empire of India here described is very like that which preceded it, between the sons of Jahāngīr, in which Shāh Jahān succeeded in destroying all his brothers and nephews; and that which succeeded it, forty years after,[1] in which Mu'azzam, the second of the four sons of Aurangzēb, did the same;[2] and it may, like the rest of Indian history, teach us a few useful lessons. First, we perceive the advantages of the law of primogeniture, which accustoms people to consider the right of the eldest son as sacred, and the conduct of any man who attempts to violate it as criminal. Among Muhammadans, property, as well real as personal, is divided equally among the sons;[3] and their Korān, which is their only civil and criminal, as well as religions, code, makes no provision for the successions to sovereignty. The death of every sovereign is, in consequence, followed by a contest between his sons, unless they are overawed by some paramount power; and he who succeeds in this contest finds it necessary, for his own security, to put all his brothers and nephews to death, lest they should be rescued by factions, and made the cause of future civil wars. But sons, who exercise the powers of viceroys and command armies, cannot, where the succession is unsettled, wait patiently for the natural death of their father—delay may be dangerous. Circumstances, which now seem more favourable to their views than to those of their brothers, may alter; the military aristocracy depend upon the success of the chief they choose in the enterprise, and the army more upon plunder than regular pay; both may desert the cause of the more wary for that of the more daring; each is flattered into an overweening confidence in his own ability and good fortune; and all rush on to seize upon the throne yet filled by their wretched parent, who, in the history of his own crimes, now reads those of his children. Gibbon has justly observed (chap. 7): 'the superior prerogative of birth, when it has obtained the sanction of time and popular opinion, is the plainest and least invidious of all distinctions among mankind. The acknowledged right extinguishes the hopes of faction; and the conscious security disarms the cruelty of the monarch. To the firm establishment of this idea we owe the peaceful succession and mild administration of European monarchies. To the defect of it we must attribute the frequent civil wars through which an Asiatic despot is obliged to cut his way to the throne of his fathers. Yet, even in the East, the sphere of contention is usually limited to the princes of the reigning house; and, as soon as the fortunate competitor has removed his brethren by the sword and the bowstring, he no longer entertains any jealousy of his meaner subjects.'

Among Hindoos, both real and personal property is divided in the same manner equally among the sons;[4] but a principality is, among them, considered as an exception to this rule; and every large estate, within which the proprietor holds criminal jurisdiction, and maintains a military establishment, is considered a principality. In such cases the law of primogeniture is rigorously enforced; and the death of the prince scarcely ever involves a contest for power and dominion between his sons. The feelings of the people, who are accustomed to consider the right of the eldest son to the succession as religiously sacred, would be greatly shocked at the attempt of any of his brothers to invade it. The younger brothers, never for a moment supposing they could be supported in such a sacrilegious attempt, feel for their eldest brother a reverence inferior only to that which they feel for their father; and the eldest brother, never supposing such attempts on their part as possible, feels towards them as towards his own children. All the members of such a family commonly live in the greatest harmony.[5] In the laws, usages, and feelings of the people upon this subject we had the means of preventing that eternal subdivision of landed property, which ever has been, and ever will be, the bane of everything that is great and good in India; but, unhappily, our rulers have never had the wisdom to avail themselves of them. In a great part of India the property, or the lease of a village held in farm under Government, was considered as a principality, and subject strictly to the same laws of primogeniture—it was a fief, held under Government on condition of either direct service, rendered to the State in war, in education, or charitable or religions duties, or of furnishing the means, in money or in kind, to provide for such service. In every part of the Sāgar and Nerbudda Territories the law of primogeniture in such leases was in force when we took possession, and has been ever since preserved.[6] The eldest of the sons that remain united with the father, at his death, succeeds to the estate, and to the obligation of maintaining all the widows and orphan children of those of his brothers who remained united to their parent stock up to their death, all his unmarried sisters, and, above all, his mother. All the younger brothers aid him in the management, and are maintained by him till they wish to separate, when a division of the stock takes place, and is adjusted by the elders of the village. The member, who thus separates from the parent stock, from that time forfeits for ever all claims to support from the possessor of the ancestral estate, either for himself, his widow, or his orphan children.[7]

