Kitabı oku: «Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official», sayfa 22

The man who passed off his bad coin at Datiyā, passed off more at Dhōlpur while my advanced people were coming in, pretending that he wanted things for me, and was in a great hurry to be ready with them at my tents by the time I came up. The bad rupees were brought to a native officer of my guard, who went with the shopkeepers in search of the knave, but he could nowhere be found. The gates of the town were shut up all night at my suggestion, and in the morning every lodging-house in the town was searched for him in vain—he had gone on. I had left some sharp men behind me, expecting that he would endeavour to pass off his bad money immediately after my departure; but in expectation of this he was now evidently keeping a little in advance of me. I sent on some men with the shopkeepers whom he had cheated to our next stage, in the hope of overtaking him; but he had left the place before they arrived without passing any of his bad coin, and gone on to Agra. The shopkeepers could not be persuaded to go any further after him, for, if they caught him, they should, they said, have infinite trouble in prosecuting him in our courts, without any chance of recovering from him what they had lost.

On the 29th, we remained at Dhōlpur to receive and return the visits of the young Rājā, or, as he is called, the young Rānā, a lad of about fifteen years of age, very plain, and very dull. He came about ten in the forenoon with a very respectable and well-dressed retinue, and a tolerable show of elephants and horses. The uniforms of his guards were made after those of our own soldiers, and did not please me half so much as those of the Datiyā guards, who were permitted to consult their own tastes; and the music of the drums and fifes seemed to me infinitely inferior to that of the mounted minstrels of my old friend Parīchhit.⁵⁶⁰ The lad had with him about a dozen old public servants entitled to chairs, some of whom had served his father above thirty years; while the ancestors of others had served his grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and I could not help telling the lad in their presence that 'these were the greatest ornament of a prince's throne and the best signs and pledges of a good government'. They were all evidently much pleased at the compliment, and I thought they deserved to be pleased, from the good character they bore among the peasantry of the country. I mentioned that I had understood the boatmen of the Chambal at Dhōlpur never caught or ate fish. The lad seemed embarrassed, and the minister took upon himself to reply that 'there was no market for it, since the Hindoos of Dhōlpur never ate fish, and the Muhammadans had all disappeared'. I asked the lad whether he was fond of hunting. He seemed again confounded, and the minister said that 'his highness never either hunted or fished, as people of his caste were prohibited from destroying life'. 'And yet', said I, 'they have often showed themselves good soldiers in battle.' They were all pleased again, and said that they were not prohibited from killing tigers; but that there was no jungle of any kind near Dhōlpur, and, consequently, no tigers to be found. The Jāts are descendants of the Getae, and were people of very low caste, or rather of no caste at all, among the Hindoos, and they are now trying to raise themselves by abstaining from killing and eating animals.⁵⁶¹ Among Hindoos this is everything; a man of low caste is 'sab kuchh khātā', sticks at nothing in the way of eating; and a man of high caste is a man who abstains from eating anything but vegetable or farinaceous food; if, at the same time, he abstains from using in his cook-room all woods but one, and has that one washed before he uses it, he is canonized.⁵⁶² Having attained to military renown and territorial dominion in the usual way by robbery, the Jāts naturally enough seek the distinction of high caste to enable them the better to enjoy their position in society.

It had been stipulated that I should walk to the bottom of the steps to receive the Rānā, as is the usage on such occasions, and carpets were accordingly spread thus far. Here he got out of his chair, and I led him into the large room of the bungalow, which we occupied during our stay, followed by all his and my attendants. The bungalow had been built by the former Resident at Gwālior, the Honourable R. Cavendish, for his residence during the latter part of the rains, when Gwālior is considered to be unhealthy. At his departure the Rānā purchased this bungalow for the use of European gentlemen and ladies passing through his capital.

