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CHAPTER XXIV.
MOHAMMEDAN INDIA

Strictly speaking, the term, Mohammedan India, could only be applied to those frontier districts in which the Mohammedans have a preponderating influence, but the Mohammedan emperors left such conspicuous monuments of their reign in Lucknow, Delhi and Agra that it does not violate the proprieties to thus describe this section. The Mohammedans themselves have laid virtual claim to this territory by the establishment of their chief college at Aligahr, nearly equidistant from Agra and Delhi, and their claim is still further strengthened by the fact that while they have not a majority, they have a very large percentage of the population of both of the last named cities.

In approaching this section of India from the east, the tourist passes through Cawnpore, made memorable by the massacre of the British residents during the mutiny of 1857. The recollection of the mutiny is still fresh in the minds of the British officials, and numerous monuments have been reared to the bravery of the besieged garrisons.

At Calcutta one is shown a black piece of pavement which covers a part of the Black Hole of Calcutta (the rest of the hole is now covered by a building) where in 1756 one hundred and forty-six human beings were forced to spend the night and from which only twenty-three escaped alive. The hole was twenty-two by fourteen feet and only sixteen or eighteen feet in height, and the awful sufferings of those who perished there are commemorated by an obelisk which stands near by.

But the cruelty practiced at the time of the mutiny far more stirred the English heart, and as the uprising was more extensive, several cities contain memorials. Of these the most beautiful is at Cawnpore, and is called "The Angel of the Resurrection." It is made of white marble and represents an angel with hands crossed and each holding a palm. It stands upon an elevated mound in a beautiful park, and is enclosed by a stone screen. It was the gift of Lord and Lady Canning and bears the following inscription: "Sacred to the perpetual memory of a great company of Christian people, chiefly women and children, who near this spot were cruelly murdered by the followers of the rebel Nana Dhundu Pant, of Bithur, and cast, the dying with the dead, into the well below, on the 15th day of July, 1857."

There is also at Cawnpore, in another park, a stately memorial church, the inner walls of which are lined with tablets containing the names of British soldiers who lost their lives during the mutiny.

Lucknow is not far from Cawnpore, and here, too, the mutiny has left its scars and monuments. The Lucknow residency, now an ivy mantled ruin, was the scene of the great siege that lasted from the first of July, 1857, to the seventeenth of November. At the beginning there were within the walls nine hundred British troops and officers, one hundred and fifty volunteers, seven hundred native troops, six hundred women and children and seven hundred non-combatant natives; total, about three thousand. When relief came but one thousand remained. The night before the arrival of Sir Colin Campbell with reinforcements, one of the besieged, a Scotch girl, dreamed of the coming of relief, and her dream gave rise to the song so familiar a generation ago, "The Campbells Are Coming."⁵

There are in Lucknow a number of tombs, mosques and buildings that gave us our first glimpse of the architecture of the Mogul emperors – great domes, gigantic gateways and graceful minarets, stately columns and vaulted galleries. The most interesting of the buildings, Imambarah, built by Asaf-ud-daulah, contains a great hall more than a hundred and fifty feet long and about fifty feet in breadth and height. On one side of the court is a private mosque and on the other a group of apartments built around a well as a protection against the summer's heat. From the top of the Imambarah one obtains an excellent view of Lucknow and its surroundings.

At Aligarh I found a great educational institution which must be taken into consideration in estimating the future of Mohammedanism in India. It was founded in 1877, largely through the influence and liberality of Sir Syed Ahmed, who until his death in 1898 devoted himself entirely to its development. He was a large-minded man and full of zeal for the enlightenment of his co-religionists. He recognized the low intellectual standard of the Mohammedan Indians, and the controlling purpose of his life was to assist in their improvement. At first, his educational enterprise met with a cold reception at the hands of the leaders of his church. Emissaries were even sent from Mecca to assassinate him, but, nothing daunted, he pursued his plans until the church authorities recognized the importance of the school.

