CHAPTER 73
Meerut—Anglo-Indian Society.
Meerut is a large station for military and civil establishments; it is the residence of a civil commissioner, a judge, a magistrate, a collector of land revenue, and all their assistants and establishments. There are the Major-General commanding the division; the Brigadier commanding the station; four troops of horse and a company of foot artillery; one regiment of European cavalry, one of European infantry, one of native cavalry, and three of native infantry.[1] It is justly considered the healthiest station in India, for both Europeans and natives,[2] and I visited it in the latter end of the cold, which is the healthiest, season of the year; yet the European ladies were looking as if they had all come out of their graves, and talking of the necessity of going off to the mountains to renovate, as soon as the hot weather should set in. They had literally been fagging themselves to death with gaiety, at this the gayest and most delightful of all Indian stations, during the cold months when they ought to have been laying in a store of strength to carry them through the trying seasons of the hot winds and rains. Up every night and all night at balls and suppers, they could never go out to breathe the fresh air of the morning; and were looking wretchedly ill, while the European soldiers from the barracks seemed as fresh as if they had never left their native land. There is no doubt that sitting up late at night is extremely prejudicial to the health of Europeans in India.[3] I have never seen the European, male or female, that could stand it long, however temperate in habits; and an old friend of mine once told me that if he went to bed a little exhilarated every night at ten o'clock, and took his ride in the morning, he found himself much better than if he sat up till twelve or one o'clock without drinking, and lay abed in the mornings. Almost all the gay pleasures of India are enjoyed at night, and as ladies here, as everywhere else in Christian societies, are the life and soul of all good parties, as of all good novels, they often to oblige others sit up late, much against their own inclinations, and even their judgements, aware as they are that they are gradually sinking under the undue exertions.
When I first came to India there were a few ladies of the old school still much looked up to in Calcutta, and among the rest the grandmother of the Earl of Liverpool, the old Bēgam Johnstone, then between seventy and eighty years of age.[4] All these old ladies prided themselves upon keeping up old usages. They use to dine in the afternoon at four or five o'clock—take their airing after dinner in their carriages; and from the time they returned till ten at night their houses were lit up in their best style and thrown open for the reception of visitors. All who were on visiting terms came at this time, with any strangers whom they wished to introduce, and enjoyed each other's society; there were music and dancing for the young, and cards for the old, when the party assembled happened to be large enough; and a few who had been previously invited stayed supper. I often visited the old Bēgam Johnstone at this hour, and met at her house the first people in the country, for all people, including the Governor-General himself, delighted to honour this old lady, the widow of a Governor-General of India, and the mother-in-law of a Prime Minister of England.[5] She was at Murshīdābād when Sirāj-ud-daula marched from that place at the head of the army that took and plundered Calcutta, and caused so many Europeans to perish in the Black Hole; and she was herself saved from becoming a member of his seraglio, or perishing with the lest, by the circumstance of her being far gone in her pregnancy, which caused her to be made over to a Dutch factory.[6]
She had been a very beautiful woman, and had been several times married; the pictures of all her husbands being hung round her noble drawing-room in Calcutta, covered during the day with crimson cloth to save them from the dust, and uncovered at night only on particular occasions. One evening Mrs. Crommelin, a friend of mine, pointing to one of them, asked the old lady his name. 'Really, I cannot at this moment tell you, my dear; my memory is very bad,' (striking her forehead with her right hand, as she leaned with her left arm in Mrs. Crommelin's,) 'but I shall recollect in a few minutes.' The old lady's last husband was a clergyman, Mr. Johnstone, whom she found too gay, and persuaded to go home upon an annuity of eight hundred a year, which she settled upon him for life. The bulk of her fortune went to Lord Liverpool; the rest to her grandchildren, the Ricketts, Watts, and others.
Since those days the modes of intercourse in India have much altered. Society at all the stations beyond the three capitals of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, is confined almost exclusively to the members of the civil and military services, who seldom remain long at the same station—the military officers hardly ever more than three years, and the civil hardly ever so long. At disagreeable stations the civil servants seldom remain so many months. Every newcomer calls in the forenoon upon all that are at the station when he arrives, and they return his call at the same hour soon after. If he is a married man, the married men upon whom he has called take their wives to call upon his; and he takes his to return the call of theirs. These calls are all indispensable; and being made in the forenoon, become very disagreeable in the hot season; all complain of them, yet no one forgoes his claim upon them; and till the claim is fulfilled, people will not recognize each other as acquaintances.[7] Unmarried officers generally dine in the evening, because it is a more convenient hour for the mess; and married civil functionaries do the same, because it is more convenient for their office work. If you invite those who dine at that hour to spend the evening with you, you must invite them to dinner, even in the hot weather; and if they invite you, it is to dinner. This makes intercourse somewhat heavy at all times, but more especially so in the hot season, when a table covered with animal food is sickening to any person without a keen appetite, and stupefying to those who have it. No one thinks of inviting people to a dinner and ball—it would be vandalism; and when you invite them, as is always the case, to come after dinner, the ball never begins till late at night, and seldom ends till late in the morning. With all its disadvantages, however, I think dining in the evening much better for those who are in health, than dining in the afternoon, provided people can avoid the intermediate meal of tiffin. No person in India should eat animal food more than once a day; and people who dine in the evening generally eat less than they would if they dined in the afternoon. A light breakfast at nine; biscuit, or a slice of toast with a glass of water, or soda-water, at two o'clock, and dinner after the evening exercise, is the plan which I should recommend every European to adopt as the most agreeable.[8] When their digestive powers get out of order, people must do as the doctors tell them.
There is, I believe, no society in which there is more real urbanity of manners than in that of India—a more general disposition on the part of its different members to sacrifice their own comforts and conveniences to those of others, and to make those around them happy, without letting them see that it costs them an effort to do so.[9] There is assuredly no society where the members are more generally free from those corroding cares and anxieties which 'weigh upon the hearts' of men whose incomes are precarious, and position in the world uncertain. They receive their salaries on a certain day every month, whatever may be the state of the seasons or of trade; they pay no taxes; they rise in the several services by rotation;[10] religious feelings and opinions are by common consent left as a question between man and his Maker; no one ever thinks of questioning another about them, nor would he be tolerated if he did so. Most people take it for granted that those which they got from their parents were the right ones; and as such they cherish them. They remember with feelings of filial piety the prayers which they in their infancy offered to their Maker, while kneeling by the side of their mothers; and they continue to offer them up through life, with the same feelings and the same hopes.[11]
Differences of political opinion, which agitate society so much in England and other countries where every man believes that his own personal interests must always be more or less affected by the predominance of one party over another, are no doubt a source of much interest to people in India, but they scarcely ever excite any angry passions among them. The tempests by which the political atmosphere of the world is cleared and purged of all its morbid influences burst not upon us—we see them at a distance—we know that they are working for all mankind; and we feel for those who boldly expose themselves to their 'pitiless peltings' as men feel for the sailors whom they suppose to be exposed on the ocean to the storm, while they listen to it from their beds or winter firesides.[12] We discuss all political opinions, and all the great questions which they affect, with the calmness of philosophers; not without emotion certainly, but without passion; we have no share in returning members to parliament—we feel no dread of those injuries, indignities, and calumnies to which those who have are too often exposed; and we are free from the bitterness of feelings which always attend them.[13]
How exalted, how glorious, has been the destiny of England, to spread over so vast a portion of the globe her literature, her language, and her free institutions! How ought the sense of this high destiny to animate her sons in their efforts to perfect their institutions which they have formed by slow degrees from feudal barbarism; to make them in reality as perfect as they would have them appear to the world to be in theory, that rising nations may love and honour the source whence they derive theirs, and continue to look to it for improvement.