In the afternoon, about four o'clock, I went to return his visit in a small palace not yet finished, a pretty piece of miniature fortification, surrounded by what they call their 'chhāonī', or cantonments. The streets are good, and the buildings neat and substantial; but there is nothing to strike or particularly interest the stranger. The interview passed off without anything remarkable; and I was more than ever pleased with the people by whom this young chief is surrounded. Indeed, I had much reason to be pleased with the manners of all the people on this side of the Chambal. They are those of a people well pleased to see English gentlemen among them, and anxious to make themselves useful and agreeable to us. They know that their chief is indebted to the British Government for all the country he has, and that he would be swallowed up by Sindhia's greedy army, were not the sevenfold shield of the Honourable Company spread over him. His establishments, civil and military, like those of the Bundēlkhand chiefs, are raised from the peasantry and yeomanry or the country; who all, in consequence, feel an interest in the prosperity and independent respectability of their chief. On the Gwālior side, the members of all the public establishments know and feel that it is we who interpose and prevent their master from swallowing up all his neighbours, and thereby having increased means of promoting their interest and that of their friends; and they detest us all most cordially in consequence. The peasantry of the Gwālior territory seem to consider their own government as a kind of minotaur, which they would be glad to see destroyed, no matter how or by whom; since it gives no lucrative or honourable employment to any of their members, so as to interest either their pride or their affections; nor throws back among them for purposes of local advantage any of the produce of their land and labour which it exacts. It is worthy of remark that, though the Dhōlpur chief is peculiarly the creature of the British Government, and indebted to it for all he has or ever will have, and though he has never had anything, and never can have, or can hope to have, anything from the poor pageant of the house of Tīmūr, who now sits upon the throne of Delhi;⁵⁶³ yet, on his seal of office he declares himself to be the slave and creature of that imperial 'warrior for the faith of Islam'. As he abstains from eating the good fish of the river Chambal to enhance his claim to caste among Hindoos, so he abstains from acknowledging his deep debt of gratitude to the Honourable Company, or the British Government, with a view to give the rust of age to his rank and title. To acknowledge himself a creature of the British Government were to acknowledge that he was a man of yesterday; to acknowledge himself the slave of the Emperor is to claim for his poor veins 'the blood of a line of kings'. The petty chiefs of Bundēlkhand, who are in the same manner especially dependent on the British Government, do the same thing.

At Dhōlpur, there are some noble old mosques and mausoleums built three hundred years ago, in the reign of the Emperor Humāyūn, by some great officers of his government, whose remains still rest undisturbed among them, though the names of their families have been for many ages forgotten, and no men of their creed now live near to demand for them the respect of the living. These tombs are all elaborately built and worked out of the fine freestone of the country and the trellis-work upon some of their stone screens is still as beautiful as when first made. There are Persian and Arabic inscriptions upon all of them, and I found from them that one of the mosques had been built by the Emperor Shāh Jahān in A.D. 1634,⁵⁶⁴ when he little dreamed that his three sons would here meet to fight the great fight for the throne while he yet sat upon it.⁵⁶⁵

CHAPTER 51

Influence of Electricity on Vegetation—Agra and its Buildings

On the 30th and 31st,⁵⁶⁶ we went twenty-four miles over a dry plain, with a sandy soil covered with excellent crops where irrigated, and a very poor one where not. We met several long strings of camels carrying grain from Agra to Gwālior. A single man takes charge of twenty or thirty, holding the bridle of the first, and walking on before its nose. The bridles of all the rest are tied one after the other to the saddles of those immediately preceding them, and all move along after the leader in single file. Water must tend to attract and to impart to vegetables a good deal of electricity and other vivifying powers that would otherwise he dormant in the earth at a distance. The mere circumstance of moistening the earth from within reach of the roots would not be sufficient to account for the vast difference between the crops of fields that are irrigated, and those that are not. One day, in the middle of the season of the rains, I asked my gardener, while walking with him over my grounds, how it was that some of the fine clusters of bamboos had not yet begun to throw out their shoots. 'We have not yet had a thunderstorm, sir,' replied the gardener. 'What in the name of God has the thunderstorm to do with the shooting of the bamboos?' asked I in amazement. 'I don't know, sir,' said he, 'but certain it is that no bamboos begin to throw out their shoots well till we get a good deal of thunder and lightning.' The thunder and lightning came, and the bamboo shoots soon followed in abundance. It might have been a mere coincidence; or the tall bamboo may bring down from the passing clouds, and convey to the roots, the electric fluid they require for nourishment, or for conductors of nourishment.⁵⁶⁷

In the Isle of France,⁵⁶⁸ people have a notion that the mushrooms always come up best after a thunderstorm. Electricity has certainly much more to do in the business of the world than we are yet aware of, in the animal, mineral, and vegetable developments.⁵⁶⁹

At our ground this day, I met a very respectable and intelligent native revenue officer who had been employed to settle some boundary disputes between the yeomen of our territory and those of the adjoining territory of Dhōlpur.