As the Mohammedans are numerically weaker than the Hindus and unable to cope with them in intellectual contests, Sir Syed opposed the national congress proposition which the Hindus have long urged and the Aligarh school became conspicuous for its pro-British leanings on this question. This may account in part for the interest taken in it by the colonial government. (The Central Hindu College at Benares refuses government aid and is, therefore, more independent.) But since the death of Sir Syed the congress idea is growing among the students of Aligarh.

Aligarh College now has an enrollment of seven hundred and four, more than a hundred of whom are law students. It has an English Cambridge graduate for president and several English professors. I might add that England, like America, has sent many teachers to India, and that they are engaged in work, the importance of which can not be overestimated. I had the pleasure of meeting those connected with St. John's College at Agra as well as those at Aligarh.

Delhi is one of India's most ancient cities. When the Aryans came down from the northwest and conquered the aboriginal tribes, they founded a city which they called Indrapat, just south of the present site of Delhi. How old it is no one knows, for the names of its founders have been forgotten, its records, if it had any, have been destroyed, and its streets are winding footpaths which one follows with difficulty. Every wave of invasion that has swept down from the north or west has passed over Indrapat, and its stones would tell a thrilling story if they could but speak. The city has been rebuilt again and again, the last time about three hundred years ago, but it has little to exhibit now but its antiquity. There is a massive city wall with huge gates, there are tumble-down buildings occupied by a few people and some goats, and there is a stone library building erected hundreds of years before Carnegie was born, but the glory of Indrapat has departed. Not far from Indrapat is the splendid tomb of Humayun and another of the Asoka pillars.

Eleven miles south of the present Delhi is what is called old Delhi (Delhi seems to have had a movable site) immortalized by the famous Kutab Minar, or tower, erected near the close of the twelfth century by one of the earliest Mohammedan conquerors after the capture of Delhi. The tower – a tower of victory – is two hundred and thirty-eight feet in height, forty-seven feet in diameter at the base and nine at the top. It has been described as one of the architectural wonders of the world, and it certainly gives one a profound respect for the mind that planned it. There are so many mausoleums and mosques scattered over the plains around Delhi that space forbids particular description.

Within a century after the death of Mohammed the Moslems made an attack upon India, but it was five hundred years later before they became masters of the great peninsula. Then for five hundred more it was the scene of conflict between rival Moslems until Timur (Tamerlan, the Tartar) plundered it and drenched it with blood. In all these wars Delhi was the strategic point, the natural capital of the north. After Timur, came his descendant of the sixth generation, Babar, who consolidated the Indian empire by bravery, tact and wisdom. He is the first of the great Mogul rulers, but he was so occupied with the extension of his sovereignty that he was compelled to leave the development of the empire to his descendants. His grandson, Akbar, built three great forts, one at Allahabad, to which reference has been made in another article, another at Agra, which he made his capital, and the third at Atok, still farther north. He also built Fatepur Sikri about twenty miles from Agra. This was to be his home, and here on a sandstone ridge overlooking the plain he reared a group of buildings which even now, though deserted for two centuries, attracts tourists from all over the world. While the material employed is red sandstone, the buildings are models of beauty as well as strength, and the minute and elaborate carvings are masterpieces in their line.

The fort built by Akbar at Agra, while not proof against modern missiles, was impregnable in its day and still bears testimony to the constructive genius of the second of the Moguls.

Six miles from Agra at Sikandra stands the magnificent tomb which Akbar built and where he rests. It is constructed of red sandstone and is part Buddhist and part Saracenic in design. The base is three hundred and twenty feet square and its four retreating galleries terminate in a roofless court of white marble in which stands a marble casket surrounded by screens of marble most exquisitely carved. Special interest is felt in the tomb because one of its ornaments was the famous Kohinoor diamond, the largest in the world. It had come down to Akbar from his grandfather, who in turn secured it from the Rajputs. The diamond was carried away by Persian conquerors, and later was returned to India only to be transferred to Queen Victoria.