We return to the society of our wives and children after the labours of the day are over, with tempers unruffled by collision with political and religious antagonists, by unfavourable changes in the season and the markets, and the other circumstances which affect so much the incomes and prospects of our friends at home. We must look to them for the chief pleasures of our lives, and know that they must look to us for theirs; and if anything has crossed us we try to conceal it from them. There is in India a strong feeling of mutual dependence which prevents little domestic misunderstandings between man and wife from growing into quarrels so often as in other countries, where this is less prevalent. Men have not here their clubs, nor their wives their little coteries to fly to when disposed to make serious matters out of trifles, and both are in consequence much inclined to bear and forbear. There are, of course, on the other hand, evils in India that people have not to contend with at home; but, on the whole, those who are disposed to look on the fair, as well as on the dark side of all around them, can enjoy life in India very much, as long as they and those dear to them are free from physical pain.[14] We everywhere find too many disposed to look upon the dark side of all that is present, and the bright side of all that is distant in time and place—always miserable themselves, be they where they will, and making all around them miserable; this commonly arises from indigestion, and the habit of eating and drinking in a hot, as in a cold, climate; and giving their stomachs too much to do, as if they were the only parts of the human frame whose energies were unrelaxed by the temperature of tropical climates.
There is, however, one great defect in Anglo-Indian society; it is composed too exclusively of the servants of government, civil, military, and ecclesiastic, and wants much of the freshness, variety, and intelligence of cultivated societies otherwise constituted. In societies where capital is concentrated for employment in large agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing establishments, those who possess and employ it form a large portion of the middle and higher classes. They require the application of the higher branches of science to the efficient employment of their capital in almost every purpose to which it can be applied; and they require, at the same time, to show that they are not deficient in that conventional learning of the schools and drawing-rooms to which the circles they live and move in attach importance. In such societies we are, therefore, always coming in contact with men whose scientific knowledge is necessarily very precise, and at the same time very extensive, while their manners and conversation are of the highest polish. There is, perhaps, nothing which strikes a gentleman from India so much on his entering a society differently constituted, as the superior precision of men's information upon scientific subjects; and more especially upon that of the sciences more immediately applicable to the arts by which the physical enjoyments of men are produced, prepared, and distributed all over the world. Almost all men in India feel that too much of their time before they left England was devoted to the acquisition of the dead languages; and too little to the study of the elements of science. The time lost can never be regained—at least they think so, which is much the same thing. Had they been well grounded in the elements of physics, physiology, and chemistry before they left their native land, they would have gladly devoted their leisure to the improvement of their knowledge; but to go back to elements, where elements can be learnt only from books, is, unhappily, what so few can bring themselves to, that no man feels ashamed of acknowledging that he has never studied them at all till he returns to England, or enters a society differently constituted, and finds that he has lost the support of the great majority that always surrounded him in India.[15] It will, perhaps, be said that the members of the official aristocracy of all countries have more or less of the same defects, for certain it is that they everywhere attach paramount or undue importance to the conventional learning of the grammar-school and the drawing-room, and the ignorant and the indolent have everywhere the support of a great majority. Johnson has, however, observed:
'But the truth is that the knowledge of external nature and the sciences, which that knowledge requires or includes, are not the great or the frequent business of the human mind. Whether we provide for action or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove by events the reasonableness of opinions.[16] Prudence and justice are virtues and excellences of all times, and of all places—we are perpetually moralists; but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter are voluntary and at leisure. Physiological learning is of such rare emergence, that one may know another half his life, without being able to estimate his skill in hydrostatics or astromony; but his moral and prudential character immediately appears. Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most materials for conversation; and these purposes are best served by poets, orators, and historians' (Life of Milton).
Notes:
1. In India officers have much better opportunities in time of peace to learn how to handle troops than in England, from having them more concentrated in large stations, with fine open plains to exercise upon. During the whole of the cold season, from the beginning of November to the end of February, the troops are at large stations exercised in brigades, and the artillery, cavalry, and infantry together. [W. H. S.] The normal garrison of Meerut in recent years has consisted of one British cavalry regiment, one battalion of British infantry, one native cavalry regiment, and one battalion of native infantry, with two batteries of horse and two of field artillery. The cantonment was established in 1806, from which date the town grew rapidly in size and population. The civil staff has been largely increased since Sleeman's time by the addition of numerous officers belonging to irrigation and other departmental services which did not exist in his day. The offices of District Magistrate and Collector have been united as a single person for many years.
2. The cantonments suffered severely from typhoid fever for several years in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
3. Few Anglo-Indians will dispute the truth of this dictum.
4. The late Earl of Liverpool, then Mr. Jenkinson, married this old lady's daughter. He was always very attentive to her, and she used with feelings of great pride and pleasure to display the contents of the boxes of millinery which he used every year to send out to her. [W. H. 8.] The author came out to India in 1809. Mr. Charles Jenkinson was created Baron Hawkesbury in 1786, and Earl of Liverpool in 1796. His first wife, who died in 1770, was Amelia, daughter of Mr. William Watts, Governor of Fort William, and of the lady described by the author. Their only son succeeded to the earldom in 1808, and died in 1828. The peerage became extinct on the death of the third earl in 1851. (Burke's Peerage.) It was revived in 1905.
5. Lord Liverpool, the second earl, became Prime Minister in 1812, after the murder of Perceval. Mrs. Johnson (not Johnstone) was not 'the widow of a Governor-General of India'. Her history is told in detail on her tombstone in St. John's churchyard, Calcutta, and is summarized in Buckland, Dictionary of Indian Biography (1906). She was born in 1725, and died in 1812. She had four husbands, namely (l) Parry Purple Temple, whom she married when she was only thirteen years of age; (2) James Altham, who died of smallpox a few days after his marriage; (3) William Watts, Senior Member of Council, and for a short time Governor or President of Fort William in 1758; (4) in 1774 Rev. William Johnson, who became principal chaplain of Fort William in 1784, and left India in 1788. She was known as 'the old Begum ', and her epitaph asserts that she was when she died 'the oldest British resident in Bengal, universally beloved, respected, and revered'. Mr. A. L. Paul kindly communicated the full text of the inscription on her tomb, with some additional notes. The author met her in 1810, when she was about eighty-five years of age.
6. The tragedy of the Black Hole occurred in June, 1756.
7. Of late years the rigour of the custom exacting midday calls has been relaxed in some places.
8. Moat people would require some training before they could find this very abstemious regimen 'the most agreeable'.
9. It will, I hope, be admitted that this observation still holds good.
10. When the author wrote the rupee was worth more than two shillings, the members of the Indian services were few in number, and mostly well paid, while living was cheap. Now all is changed. The rupee has an artificial value of 1s. 4d., the members of the services are numerous and often ill paid, while living is dear. The sharp fall in the value of silver, and consequently in the gold equivalent of the rupee, began in 1874. 'Corroding cares and anxieties' are now the lot of most people who serve in India. They now have the privilege of paying taxes.
11. This perfect religious freedom, still generally characteristic of Anglo-Indian society, is one of its greatest charms; and the charms of the country do not increase.
12. The author probably had in his mind the famous lines of Lucretius:-
Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora
ventis,
E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem;
Non quia vexari quemquam 'st jucunda
voluptas,
Sed, quibus ipse malis careas, quia cernere suave
'st.
(Book II, line 1.)