'The Honourable Company's rights and those of its yeomen must', said he, 'be inevitably sacrificed in all such cases; for the Dhōlpur chief, or his minister, says to all their witnesses, "You are, of course, expected to speak the truth regarding the land in dispute; but, by the sacred stream of the Ganges, if you speak so as to lose this estate one inch of it, you lose both your ears"—and most assuredly would they lose them,' continued he, 'if they were not to swear most resolutely that all the land in question belonged to Dhōlpur. Had I the same power to cut off the ears of witnesses on our side, we should meet on equal terms. Were I to threaten to cut them off, they would laugh in my face.' There was much truth in what the poor man said, for the Dhōlpur witnesses always make it appear that the claims of their yeomen are just and moderate, and a salutary dread of losing their ears operates, no doubt, very strongly. The threatened punishment of the prince is quick, while that of the gods, however just, is certainly very slow—

Ut sit magna, tamen certe lenta ira deorum est

On the 1st of January, 1836, we went on sixteen miles to Agra, and, when within about six miles of the city, the dome and minarets of the Tāj opened upon us from behind a small grove of fruit- trees, close by us on the side of the road. The morning was not clear, but it was a good one for a first sight of this building, which appeared larger through the dusty haze than it would have done through a clear sky. For five-and-twenty years of my life had I been looking forward to the sight now before me. Of no building on earth had I heard so much as of this, which contains the remains of the Emperor Shāh Jahān and his wife, the father and mother of the children whose struggles for dominion have been already described. We had ordered our tents to be pitched in the gardens of this splendid mausoleum, that we might have our fill of the enjoyment which everybody seemed to derive from it; and we reached them about eight o'clock. I went over the whole building before I entered my tent, and, from the first sight of the dome and minarets on the distant horizon to the last glance back from my tent-ropes to the magnificent gateway that forms the entrance from our camp to the quadrangle in which they stand, I can truly say that everything surpassed my expectations. I at first thought the dome formed too large a portion of the whole building; that its neck was too long and too much exposed; and that the minarets were too plain in their design; but, after going repeatedly over every part, and examining the tout ensemble from all possible positions, and in all possible lights, from that of the full moon at midnight in a cloudless sky to that of the noonday sun, the mind seemed to repose in the calm persuasion that there was an entire harmony of parts, a faultless congregation of architectural beauties, on which it could dwell for ever without fatigue.

After my quarter of a century of anticipated pleasure, I went on from part to part in the expectation that I must by and by come to something that would disappoint me; but no, the emotion which one feels at first is never impaired; on the contrary, it goes on improving from the first coup d'œil of the dome in the distance to the minute inspection of the last flower upon the screen round the tomb. One returns and returns to it with undiminished pleasure; and though at every return one's attention to the smaller parts becomes less and less, the pleasure which he derives from the contemplation of the greater, and of the whole collectively, seems to increase; and he leaves with a feeling of regret that he could not have it all his life within his reach, and of assurance that the image of what he has seen can never be obliterated from his mind 'while memory holds her seat'. I felt that it was to me in architecture what Kemble and his sister, Mrs. Siddons, had been to me a quarter of a century before in acting—something that must stand alone—something that I should never cease to see clearly in my mind's eye, and yet never be able clearly to describe to others.⁵⁷⁰

The Emperor and his Queen he buried side by side in a vault beneath the building, to which we descend by a flight of steps. Their remains are covered by two slabs of marble; and directly over these slabs, upon the floor above, in the great centre room under the dome, stand two other slabs, or cenotaphs, of the same marble exquisitely worked in mosaic. Upon that of the Queen, amid wreaths of flowers, are worked in black letters passages from the Korān, one of which, at the end facing the entrance, terminates with 'And defend us from the tribe of unbelievers'; that very tribe which is now gathered from all quarters of the civilized world to admire the splendour of the tomb which was raised to perpetuate her name.⁵⁷¹ On the slab over her husband there are no passages from the Korān—merely mosaic work of flowers with his name and the date of his death.⁵⁷² I asked some of the learned Muhammadan attendants the cause of this difference, and was told that Shāh Jahān had himself designed the slab over his wife, and saw no harm in inscribing the words of God upon it; but that the slab over himself was designed by his more pious son, Aurangzēb, who did not think it right to place these holy words upon a stone which the foot of man might some day touch, though that stone covered the remains of his own father. Such was this 'man of prayers', this 'Namāzī' (as Dara called him), to the last. He knew mankind well, and, above all, that part of them which he was called upon to govern, and which he governed for forty years with so much ability.⁵⁷³

The slab over the Queen occupies the centre of the apartments above and in the vault below, and that over her husband lies on the left as we enter. At one end of the slab in the vault her name is inwrought, 'Mumtāz-i-mahal Bānū Bēgam', the ornament of the palace, Bānū Bēgam, and the date of her death, 1631. That of her husband and the date of his death, 1666, are inwrought upon the other.⁵⁷⁴