Next, it is obvious that no existing Government in India could, in case of invasion or civil war, count upon the fidelity of their aristocracy either of land or of office. It is observed by Hume, in treating of the reign of King John in England, that 'men easily change sides in a civil war, especially where the power is founded upon an hereditary and independent authority, and is not derived from the opinion and favour of the people'—that is, upon the people collectively or the nation; for the hereditary and independent authority of the English baron in the time of King John was founded upon the opinion and fidelity of only that portion of the people over which he ruled, in the same manner as that of the Hindoo chiefs of India in the time of Shāh Jahān; but it was without reference either to the honesty of the cause he espoused, or to the opinion and feeling of the nation or empire generally regarding it. The Hindoo territorial chiefs, like the feudal barons of the Middle Ages in Europe, employed all the revenues of their estates in the maintenance of military followers, upon whose fidelity they could entirely rely, whatever side they might themselves take in a civil war; and the more of these resources that were left at their disposal, the more impatient they became of the restraints which settled governments imposed upon them. Under such settled governments they felt that they had an arm which they could not use; and the stronger that arm, the stronger was their desire to use it in the subjugation of their neighbours. The reigning emperors tried to secure their fidelity by assigning to them posts of honour about their court that required their personal attendance in all their pomp of pride; and by taking from each a daughter in marriage. If any one rebelled or neglected his duties, he was either crushed by the imperial forces, or put to the ban of the empire', and his territories were assigned to any one who would undertake to conquer them.[8] Their attendance at our viceroyal court would be a sad encumbrance;[9] and our Governor-General could not well conciliate them by matrimonial alliances, unless we were to alter a good deal in their favour our law against polygamy; nor would it be desirable to 'let slip the dogs of war' once more throughout the land by adopting the plan of putting the refractory chiefs to the ban of the empire. Their troops would be of no use to us in the way they are organized and disciplined, even if we could rely upon their fidelity in time of need; and this I do not think we ever can.[10]

If it be the duty of all such territorial chiefs to contribute to the support of the public establishments of the paramount power by which they are secured in the possession of their estates, and defended from all external danger, as it most assuredly is, it is the duty of that power to take such contribution in money, or the means of maintaining establishments more suited to its purpose than their rude militia can ever be; and thereby to impair the powers of that arm which they are so impatient to wield for their own aggrandizement, and to the prejudice of their neighbours; and to strengthen that of the paramount power by which the whole are kept in peace, harmony, and security. We give to India what India never had before our rule, and never could have without it, the assurance that there will always be at the head of the Government a sensible ruler trained up to office in the best school in the world; and that the security of the rights, and the enforcement of the duties, presented or defined by law, will not depend upon the will or caprice of individuals in power. These assurances the people in India now everywhere thoroughly understand and appreciate. They see in the native states around them that the lucky accident of an able governor is too rare ever to be calculated upon; while all that the people have of property, office, or character, depends not only upon their governor, but upon every change that he may make in his ministers.

The government of the Muhammadans was always essentially military, and the aristocracy was always one of military office. There was nothing else upon which an aristocracy could be formed. All high civil offices were combined with the military commands. The emperor was the great proprietor of all the lands, and collected and distributed their rents through his own servants. Every Musalmān with his Korān in his hand was his own priest and his own lawyer; and the people were nowhere represented in any municipal or legislative assembly—there was no bar, bench, senate, corporation, art, science, or literature by which men could rise to eminence and power. Capital had nowhere been concentrated upon great commercial or manufacturing establishments. There were, in short, no great men but the military servants of Government; and all the servants of Government held their posts at the will and pleasure of their sovereign.[11]

If a man was appointed by the emperor to the command of five thousand, the whole of this five thousand depended entirely on his favour for their employment, and upon their employment for their subsistence, whether paid from the imperial treasury, or by an assignment of land in some distant province.[12] In our armies there is a regular gradation of rank; and every officer feels that he holds his commission by a tenure as high in origin, as secure in possession, and as independent in its exercise, as that of the general who commands; and the soldiers all know and feel that the places of those officers, who are killed or disabled in action, will be immediately filled by those next in rank, who are equally trained to command, and whose authority none will dispute. In the Muhammadan armies there was no such gradation of rank. Every man held his office at the will of the chief whom he followed, and he was every moment made to feel that all his hopes of advancement must depend upon his pleasure. The relation between them was that of patron and client; the client felt bound to yield implicit obedience to the commands of his patron, whatever they might be; and the patron, in like manner, felt bound to protect and promote the interests of his client, as long as he continued to do so. As often as the patron changed sides in a civil war, his clients all blindly followed him; and when he was killed, they instantly dispersed to serve under any other leader whom they might find willing to take their services on the same terms.