13. This delightful philosophic calm is no longer an Anglo-Indian possession; nor can the modern Indian official congratulate himself on his immunity from 'injuries, indignities, and calumnies'.
14. There are now clubs everywhere, and coteries are said to be not unknown. Few Anglo-Indians of the present day are able to share the author's cheery optimism.
15. In this matter also time has wrought great changes. The scientific branches of the Indian services, the medical, engineering, forestry, geological survey, and others, have greatly developed, and many officials, in India, whether of European or Indian race, now occupy high places in the world of science.
16. Compare Bolingbroke's observation, already quoted, that 'history is philosophy teaching by example'.
CHAPTER 74
Pilgrims of India.
There is nothing which strikes a European more in travelling over the great roads in India than the vast number of pilgrims of all kinds which he falls in with, particularly between the end of November [sic], when all the autumn harvest has been gathered, and the seed of the spring crops has been in the ground. They consist for the most part of persons, male and female, carrying Ganges water from the point at Hardwār, where the sacred stream emerges from the hills, to the different temples in all parts of India, dedicated to the gods Vishnu and Siva. There the water is thrown upon the stones which represent the gods, and when it falls upon these stones it is called 'Chandamirt', or holy water, and is frequently collected and reserved to be drunk as a remedy 'for a mind diseased'[1]
This water is carried in small bottles, bearing the seals of the presiding priest at the holy place whence it was brought. The bottles are contained in covered baskets, fixed to the ends of a pole, which is carried across the shoulder. The people who carry it are of three kinds—those who carry it for themselves as a votive offering to some shrine; those who are hired for the purpose by others as salaried servants; and, thirdly, those who carry it for sale. In the interval between the sowing and reaping of the spring crops, that is, between November and March, a very large portion of the Hindoo landholders and cultivators of India devote their leisure to this pious duty. They take their baskets and poles with them from home, or purchase them on the road; and having poured their libations on the head of the god, and made him acquainted with their wants and wishes, return home. From November to March three-fourths of the number of these people one meets consist of this class. At other seasons more than three-fourths consist of the other two classes—of persons hired for the purpose as servants, and those who carry the water for sale.
One morning the old Jemadār, the marriage of whose mango- grove with the jasmine I have already described,[2] brought his two sons and a nephew to pay their respects to me on their return to Jubbulpore from a pilgrimage to Jagannāth.[3] The sickness of the youngest, a nice boy of about six years of age, had caused this pilgrimage. The eldest son was about twenty years of age, and the nephew about eighteen.
After the usual compliments, I addressed the eldest son: 'And so your brother was really very ill when you set out?'
'Very ill, sir; hardly able to stand without assistance.'
'What was the matter with him?'
'It was what we call a drying-up, or withering of the System.'
'What were the symptoms?'
'Dysentery.'
'Good; and what cured him, as he now seems quite well?'
'Our mother and father vowed five pair of baskets of Ganges water to Gajādhar, an incarnation of the god Siva, at the temple of Baijnāth, and a visit to the temple of Jagannāth.'
'And having fulfilled these vows, your brother recovered?'
'He had quite recovered, sir, before we had set out on our return from Jagannāth.'
'And who carried the baskets?'
'My mother, wife, cousin, myself, and little brother, all carried one pair each.'
'This little boy could not surely carry a pair of baskets all the way?'
'No, sir, we had a pair of small baskets made especially for him; and when within about three miles of the temple he got down from his little pony, took up his baskets, and carried them to the god. Up to within three miles of the temple the baskets were carried by a Brahman servant, whom we had taken with us to cook our food. We had with us another Brahman, to whom we had to pay only a trifle, as his principal wages were made up of fees from families in the town of Jubbulpore, who had made similar vows, and gave him so much a bottle for the water he carried in their several names to the god.'
'Did you give all your water to the Baijnāth temple, or carry some with you to Jagannāth?'
'No water is ever offered to Jagannāth, sir; he is an incarnation of Vishnu.'[4]
'And does Vishnu never drink?'
'He drinks, sir, no doubt; but he gets nothing but offerings of food and money.'
'From this to Bindāchal on the Ganges, two hundred and thirty miles; thence to Baijnāth, a hundred and fifty miles; and thence to Jagannāth, some four or five hundred miles more.'[5]
'And your mother and wife walked all the way with their baskets?'
'All the way, sir, except when either of them got sick, when she mounted the pony with my little brother till she felt well again.'
Here were four members of a respectable family walking a pilgrimage of between twelve and fourteen hundred miles, going and coming, and carrying burthens on their shoulders for the recovery of the poor sick boy; and millions of families are every year doing the same from all parts of India. The change of air, and exercise, cured the boy, and no doubt did them all a great deal of good; but no physician in the world but a religions one could have persuaded them to undertake such a journey for the same purpose.
The rest of the pilgrims we meet are for the most part of the two monastic orders of Gosāins, or the followers of Siva, and Bairāgīs, or followers of Vishnu, and Muhammadan Fakīrs. A Hindoo of any caste may become a member of these monastic orders. They are all disciples of the high priests of the temples of their respective gods; and in their name they wander all over India, visiting the celebrated temples which are dedicated to them. A part of the revenues of these temples is devoted to subsisting these disciples as they pass; and every one of them claims the right of a day's food and lodging, or more, according to the rules of the temple. They make collections along the roads; and when they return, commonly bring back some surplus as an offering to their apostle, the high priest who has adopted them. Almost every high priest has a good many such disciples, as they are not costly; and from their returning occasionally, and from the disciples of others passing, these high priests learn everything of importance that is going on over India, and are well acquainted with the state of feeling and opinion.
What these disciples get from secular people is given not only from feelings of charity and compassion, but as a religions or propitiatory offering: for they are all considered to be armed by their apostle with a vicarious power of blessing or cursing; and as being in themselves men of God whom it might be dangerous to displease. They never condescend to feign disease or misery in order to excite feelings of compassion, but demand what they want with a bold front, as holy men who have a right to share liberally in the superfluities which God has given to the rest of the Hindoo community. They are in general exceedingly intelligent men of the world, and very communicative. Among them will be found members of all classes of Hindoo society, and of the most wealthy and respectable families.[6] While I had charge of the Narsinghpur district in 1822 a Bairāgī, or follower of Vishnu, came and settled himself down on the border of a village near my residence. His mild and paternal deportment pleased all the little community so much that they carried him every day more food than he required. At last, the proprietor of the village, a very respectable old gentleman, to whom I was much attached, went out with all his family to ask a blessing of the holy man. As they sat down before him, the tears were seen stealing down his cheeks as he looked upon the old man's younger sons and daughters. At last, the old man's wife burst into tears, ran up, and fell upon the holy man's neck, exclaiming, 'My lost son, my lost son!' He was indeed her eldest son. He had disappeared suddenly twelve years before, became a disciple of the high priest of a distant temple, and visited almost every celebrated temple in India, from Kedārnāth in the eternal snows to Sītā Baldī Rāmesar, opposite the island of Ceylon.[7] He remained with the family for nearly a year, delighting them and all the country around with his narratives. At last, he seemed to lose his spirits, his usual rest and appetite; and one night he again disappeared. He had been absent for some years when I last saw the family, and I know not whether he ever returned.