She died in giving birth to a daughter, who is said to have been heard crying in the womb by herself and her other daughters. She sent for the Emperor, and told him that she believed no mother had ever been known to survive the birth of a child so heard, and that she felt her end was near. She had, she said, only two requests to make; first, that he would not marry again after her death, and get children to contend with hers for his favour and dominions; and, secondly, that he would build for her the tomb with which he had promised to perpetuate her name. She died in giving birth to the child, as might have been expected when the Emperor, in his anxiety, called all the midwives of the city, and all his secretaries of state and privy counsellors to prescribe for her. Both her dying requests were granted. Her tomb was commenced upon immediately. No woman ever pretended to supply her place in the palace; nor had Shāh Jahān, that we know of, children by any other.⁵⁷⁵ Tavernier saw this building completed and finished; and tells us that it occupied twenty thousand men for twenty-two years.⁵⁷⁶ The mausoleum itself and all the buildings that appertain to it cost 3,17,48,026—three karōr, seventeen lākhs, forty-eight thousand and twenty-six rupees, or £3,174,802 sterling;—three million one hundred and seventy-four thousand eight hundred and two!⁵⁷⁷ I asked my wife, when she had gone over it, what she thought of the building. 'I cannot', said she, 'tell you what I think, for I know not how to criticize such a building, but I can tell you what I feel. I would die to-morrow to have such another over me.' This is what many a lady has felt, no doubt.

The building stands upon the north side of a large quadrangle, looking down into the clear blue stream of the river Jumna, while the other three sides are enclosed with a high wall of red sandstone.⁵⁷⁸ The entrance to this quadrangle is through a magnificent gateway in the south side opposite the tomb; and on the other two sides are very beautiful mosques facing inwards, and corresponding exactly with each other in size, design, and execution. That on the left, or west, side is the only one that can be used as a mosque or church; because the faces of the audience, and those of all men at their prayers, must be turned towards the tomb of their prophet to the west. The pulpit is always against the dead wall at the back, and the audience face towards it, standing with their backs to the open front of the building. The church on the east side is used for the accommodation of visitors, or for any secular purpose, and was built merely as a 'jawāb' (answer) to the real one.⁵⁷⁹ The whole area is laid out in square parterres, planted with flowers and shrubs in the centre, and with fine trees, chiefly the cypress, all round the borders, forming an avenue to every road. These roads are all paved with slabs of freestone, and have, running along the centre, a basin, with a row of jets d'eau in the middle from one extremity to the other. These are made to play almost every evening, when the gardens are much frequented by the European gentlemen and ladies of the station, and by natives of all religions and sects. The quadrangle is from east to west nine hundred and sixty-four feet, and from north to south three hundred and twenty-nine.⁵⁸⁰

The mausoleum itself, the terrace upon which it stands, and the minarets, are all formed of the finest white marble, inlaid with precious stones. The wall around the quadrangle, including the river face of the terrace, is made of red sandstone, with cupolas and pillars of the same white marble. The insides of the churches and apartments in and upon the walls are all lined with marble or with stucco work that looks like marble; but, on the outside, the red sandstone resembles uncovered bricks. The dazzling white marble of the mausoleum itself rising over the red wall is apt, at first sight, to make a disagreeable impression, from the idea of a whitewashed head to an unfinished building; but this impression is very soon removed, and tends, perhaps, to improve that which is afterwards received from a nearer inspection. The marble was all brought from the Jeypore territories upon wheeled carriages, a distance, I believe, of two or three hundred miles; and the sandstone from the neighbourhood of Dhōlpur and Fathpur Sīkrī.⁵⁸¹ Shāh Jāhan is said to have inherited his partiality for this colour from his grandfather, Akbar, who constructed almost all his buildings from the same stone, though he might have had the beautiful white freestone at the same cost. What was figuratively said of Augustus may be most literally said of Shāh Jahān; he found the cities (Agra and Delhi) all brick, and left them all marble; for all the marble buildings, and additions to buildings, were formed by him.⁵⁸²

This magnificent building and the palaces at Agra and Delhi were, I believe, designed by Austin de Bordeaux, a Frenchman of great talent and merit, in whose ability and integrity the Emperor placed much reliance. He was called by the natives 'Ustān [sic] Isā, Nādir-ul-asr', 'the wonderful of the age'; and, for his office of 'naksha navīs', or plan-drawer, he received a regular salary of one thousand rupees a month, with occasional presents, that made his income very large. He had finished the palace at Delhi, and the mausoleum and palace of Agra; and was engaged in designing a silver ceiling for one of the galleries in the latter, when he was sent by the Emperor to settle some affairs of great importance at Goa. He died at Cochin on his way back, and is supposed to have been poisoned by the Portuguese, who were extremely jealous of his influence at court. He left a son by a native, called Muhammad Sharīf, who was employed as an architect on a salary of five hundred rupees a month, and who became, as I conclude from his name, a Musalmān. Shāh Jahān had commenced his own tomb on the opposite side of the Jumna; and both were to have been united by a bridge.⁵⁸³ The death of Austin de Bordeaux, and the wars between his [scil. Shāh Jahān's] sons that followed prevented the completion of these magnificent works.⁵⁸⁴