But if Akbar surpassed his grandfather as a builder, he was in turn surpassed by his grandson, Shah Jehan. This emperor, the last of the three great Moguls, who began his career by murdering two brothers and two cousins whose rivalry he feared, and who closed his career a prisoner of his rebellious son, has linked his name with some of the most beautiful structures ever conceived by the mind of man. At Agra within the walls of his grandfather's fort, he built the Pearl Mosque which has been described as "the purest, loveliest house of prayer in existence." It is constructed of milk white marble and combines strength, simplicity and grace. He also built the Gem Mosque at Delhi.

The fort at Delhi was built by Shah Jehan, and if its resemblance to the fort at Agra deprives him of credit for originality, that argument can not be raised against the palace within, for this is unrivaled among palaces. The marble baths, the jeweled bed chambers, the pillared halls, the graceful porticoes – all these abound in rich profusion. But it was upon the great hall of Private Audience that he lavished taste and wealth. The floor is of polished marble, the pillars and the arched ceiling of polished marble inlaid with precious stones, so set as to form figures and flowers. Each square inch of it speaks of patient toil and skill, and the whole blends harmoniously. For this magnificent audience room he designed a throne fit for the chamber in which it stood. "It was called the peacock throne because it was guarded by two peacocks with expanded tails ornamented with jewels that reproduced the natural colors of the bird. The throne itself was made of gold, inlaid with diamonds, rubies and emeralds. Over it was a canopy of gold festooned with pearls supported by twelve pillars, all emblazoned with gems. On either side stood the Oriental emblem of royalty, an umbrella, each handle eight feet high and of solid gold, studded with diamonds, the covers being of crimson velvet crusted and fringed with magnificent pearls." Thus it was described. It was too tempting a prize for greedy conquerors to leave undisturbed, and was carried off some centuries ago by a Persian, Nadir Shah. Shah Jehan, after contemplating this audience chamber and throne, had inscribed upon the wall in Persian characters a verse which has been freely translated to read:

 
"If on earth be an Eden of bliss,
It is this, it is this, it is this."
 

And yet, in view of his sad fate there seems as much irony in the lines as there was in the delicately poised scales of justice which he had inlaid on one of the walls of his palace after he had put his relatives out of the way.

But of all the works of art that can be traced to his genius, nothing compares with the tomb, the Taj Mahal, which he reared in honor of the best-loved of his wives, Numtaj Mahal, "the chosen of the palace." This building, unique among buildings and alone in its class, has been described so often that I know not how to speak of it without employing language already hackneyed. When I was a student at college I heard a lecturer describe this wonderful tomb, and it was one of the objective points in our visit to India. Since I first heard of it I had read so much of it and had received such glowing accounts from those who had seen it, that I feared lest the expectations aroused might be disappointed. We reached Agra toward midnight, and, as the moon was waning, drove at once to the Taj that we might see it under the most favorable conditions, for in the opinion of many it is most beautiful by moonlight. There is something fascinating in the view which it thus presents, and we feasted our eyes upon it. Shrouded in the mellow light, the veins of the marble and the stains of more than two and a half centuries are invisible, and it stands forth like an apparition. We visited it again in the daytime, and yet again, and found that the sunlight increased rather than diminished its grandeur. I am bringing an alabaster miniature home with me, but I am conscious that the Taj must be seen full size and silhouetted against the sky to be appreciated.

Imagine a garden with flowers and lawn, walks and marble water basins and fountains; in this garden build a platform of white marble eighteen feet high and three hundred feet square, with an ornamented minaret one hundred and thirty-seven feet high at each corner; in the center of this platform rear a building one hundred and eighty feet square and a hundred feet high, with its corners beveled off and, like the sides, recessed into bays; surmount it with a large central dome and four smaller ones; cover it inside and out with inlaid work of many colored marbles and carvings of amazing delicacy; beneath the central dome place two marble cenotaphs, inlaid with precious stones, the tombs of Shah Jehan and his wife, and enclose them in exquisitely carved marble screens – imagine all this, if you can, and then your conception of this world-famed structure will fall far below the Taj Mahal itself. It is, indeed, "a dream in marble." And yet, when one looks upon it and then surveys the poverty and ignorance of the women who live within its shadow, he is tempted to ask whether the builder of the Taj might not have honored his wife more had the six million dollars invested in this tomb been expended on the elevation of womanhood. The contrast between this artistic pile and the miserable tenements of the people about it robs the structure of half its charms.