The real members of these monastic orders are not generally bad men; but there are a great many men of all kinds who put on their disguises, and under their cloak commit all kinds of atrocities.[8] The security and convenience which the real pilgrims enjoy upon our roads, and the entire freedom from all taxation, both upon these roads and at the different temples they visit, tend greatly to attach them to our rule, and through that attachment, a tone of good feeling towards it is generally disseminated over all India. They come from the native states, and become acquainted with the superior advantages the people under us enjoy, in the greater security of property, the greater freedom with which it is enjoyed and displayed; the greater exemption from taxation, and the odious right of search which it involves, the greater facilities for travelling in good roads and bridges; the greater respectability and integrity of public servants, arising from the greater security in their tenure of office and more adequate rate of avowed salaries; the entire freedom of the navigation of our great rivers, on which thousands and tens of thousands of laden vessels now pass from one end to the other without any one to question whence they come or whither they go. These are tangible proofs of good government, which all can appreciate; and as the European gentleman, in his rambles along the great roads, passes the lines of pilgrims with which the roads are crowded during the cold season, he is sure to hear himself hailed with grateful shouts, as one of those who secured for them and the people generally all the blessings they now enjoy.[9]
One day my sporting friend, the Rājā of Maihar, told me that he had been purchasing some water from the Ganges at its source, to wash the image of Vishnu which stood in one of his temples.[10] I asked him whether he ever drank the water after the image had been washed in it. 'Yes,' said he, 'we all occasionally drink the "chandamirt".' 'And do you in the same manner drink the water in which the god Siva has been washed?' 'Never,' said the Rājā. 'And why not?' 'Because his wife, Devī, one day in a domestic quarrel cursed him and said, "The water which falls from thy head shall no man henceforward drink." From that day', said the Rājā, 'no man has ever drunk of the water that washes his image, lest Devī should punish him.' 'And how is it, then, Rājā Sahib, that mankind continue to drink the water of the Ganges, which is supposed to flow from her husband Siva's top-knot?' 'Because', replied the Rājā, 'this sacred river first flows from the right foot of the god Vishnu, and thence passes over the head of Siva. The three gods', continued the Rājā, 'govern the world turn and turn about, twenty years at a time. While Vishnu reigns, all goes on well; rain descends in good season, the harvests are abundant, and the cattle thrive. When Brahma reigns, there is little falling off in these matters; but during the twenty years that Siva reigns, nothing goes on well—we are all at cross purposes, our crops fail, our cattle get the murrain, and mankind suffer from epidemic diseases.' The Rājā was a follower of Vishnu, as may be guessed.
Notes:
1. Tavernier notes that Ganges water is often given at weddings, 'each guest receiving a cup or two, according to the liberality of the host'. 'There is sometimes', he says, '2,000 or 3,000 rupees' worth of it consumed at a wedding.' (Tavernier, Travels, ed. Ball, vol. ii, pp. 231, 254.)
2. Ante, Chapter 5, [3].
3. Jagannāth (corruptly Juggernaut, &c.), or Purī, on the coast of Orissa, probably is the most venerated shrine in India. The principal deity there worshipped is a form of Vishnu.
4. Water may not be offered to Jagannāth, but the facts stated in this chapter show that it is offered in other temples of Vishnu.
5. Bindāchal is in the Mirzāpur district of the United Provinces. Baijnāth is in the Santāl Parganas District of the Bhāgalpur Division in the province of Bihār and Orissa. The group of temples at Deogarh dedicated to Siva is visited by pilgrims from all parts of India. The principal temple is called Baijnāth or Baidyanāth. Deogarh is a small town in the Santāl Parganas (I.G., 1908, s.v. Deogarh; A.S.R., vol. viii (1878), pp. 137-45, Pl. ix, x; vol. xix (1885), pp. 29-35 (crude notes), Pl. x, xi).
6. Pandit Sāligrām, who was Postmaster-General of the North-Western Provinces some years ago, became one of these wandering friars, and other similar cases are recorded.
7. Seet Buldee Ramesur in original edition. The temple alluded to is that called Rāmesvaram (Ramisseram) in the small island of Pāmban at the entrance of Palk's Passage in the Straits of Manaar, which is distinguished by its magnificent colonnade and corridors. (Fergusson, Hist. Ind. and Eastern Arch., vol. i, pp. 380-3, ed. 1910.) The island forms part of the so-called Adam's Bridge, a reef of comparatively recent formation, which almost joins Ceylon with the mainland. A railway now runs along the 'bridge', and the pilgrims have an easy task.
The Kedārnāth temple is in the Himalayan District of Garhwāl (United Provinces), at an elevation of nearly 12,000 feet.
8. The author's other works show that the Thugs frequently assumed the guise of ascetics, and much of the secret crime of India is known to be committed by men who adopt the garb of holiness. A man disguised as a fakīr is often sent on by dacoits (gang- robbers) as a spy and decoy. 'Three-fourths of these religions mendicants, whether Hindoos or Muhammadans, rob and steal, and a very great portion of them murder their victims before they rob them; but they have not any of them as a class been found to follow the trade of murder so exclusively as to be brought properly within the scope of our operations. . . . There is hardly any species of crime that is not throughout India perpetrated by men in the disguise of these religious mendicants; and almost all such mendicants are really men in disguise; for Hindoos of any caste can become Bairāgīs and Gosāins; and Muhammadans of any grade can become Fakīrs.' (A Report on the System of Megpunnaism, 1839, p. 11.) In the same little work the author advises the compulsory registration of 'every disciple belonging to every high priest, whether Hindoo or Muhammadan', and a stringent Vagrant Act. His suggestions have not been acted on.
9. This incident still happens occasionally.
10. For the Rājā, see ante, chapter 20, [6].
CHAPTER 75
The Bēgam Sumroo.
On the 7th of February [1836] I went out to Sardhana and visited the church built and endowed by the late Bēgam Sombre, whose remains are now deposited in it.[1] It was designed by an Italian gentleman, M. Reglioni, and is a fine but not a striking building.[2] I met the bishop, Julius Caesar, an Italian from Milan, whom I had known a quarter of a century before, a happy and handsome young man—he is still handsome, though old; but very miserable because the Bēgam did not leave him so large a legacy as he expected. In the revenues of her church he had, she thought, quite enough to live upon; and she said that priests without wives or children to care about ought to be satisfied with this; and left him only a few thousand rupees. She made him the medium of conveying a donation to the See of Rome of one hundred and fifty thousand rupees,[3] and thereby procured for him the bishopric of Amartanta in the island of Cyprus; and got her grandson, Dyce Sombre, made a chevalier of the Order of Christ, and presented with a splint from the real cross, as a relic.
The Bēgam Sombre was by birth a Saiyadanī, or lineal descendant from Muhammad, the founder of the Musalmān faith; and she was united to Walter Reinhard, when very young, by all the forms considered necessary by persons of her persuasion when married to men of another.[4] Reinhard had been married to another woman of the Musalmān faith, who still lives at Sardhana,[5] but she had become insane, and has ever since remained so. By this first wife he had a son, who got from the Emperor the title of Zafar Yāb Khān, at the request of the Bēgam, his stepmother; but he was a man of weak intellect, and so little thought of that he was not recognized even as the nominal chief on the death of his father.