The Hindoo chiefs of the military class had hereditary territorial possessions; and the greater part of these possessions were commonly distributed on conditions of military service among their followers, who were all of the same clan. But the highest Muhammadan officers of the empire had not an acre more of land than they required for their dwelling-houses, gardens, and cemeteries. They had nothing but their office to depend upon, and were always naturally anxious to hold it under the strongest side in any competition for dominion. When the star of the competitor under whom they served seemed to be on the wane, they soon found some plausible excuse to make their peace with his rival, and serve under his banners. Each competitor fought for his own life, and those of his children; the imperial throne could be filled by only one man; and that man dared not leave one single brother alive. His father had taken good care to dispose of all his own brothers and nephews in the last contest. The subsistence of the highest, as well as that of the lowest, officer in the army depended upon their employment in the public service, and all such employments would be given to those who served the victor in the struggle. Under such circumstances one is rather surprised that the history of civil wars in India exhibits so many instances of fidelity and devotion.

The mass of the people stood aloof in such contests without any feeling of interest, save the dread that their homes might become the seat of the war, or the tracks of armies which were alike destructive to the people in their course whatever side they might follow. The result could have no effect upon their laws and institutions, and little upon their industry and property. As ships are from necessity formed to weather the storms to which they are constantly liable at sea, so were the Indian village communities framed to weather those of invasion and civil war, to which they were so much accustomed by land; and, in the course of a year or two, no traces were found of ravages that one might have supposed it would have taken ages to recover from. The lands remained the same, and their fertility was improved by the fallow; every man carried away with him the implements of his trade, and brought them back with him when he returned; and the industry of every village supplied every necessary article that the community required for their food, clothing, furniture, and accommodation. Each of these little communities, when left unmolested, was in itself sufficient to secure the rights and enforce the duties of all the different members; and all they wanted from their government was moderation in the land taxes, and protection from external violence. Arrian says: 'If any intestine war happens to break forth among the Indians, it is deemed a heinous crime either to seize the husbandmen or spoil their harvest. All the rest wage war against each other, and kill and slay as they think convenient, while they live quietly and peaceably among them, and employ themselves at their rural affairs either in their fields or vineyards.'[13] I am afraid armies were not much more disposed to forbearance in the days of Alexander than at present, and that his followers must have supposed they remained untouched, merely because they heard of their sudden rise again from their ruins by that spirit of moral and political vitality with which necessity seems to have endowed them.[14]

During the early part of his life and reign, Aurangzēb was employed in conquering and destroying the two independent kingdoms of Golconda and Bījāpur in the Deccan, which he formed into two provinces governed by viceroys. Each had had an army of above a hundred thousand men while independent. The officers and soldiers of these armies had nothing but their courage and their swords to depend upon for their subsistence. Finding no longer any employment under settled and legitimate authority in defending the life, property, and independence of the people, they were obliged to seek it around the standards of lawless freebooters; and upon the ruins of these independent kingdoms and their disbanded armies rose the Marāthā power, the hydra-headed monster which Aurangzēb thus created by his ambition, and spent the last twenty years of his life in vain attempts to crush.[15] The monster has been since crushed by being deprived of its Peshwā, the head which alone could infuse into all the members of the confederacy a feeling of nationality, and direct all their efforts, when required, to one common object. Sindhia, the chief of Gwālior, is one of the surviving members of this great confederacy—the rest are the Holkars of Indore, the Bhōnslās of Nāgpur, and the Gaikwārs of Barodā,[16] the grandchildren of the commandants of predatory armies, who formed capital cities out of their standing camps in the countries they invaded and conquered in the name of their head, the Sātārā Rājā,[17] and afterwards in that of his mayor of the palace, the Peshwā. There is not now the slightest feeling of nationality left among the Marāthā States, either collectively or individually.[18] There is not the slightest feeling of sympathy between the mass of the people and the chief who rules over them, and his public establishments. To maintain these public establishments he everywhere plunders the people, who most heartily detest him and them. These public establishments are composed of men of all religions and sects, gathered from all quarters of India, and bound together by no common feeling, save the hope of plunder and promotion. Not one in ten is from, or has his family in, the country where he serves, nor is one in ten of the same clan with his chief. Not one of them has any hope of a provision either for himself, when disabled from wounds or old age from serving his chief any longer, or for his family, should he lose his life in his service.