CHAPTER XXV.
WESTERN INDIA

There is so much of interest in India that I find it difficult to condense all that I desire to say into the space which it seems proper to devote to this country. In speaking of the various cities, I have been compelled to omit reference to the numerous industries for which India is famed. Long before the European set foot upon the soil the artisans had won renown in weaving, in carving and in brass. It was, in fact, the very wealth of Indus that attracted the attention of the western world and turned the prows of merchant vessels toward the Orient. While India can complain that some of her arts have been lost since she has been under the tutelage of foreigners, enough remains to make every tourist a collector, to a greater or less extent, of attractive souvenirs.

Benares is the center of the plain brass manufacture, and her bazaars are full of vases, trays, candlesticks, bowls, etc. Lucknow is noted for her silversmiths, but her products do not command so high a price as those of southern India. Delhi leads in ivory and wood carving, and one can find here the best specimens of this kind of work. Several of the addresses presented to the Prince of Wales upon his recent visit were encased in ivory caskets richly carved and studded with gems. Painting on ivory is also carried to a high state of perfection here, and sandalwood boxes can be found in all the stores.

At Agra one finds rugs woven in Turkish and Persian, as well as in original, designs. Agra is also renowned for its inlaid work, many of the designs of the Taj being copied. The Tag itself is reproduced in miniatures at prices ranging from one dollar up into the hundreds.

In all the cities of upper India, Kashmir shawls may be secured, Kashmir itself being far north of the line of travel. These shawls are of goat's hair, and some of them are so delicate that though two yards square, they can be drawn through a finger ring.

At Jaipore the chief industries which attract the attention of foreigners are enameling on gold and brass, the latter being the best known. Few who visit the bazaars can resist the temptation to carry away some samples of this ware, so graceful are the vessels and so skillful is the workmanship.

Jaipore, the first of the western cities, and the only one of the native states that we visited, is deserving of some notice, partly because it gives evidence of considerable advancement and partly because the government is administered entirely by native officials. The Maharaja is one of the most distinguished of native princes and a descendant of the famous Rajput line of kings. He lives in oriental style, has a number of wives, and elephants, camels and horses galore. He is an orthodox Hindu of the strictest type and drinks no water but the water of the Ganges. When he went to England to attend the coronation, he chartered a ship, took his retinue with him and carried Ganges water enough to last until his return. He is very loyal to the British government and in return he is permitted to exercise over his subjects a power as absolute as the czar ever claimed. There is an English resident at his capital, but his council is composed of Indians, his judges are Indians, his collectors are Indians, his school teachers are Indians, and he has an Indian army. I had the pleasure of meeting one of the council and the head of the school system of the state, and found them men of fine appearance and high culture. The illiteracy in his state compares favorably with that in the states under British administration, and the graduates from the Maharaja's college compete successfully in the examinations with the graduates from other colleges. They have at Jaipore an art school in which all kinds of manual training are taught, and the sale-room of this school gives accurate information as to the capacity of the natives for industrial development. We found here the only native pottery of merit that we noticed in the country.

The city of Jaipore was laid out in 1728 and is one of the most attractive cities in India. The main streets are a hundred and ten feet wide, the buildings are Oriental in style, most of them two stories in height – some three – and all are painted the same shade of pink, with white trimmings and green shutters. The entire city is supplied with water and the streets are lighted by gas. All in all, Jaipore makes a favorable impression upon the visitor.