Walter Reinhard was a native of Salzburg. He enlisted as a private soldier in the French service, and came to India, where he entered the service of the East India Company, and rose to the rank of sergeant.[6] Reinhard got the sobriquet of Sombre from his comrades while in the French service from the sombre cast of his countenance and temper.[7] An Armenian, by name Gregory, of a Calcutta family, the virtual minister of Kāsim Alī Khān,[8] under the title of Gorgīn Khān,[9] took him into his service when the war was about to commence between his master and the English. Kāsim Alī was a native of Kāshmīr, and not naturally a bad man; but he was goaded to madness by the injuries and insults heaped upon him by the servants of the East India Company, who were not then paid, as at present, in adequate salaries, but in profits upon all kinds of monopolies; and they would not suffer the recognized sovereign of the country in which they traded to grant to his subjects the same exemption that they claimed for themselves exclusively; and a war was the consequence.[10]
Mr. Ellis, one of these civil servants and chief of the factory at Patna, whose opinions had more weight with the council in Calcutta than all the wisdom of such men as Vansittart and Warren Hastings, because they happened to be more consonant with the personal interests of the majority, precipitately brought on the war, and assumed the direction of all military operations, of which he knew nothing, and for which he seems to have been totally unfitted by the violence of his temper. All his enterprises failed—the city and factory were captured by the enemy, and the European inhabitants taken prisoners. The Nawāb, smarting under the reiterated wrongs he had received, and which he attributed mainly to the counsels of Mr. Ellis, no sooner found the chief within his grasp, than he determined to have him and all who were taken with him, save a Doctor Fullarton, to whom he owed some personal obligations, put to death. His own native officers were shocked at the proposal, and tried to dissuade him from the purpose, but he was resolved, and not finding among them any willing to carry it into execution he applied to Sumroo, who readily undertook and, with some of his myrmidons, performed the horrible duty in 1763.[11] At the suggestion of Gregory and Sombre, Kāsim Alī now attempted to take the small principality of Nepāl, as a kind of basis for his operations against the English. He had four hundred excellent rifles with flint locks and screwed barrels made at Monghyr (Mungēr) on the Ganges, so as to fit into small boxes. These boxes were sent up on the backs of four hundred brave volunteers for this forlorn hope. Gregory had got a passport for the boxes as rare merchandise for the palace of the prince at Kathmandū, in whose presence alone they were to be opened. On reaching the palace at night, these volunteers were to open their boxes, screw up the barrels, destroy all the inmates, and possess themselves of the palace, where it is supposed Kāsim Ali had already secured many friends. Twelve thousand soldiers had advanced to the foot of the hills near Betiyā, to support the attack, and the volunteers were in the fort of Makwānpur, the only strong fort between the plain and the capital. They had been treated with great consideration by the garrison, and were to set out at daylight the next morning; but one of the attendants, who had been let into the secret, got drunk, and in a quarrel with one of the garrison, told him that he should see in a few days who would be master of that garrison. This led to suspicion; the boxes were broken open, the arms discovered, and the whole of the party, except three or four, were instantly put to death; the three or four who escaped gave intelligence to the army at Betiyā, and the whole retreated upon Monghyr. But for this drunken man, Nepāl had perhaps been Kāsim Alī's.[12]
Kāsim Alī Khān was beaten in several actions by our gallant little band of troops under their able leader, Colonel Adams; and at last driven to seek shelter with the Nawāb Wazīr of Oudh, into whose service Sumroo afterwards entered. This chief being in his turn beaten, Sumroo went off and entered the service of the celebrated chief of Rohilkhand, Hāfiz Rahmat Khān. This he soon quitted from fear of the English. He raised two battalions in 1772, which he soon afterwards increased to four; and let out always to the highest bidder—first, to the Jāt chiefs of Dīg, then to the chief of Jaipur, then to Najaf Khān, the prime minister, and then to the Marāthās. His battalions were officered by Europeans, but Europeans of respectability were unwilling to take service under a man so precariously situated, however great their necessities; and he was obliged to content himself for the most part with the very dross of society—men who could neither read nor write, nor keep themselves sober. The consequence was that the battalions were often in a state of mutiny, committing every kind of outrage upon the persons of their officers, and at all times in a state of insubordination bordering on mutiny. These battalions seldom obtained their pay till they put their commandant into confinement, and made him dig up his hidden stores, if he had any, or borrow from bankers, if he had none. If the troops felt pressed for time, and their commander was of the necessary character, they put him astride upon a hot gun without his trousers. When our battalion had got its pay out of him in this manner, he was often handed over to another for the same purpose. The poor old Bēgam had been often subjected to the starving stage of this proceeding before she came under our protection; but had never, I believe, been grilled upon a gun. It was a rule, it was said, with Sombre, to enter the field of battle at the safest point, form line facing the enemy, fire a few rounds in the direction where they stood, without regard to the distance or effect, form square, and await the course of events. If victory declared for the enemy, he sold his unbroken force to him to great advantage; if for his friends, he assisted them in collecting the plunder, and securing all the advantages of the victory. To this prudent plan of action his corps afterwards steadily adhered; and they never took or lost a gun till they came in contact with our forces at Ajantā and Assaye.[13]
Sombre died at Agra on the 4th of May, 1778, and his remains were at first buried in his garden. They were afterwards removed to the consecrated ground in the Agra churchyard by his widow the Bēgam,[14] who was baptized, at the age of forty,[15] by a Roman Catholic priest, under the name of Joanna,[16] on the 7th of May, 1781.
On the death of her husband she was requested to take command of the force by all the Europeans and natives that composed it, as the only possible mode of keeping them together, since the son was known to be altogether unfit. She consented, and was regularly installed in the charge by the Emperor Shāh Alam. Her chief officer was a Mr. Paoli, a German, who soon after took an active part in providing the poor imbecile old Emperor with a prime minister, and got himself assassinated on the restoration, a few weeks after, of his rival.[17] The troops continued in the same state of insubordination, and the Bēgam was anxious for an opportunity to show that she was determined to be obeyed.
While she was encamped with the army of the prime minister of the time at Mathurā,[18] news was one day brought to her that two slave girls had set fire to her houses at Agra, in order that they might make off with their paramours, two soldiers of the guard she had left in charge. These houses had thatched roofs, and contained all her valuables, and the widows, wives, and children of her principal officers. The fire had been put out with much difficulty and great loss of property; and the two slave girls were soon after discovered in the bazaar at Agra, and brought out to the Bēgam's camp. She had the affair investigated in the usual summary form; and their guilt being proved to the satisfaction of all present, she had them flogged till they were senseless, and then thrown into a pit dug in front of her tent for the purpose, and buried alive. I had heard the story related in different ways, and I now took pains to ascertain the truth; and this short narrative may, I believe, be relied upon.[19]
An old Persian merchant, called the Agā, still resided at Sardhana, to whom I knew that one of the slave girls belonged. I visited him, and he told me that his father had been on intimate terms with Sombre, and when he died his mother went to live with his widow, the Bēgam—that his slave girl was one of the two- that his mother at first protested against her being taken off to the camp, but became on inquiry satisfied of her guilt—and that the Bēgam's object was to make a strong impression upon the turbulent spirit of her troops by a severe example. 'In this object', said the old Agā, 'she entirely succeeded; and for some years after her orders were implicitly obeyed; had she faltered on that occasion she must have lost the command—she would have lost that respect, without which it would have been impossible for her to retain it a month. I was then a boy; but I remember well that there were, besides my mother and sisters, many respectable females that would have rather perished in the flames than come out to expose themselves to the crowd that assembled to see the fires; and had the fires not been put out, a great many lives must have been lost; besides, there were many old people and young children who could not have escaped.' The old Agā was going off to take up his quarters at Delhi when this conversation took place; and I am sure that he told me what he thought to be true. This narrative corresponded exactly with that of several other old men from whom I had heard the story. It should be recollected that among natives there is no particular mode of execution prescribed for those who are condemned to die; nor, in a camp like this, any court of justice save that of the commander in which they could be tried, and, supposing the guilt to have been established, as it is said to have been to the satisfaction of the Bēgam and the principal officers, who were all Europeans and Christians, perhaps the punishment was not much greater than the crime deserved and the occasion demanded. But it is possible that the slave girls may not have set fire to the buildings, but merely availed themselves of the occasion of the fire to run off; indeed, slave girls are under so little restraint in India, that it would be hardly worth while for them to burn down a house to get out. I am satisfied that the Bēgam believed them guilty, and that the punishment, horrible as it was, was merited. It certainly had the desired effect. My object has been to ascertain the truth in this case, and to state it, and not to eulogize or defend the old Bēgam.