In India[19] there are a great many native chiefs who were enabled, during the disorders which attended the decline and fall of the Muhammadan power and the rise and progress of the Marāthās and English, to raise and maintain armies by the plunder of their neighbours. The paramount power of the British being now securely established throughout the country, they are prevented from indulging any longer in such sporting propensities; and might employ their vast revenues in securing the blessing of good civil government for the territories in the possession of which they are secured by our military establishment. But these chiefs are not much disposed to convert their swords into ploughshares; they continue to spend their revenues on useless military establishments for purposes of parade and show. A native prince would, they say, be as insignificant without an army as a native gentleman upon an elephant without a cavalcade, or upon a horse without a tail. But the said army have learnt from their forefathers that they were to look to aggressions upon their neighbours—to pillage, plunder, and conquest, for wealth and promotion; and they continue to prevent their prince from indulging in any disposition to turn his attention to the duties of civil government. They all live in the hope of some disaster to the paramount power which secures the increasing wealth of the surrounding countries from their grasp; and threatened innovations from the north-west raise their spirits and hopes in proportion as they depress those of the classes engaged in all branches of peaceful industry.

There are, in all parts of India, thousands and tens of thousands who have lived by the sword, or who wish to live by the sword, but cannot find employment suited to their tastes. These would all flock to the standard of the first lawless chief who could offer them a fair prospect of plunder; and to them all wars and rumours of war are delightful. The moment they hear of a threatened invasion from the north-west, they whet their swords, and look fiercely around upon those from whose breasts they are 'to cut their pound of flesh'.[20]

Notes:

1. 'Fifty years after' would be more nearly correct. Aurangzēb wa crowned 23rd July, 1658, according to the author. See end of next note.

2. On the death of Aurangzēb, which took place in the Deccan, on the 3rd of March, 1707 (N.S.), his son 'Azam marched at the head of the troops which he commanded in the Deccan, to meet Mu'azzam, who was viceroy in Kabul. They met and fought near Agra. 'Azam was defeated and killed. The victor marched to meet his other brother, Kām Baksh, whom he killed near Hyderabad in the Deccan, and secured to himself the empire. On his death, which took place in 1713, his four sons contended in the same way for the throne at the head of the armies of their respective viceroyalties. Mu'izz- ud-dīn, the most crafty, persuaded his two brothers, Rafī-ash-Shān and Jahān Shāh, to unite their forces with his own against their ambitions brother, Azīm-ash-Shān, whom they defeated and killed, Mu'izz-ud- dīn then destroyed his two allies. [W. H. S.]

The above note is not altogether accurate. 'Azam, the third son of Aurangzēb, was killed in battle near Agra, in June 1707. During the interval between Aurangzēb's death and his own, he had struck coins. Mu'azzam, the second, and eldest then surviving son, after the defeat of his rival, ascended the throne under the title of Shāh Ālam Bahādur Shāh, and is generally known as Bahādur Shāh. He was then sixty-four years of age, his father having been eighty-seven years old when he died. The events following the death of Bahādur Shāh are narrated as follows by Mr. Lane-Poole; 'The Deccan was the weakest point in the empire from the beginning of the reign. Hardly had Bahādur appointed his youngest brother, Kām Baksh ('Wish-fulfiller'), viceroy of Bījāpur and Haidarābād, when that infatuated prince rebelled and committed such atrocities that the Emperor was compelled to attack him. Zū-l-Fikār engaged and defeated the rebel king (who was striking coins in full assumption of sovereignty) near Haidarābād, and Kām Baksh died of his wounds (1708, A.H. 1120).