Some six miles away is the ancient city of Amber, the capital of the state until Jaipore was established. It is reached by a ride on elephant back, the only ride of this kind that we have yet had. There is a beautiful palace at Amber which gives some idea of the luxury in which the Indian rulers lived. We returned from this trip late in the evening when the peacocks were going to roost, and nearly every tree contained one or more of these gaudy-plumaged fowls. These were apparently wild, and their numbers and beauty recalled the fact that the peacock is India's royal bird; and it is not an inappropriate symbol of the pomp and magnificence of the Oriental kings. I might digress here to say that the respect for life taught in the Hindu scriptures has filled India to excess with useless birds and animals. The crows and kites are a nuisance. It is no uncommon thing to see a vendor of cakes and sweetmeats bearing his basket on his head and waving a stick above it to scare off the birds. Sometimes an attendant follows the vendor and protects him from the birds, but in spite of all precautions they get their toll. The crows often come to the doors and windows of the hotels and inquire whether you have any food to spare, and sparrows and other small birds occasionally glean crumbs from the table. At Jaipore we saw myriads of pigeons being fed in the streets, and monkeys – they are everywhere. The jungles of the tropical countries are not more thronged with them than the road sides of some parts of India. About half way between Jaipore and Bombay they were especially numerous, and as we rode along on the train we saw them singly, in groups and in mass meetings. Here, too, we saw herds of antelope, scarcely frightened by the train. Attention has frequently been called to the fact that the Hindu's aversion to meat has a bearing upon the famine question, millions of cattle dying of starvation which, if killed earlier, might have saved thousands of human beings from starving.

A night's ride from Jaipore brought us to Abu Road, from which by pony carts, called tongas, we ascended to Mt. Abu, sixteen miles away. The journey is made over a well kept mountain road which climbs to a height of about five thousand feet. While this mountain resort draws many Europeans because of its altitude, two famous Jain temples are the lodestone that attracts tourists. These temples were built by merchant princes in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the fact that one of them cost more than five millions of dollars, shows that trade had reached a commanding position in those days. One of the temples was built by two brothers and the guide tells of a tradition that these brothers, tiring of their money, decided to bury it, but on digging in the earth they found more, and considering it a gift from the gods, built this temple. The buildings are not large, and seen from the outside are disappointing, but once within one marvels at the richness of the carving. The pillars and vaulted ceilings are of the purest white marble, brought from no one knows where, and every inch of the surface is covered with figures of gods, human beings, animals, fowls and flowers. The artists utilized the things with which the people were most familiar. Here a frieze of elephant heads, the trunks joined, there a frieze of geese, another of tigers or monkeys. In one dome maidens danced; in another warriors fought; in a third flowers bloomed. The variety is endless and the workmanship perfect. While the panels and friezes and ceilings differ so much from each other, the arrangement is such that they do not seem incongruous, but form a harmonious whole. The Mohammedan conquerors mutilated some of the figures because of their hatred of idolatry, and when, under Lord Curzon's administration, the work of restoration was begun, it was impossible to find marble like the original.

Around these temples are numerous shrines, each containing a seated figure very much resembling Buddha. The Jains are a sect of the Hindus, and their temples are renowned for their beauty. This temple is visited by a large number of pilgrims every year, some of whom were chanting their prayers while we were there.

Another night's ride and we were in Bombay, and what a luxury to find a hotel constructed upon the American plan. The Taj Mahal is the finest hotel in the Orient and would be a credit to any city in our country. It was built by Mr. Tata, a rich Parsee, who planned it more from public than from private considerations.

We found the plague increasing in virulence, three hundred having died in the city the day before we arrived. Bombay has suffered terribly from this scourge, twenty-four per cent having perished from it in the last few days. Two years ago the American consul, Hon. William T. Fee, lost his daughter and came near losing his wife by this dread disease, and two of the European consuls have recently had to leave their homes because of deaths among their native servants. With so many dying in a single city (and ten thousand a week in the entire country), India would seem an unsafe place to visit, and yet one would not know except for the newspapers that an epidemic was raging, so little does it affect business or social life. There is now in use a system of inoculation which promises to materially lessen the mortality from this disease. A serum is prepared in which the venom of serpents is the chief ingredient, and this hypodermically administered has been found almost a sure preventive. While the physicians are employing this remedy, the rat-catchers are also busy, and about a thousand rodents are captured per day, it having been demonstrated that the rat not only spreads the disease, but carries a flea that imparts it by its bite.