After Paoli's death, the command of the troops under the Bēgam devolved successively upon Baours, Evans, Dudrenec, who, after a short time, all gave it up in disgust at the beastly habits of the European subalterns, and the overbearing insolence to which they and the want of regular pay gave rise among the soldiers. At last the command devolved upon Monsieur Le Vaisseau, a French gentleman of birth, education, gentlemanly deportment, and honourable feelings.[20] The battalions had been increased to six, with their due proportion of guns and cavalry; part resided at Sardhana, her capital, and part at Delhi, in attendance upon the Emperor. A very extraordinary man entered her service about the same time with Le Vaisseau, George Thomas, who, from a quartermaster on board a ship, raised himself to a principality in Northern India.[21] Thomas on one occasion raised his mistress in the esteem of the Emperor and the people by breaking through the old rule of central squares: gallantly leading on his troops, and rescuing his majesty from a perilous situation in one of his battles with a rebellious subject, Najaf Kulī Khān, where the Bēgam was present in her palankeen, and reaped all the laurels, being from that day called 'the most beloved daughter of the Emperor'.[22] As his best chance of securing his ascendancy against such a rival, Le Vaisseau proposed marriage to the Bēgam, and was accepted. She was married to Le Vaisseau by Father Gregoris, a Carmelite monk, in 1793, before Saleur and Bernier, two French officers of great merit. George Thomas left her service, in consequence, in 1793, and set up for himself; and was afterwards crushed by the united armies of the Sikhs and Marāthās, commanded by European officers, after he had been recognized as a general officer by the Governor-General of India. George Thomas had latterly twelve small disciplined battalions officered by Europeans. He had good artillery, cast his own guns, and was the first person that applied iron calibres to brass cannon. He was unquestionably a man of very extraordinary military genius, and his ferocity and recklessness as to the means he used were quite in keeping with the times. His revenues were derived from the Sikh states which he had rendered tributary; and he would probably have been sovereign of them all in the room of Ranjit Singh, had not the jealousy of Perron and other French officers in the Marāthā army interposed.[23]
The Bēgam tried in vain to persuade her husband to receive all the European officers of the corps at his table as gentlemen, urging that not only their domestic peace, but their safety among such a turbulent set, required that the character of these officers should be raised if possible, and their feelings conciliated. Nothing, he declared, should ever induce him to sit at table with men of such habits; and they at last determined that no man should command them who would not condescend to do so. Their insolence and that of the soldiers generally became at last unbearable, and the Bēgam determined to go off with her husband, and seek an asylum in the Honourable Company's territory with the little property she could command, of one hundred thousand rupees in money, and her jewels, amounting perhaps in value to one hundred thousand more. Le Vaisseau did not understand English; but with the aid of a grammar and a dictionary he was able to communicate her wishes to Colonel McGowan, who commanded at that time (1795) an advanced post of our army at Anūpshahr on the Ganges.[24] He proposed that the Colonel should receive them in his cantonments, and assist them in their journey thence to Farrukhābād, where they wished in future to reside, free from the cares and anxieties of such a charge. The Colonel had some scruples, under the impression that he might be censured for aiding in the flight of a public officer of the Emperor. He now addressed the Governor-General of India, Sir John Shore himself, April 1795,[25] who requested Major Palmer, our accredited agent with Sindhia, who was then encamped near Delhi, and holding the seals of prime minister of the empire, to interpose his good offices in favour of the Bēgam and her husband. Sindhia demanded twelve lākhs of rupees as the price of the privilege she solicited to retire; and the Bēgam, in her turn, demanded over and above the privilege of resigning the command into his hands, the sum of four lākhs of rupees as the price of the arms and accoutrements which had been provided at her own cost and that of her late husband. It was at last settled that she should resign the command, and set out secretly with her husband; and that Sindhia should confer the command of her troops upon one of his own officers, who would pay the son of Sombre two thousand rupees a month for life. Le Vaisseau was to be received into our territories, treated as a prisoner of war upon parole, and permitted to reside with his wife at the French settlement of Chandernagore. His last letter to Sir John Shore is dated the 30th April, 1795. His last letters describing this final arrangement are addressed to Mr. Even, a French merchant at Mirzapore, and a Mr. Bernier, both personal friends of his, and are dated 18th of May, 1795.[26]
The battalions on duty at Delhi got intimation of this correspondence, made the son of Sombre declare himself their legitimate chief, and march at their head to seize the Bēgam and her husband. Le Vaisseau heard of their approach, and urged the Bēgam to set out with him at midnight for Anūpshahr, declaring that he would rather destroy himself than submit to the personal indignities which he knew would be heaped upon him by the infuriated ruffians who were coming to seize them. The Bēgam consented, declaring that she would put an end to her life with her own hand should she be taken. She got into her palankeen with a dagger in her hand, and as he had seen her determined resolution and proud spirit before exerted on many trying occasions, he doubted not that she would do what she declared she would. He mounted his horse and rode by the side of her palankeen, with a pair of pistols in his holsters, and a good sword by his side. They had got as far as Kabrī, about three miles from Sardhana,[27] on the road to Meerut, when they found the battalions from Sardhana, who had got intimation of the flight, gaining fast upon the palankeen. Le Vaisseau asked the Bēgam whether she remained firm in her resolve to die rather than submit to the indignities that threatened them. 'Yes,' replied she, showing him the dagger firmly grasped in her right hand. He drew a pistol from his holster without saying anything, but urged on the bearers. He could have easily galloped off, and saved himself, but he would not quit his wife's side. At last the soldiers came up close behind them. The female attendants of the Bēgam began to scream; and looking in, Le Vaisseau saw the white cloth that covered the Bēgam's breast stained with blood. She had stabbed herself, but the dagger had struck against one of the bones of her chest, and she had not courage to repeat the blow. Her husband put his pistol to his temple and fired. The bail passed through his head, and he fell dead on the ground. One of the soldiers who saw him told me that he sprang at least a foot off the saddle into the air as the shot struck him. His body was treated with every kind of insult by the European officers and their men;[28] and the Bēgam was taken back into Sardhana, kept under a gun for seven days, deprived of all kinds of food, save what she got by stealth from her female servants, and subjected to all manner of insolent language.
At last the officers were advised by George Thomas, who had instigated them to this violence out of pique against the Bēgam for her preference of the Frenchman,[29] to set aside their puppet and reseat the Bēgam in the command, as the only chance of keeping the territory of Sardhana.[30] 'If', said he, 'the Bēgam should die under the torture of mind and body to which you are subjecting her, the minister will very soon resume the lands assigned for your payment, and disband a force so disorderly, and so little likely to be of any use to him or the Emperor.' A council of war was held—the Bēgam was taken out from under the gun, and reseated on the 'masnad'. A paper was drawn up by about thirty European officers, of whom only one, Monsieur Saleur, could sign his own name, swearing in the name of God and Jesus Christ,[31] that they would henceforward obey her with all their hearts and souls, and recognize no other person whomsoever as commander. They all affixed their seals to this covenant; but some of them, to show their superior learning, put their initials, or what they used as such, for some of these learned Thebans knew only two or three letters of the alphabet, which they put down, though they happened not to be their real initials. An officer on the part of Sindhia, who was to have commanded these troops, was present at this reinstallation of the Bēgam, and glad to take, as a compensation for his disappointment, the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand rupees, which the Bēgam contrived to borrow for him.