'In the midst of this confusion, and surrounded by portents of coming disruption, Bahādur died, 1712 (1124). He left four sons, who immediately entered with the zest of their race upon the struggle for the crown. The eldest, 'Azīm-ash-Shān ("Strong of Heart"), first assumed the sceptre, but Zū-l- Fikār, the prime minister, opposed and routed him, and the prince was drowned in his flight. The successful general next defeated and slew two other brothers, Khujistah Akhtār Jahān-Shāh and Rafī-ash-Shān, and placed the surviving of the four sons of Bahādur [i.e. Mu'izz-ud- dīn] on the throne with the title of Jahāndār ("World-owner"). The new Emperor was an irredeemable poltroon and an abandoned debauchee.' (The History of the Moghul Emperors of Hindustan illustrated by their Coins, Constable, 1892, and in Introd. to B. M. Catal. of Moghul Emperors, same date.)

He was killed in 1713, and was succeeded by Farrukh-sīyar, the son of Azīm-ush-Shān. The chronology is as follows:-

The question concerning the exact date from which the beginning of Aurangzēb's reign should be reckoned is obscured by the conflict of authorities and has given rise to much discussion. The results may be stated briefly as follow:—

Aurangzēb formally took possession of the throne in a garden outside Delhi on the 1st Zū'l Q'adah, A.H. 1068, July 31, A.D. 1658, but subsequently orders were passed to antedate the beginning of the reign to 1st Ramazān in the same year, equivalent to June 2, 1658. After the destruction of Shāh Shujā, Aurangzēb returned to Delhi in May, A.D. 1659, and was again enthroned with full ceremonial on June 15, 1659 (= A.H. 1069). Some authors consequently assume the accession to have taken place in 1659. But the reign certainly began in A.D. 1658, and should be reckoned as running from the official date, June 2 of that year. The dates given above are in New Style (N.S.). If recorded in Old Style (O.S.) they would be ten days earlier. (See Irvine and Hoernle in J.A.S.B., Part I, vol. lxii (1893), pp. 256-67; and Irvine, in Ind. Ant., vol. xl (1911), pp. 74, 75.)

3. The author invariably ignores the fact that daughters and other female relatives inherit under Muhammadan law.

4. Hindoo law does not ordinarily recognize any right of succession for daughters, and so differs essentially from the law of Islam. The exceptions to this general rule are unimportant.

5. The experience of most officials does not confirm this statement.

6. The statement now requires modification. After the Central Provinces were constituted in 1861, the principle of succession by primogeniture was maintained only in the Hoshangābād, Chhindwāra, Chāndā, and Chhattīsgarh Districts. But even there the legal effect of the restrictions on alienation and partition is 'not quite free from doubt' (I.G. 1908, x. 73). The tendency of the law courts is to apply everywhere uniform rules taken from the Hindoo law books.

7. 'See ante, Chapter 10, notes 10, 16. The gradual conversion of tenure by leases from Government into proprietary right in land has brought the land under the operation of the ordinary Hindoo law, and each member of a joint family can now enforce partition of the land as well as of the stock upon it. The evils resulting from incessant partition are obvious, but no remedy can be devised. The people insist on partition, and will effect it privately, if the law imposes obstacles to a formal public division.

8. These remarks attribute too much System to the disorderly working of an Asiatic despotism. No institution resembling the formal 'ban of the empire' ever really existed in India.

9. The Rājās at Simla might now be considered by some people as an encumbrance.

10. The author could not foresee the gallant service to be rendered by the Chiefs of the Panjāb and other territories in the Mutiny, nor the institution of the Imperial Service Troops. Those troops, first organized in 1888, in response to the voluntary offers made by many princes as a reply to the Russian aggression on Panjdeh, are select bodies, picked from the soldiery of certain native states, and equipped and drilled in the European manner. Cashmere (Kāshmīr) and many States in the Panjāb and elsewhere furnish troops of this kind, officered by local gentlemen, under the guidance of English inspecting officers. The Kāshmīr Imperial Service Troops did excellent service during the campaign of 1892 in Hunza and Nagar. the System so happily introduced is likely to be much further developed. In 1907 the authorized strength was a little over 18,000 (I.G., iv (1907), pp. 87, 373).