We were encamped upon a fine green sward outside the entrance to the south, in a kind of large court, enclosed by a high cloistered wall, in which all our attendants and followers found shelter. Colonel and Mrs. King, and some other gentlemen, were encamped in the same place, and for the same purpose; and we had a very agreeable party. The band of our friend Major Godby's regiment played sometimes in the evening upon the terrace of the Tāj; but, of all the complicated music ever heard upon earth, that of a flute blown gently in the vault below, where the remains of the Emperor and his consort repose, as the sound rises to the dome amidst a hundred arched alcoves around, and descends in heavenly reverberations upon those who sit or recline upon the cenotaphs above the vault, is, perhaps, the finest to an inartificial car. We feel as if it were from heaven, and breathed by angels; it is to the ear what the building itself is to the eye; but, unhappily, it cannot, like the building, live in our recollections. All that we can, in after life, remember is that it was heavenly, and produced heavenly emotions.

We went all over the palace in the fort, a very magnificent building constructed by Shāh Jahān within fortifications raised by his grandfather Akbar.⁵⁸⁵

The fretwork and mosaic upon the marble pillars and panels are equal to those of the Tāj; or, if possible, superior; nor is the design or execution in any respect inferior, and yet a European feels that he could get a house much more commodious, and more to his taste, for a much less sum than must have been expended upon it. The Marquis of Hastings, when Governor-General of India, broke up one of the most beautiful marble baths of this palace to send home to George IV of England, then Prince Regent, and the rest of the marble of the suite of apartments from which it had been taken, with all its exquisite fretwork and mosaic, was afterwards sold by auction, on account of our Government, by order of the then Governor-General, Lord W. Bentinck. Had these things fetched the price expected, it is probable that the whole of the palace, and even the Tāj itself, would have been pulled down, and sold in the same manner.⁵⁸⁶

We visited the Motī Masjid or Pearl Mosque. It was built by Shāh Jahān, entirely of white marble; and completed, as we learn from an inscription on the portico, in the year A.D. 1656.⁵⁸⁷ There is no mosaic upon any of the pillars or panels of this mosque; but the design and execution of the flowers in bas- relief are exceedingly beautiful. It is a chaste, simple, and majestic building;⁵⁸⁸ and is by some people admired even more than the Tāj, because they have heard less of it; and their pleasure is heightened by surprise. We feel that it is to all other mosques what the Tāj is to all other mausoleums, a facile princeps.

Few, however, go to see the 'mosque of pearls' more than once, stay as long as they will at Agra; and when they go, the building appears less and less to deserve their admiration; while they go to the Tāj as often as they can, and find new beauties in it, or new feelings of pleasure from it, every time⁵⁸⁹

I went out to visit this tomb of the Emperor Akbar at Sikandara, a magnificent building, raised over him by his son, the Emperor Jahāngīr. His remains he deposited in a deep vault under the centre, and are covered by a plain slab of marble, without fretwork or mosaic. On the top of the building, which is three or four stories high, is another marble slab, corresponding with the one in the vault below.⁵⁹⁰ This is beautifully carved, with the 'nau nauwē nām'-the ninety-nine names, or attributes of the Deity, from the Korān.⁵⁹¹ It is covered by an awning, not to protect the tomb, but to defend the 'words of God' from the rain, as my cicerone assured me.⁵⁹² He told me that the attendants upon this tomb used to have the hay of the large quadrangle of forty acres in which it stands,⁵⁹³ in addition to their small salaries, and that it yielded them some fifty rupees a year; but the chief native officer of the Tāj establishment demanded half of the sum, and when they refused to give him so much, he persuaded his master, the European engineer, with much difficulty, to take all this hay for the public cattle. 'And why could you not adjust such a matter between you, without pestering the engineer?' 'Is not this the way', said he, with emotion, 'that Hindustan has cut its own throat, and brought in the stranger at all times? Have they ever had, or can they ever have, confidence in each other, or let each other alone to enjoy the little they have in peace?' Considering all the circumstances of time and place, Akbar has always appeared to me among sovereigns what Shakespeare was among poets; and, feeling as a citizen of the world, I reverenced the marble slab that covers his bones more, perhaps, than I should that over any other sovereign with whose history I am acquainted.⁵⁹⁴