The body of poor Le Vaisseau was brought back to camp, and there lay several days unburied, and exposed to all kinds of indignities. The supposition that this was the result of a plan formed by the Bēgam to get rid of Le Vaisseau is, I believe, unfounded.[32] The Bēgam herself gave some colour of truth to the report by retaining the name of her first husband, Sombre, to the last, and never publicly or formally declaring her marriage with Le Vaisseau after his death. The troops in this mutiny pretended nothing more than a desire to vindicate the honour of their old commander Sombre, which had, they said, been compromised by the illicit intercourse between Le Vaisseau and his widow. She had not dared to declare the marriage to them lest they should mutiny on that ground, and deprive her of the command; and for the same reason she retained the name of Sombre after her restoration, and remained silent on the subject of her second marriage. The marriage was known only to a few European officers. Sir John Shore, Major Palmer, and the other gentlemen with whom Le Vaisseau corresponded. Some grave old native gentlemen who were long in her service have told me that they believed 'there really was too much of truth in the story which excited the troops to mutiny on that occasion—her too great intimacy with the gallant young Frenchman. God forgive them for saying so of a lady whose salt they had eaten for so many years'. Le Vaisseau made no mention of the marriage to Colonel McGowan; and from the manner in which he mentions it to Sir John Shore it is clear that he, or she, or both, were anxious to conceal it from the troops and from Sindhia before their departure. She stipulated in her will that her heir, Mr. Dyce, should take the name of Sombre, as if she wished to have the little episode of her second marriage forgotten.
After the death of Le Vaisseau, the command devolved on Monsieur Saleur, a Frenchman, the only respectable officer who signed the covenant; he had taken no active part in the mutiny; on the contrary, he had done all he could to prevent it; and he was at last, with George Thomas, the chief means of bringing his brother officers back to a sense of their duty. Another battalion was added to the four in 1787, and another raised in 1798 and 1802; five of the six marched under Colonel Saleur to the Deccan with Sindhia. They were in a state of mutiny the whole way, and utterly useless as auxiliaries, as Saleur himself declared in many of his letters written in French to his mistress the Bēgam. At the battle of Assaye, four of these battalions were left in charge of the Marāthā camps. One was present in the action and lost its four guns. Soon after the return of these battalions, the Bēgam entered into an alliance with the British Government; the force then consisted of these six battalions, a party of artillery served chiefly by Europeans, and two hundred horse. She had a good arsenal well stored, a foundry for cannon, both within the walls of a small fortress, built near her dwelling at Sardhana. The whole cost her about four lākhs of rupees a year; her civil establishments eighty thousand, and her household establishments and expenses about the same; total six lākhs of rupees a year. The revenues of Sardhana, and the other lands assigned at different times for the payment of the force had been at no time more than sufficient to cover these expenses; but under the protection of our Government they improved with the extension of tillage, and the improvements of the surrounding markets for produce, and she was enabled to give largely to the support of charitable institutions, and to provide handsomely for the support of her family and pensioners after her death.'[33]
Sombre's son, Zafaryāb Khān, had a daughter who was married to Colonel Dyce, who had for some time the management of the Bēgam's affairs; but he lost her favour long before her death by his violent temper and overbearing manners, and was obliged to resign the management to his son, who, on the Bēgam's death, came in for the bulk of her fortune, or about sixty lākhs of rupees. He has two sisters who were brought up by the Bēgam, one married to Captain Troup, an Englishman, and the other to Mr. Salaroli, an Italian, both very worthy men. Their wives have been handsomely provided for by the Bēgam, and by their brother, who trebled the fortunes left to them by the Bēgam.[34] She built an excellent church at Sardhana, and assigned the sum of 100,000 rupees as a fund to provide for its service and repairs; 50,000 rupees as another [fund] for the poor of the place; and 100,000 as a third, for a college in which Roman Catholic priests might be educated for the benefit of India generally. She sent to Rome 150,000 rupees to be employed as a charity fund at the discretion of the Pope; and to the Archbishop of Canterbury she sent 50,000 for the same purpose. She gave to the Bishop of Calcutta 100,000 rupees to provide teachers for the poor of the Protestant church in Calcutta. She sent to Calcutta for distribution to the poor, and for the liberation of deserving debtors, 50,000. To the Catholic missions at Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras she gave 100,000; and to that of Agra 50,000. She built a handsome chapel for the Roman Catholics at Meerut; and presented the fund for its support with a donation of 12,000; and she built a chapel for the Church Missionary at Meerut, the Reverend Mr. Richards, at a cost of 10,000, to meet the wants of the native Protestants.[35]
Among all who had opportunities of knowing her she bore the character of a kind-hearted, benevolent, and good woman; and I have conversed with men capable of judging, who had known her for more than fifty years. She had uncommon sagacity and a masculine resolution; and the Europeans and natives who were most intimate with her have told me that though a woman and of small stature, her 'ru'b' (dignity, or power of commanding personal respect) was greater than that of almost any person they had ever seen.[36] From the time she put herself under the protection of the British Government, in 1808, she by degrees adopted the European modes of social intercourse, appearing in public on an elephant, in a carriage, and occasionally on horseback with her hat and veil, and dining at table with gentlemen. She often entertained Governors-General and Commanders-in- Chief, with all their retinues, and sat with them and their staff at table, and for some years past kept an open house for the society of Meerut; but in no situation did she lose sight of her dignity. She retained to the last the grateful affections of the thousands who were supported by her bounty, while she never ceased to inspire the most profound respect in the minds of those who every day approached her, and were on the most unreserved terms of intimacy.[37]
Lord William Bentinck was an excellent judge of character; and the following letter will show how deeply his visit to that part of the country had impressed him with a sense of her extensive usefulness:
'To Her Highness the Begum Sumroo.
'My esteemed Friend,—I cannot leave India without expressing the sincere esteem I entertain for your highness's character. The benevolence of disposition and extensive charity which have endeared you to thousands, have excited in my mind sentiments of the warmest admiration; and I trust that you may yet be preserved for many years, the solace of the orphan and widow, and the sure resource of your numerous dependants. To-morrow morning I embark for England; and my prayers and best wishes attend you, and all others who, like you, exert themselves for the benefit of the people of India.
'I remain,
'With much consideration,
'Your sincere friend,
(Signed) 'M. W. BENTINCK.[38]
'Calcutta, March 17th, 1835.'
Notes:
1. The reader will observe that the lady's name is spelt Sumroo in the heading and Sombre in the text. The form Samrū, or Shamrū, transliterates the Hindustāni spelling.
2. The author means General Regholini who was in the Bēgam's service at the time of her death. (N.W.P. Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. iii, p. 295.) The church, or cathedral, was consecrated in 1822, and coat 400,000 rupees. A portrait of the General, from Sardhana, is now in the Indian Institute, Oxford, which also possesses a portrait of the Bishop.
The best account of Begum Sumroo is to be found in A Tour through the Upper Provinces of Hindustan, 1804-14, by A. D. = Ann Deane (1823). Walter Scott introduces more than one of the stories about the Begum into The Surgeon's Daughter (1827), e.g.: "But not to be interred alive under your seat, like the Circassian of whom you were jealous," said Middlemas, shuddering (vol. 48, Black's ed. of the novels, p. 382).