11. 'In Rome, as in Egypt and India, many of the great works which, in modern nations, form the basis of gradations of rank in society, were executed by Government out of public revenue, or by individuals gratuitously for the benefit of the public; for instance, roads, canals, aqueducts, bridges, &c., from which no one derived an income, though all derived benefit. There was no capital invested, with a view to profit, in machinery, railroads, canals, steam- engines, and other great works which, in the preparation and distribution of man's enjoyments, save the labour of so many millions to the nations of modern Europe and America, and supply the incomes of many of the most useful and most enlightened members of their middle and higher classes of society. During the republic, and under the first emperors, the laws were simple, and few derived any considerable income from explaining them. Still fewer derived their incomes from expounding the religion of the people till the establishment of Christianity.

Man was the principal machine in which property was invested with a view to profit, and the concentration of capital in hordes of slaves, and the farm of the public revenues of conquered provinces and tributary states, were, with the land, the great basis of the aristocracies of Rome, and the Roman world generally. The senatorial and equestrian orders were supported chiefly by lending out their slaves as gladiators and artificers, and by farming the revenues, and lending money to the oppressed subjects of the provinces, and to vanquished princes, at an exorbitant interest, to enable them to pay what the state or its public officers demanded. The slaves throughout the Roman empire were about equal in number to the free population, and they were for the most part concentrated in the hands of the members of the upper and middle classes, who derived their incomes from lending and employing them. They were to those classes in the old world what canals, railroads, steam-engines, &c., are to those of modern days. Some Roman citizens had as many as five thousand slaves educated to the one occupation of gladiators for the public shows of Rome. Julius Caesar had this number in Italy waiting his return from Gaul; and Gordianus used commonly to give five hundred pair for a public festival, and never less than one hundred and fifty.

In India slavery is happily but little known;[a] the church had no hierarchy either among the Hindoos or Muhammadans; nor had the law any high interpreters. In all its civil branches of marriage, inheritance, succession, and contract, it was to the people of the two religions as simple as the laws of the twelve tables; and contributed just as little to the support of the aristocracy as they did. In all these respects, China is much the same; the land belongs to the sovereign, and is minutely subdivided among those who farm and cultivate it—the great works in canals, aqueducts, bridges, roads, &c., are made by Government, and yield no private income. Capital is nowhere concentrated in expensive machinery; their church is without a hierarchy, their law without barristers-their higher classes are therefore composed almost exclusively of the public servants of the Government. The rule which prescribes that princes of the blood shall not be employed in the government of provinces and the command of armies, and that the reigning sovereign shall have the nomination of his successor, has saved China from a frequent return of the scenes which I have described. None of the princes are put to death, because it is known that all will acquiesce in the nomination when made known, supported as it always is by the popular sentiment throughout the empire. [W. H. S.]

a. the anthor's statement that in the year 1836 slavery was 'but little known in India' is a truly astonishing one. Slavery of various kinds—racial, predial, domestic—the slavery of captives, and of debtors, had existed in India from time immemorial, and still flourished in 1836. Slavery, so far as the law can abolish it, was abolished by the Indian Act v of 1843, but the final blow was not dealt until January l, 1862, when sections 370, &c., of the Indian Penal Code came into force. In practice, domestic servitude exists to this day in great Muhammadan households, and multitudes of agricultural labourers have a very dim consciousness of personal freedom. The Criminal Law Commissioners, who reported previous to the passage of Act v of 1843, estimated that in British India, as then constituted, the proportion of the slave to the free population varied from one-sixth to two-fifths. Sir Bartle Frere estimated the slave population of the territories included in British India in the year 1841 as being between eight and nine millions. Slaves were heritable and transferable property, and could be mortgaged or let out on hire. The article 'Slave' in Balfour, Cyclopaedia (3rd ed.), from which most of the above particulars are taken, is copious, and gives references to various authorities. The following works may also be consulted: The Law and Custom of Slavery in British India, by William Adam, 8vo, 1840; An Account of Slave Population in the Western Peninsula of India, 1822, with an Appendix on Slavery in Malabar; India's Cries to British Humanity, by J. Peggs, 8vo, 1830; and E.H.I., 3rd ed. (1914), pp. 100, 178, 180, 441.