Bombay is the Manchester of India, and the smokestacks of its many cotton factories give to the city a very business like appearance. These mills are largely owned by Indians and operated by Indian capital.

On an island near Bombay is one of the most frequented of the rock-hewn temples, called the Elephanta Caves. This temple is chiseled out of the solid rock, great pillars being left to support the roof. It is about one hundred and thirty feet square by seventeen in height and contains a number of figures of heroic size. These figures are carved from the walls and represent various gods and demons. The Portuguese Christians, several centuries ago, showed their contempt for these gods of stone by firing their cannon into the temple. While some of the pillars were battered down and some of the carvings mutilated, enough now remains to show the impressiveness of this ancient place of worship.

No one can visit Bombay without becoming interested in a religious sect, the members of which are known as Parsees. They are few in number, probably not exceeding a hundred thousand in the world, more than half of whom live in or near Bombay. Theirs is the religion of Zoroaster, and they contest with the Hebrews the honor of being the first believers in one God. Their sacred books, the Zend-Avesta, are very ancient, and the origin of their religion is placed anywhere from seven hundred B. C. to three thousand B. C. They not only believe in one God, but they believe in immortality and claim to have impressed their ideas upon the Israelites when the latter were in bondage in Babylon. The Parsees see in the world, as well as in the human being, a continuing conflict between right and wrong, and they regulate their conduct by a high ethical system. When the Moslems swept over Persia and made it one of the stars in Islam's crown, a band of Parsees preferred migration to conversion, and, like our pilgrim fathers, sought a home in a new country. In Bombay they have preserved their identity for some nine centuries and have made themselves a potent influence in every department of the city's activity. They have their marriage ceremony, their fire temples and their funeral rites. They have sometimes been called fire worshipers and sun worshipers, but they simply regard fire as the purest thing known and therefore accept it as a symbol of the invisible god. Fire is kept burning in their temples, and when a new temple is to be dedicated, fire is collected from the homes of persons engaged in the principal industries and occupations, and this mingled fire is used to kindle another fire and this new fire another until the ninth fire is lighted, and this becomes the altar fire. Each fire is kindled without coming in contact with the former one.

The Parsees have a peculiar form of burial, which has come down from prehistoric times. On Malabar Hill in the suburbs of Bombay, overlooking the sea, in the midst of a beautiful garden, are their Towers of Silence. These are large circular buildings twenty-five or thirty feet high and without a roof. Within the wall is a circular platform sloping downward to a well in the center. When a Parsee dies he is prepared for burial and borne to this garden. After the last rites have been performed and the relatives and friends have taken their farewell, the body is carried within the tower by men appointed for the purpose and placed naked upon this platform. As soon as the corpse bearers depart, the waiting vultures (of which several hundred make their home in the garden) swoop down upon it and do not rise until the bones are bare. The skeletons, sun-bleached, are washed by the rains into the pit in the center, where rich and poor, conspicuous and obscure, mingle their dust together. Every sanitary precaution is taken and a fixed rate of five rupees is charged to all alike, the money being advanced from a burial fund where the family can not afford to bear the expense.

The Parsees of Bombay, though they wear a dress peculiar to themselves, are of all the Indians most like the Europeans and Americans. We were in one Parsee home, and the furniture, the pictures and the library were such as would be found in the average home in our country. Statistics show that the percentage of education among the Parsees is very much higher than among any other class of inhabitants, and the women share the educational advantages with the men.

The well-to-do Parsees have been conspicuous in philanthropy, endowing colleges, hospitals and other charities. While they are counted among the staunchest friends of British rule, they are also among the most intelligent critics of the government's faults. Sir Pherosha M. Mehta, the leading Parsee orator, is prominent in the national congress movement. At a reception given at the hotel, and on other occasions, we had an opportunity to meet a number of the Parsees, men and women, priests and laymen, and found them abreast with the times and alive to the problems with which the world is wrestling to-day.