3. The Bēgam's benefactions are detailed post.
4. 'This remarkable woman was the daughter, by a concubine, of Asad Khān, a Musalmān of Arab decent settled in the town of Kutāna in the Meerut district. She was born about the year A.D. 1753 [see post.] On the death of her father, she and her mother became subject to ill-treatment from her half-brother, the legitimate heir, and they consequently removed to Delhi about 1760. There she entered the service of Sumru, and accompanied him through all his campaigns. Sumru, on retiring to Sardhana, found himself relieved of all the cares and troubles of war, and gave himself entirely up to a life of ease and pleasure, and so completely fell into the hands of the Bēgam that she had no difficulty in inducing him to exchange the title of mistress for that of wife.' (E. T. Atkinson in N.W.P. Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. ii, p. 95. The authorities for the history of Bēgum Samrū are very conflicting. Atkinson has examined them critically, and his account probably is the best in existence.) An anonymous pamphlet published apparently at Sardhana and sent to the editor anonymously long ago, gives the name of the Bēgam's father as 'Lutf Ali Khan, a decayed nobleman of Arabian descent' living at Kotana. Some writers state that the Bēgam was a dancing girl, and was bought by Sumroo. Her name was Zēb-un-nissa.
5. This first wife died at Sardhana during the rainy season of 1838. She must have been above one hundred years of age; and a good many of the Europeans that he buried in the Sardhana cemetery had lived above a hundred years. [W. H. S.] She was a concubine, named Bahā Bēgam. (N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. iii, p. 96.)
6. His name is spelt Reinhard on his tombstone, as in the text. It is also spelt Renard. According to some authorities, his birthplace was Trèves, not Salzburg. He is said to have been a butcher by trade, and certainly deserted from both the French and the English services.
7. A more probable explanation is that the name is a corruption of an alias, Summers, assumed by the deserter.
8. Kāsim Alī Khān is generally referred to in the histories under the name of Mīr Kāsim (Meer Cossim). Mīr Jāfir was deposed in 1760, and his son-in- law Mīr Kāsim was placed on the throne of Bengal in his stead by the English. The history of Mīr Kāsim is told in detail by Thornton in his sixth chapter, and also by Mill.
9. Probably 'Gorgīn' is a corruption of 'Gregory'. This name may be a corruption of 'Georgian'.
10. Mill observes upon these transactions: 'The conduct of the Company's servants upon this occasion furnishes one of the most remarkable instances upon record of the power of self-interest to extinguish all sense of justice and even of shame. They had hitherto insisted, contrary to all right and all precedent, that the government of the country should exempt all their goods from duty; they now insisted that it should impose duties upon all other traders, and accused it as guilty of a breach of the peace towards the English nation, because it proposed to remit them.' [W. H. S.] The quotation is from Book iv, chapter 5 (5th ed., 1858, vol. iii, p. 237).
11. The 3rd of October was the day of slaughter at Patna. The Europeans at other places in Mīr Kāsim's power were also massacred; and the total number slain, men, women, and children, amounted to about two hundred. Sumroo personally butchered about one hundred and fifty at Patna.
12. Our troops, under Sir David Ochterlony, took the fort of Makwānpur in 1815, and might in five days have been before the defenceless capital; but they were here arrested by the romantic chivalry of the Marquis of Hastings. The country had been virtually conquered; the prince, by his base treachery towards us and outrages upon others, had justly forfeited his throne; but the Governor- General, by perhaps a misplaced lenity, left it to him without any other guarantee for his future good behaviour than the recollection that he had been soundly beaten. Unfortunately he left him at the same time a sufficient quantity of fertile land below the hills to maintain the same army with which he had fought us, with better knowledge how to employ them, to keep us out on a future occasion. Between the attempt of Kāsim Alī and our attack upon Nepāl, the Gōrkhā masters of the country had, by a long series of successful aggressions upon their neighbours, rendered themselves in their own opinion and in that of their neighbours the beat soldiers of India. They have, of course, a very natural feeling of hatred against our government, which put a stop to the wild career of conquest, and wrested from their grasp all the property and all the pretty women from Kathmandū to Kashmīr. To these beautify regions they were what the invading Huns were in former days to Europe, absolute fiends. Had we even exacted a good road into their country with fortifications at the proper places, it might have checked the hopes of one day resuming the career of conquest that now keeps up the army and military spirit, to threaten us with a renewal of war whenever we are embarrassed on the plains. [W. H. S.]
The author's uneasiness concerning the attitude of Nepal was justified. During the Afghan troubles of 1838-43 the Nepalese Government was in constant communication with the enemies of the Indian Government. The late Maharāja Sir Jang Bahādur obtained power in 1846, and, after his visit to England in 1850, decided to abide by the English alliance. He did valuable service in 1857 and 1858, and the two governments have ever since maintained an unbroken, though reserved, friendship. The Gōrkhā regiments in the English service are recruited in Nepāl.
13. Aasaye (Assye, Asāi) is in the Nizām's dominions. Here, on the 23rd of September, 1803, Sir Arthur Wellesley, afterwards Duke of Wellington, with less than 5,000 men, defeated the Marāthā host of at least 32,000 men, including more than 10,000 under European leaders. Ajantā, or Ajantā Ghāt, is in the same region. (Owen, Sel. from Wellington Despatches (1880), pp. 301-9.)
14. His tombstone bears a Portuguese inscription:
'Aqui iaz Walter Reinhard, morreo aos 4 de Mayo no anno de
1778.' (N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. ii, p. 96.)
15. According to this statement she must have been born in or about 1741, not in 1753, as stated by Atkinson. If the earlier date were correct, she would have been ninety-five when she died in 1836. Higginbotham, referring to Bacon's work, says she died at the age of eighty-nine, which places her birth in 1747. According to Beale, she was aged eighty-eight lunar years when she died, on the 27th January, 1836, equivalent to about eighty-five solar years. This computation places her birth in A.D. 1751, which may be taken as the correct date. The date of her baptism is correctly stated in the text.
16. She added the name Nobilis, when she married Le Vaisseau. (N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. ii, p. 106, note.)
17. The author spells the German's name Pauly; I have followed Atkinson's spelling. The man was assassinated in 1783.
18. This circumstance indicates that the execution of the slave girls took place in 1782. (See N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. ii, p. 91.)
19. The darker aide of the Bēgam's character is shown by the story of the slave girl's murder. By some it is said that the girl's crime consisted in her having attracted the favourable notice of one of the Bēgam's husbands. Whatever may have been the offence, her barbarous mistress visited it by causing the girl to be buried alive. The time chosen for the execution was the evening, the place the tent of the Bēgam; who caused her bed to be arranged immediately over the grave, and occupied it until the morning, to prevent any attempt to rescue the miserable girl beneath. By acts like this the Bēgam inspired such terror that she was never afterwards troubled with domestic dissensions.' (N.W.P. Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. ii, p. 110.) It will be observed that this version mentions only one girl. According to Higginbotham (Men whom India has Known, 2nd ed., s.v. 'Sumroo'), this execution took place on the evening of the day on which Le Vaisseau perished in 1795. (See post.) He adds that 'it is said that this act preyed upon her conscience in after life'. This account professes to be based on Bacon's First Impressions and Studies from Nature in Hindustan, which is said to be 'the most reliable, as the author saw the Bēgam, attended and conversed with her at one of her levées, and gained all his information at her Court'. But Bacon's account of the Bēgam's history, as quoted by Higginbotham, is full of gross errors; and Sir William Sleeman may be relied on as giving the most accurate obtainable version of the horrid story. He had the beat possible opportunities, as well as a desire, to ascertain the truth.